Episode 5
I hear the bell ring just after midnight.
I knock once. “Towel service?” The door swings wider.
He’s older, fifties, maybe, fit and graying at the temples, with the posture of someone who ran a tight ship once and never forgot how.
He’s not lounging like most of them do, not spread out like he expects to be serviced.
He’s upright. Towel knotted tight at his waist. A deep scar slices across one pectoral.
His body is aging, but it doesn’t look worn.
It looks lived in. Held together by precision and control.
“Step inside, Luca.” His eyes roam over me. Not like the others do. It’s not leering. It’s... assessing. “You’re Luca.” It’s a statement, not a question. I nod. “I’ve watched you. You take your job seriously.”
He steps back and lets me in. The room smells like eucalyptus and clean skin. The kind of space where you either surrender or pretend not to want to.
The door shuts with a soft thud behind me. He doesn’t touch me. Doesn’t move closer. Just stands there and watches, like he’s waiting for me to figure something out.
“You always this quiet?” he asks.
“Only when I’m trying to figure out what someone wants.”
His lips twitch. Not quite a smile. Approval, maybe.
“That’s a good instinct. Dangerous, but good. Sit,” he says, motioning to the bench at the far end.
I hesitate because I’m the help. This isn’t how it goes. But something in his tone makes it feel less like an order, more like... a dare. So, I sit. He kneels in front of me, unfolds the towel I brought, and lays it on the tile beside him. His hands rest lightly on my thighs.
“Let’s start simple,” he says. “Why do you work here?”
I blink. “Is that relevant?”
“You tell me.”
No one's asked before, not like this. Most of them only care if I’ll touch or let myself be touched. He wants conversation. Or control through it.
“Pays better than folding sweaters at the mall.”
That earns a smile. “But you like it,” he says, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. “I’ve seen the way you watch. You’re careful. Curious. Not hungry like some of them. Not jaded, either.”
“You’ve seen me?”
“I’ve been coming here for months. You always think you’re the observer, don’t you?”
That lands deeper than it should. I glance down at the towel in my hands. Still folded. Still between us. A line I haven’t crossed yet.
“I think,” he says slowly, “you want to learn something.” I lift my eyes. He’s watching me again, head slightly tilted. “But you don’t know how to ask. Because no one’s ever made you.”
He’s not wrong. But I’m not ready to admit it. So I ask instead, “And what is it you think I want to learn?”
A pause. A long one. Then: “How to make someone beg.”
His voice hums in my ears long after he stops speaking. How to make someone beg.
The words shouldn't make my throat tighten, or my toes curl against the warm tile. But they do. I look at him again, at the lines at the corners of his eyes, the settled calm in his chest, the stillness of a man who has nothing to prove and everything to offer.
“Who says I don’t already know how?”
“You don’t look like someone who’s been given the chance to find out.”
I hate how that hits. Hate how much of me wants to agree. “What makes you think I want to learn from you?”
He leans back just enough to say he’s not chasing. “Because you haven’t left.”
He’s right. My fingers are still gripping the towel like it’s a shield. I’m still standing like I don’t know whether to kneel or run.
“Have you ever begged?” I ask. I mean it to come out flippant. It doesn’t. It sounds like need.
His gaze drags across me like the edge of a knife. “No.”
I swallow. “So you don’t know how it feels.”
“I know how to watch for it. The catch in a breath. The moment the eyes drop. The second someone forgets what they’re saying because they need too much.”
The heat between us isn’t coming from the steam anymore.
“What do you want from me?” I manage.
He rises. No rush. No fanfare. Just stands, towel still tied, and closes the distance between us until I feel the heat of his chest hovering near mine. His voice drops, quieter now, closer to a confession than a seduction.
“I want to teach you how to take your pleasure. Without guilt. Without apology. I want to feel your mouth on me, not because I asked, but because you craved it.”
I don’t recognize the sound I make. It’s breath and ache. It’s every part of me twisting in on itself, trying to remember the rules I walked in with. I lift my chin, trying to regain ground. “You think I’m just going to drop to my knees?”
“I think,” he says, brushing his knuckles along my jawline, “you already want to.”
And God help me, I do. But I don’t move yet. Not because I don’t want to. Because I want it too much. Because I need a second longer to understand who I am in this room, in this moment.
His hand falls away, leaving a burn in its wake. “You don’t have to,” he says. “I don’t want obedience. I want a choice.” Then he backs away. Just one step. But it changes the air between us. “I’m in Room 4 tonight. If you come to me, come because you want to. Not because I asked.”
He turns toward the exit, and for a breathless moment, I panic. He’s really leaving. But before the door clicks shut behind him, he glances back.
“And Luca?” I meet his gaze. “You don’t have to kneel to take control.”
I stare at the closed door long after it shuts. Room 4.
My hands feel clammy. The towel in my lap’s still damp from the steam. I hate how fast my heart’s beating. I hate that I want to walk away, but my feet won’t move. I tell myself I’m just curious. That I just want to watch. That maybe he won’t even still be there.
But I know that’s a lie.
I walk the long stretch of hallway with a strange kind of reverence, like I’m about to enter somewhere sacred. Or dangerous. My fingertips brush each numbered door like they’re counting off my nerves one by one.
When I reach his, I hesitate. Just a second. Just enough to hear my own breath shake in my chest. Then I knock once, light. Almost too light. The door opens before I can talk myself out of it.
He’s still in his towel. Only now he’s added nothing, no robe, no barrier.
The room behind him is dim, lit only by the warm flicker of a single sconce.
The kind of light that asks for secrets.
I step inside. He doesn’t speak, just closes the door behind me with a soft click that sounds louder than it should.
We stand there, facing each other. The silence doesn’t feel awkward, though. It feels like it’s daring me to say something first.
I don’t. He does.
“You came.”
My throat is dry. “You left the door open.”
A flicker of a smile. “I said come if you wanted. I didn’t say what we’d do once you got here.”
He crosses the room, deliberate but unhurried, and sits on the edge of the massage table. Not a sprawl. A perch. Like he’s giving me the power. Like he’s not going to touch unless I say please.
And that is what makes my knees feel like they could give out.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I say. It’s too honest. It scrapes up my throat.
“That’s the best place to start.”
I move toward him, expecting him to reach for me, but he doesn’t. He just leans back slightly, letting his thighs part, giving me space to choose what comes next.
I kneel. Not because I have to. Because I want to. He draws in a breath, but still doesn’t touch me.
I look up at him. “You said you’d teach me.”
His voice is steady, but there's heat curled beneath it. “Start by kissing the inside of my thigh.”
My hands shake when I press them to his knees. He’s so warm and solid. I lower my head, lips brushing hot, damp skin. His breath catches. I do it again, slower this time, letting myself sink into the feel of him, the scent of clean skin and something deeper.
When I glance up again, his eyes are dark. Not from lust alone, but from restraint.
“You’re doing fine,” he says, voice hoarse. “Keep going.”
So I do. I explore him with my mouth, first tentative, then bolder. Every moan I pull from him is a reward. Every muscle twitch, every sigh, every moment he bites his lip to keep from begging? It lights me up inside.
I feel powerful. Wanted. Not just for how I look. For what I can do.
When I finally take him into my mouth, the noise he makes is low and strained, his hips twitching before he forces them still.
“Luca—fuck—just like that.”
I keep going, head bobbing, tongue working. I’m learning him. I’m learning myself. And when he fists the sheets, when he breathes my name like it means something, I know I’ve found something I never knew I needed.
He warns me, but I don’t stop. He comes with a broken sound, hand barely brushing my hair. And when I sit back, mouth slick, heart racing, he looks at me like I’ve just undone him.
I wipe my lips with the back of my hand, eyes meeting his. “I want to do that again,” I say.
He smiles, wide and slow. “So do I.”
We haven’t spoken in a while, just breathing through the thick steam, not since I stood up and he pulled me into his lap like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like we hadn’t just met. Like I hadn’t just learned the shape of his pleasure by heart with nothing but my mouth.
Now his arms are around me. Loose. Comfortable. One hand strokes lazy paths up and down my spine like he’s trying to memorize me. My head rests against his shoulder, damp curls sticking to his neck. His breath is steady. Mine isn’t.
I don’t know what this is supposed to feel like. I don’t know if I’m supposed to get dressed and leave, or if I’m allowed to stay, just like this.
He doesn’t seem in a rush, which helps.
“Was that your first time?” he finally asks, voice rough, like he’s been holding the question in his chest.
My cheek brushes his collarbone when I nod.
He leans back just far enough to meet my eyes. “You’re good. Better than good. You listened. Most people don’t.”
I don’t know what to do with that. The praise. The way his fingers trail up to brush behind my ear like he wants to touch the softest part of me.
“I just wanted to do it right.”
“You did.”
His hand settles at my jaw, thumb glancing over my lip. “Can I kiss you?”
It’s such a gentle thing to ask, after everything. That he still bothers to ask. I nod.
His kiss isn’t demanding. It doesn’t need to be. It’s slow, sensual, lips pressing to mine like he’s saying thank you without words. And I realize maybe he needed this too. Maybe I’m not the only one figuring shit out in here.
When he pulls away, I press my forehead to his. “Do you… do this often?”
“No.” A soft huff of breath. “Not like this. Not with someone who asks if they’re doing it right.”
I smile faintly. “Did I?”
He laughs quietly. “Every time you looked up at me, it was a question.”
“And you answered.”
He nods once, then falls quiet again. His hands settle at my hips. Possessive, almost, but not in a way that makes me want to run. In a way that makes me want to stay exactly where I am.
The hum of the air vents fills the silence. The glow from the wall light turns everything amber. I could fall asleep here. I could wake up here.
“I should go,” I whisper, even though I don’t move.
He nods again, slower this time. “Will you come back?”
That hits me harder than I expect. Not can you. Not should you. But will you.
“I might.”
His lips brush my cheek. “I hope you do.”
And for the first time in a long time, I leave a room not because I’ve been dismissed, but because I’ve been invited to return.