The Last Sweat

You'd think running your own dungeon studio would be the dream, right? I'm Natalia, thirty-one, and for six years I've been tying up rich men and making them cry on a padded bench I bought at a flea market in 2019. Six years! And somewhere in there, the whole thing turned into a grocery list.

That's the thing nobody warns you about with kink. The fantasies that used to make you wet on the train, the ones you used to rehearse in your head at two in the morning, they become routine. Rope goes there. Paddle goes there. Client whines, client pays, client leaves. I used to feel like a lightning bolt in heels. Now I feel like a woman doing inventory.

I was sitting in the front room of the studio that Tuesday afternoon, eating a sad salad and staring at my booking calendar, when Dani came through the door with two coffees. She's my business partner and my best friend, thirty-three, and she can read me with total clarity.

"You've got the face again," she said, handing me a cup.

"What face?"

"The face like somebody cancelled Christmas. You've got the Ellis appointment at four, and you look like you'd rather do your taxes."

Ellis. God, Ellis. He'd been coming every other Tuesday for eight months, this huge retired rugby player, twenty-nine years old, built with a massive, solid frame, who strutted in every time like he was doing me a favor. He owned some little gym across town. He'd lie on my bench and talk the whole session about how nobody could really break him, how other doms had tried, and then he'd leave with a wink. I hated how much I thought about him between visits. Which was a lot, honestly!

"He's a pain in my ass," I told Dani.

"Uh huh. You've reorganized the toy cabinet three times today and you only do that when you're stewing about a client. Which one?"

"You know which one."

She just laughed at me and went back to the books. I checked my phone. There it was again, that little pulse of something. Not dread exactly. Anticipation. Which annoyed me, because I'm supposed to be the professional.

Can I confess something dumb? I'd looked him up. Not just a casual Google, either. I had a folder on my laptop named "Work Reference" that was mostly photos of Callum Ellis. Him at some charity match. Him in a t-shirt at his gym's opening. Him holding a dog. That last one I don't even have an excuse for. He wasn't even conventionally my type, all shoulders and smirk, but there was something in his eyes in every photo. Like he was waiting for permission to be happy. I'd watched that folder the way other people watch cooking videos. It was embarrassing and I knew it.

At four sharp, the buzzer went.

I opened the door and there he was, six foot three of smug, in a black tee that fit like it had been sewn on him. Smelled like clean laundry and something warm underneath, and I hated noticing that.

"Afternoon, Natalia." He brushed past me like he owned the place. "You look tired."

"Wow, thanks. Flattery will get you everywhere."

"I mean it." He turned around in the middle of my front room and looked at me, and something in the look made the back of my neck prickle. "You've been going through the motions for a while now, haven't you? Even with me."

"I'm paid to go through motions. It's called a job."

"Sit down, Natalia."

I laughed. I actually laughed out loud, because who did he think he was? "This is my studio. You book time here. I don't take direction from clients."

"I know." He sat down on my bench, the one I'm supposed to put him on, and stretched his arms along the back of it like a king on a throne. "But you're going to want to hear this sitting down."

Everything in me said don't. I sat down anyway, on the folding chair across from him, because curiosity is going to be what kills me someday and today looked as good a day as any.

"You've got a folder," he said.

The room got very quiet. "A folder."

"On your laptop. Work Reference, you called it. Photos of me. There's one where I'm holding my sister's dog, which, okay, I'll admit, that's a good one."

My face went hot. I could feel it happening, my whole head heating up like a stove burner. "How do you know that?"

"Your laptop was open in the back room two visits ago when I went looking for the toilet. I wasn't snooping, it was just right there. And there I am, forty pictures deep in your files." He shrugged those enormous shoulders. "I could have been insulted. I wasn't. I was flattered, honestly, and then I was curious, and then I did some thinking."

"Callum, that's... I should explain."

"You don't have to explain anything. I'm not here to shame you." He leaned forward, elbows on those tree-trunk thighs. "Here's what I worked out. You've been studying me for months. Every session you watch me like you're waiting for something to happen. And every session I leave disappointed because you won't touch the actual thing."

"Which is what, exactly?"

"That I'm not the arrogant bastard I play. That I come here every other week and I've never once let go, and you've known that, and you've been too burnt out or too polite or too scared to push me the way you clearly want to." He smiled, and it was a different smile than usual, no smirk in it at all. "So here's my offer. Today, we swap. I run the scene. You do what I tell you. If you hate any of it, say ruby and we stop, and nothing changes. Cancel the four o'clock, it's not a booking. No fee, no tab, nothing tied to it either way. This is separate from the business, and you can say no to the whole thing right now."

My heart was doing something I didn't care for. "You've never topped anyone in your life."

"Maybe not. But I've spent twenty-nine years watching people try to break me, so I've got a very good education in what not to do." He stood up, and suddenly the room felt small. "One condition. The folder stays. I like that you watch me."

"This is insane," I said. And then, because I'm an idiot and a professional and apparently both at once: "What's your safeword going to be, then?"

"Yours is ruby, I remember. Mine will be ruby too, keeps it simple. So? Do we have a deal or not, Natalia?"

God help me, I looked at him sitting there all patience and muscle, and I felt that lightning bolt thing flicker for the first time in a year. "Deal," I said. "But if you're terrible at this, I'm telling Dani."

"Tell whoever you like." He pointed at the floor in front of him, easy as anything. "Come here. Kneel."

I knelt. My knees have never shaken like that, not from nerves anyway!

He watched me kneel there for a second, and I could see him doing the math on me, same as I'd done on him for eight months. It's a strange feeling, being the one on the floor. My knees on the concrete, my hands loose in my lap, and this huge man sitting on my bench looking down like he'd been doing it all his life.

"Color?" he asked. Just like that, like a pro.

"Green. Obviously. Shut up."

"That's two things, green and shut up, and I only asked for one." But he was grinning, and I was grinning too, which was ridiculous. "Hands stay where I can see them. You don't touch me unless I say you can. Deal?"

"Deal."

"Good. Now, first thing!" He leaned forward and took my hand. Not grabbed, took, the way you'd take a cup somebody handed you. He guided it across his thigh and pressed my palm flat against the front of his shorts, and there it was, thick and already half hard under the fabric. "I've thought about your hands for months. Every session you wrapped me up or strapped me down and you never once just touched. So touch."

My fingers curled a little without my permission. He was warm through the cotton, and he got warmer, and harder, right under my hand, and my own breath escaped me audibly. "You're not even going to pretend to be shy about this?"

"Why would I? I've got nothing to be shy about and you've clearly seen the photos." He kept his hand over mine, not pushing, just