Chapter 3: Mirror Worship
The harness lay on the floor by the bed, a coiled black snake in the stripe of dawn now bleeding through the blind. The room held a new stillness, thick with the smell of sweat and sex and the faint, ever-present tang of linseed oil from the canvases in the corner.
Oli’s body was a map of unfamiliar sensations. A deep, pleasant ache in muscles he wasn’t aware he had. A residual hum in his veins. A bruise, he suspected, forming on his hip from the grip of her hands. He lay on his side, watching the slow rise and fall of Emma’s shoulders. She was on her stomach, her face turned away, one arm dangling over the side of the bed. The dawn light sketched the topography of her back in stark relief—the trapezius muscles like swept wings, the hard ridge of her spine a valley between the densely packed geography of her lats. She looked like a landscape carved by a different god.
His mind was blank. Not peaceful, just… scoured clean. All the noise, the panic, the what-the-fuck-ness of the last few hours, had burned off in that final, shocking climax. What remained was a hollow, almost vibrating calm.
A bus groaned past on the street below. A normal sound. The world was still out there.
Emma stirred. A low, unconscious murmur escaped her. She flexed her shoulder, the muscle balling and releasing under her skin. Then she went still again, her breathing deep and even.
Oli carefully pushed himself up on one elbow. The movement sent a twinge through his lower back. Christ. He looked around the room, seeing it properly for the first time. The leaning tower of sketchbooks. The abandoned protein bar wrapper. A paint-stained mug holding a bouquet of dead brushes. On the easel, a draped canvas. It was all so her. And now he was here, naked in the wreckage of her bed, a frail ghost in the temple of her discipline.
He needed water. His mouth felt like it had been stuffed with wool. He slid out from under the duvet, the cool air raising goosebumps on his skin. He found his glasses on the floor, next to the discarded strap-on. The sight of it, inert now on the carpet, sent a fresh, hot jolt through him. He looked quickly away, located his crumpled shirt and stepped into it, not buttoning it. It barely covered him.
He padded out to the kitchen, the boards cold under his feet. The living room was a crime scene from a previous life. The coffee table was back in its usual spot, but one of the wine glasses lay on its side by the leg of a chair. The fairy lights were still on, blinking stupidly in the grey morning. He filled a glass with tap water and drank it in one long, desperate gulp, then filled it again.
“Stealing my water?”
Her voice, husky with sleep, came from the doorway. He turned, water sloshing over his hand.
She leaned against the frame, wrapped in a thin, grey sheet she’d dragged from the bed. It was tucked under her arms, leaving her shoulders bare. Her hair was a magnificent disaster. She looked solid, rumpled, and utterly unreadable. The green of her eyes was muted in the flat light.
“Forgot to ask,” he said, his own voice rough. “Protocol for post… after…”
“Hydration is encouraged,” she said, a ghost of her dry tone returning. She pushed off the doorframe and walked to the sink, moving with a loose, powerful grace. She took the glass from his hand, her fingers brushing his, and drank from the same spot he had. She handed it back empty.
She turned and leaned back against the counter, facing him. The sheet gaped slightly at her chest. “So.”
“So.”
They looked at each other. The silence stretched, but it wasn’t the pressurized roar from before. It was cautious, exploratory. A mutual assessment of damage.
“I’m… sore,” Oli offered, for lack of anything else.
A corner of her mouth twitched. “Good.”
“That’s sadistic.”
“It’s honest.” She watched him, her gaze travelling over his open shirt, down to his bare legs. “You look like you got run over by a very specific vehicle.”
“I feel like it.” He shifted his weight. “You?”
She shrugged, a rolling movement of deltoid and trapezius. “Fine. A good stretch.” She wasn’t bragging. It was just data. She glanced past him into the living room. “We should probably talk about the table.”
“The table is the least of it.”
“True.”
Another beat of quiet. The fridge condenser kicked in, a sudden rattle.
“Are you freaking out?” she asked, her eyes pinpoint sharp on his face now. “Internally? Be honest.”
He let out a long breath. He was. A low-grade, formless freak-out was simmering beneath the numbness. But it was competing with something else—a bizarre sense of relief, as if a cyst of unspoken tension had finally been lanced. “I don’t know what I am. I think my brain rebooted in safe mode.” He met her gaze. “You?”
She looked down at her own hands, curled loosely on the countertop. Her knuckles were prominent. “I don’t know either.” She sounded surprised to admit it. “I thought I would. I had… the scenario. The demonstration.” She glanced up, a flicker of the previous night’s intensity in her eyes. “I didn’t have the morning after.” Her voice dropped. “I didn’t plan for you calling me ‘Daddy’ and then… all the rest.”
The word in the daylight was a slap. He flinched. “Emma, I—“
“Don’t,” she cut him off, but it was gentle. “Don’t apologise for it. Not now. It happened. It’s data.” She pushed off the counter. “I’m taking a shower. There’s coffee. Make some.”
She turned and walked back down the hall, the sheet trailing behind her like a royal mantle.
He stood in the kitchen for a full minute, listening to the pipes shriek and then the steady drum of water. Data.
He made coffee. He found the bags in the freezer, ground the beans in her crappy machine, boiled the kettle. The routine was an anchor. He cleared the two wine glasses from the living room table, wiped the ring of condensation. He righted the fallen chair. He did not look towards her bedroom door.
By the time the coffee was brewing, its bitter scent cutting through the stale air, she emerged. She was dressed in loose black sweats and a tight grey tank top that left exactly nothing to the imagination. Her hair was damp, darker now, clinging to her neck. She’d scrubbed her face clean. She looked younger, and more vulnerable, despite the formidable frame.
She took the mug he offered without a word, cradling it in both hands. They stood in the kitchen, drinking in silence.
“That was the most insane thing that has ever happened to me,” Oli said finally, staring into his mug.
“Likewise.”
“You’ve… you know. Done things like that before?”
She shook her head. “Lifted a man and fucked him in mid-air? No. That was a first.” She took a sip. “The harness, yes. A few times. Never with… someone I knew. Never like that.”
“The double entendre wasn't lost on me. With someone you knew."
She gave a soft, almost laugh. "See? You're already making weak jokes. You're recovering."
"It's a defence mechanism." He looked at her. “Why me?”
She put her mug down. “Because you saw the work and called it a snack. Because you were the one person I didn’t want to see it, and then you did, in the worst possible way. Because you looked at me in that living room and you were scared.” She held his gaze. “I liked it.”
The admission hung between them, stark and uncomfortable.
“And after?” he pressed. “When I was… compliant.”
Her eyes clouded. She traced a grain in the wooden countertop. “That was different. That was… shared. The power became a thing we were both looking at. You weren’t just scared. You were… present.”
He remembered the mirror. Her commanding him to look. The brutal, honest contrast. “It felt more honest than anything has in a long time.”
She nodded, as if he’d confirmed a theory. “Yes.”
The coffee was bitter and good. The morning was getting brighter, etching the room in dull details.
“What happens now?” he asked.
“Now?” She finished her coffee, placed the mug in the sink with a decisive clink. “Now, we have breakfast. I’m starving. And you…” She turned, leaning back against the sink, and looked him over. “You’re going to stand right there. And you’re going to tell me what you want. Not as a joke. Not deflected. One honest sentence.”
The command was quieter than last night’s, but it held the same steel. It wasn’t about sex now. It was about something more terrifying.
His mouth went dry again. He could feel his heart thump against his ribs. The old Oli would have cracked a joke about wanting smoked salmon and not the cheap kind. The Oli who had been dismantled and loosely reassembled in this flat stayed silent, searching.
He looked at her. At the woman who could lift a table with one hand. At the artist whose sketchbooks were filled with delicate, precise lines. At his best friend, who had just rewritten the rules of their entire universe.
“I want,” he said slowly, the words foreign on his tongue, “to not go back to how it was before. I want to look at you and see you, and not have to pretend I don’t.”
She didn’t smile. But something in her face softened, a subtle release of tension in her jaw. “Okay,” she said. Simple. Accepting.
“And,” he added, the momentum carrying him, “I want you to make me eggs. Because I’m starving too, and you’re a demon in the kitchen.”
That got a real smile, quick and bright. “Now that,” she said, pushing off the sink and opening the fridge, “is an honest and excellent request.”
She pulled out eggs, butter, a block of cheese. He watched her move, the efficient, powerful motions. The world hadn’t ended. The fairy lights were still blinking. They were just two people in a kitchen, marooned in the strange, silent aftermath of a shared earthquake, making breakfast. The ordinary act felt more intimate than anything that had come before.
The ordinary act felt more intimate than anything that had come before. She cracked eggs into a bowl with sharp, single-handed flicks. He found a block of cheddar and a grater, the metallic scrape filling the comfortable silence. They moved around each other in the small kitchen, a hesitant, unfamiliar choreography.
“You’re burning the butter,” he said, watching the pan.
“I like it hot,” she replied, not turning. She poured the eggs in. They sizzled violently, immediately feathering at the edges. She stirred them with a rough, impatient push of the spatula. It wasn’t delicate. It was efficient.
They ate standing at the counter, shoulders almost touching. The eggs were creamy, sharp with cheese, perfect. For a few minutes, there was just the sound of chewing, of forks on plates. The sun had properly risen now, a pale London yellow sliding across the cluttered living room and highlighting the dust motes in the air.
“So,” Oli said, swallowing. “Marketing plan for Acorn Furniture draft is due Tuesday.”
Emma snorted, a genuine laugh. “Right. Yes. The pivot to ‘rustic sustainability’. We should probably think about that.”
“I was thinking we could suggest they actually use sustainable wood. Radical, I know.”
“Too on-brand. They’d hate it.” She scraped the last bite from her plate. The mundane office talk was a life raft, and they were both clinging to it. It held. The world hadn’t ended. They still had jobs, and bad clients, and each other’s weirdly specific sense of humour.
Then she stretched. It was a languid, unconscious movement after eating, her arms reaching for the ceiling, her back arching. The hem of her tank top rode up, revealing the dense, corrugated planes of her lower abdomen. The muscles in her shoulders and arms elongated, swelling into defined, formidable chunks. She was a study in controlled power, even in repose.
The sheet from earlier was still draped over the back of a kitchen chair. As she brought her arms down, her elbow caught it.
It slid, pooling in a heap on the floor at her feet.
She stood there, in her sweats and tank, suddenly exposed in the honest morning light without even that thin veil. The fabric of her top strained across her pectorals, each one a solid, distinct shelf. The defined line of her serratus anterior wrapped around her ribcage like armour. Every hour of lockdown obsession was visible, a testament to sheer will. She looked absolutely huge.
Oli’s fork clattered onto his plate. The noise was too loud.
He stared. His mind emptied of Acorn Furniture, of bad coffee, of anything resembling a thought. The data from the night was no longer abstract. It was here, in the sunlight. The thing that had lifted him, pinned him, fucked him senseless. It was his best friend, blinking sleepily, her stomach softly gurgling from breakfast.
A force, outside of himself, took over. His legs moved. He crossed the three steps to her. He didn’t look at her face. His gaze was locked on the harness, a dark lump where it had been dropped last night beside the table leg. He picked it up. The neoprene was cool, the straps limp.
Emma watched him, utterly still. Her expression was one of pure, unguarded curiosity.
He turned back to her. His voice, when it came, was flat, detached, as if someone else was using his throat. “You’re huge, Daddy,” he heard himself say. “And I’m going to suck you off.”
A slow, deep breath filled her lungs, making her chest expand. She said nothing. She simply lifted her arms, a gesture of permission, of expectation.
His hands weren’t trembling as he knelt before her. He looped the harness around her hips, his fingers fumbling slightly with the buckles under the sweatpants’ waistband. He tightened the straps over the powerful curves of her glutes, snapping them securely. The act was methodical, reverent.
He retrieved the double-ended toy from where it lay. He fitted it into the ring. It clicked home.
He didn’t wait for a command. He leaned forward and took the silicone into his mouth.
The sound Emma made was a sharp, punched-out “Ah.” It wasn’t a word. It was pure reaction. He felt it vibrate through her. The toy was double-ended; the other tip pressed against her, and the sensation, amplified by the firm pressure of his mouth, was direct and incredibly pleasurable. He could feel the subtle jump of her clit against the base.
He started slow, a deliberate, sliding rhythm. His eyes were open, fixed on the firm ridge of her quadricep at his eye level.
“Look at you,” she breathed, her voice already thready. She placed a hand on the back of his head, not pushing, just resting. The weight was a brand. “My good boy. Sucking me off. Tell me what you see.”
He pulled off with a soft, wet pop. He was panting. “I see your legs,” he murmured against the chill silicone. “They’re like tree trunks.” He took her back in, humming this time, feeling her twitch.
“And?” she prompted, her fingers tightening in his hair.
He pulled away again, licking a broad stripe up the shaft. “Your stomach. It’s carved. I can see every muscle. You’re a sculpture.” He returned to his work, more urgently now, spurred by her approval, by the raw, salty taste, by the faint, rhythmic pulsing he could sense through the material.
“Look in the mirror,” she commanded, her voice gaining an edge. “Look at us. Now.”
He turned his head. The full-length mirror on the closet door captured them. The image was devastating. She stood, dominant and immense, a colossus in grey cotton. He was on his knees before her, a pale, skinny wraith, his mouth stretched around the black silicone extending from her hips. The contrast was absurd, obscene, breathtaking. She was devouring him with her presence, and he was willingly being consumed.
“Tell me,” she gasped. Her hips made a tiny, involuntary thrust.
He moaned around her, the vibration making her shudder. He released her. “I look tiny,” he panted, staring at their reflection. “You’re this… this giant. My giant. And I’m your little thing. On my knees.”
“Yes,” she hissed. “Again.”
He resumed, his movements becoming sloppy, desperate. He worked her with his mouth and his hand, a twisting, milking pressure. His other hand drifted to his own hardness, stroking in time. He was a feedback loop of submission and arousal, watching the powerful woman in the mirror come apart because of him.
Her breathing became ragged, torn. Her thighs began to tremble. “Don’t stop. Don’t you dare stop, Oli.”
He doubled his efforts, his jaw aching, his world narrowing to taste, to sight, to the building tension in the form above him. He could feel it, the gathering storm inside her. Her abs clenched, a rigid board. A choked, guttural sound ripped from her throat.
She came. It was a silent, total locking of her body, followed by a deep, rolling series of quakes that travelled from her core down through her thighs. Her hand clenched in his hair, holding him fast as she rode the sensation, her head thrown back, her powerful neck corded.
He watched it all in the mirror—the collapse of her control, the unvarnished glory of it. It was more intimate than anything before. It was a gift.
As the last tremor subsided, her grip loosened. She gently guided his head away. He slumped back onto his heels, spent, lips feeling bruised and slick. She looked down at him, her eyes glassy, her expression soft with a stunned wonder.
She slowly unsnapped the harness, letting it fall to the floor with a soft thud between them. Then she sank down, not to the floor, but lowering herself until she was sitting before him, their knees touching. The giant was gone. It was just Emma, breathless and real.
She reached out and wiped his lower lip with her thumb.