Chapter 1: The Forbidden Inquiry
Kushina’s heel tapped a silent, frantic rhythm against the plush ivory carpet of her study. The city’s neon glow bled around the edges of her automated blinds, painting her face in streaks of artificial blue and pink. Her laptop screen was the only other light, a rectangle of stark white in the dark room.
She scrolled.
The words blurred together, a cascade of ecstatic, embarrassing praise. A digital shrine to a man known only as ‘The Legendary Fox.’
“Finally a man who can please me.”
“This is not a penis. This is a cock.”
“Sex God.”
“At first I came for sex now I came to see him. I fall in love with him.”
Multiple women replied to that last one. “I love him too.” “Me three.” “We all do, sweetie. We all do.”
Kushina’s lips, perfectly lined in a shade of burgundy she’d selected to convey ‘unapproachable executive,’ twisted into something bitter. Pathetic. These women were pathetic. Letting themselves get emotionally entangled with… a service. A transaction.
Her own emptiness echoed back at her, a hollow sensation beneath her ribs that no boardroom victory, no seven-figure quarter, had ever filled. It was a different kind of hunger. A physical ache that had been simplified, bureaucratized, made so mundane and safe in this world that it had lost all its flavor. All its fire.
Her fingers, usually steady enough to sign away millions, hovered over the keyboard. They trembled. Just a faint, betraying tremor.
She typed the message, her nails clicking a final, decisive beat. I need to feel alive.
She hit send before she could delete it. The screen went black as she slammed the lid shut.
Across the city, in a different kind of penthouse, the air smelled of ozone and sweat. The lobby here was sleek black marble, a cavernous space where floor-to-ceiling windows framed the chaotic neon symphony below. Inside, the scent of expensive leather mixed with something sharper: the metallic tang of old whiskey, and beneath it, the warm, animal scent of sex.
In a soundproofed office, a woman with lilac hair tied in high buns watched a bank of monitors. One screen showed a client room. In it, a man with sun-kissed hair moved with a powerful, relentless grace over a woman named Ultear, who had come in scowling about the price and was now gripping the silk sheets, her mouth a perfect ‘o’ of shattered composure.
Tayuya smiled, popping a gum bubble. She didn’t watch the physical act so much as she studied the data streaming alongside the feed. Heart rate, respiratory spikes, neural pleasure indicators. All optimal. Perfect.
Her console chimed. A new request. She opened it, saw the client name and the brief, desperate message. Her smile widened, turning genuine.
“She finally found it,” Tayuya murmured to herself, her eyes shifting from the new request back to the monitor where the man, Naruto, was whispering something that made Ultear sob. A good sob. A breaking-down-of-walls sob.
Tayuya leaned into her intercom, her voice a low purr. “I look forward to you joining us, Mom. We can finally be a family again.” She released the button. The words hung in the cool, recycled air of the control room, a private vow.
“Now,” she said, pushing her chair back. “Let’s go join and see how the new client’s doing.”
She got up and walked out the door, her footsteps silent on the polished floor. The hallway was all muted grays and hidden lighting, leading to the client suites. She paused outside one, not entering, simply observing through the one-way glass inset in the door.
Inside, the new client, a woman who’d arrived looking like she was attending a merger, was on her knees. Her professional façade was in tatters on the floor beside her blazer. Naruto stood before her, his hand gently fisted in her hair, not forcing, just guiding. His other hand tilted her chin up. He was talking, his expression intense, focused only on her. The woman’s eyes were wide, unblinking, swimming with a tumult of fear, shock, and a dawning, devouring need.
Tayuya watched, her head tilting. This one was fighting it. Most did, at first. They came for a novelty, for a story to tell themselves, not expecting the current underneath. Not expecting to be seen. Naruto had a way of stripping everything else away until all that was left was the raw, pulsing truth of what you wanted. It was brutal. It was merciful.
She saw the exact moment the client’s resistance broke. Not a collapse, but a surrender. A sharp intake of breath, her shoulders slumping, then rising again with a new, decisive rhythm as she leaned forward.
Tayuya nodded, satisfied. The process was underway. She turned from the door, her mind already cycling back to the request on her screen, to the woman with the red hair and the trembling fingers. The pieces were moving. It was all coming together.