Chapter 6: The Mentor's Touch
The afternoon light fell in warm bands through Karin's window, catching the motes of dust that floated lazily in the still air. The room smelled of lavender and cedar, the dried flowers hanging in neat bundles from the rafters, the wooden floor scrubbed to a soft gleam. Nia knelt on a woven rug in the center of the space, her hands resting on her thighs, her jaw tight.
Karin sat cross-legged before her, those pink twin tails framing his delicate face, his expression soft and curious. He had been quiet since she arrived, letting her stew in her silence, letting the admission build in her throat until it had to come out. And now that it had, now that the words hung raw and ugly between them, he let out a small laugh, not cruel, not mocking, but warm, almost fond.
"Nia," he said, drawing her name out. "You're trying to force a door that doesn't open that way. Of course it's not working."
Nia's nostrils flared. She had come here because she had nowhere else to go, because Bambi was useless and Vera was too soft and Margot would have gloated. Karin was the only one who might understand, who might not judge her for failing at something so simple. But the laugh made her want to claw his face.
"Finger won't even go past the first knuckle," she said, her voice cracking on the last word. "Three days. Three days of stretching and oil and it's like my body is fighting me. I feel nothing but frustration. Nothing."
Karin tilted his head. "Have you tried breathing?"
"Don't mock me."
"I'm not mocking you." He rose in a fluid motion, moving to a small wooden chest against the wall. His bare feet padded softly on the floorboards. He knelt, opened the lid, and rummaged through the contents with the care of a man handling holy relics. When he turned back, he held a small glass jar filled with a pale, almost translucent substance, and a slim, tapered plug made of smooth, dark wood.
Nia eyed both with suspicion. "What is that?"
"Homemade lube. Beeswax, olive oil, a bit of aloe. The women here have been making it for years." He settled back down in front of her, placing the items on the rug between them. "And this is a training plug. You start with something small like this, you wear it for a few hours a day, and eventually your body learns to open."
"Learns?" Nia's voice was flat. "It's a hole. It doesn't learn anything."
Karin laughed again, softer this time. "You really don't get it, do you? That's why you're stuck. You're treating this like work. Like a field to be tilled or a debt to be paid. But Abel doesn't want you to grit your teeth and endure it. He wants you to want it. He wants you to melt into it."
Nia stared at him. The words burrowed under her skin, uncomfortable because they rang true. She had been approaching the training the same way she approached everything, with discipline and force and the grim determination of a soldier. And it had gotten her nowhere.
"Is that what you do?" she asked, her voice quieter now. "When you're chosen?"
Karin's lips curved into a small, knowing smile. "I haven't been chosen yet. But I will be. And when I am, I'll be ready." He picked up the plug, turning it in his fingers. "Here. Let me show you."
Nia's breath caught. "Show me what?"
"How to surrender."
The words hung in the air. Karin's eyes were patient, unblinking, and Nia felt something shift inside her chest, a loosening of the iron grip she kept on her own pride. She was the enforcer. She was the one who kept others in line. To be taught, to be guided, to be led by someone like Karin, a man who pranced around in rags and prayed to Abel like a lovesick child, it rubbed against everything she thought she was.
And yet.
"Alright," she said. "Show me."
Karin nodded, rising from the rug with a dancer's grace. He crossed to the bed, a low frame draped in soft white linen, and began to undress without ceremony. The coarse rags fell away, revealing a body that was slender and smooth, pale skin unmarked save for the faint tan lines where his makeshift clothes usually covered him. He was completely hairless, his skin as smooth as polished stone from chest to thigh, not a single follicle breaking the clean line of his body except for the pink hair on his head.
Nia watched, her throat tight. She had seen plenty of naked bodies since joining The Garden, but Karin's was different. It was almost doll-like, delicate, deliberate. Every inch of him had been maintained with care, shaped into something pleasing for Abel's eventual use.
Karin settled onto the bed, lying back against the headboard with his legs spread wide, his arms stretched out above him. He looked like an offering laid out on an altar. He patted the mattress beside him.
"Join me," he said. "And bring the jar."
Nia hesitated for only a heartbeat. Then she stripped, her own body rougher next to his, muscled from years of farm labor and before that, city discipline. She climbed onto the bed, kneeling beside him, the glass jar clutched in her hand.
Karin reached over to the small chest and produced another item: a hand-carved dildo, smooth and dark, longer and thicker than the training plug but still modest. He handed it to her, his fingers brushing hers.
"I believe in showing by example first," he said, his voice soft. "I'm going to let you use this on me. And I need you to be careful. Slow. Don't hurt me."
Nia blinked. "You want me to... fuck your ass?"
"I want you to learn what surrender looks like." Karin's eyes held hers, calm and certain. "I'm going to give you my body, and you're going to take it. That's the deal. You watch how I open, how I breathe, how I take it. And then you'll understand what Abel wants from you."
She opened the jar, dipped her fingers in the slick substance. It smelled of beeswax and something faintly floral. She coated the dildo generously, her hands steady despite the strange flutter in her chest.
Karin spread his legs wider, his feet planted on the bed, his knees falling open. His body was a perfect canvas, smooth and pale, his entrance visible and clean. He reached down and parted his cheeks with two fingers, offering himself without shame.
"Whenever you're ready," he murmured.
Nia positioned the dildo against his entrance. She pressed gently, expecting resistance, expecting the same stubborn wall that had met her fingers for three days. Instead, the dark wood slid in with shocking ease, as if his body had been waiting for it, as if it had been trained for this exact purpose.
Karin let out a low moan, his head falling back against the headboard, his eyes fluttering shut.
"Oh," Nia breathed. "It just... went in."
"Mm." Karin's lips curved. "Try moving it."
She did. She pulled it back an inch, then pushed it in again, deeper this time. Karin's moan pitched higher, his hips rolling to meet the motion, his fingers gripping the sheets. His body accepted the dildo readily, opening around it like a flower turning toward the sun.
Nia found a rhythm, slow and careful, watching his face. His expression was pure pleasure, slack and warm, his lips parted, his cheeks flushed. She could feel his body clenching around the toy, welcoming it, drawing it deeper.
And then she noticed it.
His cock lay limp against his belly. Completely soft. Barely there.
She almost stopped. Almost asked what the hell was going on, whether he was faking it, whether he was even feeling anything at all. But before the words could form on her tongue, Karin shuddered, and his limp cock twitched, and a thin, pathetic stream of cum pulsed from its tip, followed by another, and another, small spurts that landed on his smooth stomach in scattered droplets.
He came without an erection. His body convulsed in pleasure, his hips rolling, his ass clenching around the dildo, and he came like some kind of broken toy, his soft cock leaking weakly as his whole body trembled.
Nia froze, the dildo still buried inside him. "How...?"
Karin's eyes opened, dark and satisfied. "Abel's decree," he said, his voice breathy. "My cock is useless. It's not for him. It's not for anyone. I train my ass to be the only thing Abel needs. My body learned that a long time ago."
He reached down, touched the wet spot on his stomach, and brought his fingers to his lips, licking them clean.
"That's surrender, Nia. That's what happens when you give everything to him."
She let go of the dildo as if it had burned her. Karin pulled it free with a soft, wet sound, the dark wood slick with lube, and set it aside on the linen without a word. His eyes were still hazy with pleasure, but his hands moved with practiced ease as he reached for the training plug and the jar.
"Now it's your turn," he said, his voice a low, patient murmur.
Nia's heart slammed against her ribs. She watched him coat the slim plug with a generous amount of the pale lube, his fingers working the substance over every inch of the smooth dark wood until it gleamed. He gestured to the bed with a tilt of his chin.
"All fours. Head down. Let your body hang loose."
She moved before she could talk herself out of it, turning on the mattress and settling onto her hands and knees. The woven rug was beneath her palms, the linen cool against her knees. She felt exposed, open, her ass raised and presented like an offering.
"Wait," she said quickly, her voice tight. "My cunt. Abel decreed it forbidden. I'm not allowed to feel pleasure from it. So be careful. Don't touch it. Don't brush against it. Nothing."
Karin's laugh was gentle. He knelt behind her, his knees pressing into the mattress on either side of her thighs. "I won't touch what belongs to him. Not even to help."
She felt the tip of the plug press against her entrance. It was cool, slick, insistent. She braced herself, clenching her jaw, waiting for the same stubborn resistance that had defeated her for three days.
Nothing.
The plug met her body's closed gate and stopped there, refusing to enter. Karin applied a little more pressure, and her muscles locked up tight, a wall of tension that she could feel all the way up her spine.
"Breathe," Karin said softly. "You're holding everything in your hips, Nia. Your asshole is just the door, but your whole body is the bouncer. You're trying to keep everyone out."
"I don't know how to not hold it," she gritted out. "I'm not used to letting things in. I'm the one who keeps things out."
"I know. That's the work." Karin placed his free hand on the small of her back, a light, grounding pressure. "Close your eyes."
She did.
"Think about Abel."
The words landed in her chest like a stone in still water. She thought about him, the way he looked down from his terrace, the way his eyes passed over the kneeling ranks and lingered only on those he deemed worthy. She thought about the low, calm timbre of his voice when he had decreed her cunt forbidden, about the way that decree had made her feel, not angry, not humiliated, but seen. Claimed like a marked animal.
"Now breathe in. Deep, all the way down into your belly. And as you breathe out, I want you to imagine your asshole loosening. Letting go. Opening for him."
She took a breath, slow and deep, her belly swelling against her thighs. She held it for a heartbeat.
"Exhale," Karin said.
She let it out, a long, shuddering sigh, and in that exact moment Karin pressed the plug forward with a firm, steady push. It slid in with a wet, slick sound, past her resisting ring of muscle and into the empty space beyond.
The whole thing. In one go.
Nia's breath caught in her throat. She felt the base of the plug settle snug against her perineum, the small lip of it pressing against her skin. She stared down at the mattress, her arms trembling, her mind blank with shock.
"That's it," Karin said, his voice warm with approval. "That's it, Nia. It's in."
She hadn't even managed a full finger. Not once in three days. And Karin had just slid the whole plug into her like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"I..." She couldn't finish the sentence. She pushed her hips back slightly, feeling the plug shift inside her, a presence, a fullness, something she had been trying to achieve for days. It didn't feel like pleasure. It didn't feel like anything except pressure, foreign and strange. But it was in. It was inside her.
"Thank you," she breathed, the words stumbling out of her. "Thank you. I thought I was broken. I thought I couldn't do it."
"Give yourself time," Karin said, already moving off the bed. He pulled his coarse rags back on, the short skirt and the crop top, his movements unhurried and graceful. "Three hours a day. Wear the plug for three hours until it gets so easy you forget it's there. Then come find me. I'll give you a bigger one, and we start again."
Nia pushed herself up onto her knees, reaching back to touch the base of the plug protruding from her. It was real. It was inside her.
"The goal right now is to prepare your asshole to receive," Karin said, tucking a strand of pink hair behind his ear. "Pleasure can and will come either during or after. But first, you open. You learn to surrender."
She began to dress, pulling the coarse tunic over her head, settling the rough linen against her skin. The plug moved inside her with every motion, a constant reminder of its presence.
"Thank you, Karin," she said again, softer this time. "I really mean it."
Karin smiled, a small, genuine thing. "That's what we're here for. To support and help each other become exactly what Abel wants us to become."
Nia stood, feeling the plug shift deeper inside her. She would wear it for three hours. She would wear it tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that until she was ready for the next one. Until her body learned to melt instead of resist.
The door closed behind her, and the afternoon sun washed over her as she stepped out into The Garden, a small, strange weight inside her. A promise. An opening.