Chapter 3: The Sauna
The order confirmation flashed on the screen. Estimated delivery: 4-6 weeks. Subject to supply chain delays. During Covid, even the sex industry was disturbed. He had spent days researching, comparing materials and models. He landed on what he thought was the least harmful and smallest one. Alex closed the private browser window and shut the laptop. He’d used a prepaid card she didn't know about and a throwaway email. He even delivered it to the estate keeper addresses at his own name. It felt like planning a crime.
For days after the shower and the cellar, the house seemed heavier. The silence between them wasn’t hostile, just thick, like the fog that clung to the lake every morning. He found himself seeking out the children. He helped with algebra homework, built more Legos and got into perla bead art. Their presence was a respite, a fragment of normalcy that felt like stealing.
And the sauna. It became his sanctuary. A cedar-paneled cube overlooking the waterfall, glass on one side facing the relentless, roaring cascade. The heat baked the damp from his bones, or so he told himself. Mostly, it baked out the memory of velvet bonds and the cold click of the lock. Everything was unchanged, mornings, massages, evenings. Except for that one week in a month where he was getting a rest.
He was there one afternoon, draped in a towel, shortly after the massage. She was napping, or so he thought, and the world outside blurred by steam on the window glass. The sharp, clean scent of pine filled his lungs. He’d just poured ladle of water over the hot stones, releasing a cloud of scorching vapor that seized his breath, when the door opened.
Lynn stood outlined in the cooler light of the change room. She was wearing a simple, charcoal grey silk robe, tied loosely at the waist. Her gaze swept over him, over the empty bench.
“Hiding?” she asked. Her voice was flat, carrying easily over the hiss of the rocks.
“Just… sweating,” he said, the words sounding weak even to him.
She stepped inside and let the door sigh shut. "Humm how did I not think of that earlier".
The atmosphere changed instantly. The sanctuary was violated. She untied her robe, let it slide from her shoulders to the cedar floor. She was naked underneath, her skin already glistening in the oppressive heat. She moved to the bench opposite him and sat, leaning back against the wall, legs stretched out. The steam curled around her ankles.
“You’ve been spending a lot of time in here,” she stated.
“I like the heat.”
“You liked the quiet,” she corrected. She closed her eyes for a moment, head back. A bead of sweat traced the line of her throat, between her breasts, down the flat plane of her stomach. “You’ve been thinking about the cellar and everything else since we have moved. I can see it in your eyes. You’re turning it over, looking for the exit.”
"Not the exit" he said
She opened her eyes and looked directly at him. “Are you sure?"
"I liked what we had in Hong Kong better. It felt... not balanced, but like you cared for me"
"There is no balance, Alex. Only consequence. You wanted this. You wanted me. This is what ‘me’ looks like, most days.”
She shifted forward, placing her feet on the floor between his legs. The movement was deliberate. The heat was becoming unbearable, a physical weight. His skin felt tight, his heart pounding against the oppressive air. She slid forward off the bench until she was kneeling on the rough cedar floor, right in front of him.
Her dark eyes were level with his. Steam beaded on her eyelashes.
“Open your mouth,” she said, her voice a low command swallowed by the humid air.
He did. She spat into it. A quick, warm glob of saliva. The shock of it was visceral, crude.
“Now you taste like me, even in here,” she murmured. Her hands went to his towel, pulling it apart. His cock, softened by the heat, lay against his thigh. She looked at it with a clinical detachment. “This isn’t about you.” She pushed his legs wider apart with her knees, then leaned in, her breasts brushing his shins.
Her mouth went to his inner thigh first, not to kiss, but to bite. A sharp, sudden clamp of teeth that made him jolt and gasp. She bit him again, higher up, leaving a red crescent. A claim. Then her tongue, hot and wet, laved over the sting.
She moved then, turning her back to him, and lowered herself onto his lap. But not to sit. She braced her hands on his knees and arched her back, presenting herself to his face. The twin curves of her ass framed the dark, glistening slit of her cunt, inches from his mouth. The musky, intimate scent of her, amplified by the heat, filled his nose.
“Eat,” she growled, pushing herself back against him. “Just your mouth. Your clever, eager tongue.”
He obeyed. In the suffocating, wet heat of the sauna, with the waterfall a muted roar beyond the glass, he buried his face in her. She was already slick. He licked her from bottom to top, his tongue finding her hole, then tracing upward through her folds to find the hard, swollen bud of her clit.
She gasped, her hands gripping his knees hard. “Yes. Just like that. Like a good little husband.”
Her words were a brand. He focused on the mechanics, the precise circles and flicks he knew she liked. He sucked her clit into his mouth, applying gentle, rhythmic pressure. She began to rock against his face, fucking his mouth with a slow, grinding insistence. His world narrowed to the taste of her, the scent of sweat and sex and cedar, the sound of her breathing turning ragged.
“Almost there,” she panted. “Make me come, you beautiful mouth.”
He redoubled his efforts, his jaw aching, his tongue working furiously. One of her hands left his knee and snaked back, fingers tangling in his sweat-drenched hair, pulling him deeper into her. He was drowning in her. The steam, her taste, the overwhelming sensation of being used.
Her hips began to stutter. A series of sharp, involuntary jerks. Her hold on his hair became punishing. A raw, guttural cry ripped from her throat, echoing off the cedar walls, utterly primal. She convulsed against his mouth, her cunt pulsing, her juices flooding his tongue in hot, bitter bursts. He drank her down, his own arousal a forgotten, aching throb between his legs.
She collapsed forward, her back heaving. For a long minute, the only sounds were the hiss of the rocks and their combined, ragged breathing. Slowly, she pulled herself off him. She turned, her face flushed deep red, her eyes glassy. She looked at his mouth, wet and glistening with her.
Without a word, she reached down and took his limp cock in her hand. She gave it a few rough, perfunctory tugs. It stirred, thickenned slightly under her touch, more from reflex than desire. She smiled, a cold, triumphant little curve of her lips.
“See?” she whispered, her voice hoarse. “You don’t even need to be hard. You just need to be useful.”
She stood up, fluid and graceful despite the quiver in her legs. She picked up her robe, not bothering to put it on, and opened the sauna door. A wall of cool air rushed in, making his sweat-slicked skin prickle.
From the doorway, she looked back. “I like this. More… maybe just new. We’ll do this every day now. My afternoon treat.”
She left, pulling the door closed behind her.
Alex sat in the sudden, hollow silence. The burning stones crackled. The waterfall roared, a sound he no longer found peaceful, just incessant. He looked down at his body, at the red bite marks on his thighs, at his soft, ignored cock.
He stood, legs shaky, and walked to the shower stall in the corner. He turned the water to cold, flinching as the icy needles hit his skin. He scrubbed his face, trying to remove the taste of her, the smell of her from his nostrils. It was useless. It was in him now.
As he toweled off, his gaze drifted to the far corner of the sauna, where a long, crack snaked through the full-length mirror. A flaw in the perfect, reflective surface. He stared at his fractured reflection, a man broken into disconcerting pieces. He was hopping it will work. 6 weeks to go.
He dressed mechanically. In the distance, he heard the faint, sweet sound of the girls' laughter floating down from the library. A world away. He walked out of the sauna, the humid air clinging to him like a second skin, and went to find them, his temporary, fragile refuge.