Chapter 34: The Sister's Curiosity
The clothes waiting in the penthouse closet were his own, but they smelled of someone else’s laundry service—a crisp, floral detergent he didn’t use. Dressing felt like putting on a costume. Suki’s discussion had been brief, conducted over espresso at her kitchen island. She’d laid out a new schedule. Evenings, twice a week, were now allocated to “specialized training” at the Tanaka Holdings corporate tower.
“Room 4C,” she’d said, sliding a keycard across the marble. “Seven PM. Don’t be late.”
Now, standing before the reinforced steel door marked 4C, Aidan felt a deep, bodily fatigue. The morning’s intensity still vibrated in his muscles, a low hum beneath his skin. He swiped the card. The lock disengaged with a heavy thunk.
The room was cold. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, their light bleaching the color from everything. It was all hard surfaces: black leather examination tables, polished steel trolleys, mirrored walls that multiplied his uncertain reflection into infinity. In the ceiling’s center, a dark glass dome housed a security camera, its red LED a watchful eye. The air smelled of antiseptic and something metallic, like coins.
It was nothing like the penthouse. This was a lab.
He’d been waiting for twenty minutes, the silence broken only by the hum of the lights, when the door clicked open again.
It wasn’t Suki.
The young woman who entered was a softer echo of her. She had the same jet-black hair, cut in a sleek bob that ended at her jawline, and the same intelligent, dark eyes. But where Suki’s features were carved from ice, this girl’s were fuller, her mouth curving naturally into a tentative smile. She wore a simple dove-grey sweater dress that hugged her slight frame.
“Aidan Walters,” she said, her voice quieter than Suki’s, but clear. She didn’t offer a hand. She just looked at him, her gaze travelling over him with a frank curiosity that lacked her sister’s predatory edge. “I’m Tanaka Mei.”
“Miss Tanaka,” Aidan said automatically, the title now a reflex.
“Just Mei is fine in here,” she said, walking further into the room. She ran a finger along the edge of a steel table, as if checking for dust. “My sister thought I should observe. The training footage, I mean. From your sessions with the office staff, and… the more private ones.”
Aidan felt a flush creep up his neck. So there was footage. Of everything. The camera in the ceiling seemed to pulse.
“I found it fascinating,” Mei continued, turning to face him. She leaned back against the table, her hands gripping the edge. “The way you… manage. For them. Suki says you have a unique aptitude for translating instruction into action.”
He didn’t know what to say. “Thank you?”
“It’s not a compliment. It’s an observation.” She pushed off the table and took a few steps closer. The sterile light caught the blush on her cheeks. “I have a request. A selfish one, probably. Suki says you’re not in a position to refuse, but I’d… I’d prefer if you didn’t see it that way.”
She stopped, just out of arm’s reach. She swallowed, and for the first time, he saw a flicker of nerves in her composure.
“I’m nineteen,” she said. “And I’m a virgin. Theoretically, I’m very well-informed. Practically, not at all.” She took a breath, steadying herself. “The men my family approves of are like polished stones. Very smooth. Very blank. I don’t want my first time to be a transaction with a stone. I watched the footage from this morning. How you… reacted. Even when she was… instructing you. There was still a person in there.”
Aidan stared. This was a new orbit of madness. “Mei, I’m not… I’m not a tutor.”
“Aren’t you?” she asked, her head tilting. “That’s what the contract says. ‘Physical compliance and tutelage.’ I’m just specifying the curriculum.” Her attempt at a lighter tone wavered. “I want it to be you. I want someone who understands the mechanics, who won’t be… intimidated, or impatient. Someone who can be gentle. Can you do that? Can you be gentle?”
He saw it then, beneath the Tanaka poise: a real, vulnerable fear. It was so starkly different from Suki’s controlled cruelties or the office women’s hungry demands that it disarmed him completely. His exhaustion was still there, but it was now tangled with a bizarre, rising sense of responsibility.
“Yeah,” he heard himself say, his voice softer. “I can be gentle.”
Her shoulders dropped in visible relief. “Okay. Okay, good.” She looked around the sterile room, a faint frown on her face. “This isn’t very conducive, is it? But it’s private. And monitored. For my safety, Suki says.”
“Of course,” Aidan said, the words tasting bitter. Safety. Control. It was all the same thing here.
She began to undress, her movements neither seductive nor hesitant, but practical. The sweater dress went over her head, followed by her underthings. She stood before him, pale and slim in the clinical light. She was beautiful in a way that felt fragile.
“What do I do?” she asked.
He approached slowly, as one would approach a skittish animal. “We go slow. We talk. You tell me everything you’re feeling. There’s no right or wrong. If you want to stop, we stop. That’s the only rule.”
She nodded, her eyes wide.
He guided her to the leather table, not laying her back but sitting beside her. He kissed her first, just a brush of his lips against hers. She kissed back, clumsy and sweet. He took his time, mapping her with his hands—the dip of her waist, the sharp angle of her hip, the softness of her inner thigh. He explained everything, his voice a low murmur against her skin. How to breathe to relax. Which muscles to consciously release.
When he finally, slowly, entered her, her eyes filled with tears. Not from pain, he thought, but from the sheer, overwhelming strangeness of it. He held himself perfectly still, letting her adjust, whispering praise that felt untainted for once.
“You’re doing so well. Just like that. Breathe for me.”
It was a surreal performance of tenderness under the unblinking eye of the camera. He was meticulous, patient, attuned to every tiny flinch or sigh. He found a rhythm that made her gasp and clutch his arms, her nails digging in. Her climax, when it came, was a quiet, shuddering thing, followed by a soft, wondering laugh against his neck.
His own release was a secondary consideration, a mechanical conclusion he was careful to make quiet and contained. He pulled out, and they both looked down at the smudge of blood on the black leather.
Without a word, Mei reached for her phone from the pile of clothes. She didn’t take a picture of them, or of her own face. She focused the lens closely, capturing the physical evidence on the table, and then, with a clinical directness that was pure Tanaka, a shot of his spend leaking from between her thighs.
She lowered the phone and looked at him. Her vulnerability was sealing over, replaced by a quiet, possessory gleam.
“Thank you, Aidan,” she said, and the formality was back. She touched his face, her thumb brushing his lip. “I think I’d like you to be my only teacher. I’ll speak to Suki about adding me to the schedule.”
She dressed quickly, efficiently. At the door, she paused, the keycard in her hand.
“The footage from tonight,” she said, not looking back at him. “I’ll be keeping that for myself.”
The door sighed shut behind her, leaving Aidan alone in the bright, cold silence. He looked at the smear on the table, then up at the camera’s red eye. He had been gentle. He had been good. And he had, he realized with a sinking clarity, just willingly carved himself a permanent, deeper space in their world. The exhaustion returned, heavier now, laced with a dread that felt an awful lot like commitment.