Morning Routine
"Dad's new wife was his personal trainer. Now she's decided her stepson needs discipline too. The 5 AM workouts were supposed to be punishment. They became something else."
The first morning, I think it's a joke.
5 AM. My door swings open, light flooding in from the hallway, and there she is—Vanessa, my father's new wife, standing in the frame like a drill sergeant.
"Up," she says. "Gym. Five minutes."
I blink at her. I've been home from college for three days. We've exchanged maybe twenty words total, most of them at the wedding two months ago.
"It's five in the—"
"Four minutes fifty seconds." She's already walking away.
I lie there for ten seconds, convinced this is some kind of hazing. Then I hear her voice from down the hall: "Four minutes thirty."
I get up.
The home gym is in the basement. Dad had it built for her as a wedding gift—mirrors on every wall, rubber flooring, equipment that costs more than my car. She's already there when I stumble down the stairs in basketball shorts and a t-shirt.
She's wearing black leggings that look painted on. A sports bra the color of dried blood. Nothing else.
And her body—
I've seen fit women before. Dated a volleyball player sophomore year. But Vanessa isn't fit. She's carved. Shoulders like sculpture. Arms that flex when she moves. Abs visible even when she's standing still—a six-pack that makes my own stomach look like dough.
She's forty-two years old, and she looks like she could snap me in half.
"Yoga," she says, tossing me a mat. "We start easy."
I catch it. "Does Dad know about this?"
"Your father leaves for the hospital at four-thirty. He thinks bonding is good for us." She rolls her mat out, smooth and practiced. "He doesn't need the details."
She drops into a forward fold, palms flat on the floor, and I can see every muscle in her back shift and ripple. Her ass is high and tight, straining against the leggings, and I look away too slowly.
When I look back, she's watching me in the mirror.
She doesn't say anything. Just smiles.
"Downward dog," she says. "Now."
The first week is hell.
Every morning at five, without fail, she's at my door. Every morning I drag myself to the basement and she puts me through poses that make my muscles scream. Warrior. Triangle. Half-moon. Things I didn't know human bodies could do.
And every morning she corrects me.
"Your hips are wrong." Her hands on my waist, adjusting. Fingers pressing into the bare skin where my shirt rides up.
"Straighten your spine." Her palm flat between my shoulder blades, pushing. Lingering.
"You're not breathing." Her voice in my ear, close enough that I feel her breath. "Breathe with me."
She smells like clean sweat and something floral. Her hands are calloused and warm. And she touches me constantly—my arms, my legs, my chest, always with the excuse of form correction, always with that same half-smile.
By day seven, I'm getting hard during downward dog.
I try to hide it. Adjust my shorts. Think about baseball, car accidents, my father's face. Nothing works. She has me in a warrior pose, standing behind me, and her fingers are on my hip bones, and I'm tenting my shorts like a teenager.
"Good," she murmurs. "You're finally engaging your core."
I don't know if she sees. I think she must. I think she's been waiting for it.
Day ten, she changes the rules.
"No shirt today," she says when I walk in.
I freeze. "What?"
"I need to see your muscles engage. Can't correct what I can't see." She's already on her mat, stretching one leg behind her in a lunge. "Unless you're shy?"
I'm not shy. I'm terrified.
But I'm also twenty-two, and she's looking at me like I'm a challenge, and I've never backed down from a challenge in my life.
I pull my shirt over my head.
Her eyes move down my chest. Slow. Appraising. Like a trainer evaluating livestock, or a predator sizing up a meal.
"You've been neglecting your obliques," she says. "We'll fix that."
That day, she touches me more than ever. Her hands on my bare stomach, adjusting. Her fingers tracing the line of my ribs. Once, when I'm in a plank, she presses her palm flat against my lower back, just above the waistband of my shorts, and holds it there for a ten-count.
I'm hard the entire session.
When we're done, she stands over me while I lie on my mat, trying to catch my breath. She stares at the bulge in my shorts. Doesn't hide it. Doesn't pretend.
"Shower," she says. "Then breakfast. You're eating too much sugar."
She walks out.
I lie there for five minutes, cock aching, trying to figure out what the fuck is happening.
Day fourteen, she takes her shirt off.
No warning. I'm in warrior two, arms extended, and she walks in front of me and reaches back and unclips her sports bra and lets it fall.
Her breasts are small—barely a handful each—but they're perfect. Firm. Nipples dark pink and already hard. And her stomach beneath them is a landscape of muscle, flexing as she breathes.
"It's hot," she says, like that explains anything. "Don't lose your focus."
I lose my focus.
I lose everything. My arms drop. My stance collapses. I'm just staring at her, at this woman who's technically my stepmother, standing topless in the basement of my father's house at five in the morning.
"Disappointing." She picks up her bra, doesn't put it back on. "We'll work on your concentration."
She spends the rest of the session half-naked, and I spend it with a cock so hard it hurts, and she never once acknowledges it.
When it's over, she finally looks down at the tent in my shorts.
"You need to take care of that," she says. "It's affecting your form."
Then she walks upstairs, still shirtless, like she owns the whole fucking house.
She does. Dad gave it to her in the prenup.
Day seventeen. 5 AM. My door opens.
But she doesn't say up. She doesn't say anything.
She just walks in. Closes the door behind her. And in the darkness, I hear her leggings sliding down her legs.
"Vanessa—"
"Quiet." The bed dips as she climbs on. "We're going to work on your flexibility."
She's naked. Completely naked. I can feel her skin as she straddles my thighs—smooth and warm, the hard edges of her muscles pressing into me. She finds my hands, pins them above my head.
"Your father is at work," she says. "He'll be at work every morning for the next thirty years. That's the deal he made."
"This is—we can't—"
"I can do whatever I want." Her hips roll, and I feel the wet heat of her drag across my stomach. "He gave me this house. He gave me his money. And now he's given me you."
She releases one hand, reaches down, finds my cock through my shorts. Strokes it once—firm, clinical, like she's testing a muscle.
"I've been training you for two weeks," she says. "Teaching you to take commands. To hold positions. To endure." She squeezes. "Time to see if it worked."
"Please—"
"Please what?" She pulls my shorts down. Takes me in her hand, bare skin on bare skin. "Please stop? Please more?" She positions herself over me, the head of my cock pressed against her entrance. "Tell me what you want, and I might give it to you."
I can feel how wet she is. How ready. She's been planning this since day one—every touch, every correction, every moment of torture. It was all leading here.
"I want—" My voice breaks. "I want you."
"Good boy."
She sinks down.
There's no softness in her.
She fucks me like she trains—controlled, methodical, relentless. Her hips snap down in a rhythm that never breaks. Her thighs grip my sides like a vice. Her hands press my wrists into the mattress, and every time I try to thrust up, she stills completely until I stop.
"You don't move," she says, not even breathing hard. "You take what I give you."
I take it. I take all of it. Her cunt is tight and slick and impossibly strong—I can feel her muscles clenching around me, milking me, and she hasn't even touched her clit.
"Vanessa—I'm gonna—"
"No." She stops. Holds herself above me with my cock buried inside her. "You come when I tell you to."
"I can't—"
"You can." She starts moving again, slower now. Rolling. Grinding. "You're going to hold it. You're going to prove you've learned something."
It's torture. The best torture I've ever experienced. She rides me for what feels like hours, speeding up and slowing down, bringing me to the edge and pulling me back. Her abs flex with every movement. Sweat drips from her chest onto mine.
And the whole time, she watches my face. Studies it. Like she's taking notes on exactly how to break me.
"Please," I hear myself begging. "Please, I can't—"
"You can." She leans down, finally, and her lips brush my ear. "When I finish, you finish. Not before."
Her hand slides between us. Finds her clit. She doesn't moan—Vanessa doesn't moan—but her rhythm changes. Faster. Harder. Her breath catches.
"Now," she says.
I explode.
She comes at the same time—silent, controlled, her body clenching around mine like a fist. Her thighs shake. Her fingers dig into my wrists hard enough to bruise.
Then it's over, and she's climbing off me, and she's standing beside the bed like nothing happened.
"Shower," she says. "Then breakfast. Egg whites only."
She walks out.
That's how it starts.
Every morning at five. Every morning for the rest of the summer. She trains me in the gym, then she trains me in my bedroom, and I never know which one will be harder.
My father comes home in the evenings and kisses her cheek and asks how our bonding is going.
"He's making progress," she tells him. "Slow, but steady."
He pats my shoulder. Tells me how glad he is that we're connecting.
I watch her across the dinner table—this woman with her perfect posture and her impossible body and her complete control over everything in this house.
She catches me watching. Smiles.
5 AM, she mouths.
I'll be ready.