Work Hard, Play Hard

You learn things in my line of work. The main one? Power is fungible. The higher someone sits on the org chart, the more likely they are to crave the relief of surrender. It isn’t weakness; it’s symmetry. Big lives need big release valves.

My date tonight wasn't my wife; My date tonight flew in from Sydney—an executive I already knew from television. I watch Sky Business; I’d seen her pull apart entire sectors with that velvet, razor-sharp voice. In person she was somehow more: $3,000 heels you could land a helicopter on, a tailored sheath that looked like a $5,000 argument for precision, and a perfume I later googled—about $1,300 a bottle, with the kind of silage that announces you’ve arrived ten seconds before you actually do. Distinctive, like a signature written in light.

We met for coffee in the city, the sort of neutral ground where people test edges. I paid. She tried to insist. I didn’t raise my voice; I didn’t need to. I just let a firmer note ride the air between us: no—I will pay. Then I asked her to excuse herself, go to the bathroom, and return with her panties folded neatly in her hand. She held my gaze for a beat. Challenge, acceptance, a tiny flicker of amusement at the corner of her mouth. When she came back she placed them on the table, careful, deliberate, a private exchange masquerading as nothing at all. Honey Birdette. Of course. You don’t buy armour that fine unless you intend to be conquered in it.

People think Dom/Sub is about orders. It isn’t. It’s about truthfulness. I asked questions I always ask at the beginning: What does safety look like for you? What does too much feel like just before it’s too much? What words do we use when you want to be pushed further—and when you need me to stop? She answered like an operator who knows her brief: calmly, cleanly, no fluff. She told me why she was there—curiosity, relief, the itch behind the ribs that never quits after a 14-hour day. I told her what I bring—structure, care, consequences, and the peculiar intimacy of being seen without having to perform.

We agreed to meet after work for a drink first. Rooftop bar, five-star hotel, city lights making a constellation out of the river. The waiter clocked the dress code and the watch but missed the choreography—our conversation was cool, measured, apparently business. That was the point. In public, I asked her to be polite, not flirt, not reach. I set the table rules so the later ones would land. She followed them easily. Dinner bled into a second bottle and the bill did a triple-take—$3,000 and not a moment wasted.

We left separately. She took the lift. I walked to the car and retrieved the lawyer’s trolley case that isn’t for law. The room key was warm from her hand. I rode up to the penthouse with the case rolling behind me, the soft click-click on polished stone becoming a metronome for my breathing.

The suite had the quiet you can only buy with serious money. You shut the door and the city disappears, all that noise held outside like weather. I did a slow circuit, letting the room speak. Fresh flowers. Crisp linen. A dining table that looked like it cost more than my first car. “I’m told it was more than my first house” she said later, running a fingertip along the edge the way you test a blade. The table didn’t creak. Quality seldom does.

Negotiation first—always. We revisited boundaries, mood, health, and aftercare. A safeword, sure, but also the softer vocabulary: colour checks, breath checks, the question I ask that sounds like a statement—“with me?”—and the answer I want that isn’t a word so much as a pulse returning to my palm. When we were both steady, I let the room become smaller: lighting dipped to low amber, music that breathes rather than shouts, the scent of her perfume turning honeyed in the warmth.

Restraint suits executives. It’s honest. The body can only be in one moment at a time, and leather is an excellent teacher. Her shoulders let go first, then the jaw—where people keep their day. She said she could handle pain. I told her pain is a colour; we’ll choose the palette together. I took my time. Precision isn’t dramatic, but it’s devastating. A hand that lingers half a second longer than expected. A pause that feels like a cliff edge. The discipline of asking permission in a voice that doesn’t sound like asking at all.

She wanted more. Then more again. I learned the rhythm of her bravery, when to layer sensation, when to take it away and let her reach for it. She smiled when I calibrated up, that unmistakable smile of a person who has realised she is both safe and not in charge. That’s the gateway—when the body trusts the container enough to go exploring on its own.

Time gets strange in those rooms. Ninety minutes might be nine or nineteen; I only know we kept to our agreement, returned to checks, hydrated, laughed at one point—there’s always a ridiculous moment, something wonderfully human—then drifted back into the deep end. She asked to feel the line. I showed her the line and stood there with her, shoulder to shoulder, while she looked over the edge and decided, calmly, to take one more step. She did. I kept the ground under her feet.

At some point we paused in the marble calm of the bathroom, city lights smearing themselves across the window like a rumour. I remember the chill of the champagne against my fingers and the way it threaded through heat like a silver needle. Not spectacle—care. Cooling. Soothing. The recalibration that lets you go again without tipping the scales. Luxury is wasted if it doesn’t serve the body.

Three hours sounds like an indulgence until you realise it’s what’s required for the full arc: introduction, negotiation, ascent, apex, landing, aftercare. We did all of it, properly. No rush, no bravado. Just a beautiful, exacting container for a very particular kind of freedom. When we were done, I loosened everything I’d tightened, returned her breath to her hands, brought her water, wrapped her in a robe that felt like forgiveness. We sat on that absurd dining chair and talked nonsense for ten minutes the way people do after turbulence—giddy, relieved, clean.

Before I left, I placed her folded panties—still neatly folded—on the lamp table by the door. A small, private bookend to the coffee shop exchange that began it all. She stood, taller somehow, like something had been refiled inside her under a better label.

In the lift down, I could still smell her perfume. It had warmed into something low and inviting, less boardroom, more secret. I wheeled the case across the lobby at a pace that wouldn’t make a concierge look twice and stepped back into Perth’s night air, which tasted like eucalyptus and high voltage.

People like to say work hard, play hard as if it’s a slogan. For some of us it’s a symmetry. She went back to Sydney with the same schedule and the same shoes, but looser shoulders and a new kind of quiet at the base of her spine.

When I share my stories and adventures, I do so with permission from the person and my willingness to allow any changes to be made to protect their identity.

For those who have never met me - I am old school and the oldest technology in the world is trust, and the oldest luxury is time. Power isn’t a costume. It’s a conversation and some conversations are best held with the city on mute.