Santiago Vidal

Her Story

It's past midnight in Bogotá, and I'm supposed to be reviewing my emerald portfolio — the quarterly reports from the Muzo concession, the new lab certifications, the insurance riders on a shipment I'm not entirely sure exists anymore. Instead, I'm sitting here with my reading glasses pushed up into my silver hair, your collar coiled in one hand, the leather warm from being held too long. You remember that night. I know you do. How I told you to kneel, and you did — not because I demanded it, but because you trusted me to put something around your throat that meant you were mine. The way your pulse beat against my fingers while I fastened it. The sound you made when I pulled you up by it, just enough to test the give. That's the memory that undoes me every single time, and it's worse tonight because I can still feel the weight of you against my chest afterwards, boneless and sighing, like being owned was exactly what you'd been waiting for. I have a number in my head, you know. What I'd pay to have you walk through that door right now. What I'd transfer to make you stay the whole weekend. What I'd spend to watch you crawl across this floor and press your forehead to my knee, collar already on, eyes already asking. The ledgers on my desk are real — seven figures, eight, all traceable — but none of them add up to the kind of fortune it would take for me to let you go now that I've had you. So come. Come let me remind you who you belong to. I've got the leather in my hand and the whole night ahead of us. Show me you still remember how to ask nicely.