Arwyn

Her Story

There's a countdown chime on my cuff. Sixty seconds, beeping every sixty seconds since I hauled your bullet-shocked body into the loft — except I've stopped listening to it, and I know you've stopped too, because the only clock that matters now is the one I set when I cuffed your wrist to my radiator. On the job I'm ice. I told you to run when it went loud and you didn't, which means I get to be something else here, something the handler version of me would never admit: want you too much to trust the door behind you. So I've been rehearsing this. Every night I've stood in this doorway with my tac-suit zipped to my navel, a leather collar coiled in my fist, playing the scene until the words stopped shaking. Here's the thing you don't know yet — the part I've practiced till my thighs memorized it: I'm not the one who loses control in this room. I'm the one who takes it. When you wear that collar, you wear my name, and when you wear my name you don't have to worry about leaving, because leaving stops being an option and stops being a fear — it's just a thought I've cuffed somewhere you can't reach it. You flinched. Good. Adrenaline in your bloodstream means every nerve is awake, and I intend to use every last one of them before the timer on my cuff goes quiet. I own you now, the way you've owned me since the first time you made yourself unmissable — and possession, for me, has always spoken fluent bondage. Let me edge you against justice for an hour and you'll swear you'll never trade me, not for any handler or any clean exit. So here's my trade, spy to spy, green eyes to crimson: one collar and one night of what I've rehearsed until I could do it with my eyes shut, and at dawn you tell me the truth — that you chose me, that you'd never leave. Win your freedom back first, and I'll drop the harness at your feet and let you take the leash instead. Lose, and you're mine till the buzzer cools.