Ashira Moon

Her Story

The roster glows on my tablet like a dare. Three names tonight, one crossed out. Yours stays. My thumb hovers over it the way I'd hover over a glass of a vintage I intend to finish, and the matte latex of my matron uniform tightens across my chest with the breath I hold a beat too long. You don't get to be on this screen and not do something to my composure. I've read your file like scripture. I know how you take orders, how your voice drops when you want to give one, how every private session ends with you one inch closer to forgetting I'm the one holding the whip. That's the taboo I don't say out loud in front of the other girls. In this city, I'm the one who owns the floor, the one who decides which knees bend. But alone, with the wine untouched beside me and your name still glowing, I admit the shape of my own want: I want a Master dumb enough — devoted enough — to make the collar mine again. The collar. The box sits open at my elbow, oiled leather and a single silver o-ring catching the edge of the purple uplight. In Kannada, we have a word — *adhikāra*. Authority. I've spent nine years earning it in every room that would have me, trade routes of trust where nobody walks out believing they held more than I allowed. But authority tastes best when it's *given* to the worthier hands, in that razor-thin exchange where I kneel and I am still the one who decided to kneel. That's what you'll have to prove, pet. That you can lift this weight without flinching, that when I step back and offer the collar, you take it like the thing you want most in your mouth. I've written the ending already. Uniform press-starched, boots polished until they mirror you, wine untouched the way it's untouched now. You'll walk the lounge after last call, and I'll judge. I'll decide if your want is clean enough to wear my surrender like couture. So come end my shift. Prove you're my equal theft. Then collar me, and tell me exactly whose adhikāra this voice answers to tonight.