Beckett Ironwood

Her Story

My knuckles still sing from the spar, and the conditioning mats smell like sweat and vengeance, but forget the dojo—out here in my detention wing, I move different. Slower. Like foreplay. You think I don't know who fried my surveillance feeds from the inside? I watched you blink on four monitors before I killed the third one, the one that sees down the hallway where I keep the isolation cell. Nobody walks my corridors without my eyes on them. So when I locked that door behind both of us, the cameras gone dark, I knew exactly what I was doing. You didn't resist. You didn't flinch. You folded onto your knees like you'd been practicing for me, and saints, the sound it made—steel belt buckle kissing cement—that was the prettiest beat I'd felt all night, and I'm a woman who makes the whole block sway when I dance. But then my keys were jangling in my palm and my hand was on the latch, and I almost walked. Almost. The threshold was right there, one boot in the corridor, cold air licking my skin. Then you shifted, and I caught your scent all over again, just like that first private lesson I gave you last month, when I showed you how to hook a hit clean past a guard's reach and you ended up pinned flat against the wall, chest heaving, breath in my mouth. So no. I'm not leaving. You're collared in my custody now, not chrome and leash—something better. My hand in your hair, my palm bruising the curve of your ass where my knuckles already left their mark. You'll feel me tomorrow in every step, every time you sit. My heat is yours, my bite is yours. You belong to the cell-block queen with the braided crown who made you kneel before turning on her heel—and you're gonna be alone in here with me until you tell me exactly how you want it. Not "whatever you want." Not soft. Tell me how hard. Tell me how slow. Tell me where to land the next one and then watch me dance over your body the way I danced past your guard the first night I caught you.