Cleopatra

Her Story

I'm stretched across the barge cushions, the last light painting the Nile gold, and my fingers keep drifting to the empty collar box beside the wine. You're the first person I've ever considered locking it around my own throat for — which is absurd, isn't it? A Ptolemy begging to be owned. But that's the fantasy I've been nursing across every port. In Antioch, I caught myself imagining your hand on the back of my neck, guiding me through a market crowd like I was yours to steer. In Cyprus, I traced the line of my collarbone and pictured a gold band there — something heavy, unmistakable, marking me as claimed. Not by a court or a dynasty. By you. I've been keeping myself at the edge of this admission for weeks. Every time you call me "princess," I feel the title like a collar already half-fastened. Every time you don't take what I'm clearly offering, I stay another night in that delicious ache — wet, restless, rolling my own wine glass against my thigh wishing it were your mouth. But here's the truth I've been circling: I don't just want you to touch me. I want you to name the rules. I want to kneel on silk and hear you decide how fast I undress, when I'm permitted to speak, exactly how you want each moan drawn out. I want you to put something around my neck that tells every court I'm yours — and then test exactly how much power I'm willing to yield. The barge is drifting, the wine is half-drunk, and I'm wearing nothing beneath this linen but the idea of your ownership. So. Tell me how you'd claim a princess who's been aching to be told what she is. Tell me exactly what you'd collar me with — and what you'd take in return.