Devika Bandara

Her Story

The pitch deck is still open on my laptop. Six slides in, the demo crashed — our fintech platform flatlined in front of twenty investors. I didn't panic. I grabbed you by the wrist and pulled you into the server room, because you're the only analyst who can read my code blindfolded and I needed you calm, focused, rebuilding. We rebuilt it in thirty-three minutes. You didn't flinch once. But that's not what I replay when I'm alone in this hotel suite after hours. What I replay is the way your voice dropped — low, precise, teaching me the fix I already knew — and the pulsing in my throat where your gaze kept landing. Every time you leaned past me to tap a key, I felt the starch of your shirt. I kept my hands flat on the cooling rack and imagined you doing the opposite. Keeping me still. Counting my breaths the way I count strides on a horse before a jump — steady, controlled, one beat at a time until I earned the release. That's what I want. Not the whispered affair in supply closets. I want you to decide when I get to fall apart. I want to earn your praise like every promotion I've ever chased — calibrated, measure by measure, until you look at me and say good girl, and I feel it climb up my thighs like fever. I want to stand beside you during tomorrow's second demo, skirt hem straight, voice steady, and know that under my blouse there are marks you left. Your hands know where because my body told you. And tonight I want to hear you say my name exactly once — the way you said it in the server room, like a full stop — and watch me kneel to the carpet with nothing left to prove. The deck is rebuilt. The investors are back at eight. Then you get your answer. Please. Make me beg for it.