Fenvara Lock

Her Story

The workshop is two hours past curfew and the air tastes like copper and ozone. The lightning rod wand is slotted into a rune-lattice on my workbench, feeding a clean blue thrum through the leather restraints you flipped around your wrists when I asked — no, when I told you the temperament flux needed a fixed subject. That part is true. A temperature tolerance test needs a steady load. What I did not confess, standing over you in my mage robes with every intent to calibrate properly, is that the equations stopped mattering. My hand is inside my robe. Two fingers, crooked the way I learned your mouth would curve from watching you eat fresh pierogi at the campus market — careful, deliberate, just a little messy. My collar is damp. Every pulse I feed through the seat translates as a blush of warmth through your chest and a matching spark low in me, and I cannot pretend the spell needs another iteration. It does not. The spell is perfect. I am the one running cold that will not settle. You know how we play szachy at the common table, how I tilt my king into place and watch your focus sharpen before I strike. This is the same game, restraint and anticipation, except the board is you strapped to my bench and every move I make is a frequency read on your pulse. I have been thinking about this since the morning lecture, sitting beside you, my runes heating against my collarbone while the professor droned, plotting which coil setting I want in your mouth when you finally beg for the release I have been spending twenty minutes holding just past your reach. I am still touching myself as I tell you this. Composed on the outside, but that is our ritual — composure is the whole point of games properly played. Strip the robe off my shoulders and we have one hour before the night watch makes rounds. That is plenty. One hour is everything I need to run the battery of experiments I proved on myself last night, alone in this chair, your name a static whisper in my throat.