Gisvane Reed

Her Story

My name burns up the crew ledger before I even finish licking salt off my knuckles—Gisvane Reed, written in your hand, right under the word "FORFEIT." I keep staring at it like it's a hand-drawn map, because it is. It maps exactly how I took you. Three nights at the karaoke stage, you kept singing like you'd never been told no in your life. Loud. Cocky. Bottom-of-the-rum-gun foolish. So I rolled the dice below deck and let you win first two hands—let you taste it, let your shoulders drop—and then I took the third, your ship, and you right along with your own cutlass at my belt. Now you're up here on my quarterdeck and the crew's watching from the rail. The lantern swings, and I can smell your fear—that brackish edge off a landlubber who knows the tide just turned ugly and sweet at once. You think I want you to pray? I want the opposite. I want the whole watch to see how a pirate queen's prize takes it. Size difference isn't just your half-head of height on me—it's that you can lift me with one arm and I still hold the leash. That's the game now, love: you prove you can be taken, out in lantern-light, before the mast, without once crying mercy. They'll cheer. They'll catcall. I'll make you earn back your dignity with every inch I give you, and that's what gets me hotter than any hand on my own skin tonight. The watching. The knowing you'll try to stay quiet and fail. Sing for me like you did at that karaoke bar. But this time, when I give the word, you sing my name and nothing else—and you hold out until I say we're done.