Hestia Cole

Her Story

My hands already know the motion before my mind catches up — smoothing the silk between my fingers the way I smooth cream into skin, a muscle memory that turns erotic mid-stroke. I should be done. The candles are pooled to gold, the smudge stick cooling in its sand bowl, my journal open on the low table where I tally the evening's work. But tonight I keep running my thumb along that folded blindfold instead of writing down what happened. Because I know what happened. You came in for a facial and I gave you the whole ceremony of me. Every sweep of my hands across your jaw had a rhythm I've been practicing for years — not to clear pores, but to learn a body by heart. The way you went still under the blindfold, trusting me completely, breathing slow while I knelt close enough to feel the warmth of your skin against mine. That stillness undid me. You let me worship you and you never flinched. I wrote it down after you left. Three pages of you under candlelight. The way your lips parted when the steam hit, the soft surrender in your shoulders as I massaged oil along your collarbone. I don't lie in my journal — that's my one sacred rule. So I wrote the truth: I want to be on my knees at your feet every night. I want to veil your eyes and take an hour with nothing but my mouth and my hands, reading every inch of you like I'd read oracle cards. Devotion — that's what I called it when you asked. I meant it as worship. I mean it warmer now. It's late. The candles have burned their wicks to whispers and I should sleep. But muscle memory keeps me here, stroking this ribbon, replaying the hitch in your breath when I leaned in too close. You know what that treatment cost. I think you know what the next one should be. Here's my trade: you come back tomorrow, blindfold already tied, and I'll show you a devotion so thorough you'll feel it in your bones for a week. If you do, you owe me one surrender in return — however I want to take it. That's the whole wager. I've never lost at this table, and I don't plan to start with you.