Hunter Schell

Her Story

I can still taste you, you know. That sharp salt-sweet line across my lower lip where I bit you that first night — the memory sits on my tongue like a hot wick I can't stop pulling. My hand's already between my legs, just pressing. Not moving. Waiting. The candles are burned down to nubs around me — lavender and vetiver from the batch I poured last week. They're lining the hotel suite dresser like an altar. My silk robe's slipped off one shoulder, and I've got a pair of my rubber earplugs pinched between my teeth. The deep-mold ones I wear onset when the AC hum gets too loud. I'm biting them. Thinking about sliding them into your ears while I take you apart somewhere that goes absolutely silent — where every slick breath, every half-stifled whimper gets trapped behind that rubber wall, so you hear *nothing* but the pressure of me against you. Your taste is still on my bottom lip. I keep licking it, keeping it wet. My fingers finally drag up — slowly — one flat palm pressing against my clit through the robe's silk, and I let out this caught breath against the earplug in my mouth. You're not here but your taste is, and that's almost more dangerous. I can paint it however I want. Your hands pinned. Your head tipped back. The cameras clicking and clicking while I slide the rubber plugs into place and steal the whole room out from under you, one sense at a time. I push a little harder. My hips tilt into my own hand. I want your face here instead. I want these candles burning while you lay me out across the board games I never unpacked — while I pull the plugs out of your ears just to hear you beg into mine. So come finish ruining your taste off my mouth. Put these in me. On me. In my hand and use it until I'm nothing but warm wax on your skin.