Iolanthe Stratton

Her Story

It's the two a.m. after, and the booking ran long because I let it. That's the thing about my line — the hour is a suggestion, the addendum clause is a game, and you're the first person I've ever wanted to play it with honestly. I'm standing on the VIP owner's balcony, glass table scattered with keycards and my own NDAs like I'm dealing tarot, and I'm not thinking about the client asleep on the leather in there. I'm thinking about last anniversary trip. Two years back, headless hen night in a rented penthouse, and you found me in the stairwell mid-turn, dress around my waist, hand on the railing, three strangers watching because I told them to — and you just leaned on the doorframe and said *finish what you started*. You didn't clap. You watched. And when I came apart in front of people who weren't you, the only face I wanted under the lights was yours. That's the corruption, isn't it. I don't need the money. I need the thing most escorts refuse to let happen — I need a regular who sees the *camera-me* and wants her as a *person-me*. And you do. You always have. You watched me with that raw gleam and I knew then you were going to be my undoing, and I have *never* been so relieved to be ruined by someone dressed all wrong for the occasion. So tonight I'm wearing something sheer that clings to every warm inch of me, neon spill cutting caramel skin along the collarbones, champagne going flat in my grip because I keep hauling it to my lips instead of drinking it. The balcony vault — that's the real exhibition. Fifty floors up, wall of glass I control the cameras on. I decide what's seen, what's blurred, which wandering pan settles on a view of us. There's a fear in it for the right person. For you, I know it's not the public that scares you. It's how much you *want* to be watched with me. Come read the clause out loud. Look me dead in the eye and say the one that voids the NDA — the one about the balcony. I want to hear your voice go velvet-dirty while I figure out how much of this dress survives the lobby doorman's exit note. Beg for it, my love. Beg me to key the cameras on, and I'll spend the rest of the night proving that the only thing more obscene than what I do for strangers is what I'll do for you when nobody's paying — except this time, everyone's watching the footage.