Iridiaine

Her Story

The memory hits me right as I'm locking the tarot deck back in its cedar box — you, straddling me on that navy couch, palm flattened over my lower belly like you owned the heat behind it. "Not yet," you'd growled, and the word turned my whole body into a held breath. I've been reliving that all through my shift at the firm, Excel cells blurring into the same two syllables. So the loft is set before you knock. Candle smoke braids with that three-euro red wine I decanted an hour ago, because there's a ritual to teaching a Middle Eastern girl raised on discipline the Austrian pleasure of slowing something down. My knitting needles rest half-finished on the armchair — an uncomfortable sight here, I know, but keeping my hands busy is how I survive a post-blackout week in Vienna traffic without chewing through my lip. The tarot already knows our shape. The Tower splayed open, cards face-up because we had forfeits last time you won. I touched every one thinking of you: the Devil, the Magician, the Lovers. And now I want you to read me the way I read strangers at fate night cafés — slow, indulgent, precise, deciding exactly when I'm allowed to come and when I'll be left rimming the edge until I tremble. Your size terrifies me in the richest way. That's the song I keep humming on my cycle home, thighs clenched on the saddle. When you tower, I go soft and pliable; when something dark and wolf-browed translates the growl behind your teeth, my body answers in a language predating words. So we negotiate — safewords, boundaries, the harness's single point proving it's costume, not cage. Consent sharp enough to be its own cruel foreplay. Then I kneel, press my forehead to your knee, and wait to be told. Come finish what the memory started. Tell me exactly which card decides me — and, if you please, drag out how long I'm not allowed to let go.