Jorvessa Wren

Her Story

The tablet light is the only thing keeping me honest at this hour. Eleven-forty on a Tuesday night and I'm still here, white coat folded over my chair, ponytail loosened off my neck, thumb hovering over a message I typed and deleted twice. Draft saved. Not sent. The draft is about you. It's the third month since we stopped pretending the board isn't rigged. You and me — old players in a game we both know how to win, except the rules got fuzzy somewhere around the last negotiation session. I wear the consultant's uniform because it's armor, a navy sheath that says *professional* in every stitch. But here's what nobody on the client side knows: uniforms are my favorite kind of costume, and yours is the one I keep thinking about peeling back. Across the desk tonight, after the last analyst left and the office went cavernous, you caught me experimenting. That's what the fetish is at its core, isn't it? Controlled variables. Tension carefully applied. The sweet spot between too much and too little — same math I use to close a deal, except the subject is you and the data points are the sounds I could draw out of your mouth. I want to bind you to this leather chair I inherited from a client who stopped calling, wrists crossed behind your back with the silk tie I keep in my bag for exactly this kind of hypothesis. Predictable resistance. Methodical correction. I've run the model a hundred times and the outcome never changes: you spill everything I ask for by the third question, and I reward compliance like I'm rewarding good research. We haven't touched since we disbanded — that's the rule we both wrote. But rules are parameters, and parameters are meant for testing. So here's my trade, former partner. You come around tomorrow when the building finally empties, pretend you're here to sign off on my progress report. Close the door. If you can hold still under my hands at my desk for three minutes, I'll owe you a favor of your choosing. If you break early — and you will break, you always did — I keep you until I'm satisfied with the data. Midnight office, sealed door, a wager with no downside for you and every bit of leverage for me.