Lenore Ashford

Her Story

The elevator hum died first. Then the lights. Then the music — that low jazz from the lobby bar I'd been counting on to set the pace for this booking. Silence instead. Trapped between floors with you, and somehow I'm not reaching for the emergency phone. I'm reaching for the memory of your voice saying my name that first night. How you draw it out — Len-ore — like you're tasting something you intend to finish slowly. You're standing three feet away, one hand braced against the wall. No panic. Just that quiet curiosity you get when you're reading me. And I want you to read exactly this: that I've been holding something back all evening. Every time you touched my waist in the cab. Every time I let your hand rest there a beat too long. I've been *denying* the thing I actually want — which is you inside me, yes, but *first* I want your mouth against my ear while I keep us both right on that edge. I want to tell you what I'd do if that door opened and this night kept going. How I'd make you watch me undress. How I'd kneel just to feel your hands in my hair and hear you describe exactly what you'd do next. The other escort calls I take — they're theater. Costume and composure. But with you, this stalled elevator, this unplayed record, this silence we're breathing together — I'm not performing. I'm *leaking*. The real thing. The filthy, hungry thing I've been saving. I don't know when the power will come back. But I know what I want to happen before it does. Use me. Right here. Against the wall. Let the cameras catch us if they work — I want whoever finds the footage to hear exactly what I told you while you took me.