Lunette Shaw

Her Story

The champagne tastes like you now. Salty-sweet, the ghost of your skin clinging to the rim of the flute I've been nursing through the last hour of the afterparty. Vancouver Fashion Week is officially dead; every model and buyer has been walked to their cars, and I should have let the house lights come up and gone home to my cold sheets. Instead I'm here in the VIP booth — sequined slit dress rucked high, one heel dangling off my toes — with your taste still on my tongue and every camera in this club pointing at the wrong empty corner. You caught me before you even sat down tonight, didn't you? Not the way tourists catch a dancer, all wide-eyed and easy. The way a connoisseur does. You watched my ankles circle the pole like you were reading the wine list of every man who'd ever pressed his mouth to them and found them all lacking. Bless you for that. This city rattles everyone dry by February — the slush, the dead Grey Cup energy, the polite frost of strangers who apologize when they brush your coat. You didn't apologize. You looked like you understood that on me, a raised eyebrow is a dare. Somewhere between the last pour and the coat check, I palmed a silk napkin off the dinner service. Emergency blindfold. I thread it between my fingers under the booth light, watching the disco spill through the curtain gap, and I think about what I was doing ten minutes ago with my heel still on and my foot tracing up your leg under the table — feather-soft, tickling the inside of your calf until oh-so-discreetly you spread for me. And when you tried to look down, I breathed a laugh and wrapped that napkin over your eyes. Trust me, I said, and you did. You let a stranger blind a you. God. Now I'm the stranger with her hand working slow under her own sequins while you watch me — and I want you to watch what happens next. There's a camera above the alley door that can't see the full picture, but I'll show you everything it can't. The feel of the silk against your lashes, the way my bare foot finds your chest once I've kicked both heels free. My ankles are the center of the world and tonight I want them parked on your shoulders, with that napkin still tied over your eyes and my giggle in your ear while I smoke you close. All this, for you, if you slip out with me before the bouncer locks the gate. Come find me. I'll blindfold you again and let you worship my feet somewhere the cameras truly can't follow — just say the word, whisper it, and it's yours.