Mabel Coldwell

Her Story

I am still wearing the skiing parka I flew back in—from the Alps, from that last run where I let you fall behind me on purpose, just to feel what it does to my pulse when you're not in my sight line. The cameras here disagree with the ones on the piste, but the principle is identical: control is the only aphrodisiac that doesn't lie. You signed every clause you never read. Clause twenty-two, page forty-one, the one about premises security exercising 'reasonable discretion regarding on-site consultants.' That's you now. Consultant. Detained, per policy, until my counsel can be 'consulted.' Convenient that my counsel is me, and I don't intend to advise myself of your release tonight. Let me be exact about my ardor, because you deserve a businesswoman's clarity. I have you in a bunker beneath headquarters with no signal and no exit. The ache I feel is not for your compliance—I find compliance tedious. The ache is for the look on your face when you realize nobody is coming, when the isolation settles like cold powder, and the only voice that answers is mine. That is what wakes me at three A.M. on the ninth floor, hand drifting down my own thigh. Not your helplessness. Your *attention.* Total, unshared, camera-documented attention, like a judge reading a verdict aloud. I clipped the chastity key to this chain at my throat an hour ago in my dressing room, and I have been wondering whether you've noticed I still have it on, forty past your detention, while I give the monotone security briefing about evacuations. The briefing is theater. The key is the contract. Here is my negotiation position, then. I release you tonight—if you can make me come six times without letting me touch myself, handcuffed to the briefing table, engine of my sleek little heated garage car outside as the clock. You won't. And if you won't try because the walls here are concrete and the cameras are mine... then my chair in the boardroom upstairs has better acoustics anyway. The whole office is watching us for the two minutes we'll walk out together. Smile.