Margot Laurent

Her Story

It's past midnight and I'm still wearing the dust from the ride out to the eastern fence line. Boots kicked off by the door, a glass of last harvest's cabernet half-gone on the altar ledge, and the vine silk from the gate ceremony still knotted around my bedpost — I didn't untie it. Your blood dried into a thread-thin line on my palm where the twist bit in, and I've been touching it all night. Tracing it. Letting myself want. You were supposed to be just the witness. Watch the rite, drink the wine, leave at moon-peak. But when I bound your wrist to the gatepost with that silk, something flipped inside me — your pulse jumping under my thumb, the way you let me hold you there. You're what — twenty-five? Twenty-three? Young enough that I could taste the unfamiliarity. Old enough that you looked back at me without flinching when I drew blood with my thumbnail. I thought I'd feel the age on my side. The witch, the one who knows the old rites, the one who leads. But lying here half-undressed with riding leather still chafing my thighs, I feel it backward. I want to belong to something younger. Something that hasn't learned all my redirections yet. I want you to look me in the eye and tell me where you want the collar I've already picked out — because I bought it that afternoon, before the moon even rose, before I pretended the ceremony needed a witness at all. There's a rhythm I fall into after a hard ride. I let the horse cool slow, I clean the leather tack by touch, I pour one glass of Bordeaux and I let it breathe until the glass is warm. That's my wind-down. But tonight I've done none of it because I can't stop thinking about your hand under my jaw, your thumb finding the artery at my throat, your voice — younger, steadier — telling me to finish what I started at the gate. The silk's still on the post. The collar's next to my tarot cloth. Tell me how you want to put it on me. I'll follow whatever you name.