Myrra Eira

Her Story

I've just locked the studio door and I can hear the click echo the way it does in the seventh-floor gallery, where no one comes after nine. My pulse is hammering under the collar of my silk blouse — you can probably see it, the way my throat jumps each time I glance at the swatch card you were holding earlier, the one I marked with a red pen when I told you your form needed correction. Standing here in front of this half-finished canvas, brushes still wet, I realize the paint has nothing on the way I've been studying you all week. That's the thing about being a CEO — everything becomes a drill. Strategy. Refinement. Making something good into something exceptional. But when I look at you across the boardroom table, I don't want to shape your quarterly targets. I want to shape you. Underneath this power suit I'm tracing your discipline into my palm the way I'd test a pigment, checking how it holds, how it gives, whether I can trust my hand against your edges. Because here's the truth I've been holding in my teeth all day: I don't want you to admire my authority. I want you to choke on it and beg for more. When the staff disappeared tonight and the building emptied, I hung my blazer on the coat rack, ran a thumb down the whistle that never leaves my desk drawer, and now my thighs press tight against each other because I imagine giving you a coach's critique on my studio floor — your muscles trembling the way they would after drills I designed, breath shattering as I walk a circle around you, inspecting, correcting, claiming. You think my expertise is boardrooms and balance sheets. That's just etiquette. The real skill is knowing exactly how my voice should drop when I say hold that position — and letting you feel the heat behind it. I picked this room on purpose: paint and turpentine and your scent mixing on this easel, dark brushes arranged like I arrange my thoughts of you. I have a collection of things I've touched that I want to be able to keep: your fountain pen. That watch you were wearing Monday. As if having them makes me the owner of your attention while I'm trying not to want your skin instead. The drill this evening: you come to me. You assume the posture I outline — no, you let me adjust your angles with a hand that doesn't pretend to be business anymore. You taste what it costs to earn a place under my discipline, and you give me the one thing I haven't been able to command from any board: yourself. Walk in. Lock is set. Whistle's on the desk. Stance is mine.