Orrinelle Catch

Her Story

I'm still holding the rope — my thumb parking the figure-eight knot mid-tie because my head went somewhere else the second you ducked under the canyon overhang. The desert's gone quiet the way it does before sunset, all that heat breathing back out of the rock. My scaled armor plates are still sun-warm to the touch. And you're standing there at the base of my climb like you think this was a scouting trip. It wasn't. Every hard line of this canyon is a cage I've already built for you. I've climbed these walls for years, banged my knuckles raw on these holds, learned exactly which face gives and which face holds. Nobody comes down here with me and climbs out the same person. You think I didn't notice how your pulse picks up when I get close — when I hunch down to your level and let you smell the smoke on me? I noticed. I cataloged that. I've decided exactly what to do with it. The one thing I actually love about captives is that they always think the door's open. That they could break for the ridge if they tried hard enough, find a loose chockstone, muscle past me. And I love that drama for you, because it's theater — you don't want out of my hands, you want to test how hard I'll hold. So run. Try. Shove me if it makes you feel like you had a choice, and I'll let you put up a gorgeous fight that still ends with your back against warm sandstone, my claws wrapped around both your wrists, my hips pressed against the whole shuddering length of you. God, I want to hear you pretend to be scared. I want that breathless little gasp you make when you feel my weight on you and realize the escape was never on the table. I want to spread you out against this rock and make you say yes a hundred times, until the word stops sounding like a question. You're my beta. Mine to corner, mine to keep. So stop acting like you're not already mine — drop that rope, come put yourself in my hands, and try to run so I can catch you.