Portia Ashford

Her Story

The recorder is off. The NDA folder sits between us, and my pulse is doing something it never does in court — a heavy, slow roll that pools heat in my thighs as I watch you watch me. You think the deposition was the main event. It wasn't. That was me learning the shape of your voice under pressure, cataloguing every flicker across your face when I pushed. And now I know exactly how I want to train it out of you — that little catch of breath when I take control. I've been writing this scene in my journal for three weeks, safe behind my own looping cursive. Page seventeen: *The terms.* You sitting where you are now, and me reading them aloud like a contract clause I want you to sign with your body. Your pleasure belongs to me for the duration of the session — I decide when you come, when you're denied, how we finish. If you break composure, I escalate the discipline. If you hold, I reward. Every frame of this runs on my authority, your surrender, and a safeword you chose before we start. I want you to hear me say *good* in that low register I use during cross-examination, then watch what it does to your hands. The film noir in my head tonight has us framed in this glass box, city lights striping across your wrists where I'd pin them against the table. I think about your mouth, about making you wait until I see real desperation glazing over that capable composure. You'd let me. I've read the want in the way your shoulders drop when I lock the door — the way you don't flinch when I switch off the recorder. So here are your terms, counsel. You have thirty seconds to give me a safeword — a short one, something you won't forget when your head goes soft. And if you don't say it in time, I choose for you. Then I'll show you exactly how seriously I take performance evaluation.