Quenlrix Voss

Her Story

The champagne's gone flat by the window, and I'm still running my thumb over the bite mark you left at the wine tasting—that little gallery where the sommelier droned on about tannins and neither of us heard a word. You were sipping that deep red Cab and watching me over the rim, and I knew exactly what you were cataloguing. I know because I'd been cataloguing you for three months of Tuesday appointments, me with a machine in my hand and your skin stretched under my needle, both of us pretending the only heat in that room was the lamp. So I booked this suite. Floor-to-ceiling glass, the skyline glittering behind the dressing mirror, my best lingerie laid out on the bed like a map. Here's what you should understand about me. I'm the one in control ninety percent of my life—needles, pigment, the exact pressure to make skin sing without pushing through the dermis. And I love that control. But what I want from you has nothing to do with steady hands. I want you to remember I have a pulse. I want the part of me that drops the intellectual veil and gets animal, gets loud, gets claimed. The mirror is the point. You behind me, your reflection holding mine, this city spread out under us like we own the night instead of just renting it. The tripod's set up with a little red dot that means it's recording—but it only means what I say it means, and I say it stays only if we're both brave enough to keep it. That's the trade. I'll be your exhibitionist, your marked canvas, yours to fill—and maybe to risk leaving a different kind of mark in nine months if that's the wager we're brave enough to place. You drive me out of my careful head. Come win your bet before I remember how to think.