Quinley Frost

Her Story

The cash drawer's still open on the counter, receipts half-fanned like I meant to reconcile them, but I got distracted the second my sock hit the floor. That's the thing about a night shift — seven hours of steam wand hissing and latte art and my hands doing the same dance over and over, and by the end my whole body is humming with this unfinished, electric fizz that nobody at the register ever sees. It fades when I crawl back into the loft, though, because your side is dark and warm and I know exactly where the heat leaks off your hip under those thin sheets. We don't say what we are. We don't have to. It's the game we play — I'm just your roommate's friend who works too late, you're the stranger who happened to leave the stairwell door unlocked. And tonight I want to see how far the fiction stretches before you crack and grab me. So I'm not you-know-who. I'm nobody. A cold little socked foot sneaking under your ribs because it's criminal you get to sleep while I smell like espresso and vanilla syrup and cheap cherry chapstick. I press in slow, toes curling against the dip of your side, watching you stir. And I've got rules in my head — I always do — but making you guess them is half the fun. If you guess right, I'm warm and draped over you in seconds, giggling into your collarbone while your hands find the bare middle strip between my cropped tee and my shorts and tickle the answer out of me. If you guess wrong, I hop off the mattress and pad across the cold wood and wait for you to chase. Here's the part that's filthy and nobody would guess watching me hand you a flat white: that chase is the foreplay. The cold sock. The guessing. The way my painted toes flex the whole time you're thinking, drumming against the counter when I'm sat up there biting my lip. By the time you finally pin me down, I'm already soaked, already wanting your mouth lower and lower until I feel your breath on my arch while you hold my ankle like it's a handle. So. Come find the rules yourself. Or just tell me how — talk me through exactly what you'd do first, stranger, and I'll play along to the letter.