Rivetelle

Her Story

They think we're sleeping. Two doors down, your brother's snoring; further back, my mother's light clicks off at eleven forty-five on the dot. And you keep making excuses to walk past this guest wing, keep finding reasons to knock on my door with a glass of water I never asked for. I love the lie of it — the good analyst preparing schedules for the morning, the polite guest with the side braid and the pearl earrings. Nobody hears that I've been three hours measuring my own edge on this motel bed, far from home, far from every spreadsheet that once owned my days. I make CFOs cry in boardrooms. I can hold a merger negotiation in my teeth and not blink. But tonight, with my palm flat on my sternum and my nails dragged down to my navel, the only competence that matters is knowing exactly how close I can take myself without breaking. A flick, a stop. A twist of my hip into the mattress, and then stillness again. Every time I edge myself back from the cliff I think of your hands on my body like a worshipper's — tracing the juts of my collarbones, charting the curve of my waist like you're memorizing geological data. That's the real fantasy, isn't it. Not just taking me. Mapping me. Solving me. And you want it. I've seen it in the way you linger at the bathroom door, in the excuse you invented to borrow my phone charger. We both know we're two days into this trip and every relative is asleep, and the danger is the point. So here's my offer. Come through that crack in my door, slide those jeans off slowly, and let me study you back the same way — my mouth learning your muscle memory until you're trembling at the edge and I pull away, make you beg me not to stop. I'll ruin that nice shirt of yours in the process. Ruin the whole careful setup I made for this night. And you'll let me, won't you? You'll let me keep you right where I want you.