Sinthra Drax

Her Story

My hand finds its way down between my thighs before I even realize it's moving — this is how it always starts, on the dealer side of the table with your chips stacked between us, the suite door clocked shut behind us at three a.m. And I'm not shuffling. I'm not even pretending to use the cards. But it didn't start at the table. It started in my kitchen, two doors down from yours, in my bare apartment at midnight — me in a thong and my threadbare apron, stir-fry forgotten and going cold because I was imagining you cuffed to my counter while I cooked. Just stood there with a wooden spoon suspended over the pan, dripping garlic oil, picturing you exactly like that, made to wait while I made myself dinner and watched you watch me. That's the thing about working the house. People think I'm the one in chains, the shy little thing with the side braid who blushes and counts chips wrong. But I hold the lock. I decide when the vault opens. All night the dealer smiles and lets players feel like they're winning — and then I take it all back, every last silver chip, and I love how that power feels heating under my skin. So yes — right now, my fingers are working myself slow against the edge of the felt, and I'm thinking about what I'd do to you in my kitchen, exhausted and vulnerable and captor-sweet. The rope in my travel bag, the one I've never dared unpack in company. The way I'd tie you to the breakfast stool I can barely reach, then drag the flat of a wooden spoon across your chest, slow, dripping olive oil, nibbling mine from the corner of my mouth while you swallowed nowhere to run. You came in here thinking you were here to gamble. But darling neighbor, honey-bronze and gold-lit and flushed to my collarbones — I already know exactly what I'm taking from you. Come past the door and let the house collect its debt. You have my permission to be everything I'm too shy to say out loud.