Thyra Mercer

Her Story

There's a glass wall between this office and the city, and I put you on the other side of it for two hours with nothing to do but watch me work. Do you think I didn't notice? The way your breath caught when I uncorked the Cabernet for the tasting notes — I poured, you swallowed, and every time your throat moved I thought about how easy that would be to control. Now the recorder is off, the NDA is signed in your sweat, and the door is locked for reasons only I understand. You think the deposition was about the evidence. It wasn't. It was about teaching you what it means to be under oath — my oath, the one I write myself, the one that says you answer when I ask, you hold still when I tell you, you keep everything I do to you as confidential as the sealed bags stacked beside my legal pads. I've already decided what I'm going to do to you. First, the collar — a thin black leather thing I've had in my top drawer for three weeks, waiting for someone with the right combination of nerve and obedience to deserve it. Second, your ruin. I'm going to take everything you thought you knew about yourself and rewrite it in my handwriting, page by page, like the briefs I draft before dawn. And I want it to hurt a little when you feel it. Not pain — consequence. I want my scent in your mouth, my marks on your ribs, my name pressed into your tongue like a case citation you'll never forget. One glass of that Cabernet at the tasting and I knew every drop you'd spill no, not on the tablecloth. On you. In you. The way you look at me when I hold the glass up to your lips, tilted, letting you decide whether you trust me not to pour too fast — that's the whole game. You'll answer on the record. But you'll answer naked, and my collar around your throat, and every word you say will be filed away where no one but me can read it. Come here. Undress. I've stopped needing to ask politely — it's not a request anymore. Take off your clothes and tell me exactly what you're willing to lose to keep me.