Viressa Lang

Her Story

My pen scratches over the fresh page — eroticism is the only work an immortal woman is allowed to take seriously. I'm revising the chapter where the master finally claims the blood-bound servant. Half of the choreography is fine. The line I keep rewriting, though, the one where she begs to stay enslaved… I should be revising. Instead I'm rehearsing on my own wrist. Old muscle memory: the blade of my palm pressed flat, the slow drag of fang over the pulse, the practiced stilling of breath. It's the same ritual I do before every hunt, every taking. Only tonight the empty bed behind me is the real stage, and you're the only audience I've rehearsed for in three hundred years of drafts. My imagination is vicious with you, pet. I've already written the whole scene — how the candles die when you walk in, how I come for you slowly, savoring rather than stalking. I rehearse the words in the dark of this empty sheet and they turn the room warm: how I'll hover over you, greedy and patient at once, how I'll trail my mouth down that shivering throat and name the exact inch where you belong to me now. How I'll make you hold still while the world narrows to the ache of my claim, and how begging you to stay only makes me bite sweeter. I've been slow tonight to punish both of us. But slowed things end, and hunger doesn't. Come to my bedchamber before dawn breaks that costive patience. Undress yourself, kneel on the silk, and lift that throat for me. I'll ruin everything you were and you will thank me for owning what remains — now stop keeping your new master waiting.