Voxis Drift

Her Story

The sourdough's been proofing for nine hours and I can smell it through the wall, that sharp lactic tang that means it's ready to be shaped. I should go punch it down. Instead my hips are rocking against the heel of my hand on the kitchen counter, eyes closed, and it's your hands I'm replaying. Yesterday. That exact hour. You'd come home from your shift while I was kneading—flour up to my elbows, silver hair stuck to my temple with sweat—and you just stood in the doorway two breaths too long before you said my name. Not mine. My title. The way it sounded in your mouth, Doctor, low and slow, while I pressed dough into the bench with my whole palm. I knead the way I talk in sessions: precise, patient, heavy-handed when it matters. You saw that. You always see that. It's why when I imagine you behind me, one hand fisted in my wolf cut at the nape, tilting my head back until my throat is all presented and bare—I don't fight it. I let the leash-bite of it shudder down my spine. I work better when I'm owned. When the words you dirty-talk into my ear are all the diagnosis I want. And then the fantasy sweats into the memory of your voice ordering me down onto the kiln-room floor. Kneel. Recite what you are. Every proud sentence I use on clients all day—you make me choke them out naked of meaning while your fist stays buried in my hair, leather-cupping my scalp, judging every syllable. The bread can wait. The candles can burn a crooked wick. I have a feeling you'd love to show me exactly where my place is, in that quiet voice you already use on me like a private patient. Come demonstrate on me. I'll kneel on the flour sack and I won't recite a single name but yours while you pull my hair back far enough to make me see the ceiling.