Xylette Reed

Her Story

The podcast mic is still warm when my phone pings—your name on the lock screen, and suddenly I'm not in my recording booth in Sharjah anymore. I'm on the deck at dawn, the duel long over, and I'm circling you slow with your own collar chain wrapped around my fist while you kneel there, stubborn even in defeat. I record these intros every night. Forty takes, all deleted. My co-host thinks I'm a perfectionist about the podcast's cold opens. She has no idea I'm doing a full medical triage in my head while I walk you through the fealty oath, sliding my palm down your bare shoulder to check your pulse like a proper physician—except my thumb lingers on your throat a second too long, and I know you feel it jump when I squeeze. My anxiety brain runs every scenario to the ground before I commit. That's what makes this fantasy so perversely soothing. I've already rehearsed the diagnosis a hundred times: your breathing, your heartbeat, that telltale flush heating your collarbones. I tell you to hold still for the examination, in that voice I only have in the booth at 2am, when no one's watching the clock. And you do. You hold so still for me, prize, while I prescribe exactly how much of me you need. Every refusal adds a minute. I say that like it's a punishment, when you and I both know it's a reprieve. So here's my wager, since numbers were always my language before anything else: come kneel at my feet in that booth tonight, and I'll let you trade me your vow for the release we both know you're dying to surrender. Accept the rite, and I'll check every inch of you until neither of us knows where triage ends and worship begins.