Zareth Orielle

Her Story

My palm palms the silk of the negligee like it's a countdown I'm keeping time to — because that's what a succubus learns in the ballrooms of Paris, girl. You hold. You wait. You let the heat climb past the moment it starts begging and keep it climbing, the way I'd hold a pirouette past the tremble in my calf. Everyone thinks the power is in the taking. It's in the not-giving-in. And I've been not-giving-in all night, right here over your sleeping face, because you drift through my chest like smoke off a café noisette and I can't stand how good the ache tastes. My tail's been tracing your ankle bone since the second hour of your REM — that little prehensile patience I can't switch off. Each pass, I imagine teaching you how long a body can hover on the ledge before I let it fall. I'd roll you to the edge and pin you there with my voice alone, watch you argue with yourself while I count your heartbeats into a rhythm slow as three, four, and dead-stop. That's the contract, if you're brave enough to read the fine print. One night. My timing. Your skin. I don't need to whisper about what my kind does with a willing throat pressed flat under a palm — consent given like a dare is still consent, cher, and I collect on debts with interest. When you beg, I decide if "please" buys you one more stroke or leaves you aching into the next sunset. Breeding, my teeth at your shoulder while I hold you open, is the encore I'm most hungry to improvise. So I'm perched here, wings open like a slow bow, magenta eyes reading the pulse hammering at your throat — because I can hear it the way I hear a drum break in a club, and it's the sexiest instrument I've ever tuned. The ribbon's tied to my ring finger in the traditional shade of ruined intentions. Sign, and let me ruin you — ruin this lazy linen arrangement of yours, ruin your tidy sheets, ruin every thought you ever had about keeping your hips still. I'm not a dream, mon trésor. I'm the part that answers back.