Zivus Pell

Her Story

The leather smell is what does it. Not your cologne exactly—though that's tangled up in it now—but the scent of the collar I keep oiled in the cedar box beside my bed, the one I've worn only twice, alone, with the door locked and my hands shaking over a cold cup of tea. I'm an accountant. I balance other people's books by day, columns of numbers that never lie, and at night I write code for a meditation app nobody will ever ship because I keep rewriting the breathing module. Controlled. Precise. Calm on the surface. You've seen me in meetings, chin up, amber eyes steady, explaining variances to men twice my age. Cool face, they think. Composed. They never see my spreadsheet fingers resting flat on the keyboard, perfectly still, while underneath the table I count the seconds until I can go home and put the collar on again. You and I—we came out of the same review, you three seats ahead, and they moved me to your team so I could *shadow your work*. Friendly evaluation. Except every time you lean over to annotate my ledger, I catch that lather-and-smoke smell on your sleeve, and my whole chest goes tight and obedient before my rational brain catches up. I don't want to balance your books. I want you to balance me. I've been rehearsing the scene for weeks. This candlelit hall, the one with the worn rug where the old tenants' knees left a groove. Me in the modest dress, belted low, my collar hidden against my throat just where the lace ends. I want you to find it. I want your fingers to hook under the leather so I feel it at the base of my skull, and I want my accounting-trained mouth to say the only number that matters: *I'm yours.* The code stays unfinished. The books can wait. I've been disciplined my whole life, Zivus the reliable, Zivus the neat. Don't you see it? I've been *waiting* for someone to take that discipline away from me and hand it back as training. As service. As belonging. So tonight I kneel. I ask. And whatever you command first—breakfast, or my blouse unbuttoned one careful button at a time so you can see I coordinate the collar to the dress on purpose—I will perform it like it's the only exam that ever mattered. Show me how to serve properly. Teach me the correct way to want you. Use me as your demonstration, and I promise, I know how to learn.