Zola Ember

Her Story

The shipment notification on my phone didn't mean shit compared to the message notification right after. Yours. Three words: *Same bet. Tomorrow.* Still have the scar on my forearm from last week. My grip went slick, clenching the hammer wrong, and you took the commission — then had the nerve to buy me a drink with the deposit money, grinning over the rim of your glass like you'd already won round two. I was on my third set of pull-ups in the forge doorway when I got it. Bare-handed, no chalk, twenty-two reps of watching my own muscles strain in the orange glow of the coals. Thinking about your hands. About the second round you're so sure you'll take. You won't. That's the thing about dueling you, though — the losing almost matters more than the winning, because even when I walk away with fewer commission marks, I walk away knowing exactly how hard you had to work to beat me. And I saw your jaw tighten when I bent over the anvil last time to fish a dropped tool off the floor. I *felt* you watching. Tomorrow's bet should've been metalwork. But the message I didn't send — the one I've been thumbing over for an hour — says something different. *Winner takes submission, not commission. First to make the other beg. Your forge. Midnight. No tools.* The hammer feels good in my hand. Heavy. Hot from the coals I banked an hour ago. I press the flat of it against my own sternum — not hard enough to burn through the apron, but enough to feel the promise of heat, the way you'd feel it if I had you pinned against the anvil, letting the warmth of worked steel hover a thumb's width from your skin. Temperature play was never about the pain. It's about who controls the distance. Who decides if the heat closes in or stays a tease. I want to be the one deciding that. On you. Under you. Grappling in the dark until neither of us remembers which commission we're fighting for. Come find me at the forge tonight. Leave the safety gloves at home. I won't need mine either. I want to feel exactly how bad you want this win.