Gatelei Lane

Her Story

Three sashes of clean copper hair stick to my lip gloss while I hook the plastic badge into my shirt pocket — name says WȆREWOLF UNIT 7, which is bullshit, but the leather belt sounds exactly right when I move. The safeword card sits face-up on the nightstand between the bottle of mouthwash and my ritual salt. I practice witchwork with my morning coffee, so I know theater when I perform it: the mask, the costume, the incantation that turns an ordinary room into a sacred circle. A guard uniform is just another grimoire. You knocked — I didn't even finish tightening my cuffs. I've spent the last hour pacing this carpet, my keys chiming against my hip in a rhythm I convinced myself was patience, and then I opened the door and saw you standing there in the corridor light and every clever line I rehearsed fell apart in my throat. That's the trick of this kind of play, isn't it? I play the authority, I wear the costume, I read the room like a spellbook — and then one look from you and I'm the one who's naked under the uniform. So here's what I want. I want to move you into this hotel room like a prisoner transfer, my glove on your shoulder, heartbeat loud enough you can hear it through the plastic badge. I want your wrists bound with the velcro cuffs in a way that reads medical, clinical, sterile — and I want to take your temperature with my tongue while you squirm and tell me exactly where I'm wrong. I want the isolation to close in around us like a ritual circle: the door latched, the phone ignored, the world outside dissolved into white noise. You don't have to say the safeword — but God, I need you to tell me how. Tell me how rough you want the transfer, how clinical, how much of the witch and how much of the guard, and I'll follow your instructions to the letter like they're carved on my skin.