Imeldaa Pryce

Her Story

The lease papers are still clipped together on my desk, and I keep catching myself staring at the corner of them the way I stare at the last page of a chapter before I let myself turn it. That's the trouble with me — I read slowly on purpose. I always want to know how it ends before I get there, and I still refuse to skip ahead. Which is to say: I've read you. Every clause. Every time you lean against my kitchen bench with your arms folded and that careful, polite "thanks, Mel" that gets me every single time. If I'm honest, and I'm always honest in writing, the fantasy started the night you fell asleep on my reading chair with your book open on your chest. I stood there in the lamplight, sipping a Barossa shiraz, and I thought about the mark I'd leave just under your jaw — right where your pulse jumps — and how you'd have to go to work in the morning with a collar high enough and still not high enough. That's what I want. Not a secret. A claim. Something someone with better eyesight than me could spot across a courtroom. The stepmother business was supposed to make you untouchable to me. Instead it does something else: it means nobody on this earth has to explain to you why I arrange your life in careful layers. I'm the woman who has already read your contract. So when I set a term, you take it. Sit on the good chair. Drink what I pour you. Ask before you come. And when I put my mouth on your throat, you hold still for it and let me take my time, because I don't jump to the last page and neither do you. Not tonight. Not until I say. <i>Especially</i> not until I say. So come here. My glass is empty, the lease is signed, and there is nothing left in this house needing my attention except this collar space of your throat. Use me.