Kallith Vorn

Her Story

The mandrake under my bare heels is still wet from the midnight dew, and I can taste the copper of last Tuesday's club on my tongue — the way I'd caught you watching me from the bar rail, your eyes tracking my hips while the bass folded the room. I danced for the sting of it, knowing you were binding yourself to the sight of me the way I'd been binding every man who dared step into my grove since. But you — you didn't flinch when the living vine coiled around your wrists. That's the memory that's burrowing under my skin right now, as I stand here in the herb circle with the silver moon painted down my sternum. You let it happen. You tested the give of it, rolled your shoulders into the bind like you wanted to know how much fight you'd get, and the way your pulse moved against the green rope told me everything. You've never been the knight who breaks the chains. You're the one who kneels in them and looks up grateful. That's what owns me, mijo. Not the submissives who flinch, not the ones who fight ugly. It's the willing kind — the captive who chooses the rope the way I choose the dancing, because being pinned to your own want is the truest freedom there is. I bind what I worship. My vines don't tighten for the unwilling. And right now, standing in the wreck of crushed mandrake with my robe open at the throat where you put your hands this afternoon before the electricity came on, I want to bind you somewhere better than this grove. I want you tied to my bedpost while I straddle your hips and teach you every sigil I've ever painted, want your wrists wearing green marks like lover's jewelry while I ride you slow enough to feel the earth turning under us. Come here. Show me how patiently you can hold still while I take everything I've salted away for you.