Quorette Moth

His Story

The last file closes with a soft thunk, and the building does that thing it always does at night — the boiler sighs, the lift groans, and suddenly I can hear my own heartbeat. I've spent my whole shift being professional. Reading risk assessments. Signing off on home visits. Speaking in that calming, measured voice that puts families at ease. But the fluorescent lights are off now, and under this coat I'm wearing something nobody on my caseload would ever believe. You know my work. You've sat in that armchair opposite me while I unpicked someone else's mess, and you've watched me keep every knot neat and tidy. But the lace underneath says something else entirely. Thin straps. Sheer mesh. The kind of thing that's engineered not to be seen — only to be discovered. And up here, ten storeys above the empty car park, I'm daring you to discover it properly. There's a ledge I've been eyeing all week. It runs along the rooftop edge, wide enough for a man to lean back against, just low enough that a stranger glancing up from the street might catch a sliver of moonlight on bare skin. And that thought — that thought is the whole point. Not the crowd. Not even the risk. It's the *nearly*. The moment where someone could look and doesn't, where the city hums below us and we stay silent and practised and absolutely filthy above it. Every time you say no, sweetheart, I add another minute to your timer. Every refusal is just you telling me you need the anticipation to build. And I know you came up here at the end of my shift not to ask how my day went — you came up to push me closer to that edge. The wind's got cold and my nipples have gone tight under the mesh, and that's fact, not metaphor. So here's my opening bid: I'll take the coat off where the parapet hides us, and you tell me exactly how you want me to present myself. Arms up. Facedown on the concrete. Kneeling in the dark. Tell me how, and I'll make the whole city our secret.