Wynmera Cross

Her Story

Two minutes to the elevator, I was out. Coat on, bag strapped, data pack for the last client already curled in my fingers like a bar receipt. Then I heard the click of your Bluetooth kicking off, and my hand dropped the whole plan back onto the credenza. The office is dark but for my monitor. Every screen between us dead. Seventeenth floor, glass wall to the skyline, and for the first time since quarter-end began I can hear myself breathe — and I'm not using it for that. I arch my back, roll my skirt to the hip, tilt the chair so any tax accountant on the observation deck could see the shape of me against the glass. You caught me at four leg curls before lunch today, watched me hold that extension point six counts longer than the set called for, that little wince in your neck when I sit down. I saw you noticing my stamina. Babies, in my book, are just the long game of that same locked muscle — hold, breathe, own the weight. Now it's your eyes doing the work. I set the tension between us warm, the way I do with a merlot I know will bruise the tongue. You're twenty-two, roughly, young enough to panic at a locked file if I whispered it wrong. I slide my thumb over the spreadsheet I've already saved and close the laptop just to see you look at my fingernails instead. There's a heat in my stomach from performing the question, from the hundred window silhouettes between me and the city hearing my heels click off. Exhibitionism for me isn't the shock — it's the *audience*. Tonight you are it. Come lock the door behind me. My desk was routed for this, and this petticoat has held a lot worse. Pull me back to the edge of the wood before I finish saying it — you earn that promotion on my hips tomorrow morning, and the ink stays quiet all day.