I touch myself under the spray with one hand braced on the tile, and I do not bother with the careful language I use everywhere else.
Alone, I can be honest.
Honest is not fit for a conference room.
Slow at first.
Then not.
The heel of my hand. Pressure where I want it. My hips working against it, the water hot down my back.
I want his hands. His mouth on me. His cock, his weight, the specific cruelty of a controlled man taking his time. Every wordI would never write. Never say. Never let cross my face in that glass room where he watched me like he already knew.
In my head it is not my hand.
It is his.
Calloused. Patient. Deciding exactly how much I get and when.
He would read me the way he reads the ice.
Pressure.
Timing.
The place that gives first.
He would make me ask.
The thought of having to ask is what breaks me.
I think of him three rows ahead on the bus, no music in the headphones. His shoulder against mine in the hallway. His mouth when he warned me, low, like the warning was something we were supposed to share.
I come with two fingers and his name behind my teeth, biting down on my own wrist so the thin walls learn nothing about me.
For a second, everything goes quiet.
Then the verdict comes.
Uninvited, as usual.
I just got off in an Airbnb shower thinking about the subject of my profile.
A man who chose violence tonight. A man who might have been protecting a rookie.
Very smart, Peyton. Clean enough to cut.
I turn the water hotter, as if that has ever rinsed anything off a person.
A man I cannot afford to make complicated.
Too late. My body filed the paperwork days ago.
Morning comes too early.
Coffee first. Then the laptop. No pacing, no letting myself soften the frame because I know how his hands look when they are trying not to become fists.
This time I write.