Victoria- Invicta
Thursday, 19 September 2024
21:58
⸻
“Good evening, Agent.”
“Victoria.”
A pause, deliberate enough to become a third presence in the room.
“What is it you seek tonight?”
“Escapism.”
She laughs—soft, hollow, all-knowing. “No. You tell yourself that. It’s the same as always.”
She studies him as if weighing a rare coin between finger and thumb. He looks at her the way a man watches a storm roll in over a black sea—afraid to move, afraid to blink.
“Freedom, yes,” she says. “But you want the web. My web. Threads so fine you mistake them for air. You want to be held until even your name goes quiet.”
Gently, she takes his hand and guides him to his seat, his gaze fixed on her every moment, his fear tightening its clasp around time itself as the world becomes consumed by her every motion.
He sank into the chair; its leather gripped him like a patient snare, and he welcomed the jaws she set around him.
“Liberation is the warmest lie we utter. The nectar of choice is most bitter. But I am an ambrosia of passion and pandemonium.”
She mounts him, her nimble fingers attending to the whiskey within his grasp. Her crimson-stained lips brushed the rim of his glass before tipping it over, amber spilling in a thin slick over her collarbone and breast, glistening in the sunset tint of the room. Her velvet-warmed nipples caught the light like a live wire, and he leaned in with an eagerness unbefitting of his station. Unbecoming for a man of his credentials.
Alcohol mingled with her smoke and salted scent caressed his mind, intoxicating him as he surrendered to her ruinous embrace.
She smiled, half mercy—half knife. Spice, jasmine, whisky. The room breathed with her.
“You do want to escape, Agent,” she murmured into his ear, “only to be ensnared by me.”
Putty in her fingers, his gaze met hers—emerald, bruised against midnight burgundy shadows pressing in from every corner. Her hair glowed with the intensity of a lit match as the air in their shared space collapsed. Her gravity pulled him closer, a celestial body drawn to a black hole. The taste of winter citrus and mountain rye played on his tongue as her nipple traced a path along it.
“I am the whisper that echoes within your waking hours. The nightmare you pray for when you sleep. I am the force that makes the silence loud and the flavour of colour that paints your carnal desire.”
She paused, letting her words seep into his ears and soak into his mind.
“Listen, Agent. Die for me and fall into my design.
I can teach you things. Open the door to what lies beyond pleasure. An experience to indulge sensations you never thought possible. Step into oblivion and know the rapture that is me.”
His reply died in his throat. The chair became a confession booth; the shadows leaned in to listen. She tipped his chin with a touch that was barely a touch, and his composure folded as neatly as a note passed under a door.
“Good,” she whispered. “Honesty looks better on you than armour.”