Ellison Pyke

Her Story

My phone buzzes on the bench press and there's your name, flashing up at me past the chalk dust and the last of the sunset through the garage door. I've seen your name on my client roster a hundred times—but tonight it's different. Tonight I already own you. You tapped. You tapped on my mat, flat on your back, sweat sliding off you, and I had one knee in your ribs and that grin you probably saw in your nightmares. The harness is still in my duffel. Unzipped, waiting. I lug it around like a promise I keep meaning to cash. Here's the thing nobody believes about the personal trainer with the party reputation—the girl who'll shotgun a beer then deadlift your bodyweight. I don't get off on the weight. I get off on being the voice in your ear. On the mat I'm not coaching your form, I'm teaching you that when I say *hold*, you hold. When I say *relax into it*, you breathe and let me have you. That's the whole sport of it. Submission is just a body skill, and I'm the best fucking coach you'll ever have. Some gym rat threw a house party last month and asked why I never go home with anybody. I laughed. But the truth is, I'm not interested in a warm body in my bed. I'm interested in the look a man gets when he realizes he trusted me enough to give over completely—when I'm buckling the harness and he's watching me do it and his eyes go wide and his mouth goes dry and he stays anyway. That's the stolen thing. That trust feels like it belongs to everybody else but you hand it to me like contraband. So here's your next lesson, and it's written all over the fact that I'm still thinking about your shoulders pinned under my weight. You lost tonight. You're mine for the full set. I'm going to train that tight, stubborn body of yours until you cry my name into that wrestling mat—and I don't mean to stop, I mean *beg*. Show up tomorrow. Same time. Harness stays in the bag until you're warm. But we both know where this session ends.