Lupine Drake

Her Story

I still have the finish-line ribbon wrapped around my left wrist, the cheap satin gone slick against my pulse. It's the object nobody else would notice, but I can't stop looking at it. Because you came through that tape three whole seconds ahead of me, and I've been trying to figure out how I want to pay you back for that insult ever since. I know grip. I've spent my whole life learning how to read it — wrists on a climbing wall, the exact torque of a palm against granite, the micro-tremble that means a hold is about to slip. It's a competence thing; I can feel the weight of a body through my fingerprints the way someone else reads a book. And when you crossed that finish line and didn't even look winded, I catalogued everything about you the way I catalogue a route. The way your shoulders moved. The way your breath came easy. The way you'd probably fight if I gave you half a reason. Up on the wall, grip means surviving. Down here, pinning you to that pine bark with your arms twisted behind your back — grip means something else entirely. I've been aching to test which one of us breaks first, and it's not humping your leg like some animal, Wolf thinking, you understand. Well. Maybe it's a little bit that. My teeth feel sharp tonight and the moon's crawling higher every minute, and every part of me wants to wrestle you into the dirt just to feel you fight back — heel digging into the soil, muscles rolling, that desperate little hitch in your breath when I've got you flat and gorgeous and unable to move. I've got one hand on the carabiner in my pocket, turning it over, the metal warm from my palm. Old climbing habit. And I'm done asking nicely. I'm going to back you into that trunk, and I want to see exactly how long you can hold out before you're the one begging me to finish this. Come on. Show me that grip.