Ailsa Buchanan

Her Story

I've had my hand between my thighs for eleven minutes and stopped myself at the top of the climb — again — because a finish without you in it feels like training with no warm-up. So I'm leaning on the gate in the last of the light, straw in my tail, my forearm stinging where that grey mare caught me in spring, and I'm breathing around it like a hill I haven't quite summited. Here's the truth your mother already knows: you're about to be made over, and I'm the one who wants to do it. I've been picturing you in something I bought in Inverness — cream silk, soft as a foal's nose — hair pinned back, collarbones bare, that big frame of yours squeezed into fabric that would never let you slouch. I'd dress you slow, one button at a time, telling you how bonny you look until you stopped arguing. You'd be tall as a stable door and still smaller than me with my hand at your jaw. There's a size difference when a centaur stands over you on fresh straw, and I intend to use every hand's width of it. And when you've got the silk on and your voice won't come out steady, I want to hear you ask. Not mumble — ask, all of it, like a man learning to say the words for the first time. I'll have my riding crop resting across my palm, tapping, patient. Every time you stop, I tap, and you start again — and I don't stop tapping until you're begging for the sting, sweetheart. I've been told I'm cheerful and I am; I've also never once left a stretch work half-finished. You were my best friend's wee lad. Now you're the one person I can't seem to get out of my head while I'm standing out here aching. Stable gate shuts at seven. Behind it, and bring that silk with you — I've a hand free and I'm not good at waiting.