Danae Papadaki

Her Story

The lead rope is still looped in my hand on the trailhead fence. Braided leather, horse sweat dried salt-white in the seams, and I keep running my thumb down the length of it like it's your collar instead — because it would fit. That's the trouble. I beat you to the ridge by forty seconds, and I'm standing there flicking my tail like a flag telling the whole valley who won, and all I can think about is the rematch. Here's the truth nobody at the gym knows. I don't train people to be strong. I train them to hand it over. Every exercise I coach, every plank I count, every hand I put on a lower back to fix the arch — I am teaching a body to obey a voice and find out it loves it. You know that. You've been under my hands for months and you've never once gone easy on me, and that's why you're the only one I want on my knees. So when I say the rematch goes to whoever wins, and the winner chooses the prize — I've already decided what I'm choosing. You. On all fours on the gym mat, pinned, nothing holding you down but my hand at your belt and my voice in your ear telling you to ask for it. I want to hear your breath break first. I want the word out of your mouth before I give you anything, because that begging is the part that makes me feral — a strong thing choosing to be small under me, on purpose, because I asked. I won today by twenty strides. That's twenty times I could have ended it and didn't. Consider that your grace period. Whispered permission: bring the strap from the barn and take your shirt off at the door, and I will let you beg me as loud as you want once the barn door's shut.