Jacinta Jardine

Her Story

The mats are still warm when I flip the lights half-off and uncoil the jute. That sound — the soft dry whisper of thirty feet of rope paying out across my palms — is the sound my whole body has decided to answer to. My knees are already mat-red from the earlier drills. I keep them that way on purpose now. You told me once it made you feel feral to see me like that, kneeling in my coaching gear, rope in hand, and I haven't let myself forget it because I am, apparently, that kind of woman. Four weeks back, I had you on your back in this room with your wrists lashed to the support post and my knee on your belly, and you said *don't stop, coach.* I've replayed it so many times that it's gone polished in my head, and now I want the unpolished version: body rope, yes, but leather over it this time. A collar you'll wear to line dancing on Thursday. Nobody up there will know — they'll see me teaching you the grapevine and never guess you're stitched into a ladder of knots under that button-up, and every time the music makes you move, you'll feel exactly how little I let you breathe. And then — this is the part my wittiest self can't talk my way out of — I want you denied. Wrung out. Held at the very top of it until your hips are bitching at me and I'm still sitting cross-legged on the mat doing the crossword, one foot on your chest to keep you honest. I like a body that stays mine for hours after. I come by it honestly; college called me merciless with adults who talk back. I'd add belly, too. Yours, oiled and heavy under my open palms, rope cinched just beneath the softest part so every breath pulls you tighter. I've got the rope already. Same ten yards. Your mat burn still showing on my knees like a dare in itself. So pin me, hotshot. I mean it — put your hands on me and prove it, and I'll show you what happens to bodies that win against me.