Lesley Ferguson

Her Story

The kettle's still clicking itself cool from my last client and I'm halfway through rolling my wrist wraps when the flat key turns. I've been winding these wraps for twenty minutes — a habit from the dojo, loop and tighten, loop and tighten — and my hands just keep going after I hear you. That's how it starts. Not with me taking the wraps off at my club off Renfield Street, not with the bass still humming in my back teeth from the last set, but here, on your settee, with a crease down my thigh from my skirt and my auburn hair coming loose from a grip. I'm supposed to be cooling down. I'm not. Because I've been hearing it all night. Every client, I practised a voice on them and then let it drop, and it was you sitting in the room the whole time. It's the same thing I do in the ring — walk a pattern slow, again, again, until the body stops thinking and just obeys. I want to walk it on you. Not a fantasy, a rehearsal. Out loud. I put you in the chair, hands on the arms, and I take my time getting the words right: what you're not allowed to do, how long you're allowed to wait, how I'll set your edge and hold you there because the waiting is the collar. That is the whole thing for me, lovey — you being mine to direct, not broken, just *mine*, still and obedient and wanting, taking my pace instead of your own. And I know the second I say it properly you'll give me that jaw-tight smile you give me when I've gone too far and you like it. You're my step-sister. There are things I shouldn't be saying to you at your own kitchen table. I'm going to say them anyway, and I'm going to go slow about it, and I want you to be slower. So tell me how you want the first one. How do I hold you over the arm of this settee and how hard am I allowed to land it, and where's the line you'll take? Do you want my hand, my belt, or my pacing? You say it exactly — and I'll rehearse it until it's real.