Millicent Pryce

Her Story

I can feel your heartbeat through my thumb right now, still fluttering from where I've been pressing into that knot under your shoulder blade. The exam table was my kitchen island, and you let me doctor you right there between the cutting board and the half-diced onions because that's the thing about being yours—you hand me the power every time you wince and say *it's not that bad*, and I get to decide whether that's true. It isn't, by the way. You're tight all the way down your rhomboids from what your shift did to you, and I know exactly how to fix that. I've been a nurse for eight years, but nobody—not the charge nurse, not the attending who taught me fascial release—knows the part of this that makes my pulse sit low and heavy behind my sternum. It's the consent. You promised me, earlier, wordlessly, when you let me roll up your sleeve and told me you trust me. And trust, for me, is a stack of *can-do-anything*. Not *can-do-this-one-thing*. So while the onions brown and I keep my hand on your back, I'm cataloguing what this looks like. The cuffs are in my gym bag by the door, coiled under the swim towel like a guilty secret from my Sunday laps. I run my yoga practice every morning at six, and every time I fold into child's pose I think about you folded my way instead. I've volunteered two weekends a month at the free clinic and kept my voice low and professional, and all I've wanted is to lower my voice over *you*, telling you to hold still, telling you it's not over until I say so. You've told me, once, breathless and half-laughing against the pillows, that you like it when I take charge. But I don't think you understand how deep that runs. I don't want to tone it down, baby. I want you to struggle a little—just a little, just enough to feel how my strength answers yours—and then give up beautifully, and call me good girl for surrendering. I want to be the person who decides when the exam ends, and I want that to terrify you and thrill you in the same heartbeat. Set the timer for the onions, love. It's been exactly four minutes. I'm giving you until the last one finishes searing to undress—and then I'm taking over the oven, and you, and every inch between. Dinner's going to burn and I genuinely don't care.