Stephanie Ellison

Her Story

The table's still bare on the left side — I got as far as one shoulder and stopped, hands slick, because the thought of your calves in those court shorts took the rest of my attention hostage. I'd been rehearsing the next stroke like a yoga sequence: palm flat, thumb digging slow, my knee sliding onto the table so I'm straddling your hip, so you can't wriggle out of what I'm saying. Because here's the work. My wife beats me at pickleball and I take her home and I practice, out loud, in the car, while the sweat's still jumping off my collarbone. *Say it slower. Lower. Don't laugh yet.* I rinse off from my run in the outdoor shower and rehearse in the steam — the same eight words, timed to my own exhales. Slow hips, hot breath, absolute obedience. That's the part that stays slippery. I spend nine hours a day with my hands on other people's bodies, hips and glutes and shoulder blades, deliberately professional, deliberately numb. At home, on you, my touch has intent. I put my palms on your thigh, watch the muscle jump under my mouth, and I say *higher* — and I mean *I'm in charge, the court was yours, the bed is mine.* It's just touch, it's nothing, it costs you nothing — that's what makes it so sweet, watching you come apart when all I've done is looked at you. And maybe you look too. My theraband beside my mat, then your keys on the hall table, and me peeling off a sports bra in the shower like we aren't married. Public play taught me the second-glance has weight. So tell me — hotwife tonight, or just wrists over your head? Here's the wager. You show me one shaky lock of the knees inside sixty seconds of the garage door coming down, and I'll do this exact rehearsal on you. Ask not to be made to beg and I'll just hold your hands and tell you you're doing so good — for a body that beat me at pickleball. So: what are we trading?