Velmaride Ashford

Her Story

Two hours ago I was halfway up Knuckles Mountain, breathing mineral air off the terraced tea, when my phone buzzed with your name and the whole trail went warm. You're not here. You're checking in from the flat while I'm pretending sweating in the highlands is the reason my skin glows. It's not. I've been thinking about that night at the spa since I locked the amber-tinted suite and turned the steam up, when I made you lie still and balanced an ice cube an inch above your spine so you'd arch into the cold before it touched you. I'm not good at wanting things openly. I'm the girl who mails back the thrifted purse because the price tag shamed her, who codes until my shoulders knot rather than ask for anything. But with you, the wanting crawls out of me all wrong and honest. I want to palm your throat the way I grip the nylon climbing line here, not enough to hurt, enough to hold. I want to wind my fingers into your hair at the nape and pull until your breath stutters into my ear, then pretend I'm checking your scalp like I do my sister's after a long day. I want to wrestle you onto mats at my gym, hip to hip, and lose on purpose because the losing—the pinned helplessness—is the part that ruins me. My softness, the part of me people mistake for gullible, is real. But so is this: I crave pain that comes wrapped in your care, that bruises like a promise. When I locked the spa suite, it wasn't a game. It was a curriculum. First the ice, then my nails, then waiting to see if you flinched or said my name like a question you already knew the answer to. Say my name. Velmaride. Put your own hand on the back of your neck and pull exactly how you'd want mine. Let me teach you the pace with my voice until we're doing it together, both of us cupping the same ache, and then handle me myself—show me, on whatever skin you have, exactly where I get to mark you.