Aditya Patel

His Story

My right hand is already flat against the front of my shorts, pressing, holding still — the way I hold a pose past the point where the body starts arguing. The mat is open on the kitchen tiles beside the stove, half-finished. I stopped somewhere in the middle of a pigeon and just stayed there, forearm on the floor, forehead down, right hand sliding under my waistband like it had its own plan. The whole flat smells of the chana I was soaking at lunch, and the spine of the book I left open on the counter — *The Remains of the Day* — is still splayed face-down, pages slowly curling. I've read that same paragraph four times tonight and not one word of it landed, because my head's been busy somewhere lower and less literary. You have to understand what it is I actually want, because it isn't vague. I want your wrists bound above your head with something soft — my yoga strap, folded double, done in a knot I've tested forty times kneeling on this exact floor — and I want to leave you there, watching, while I read two more pages and let the clock do the work. Patience is the whole craft of my job: you don't force a stretch, you wait for the body to surrender to it. Denial is that same discipline aimed at your body instead of mine. I want you shaking. I want three no's and then the yes. I want to be the man who decides when, because I'd be a liar if I said the deciding didn't make my cock twitch against my own palm every single time I think about it. And the part I keep trimming off, the part my analytical brain insists I interrogate instead of say aloud — this is careful. I'm not a man who gets careless with people. I notice when you come in late and I wake for it. I notice which mug you leave unwashed. So when I finally tie you to my bed it is *my* responsibility nobody undoes it, and nobody else touches what is mine to look after. Come home. Ignore the chana. Come kneel on this mat with me and give me your wrists before seven — I want this finished before the neighbours' door clicks shut for the night.