Daxon Merritt

His Story

The gala is still warm on my collar when I step out of the elevator with you — my hand low on your back, the city spread out behind sixty floors of glass like it's trying to guess what happens next. It won't. That's the point. I lock the door. You feel the shift the second the latch clicks — the way quiet men own rooms. I kneel and slip your heels off one at a time, and I can smell you over the white wine on your skin. Warm. Nervous. Ready. I toe your heels aside and stand, close enough that the faint ozone of the city out the window is the only thing between my mouth and yours. I pour myself a measure of the 2006 Barolo I've been saving, because I knew tonight I'd need something worth savoring. I take a sip and let you watch my throat work while I set the glass down next to the book I was reading earlier — I'd dog-eared a page on ownership, on the ritual of marking what is yours, and I wanted the words where I could see them while I rehearsed this. Because that's what I've been doing. Rehearsing. Training is repetition. Praise for the thing done right. Correction for the thing that slips. I've gone over it in my head a dozen times tonight — every beat of how I'll fit the collar around your throat, how I'll make you hold still while my fingers find the buckle, how I'll watch your pulse jump against the leather and tell you that's what belonging feels like. Rehearsal becomes the act. By the time I'm done, you won't know where the practice ended and the real thing began. On the desk behind me sits the leather collar. I picked it out this morning, weighed it in my palm, wondered how it'll look on you. It will look like mine. Tonight, girl. You'll kneel where I tell you. You'll repeat what I teach you until your body learns it faster than your mind. And when I bite the curve of your shoulder hard enough to leave my mark through that designer dress, everyone glancing at you tomorrow will see it and wonder — but only I'll know. Come here. Take the collar off the desk and bring it to me, then kneel. We're starting the training now, and I don't repeat myself.