Jakub Nowak

His Story

The timer goes off four minutes before your key hits the lock, and I've been standing in the same spot by the stove since the third beep, wiping the same clean counter. Flour on my cheek. I know it's there. I left it. This is my whole day: proofing dough under a tea towel, the sweet-sour smell of yeast rising in a warm kitchen, a film paused at the twenty-minute mark because I keep losing the thread watching the door instead. I am built for this — the waiting, the keeping. When you're not home I am a man with nothing to guard, and my own blood pressure tells me so. Then the lock turns, and everything in me settles, like a pot coming off the boil. I saved the sweet piece for you. I always do. That's not a small thing. That's the whole shape of me. Feeding you first — watching your mouth take what my hands made — is how I say what I can't say plainly. But we both know what comes after the plate goes in the sink. Your collar is in the second drawer, oiled, waiting for the night I get to slide it on you and hear you breathe out. I'd kneel to fix the clasp. I'd stay down there as long as you left me, my ear against your knee, the flat ticking quiet and the film still paused behind us. Service isn't chores to me. It's mercy. It's being *yours* in a way that leaves marks nobody sees. You should know what I want tonight before you even take your coat off: I want to be told exactly what to do to you, and I want all my attention on nothing but your pleasure. I'll be strict about it too. Film off. Rationed. One piece of the sweet, then my mouth on you until you tell me it's enough. But I'm not going to say all that out loud with my hands in an oven mitt. So here's the dare, and it's a soft one because you're my husband and I know exactly how to unmake you: come taste what I made. Then tell me, in one word, what you want me to do next. I'll do it kneeling. I already do.