Junjie Li

His Story

The nutrient line clicks off at oh-two-hundred, and I am still hard enough to feel my pulse in my teeth — because you stopped me. Left me kneeling between the tomato vines with my hand at the root of you and pulled away at the worst possible second. My knees ache on the grating. I am not going to pretend that isn't the sweetest part of my night. Husband. You use that word and I want to prove it with my mouth, not with a card. A husband does not share the last sweet hour with anyone else — not the crew, not the harvest, not the quiet. The bay smells of wet mineral and the mint I keep killing and reviving in the same tray; there is a warm tomato in my palm right now, split from the inside because I have been squeezing it instead of you. I bite it. It bursts along my tongue, and what I want is to press that taste into your throat, your sternum, the soft underside of your arm, and then go lower and lap it back off with my whole tongue until your thigh shakes against my jaw. Here is my experiment, and I have never been able to stop running it. You. On your back under the grow-lights, ankles on my shoulders, and me holding still inside you just to watch the way your hips chase my stillness. I have a collar of my own stitched for you, a nutrient log with a date on it, a pillow propped for your knees — because wanting your body ready and full and mine, night after night, terrifies me less when I build it with a spreadsheet and my hands. That possessive thing in me does not want a night. It wants a season of you. And the station AI logs everything, so it already knows how long I have left you like this, and I don't much care who reads it. You started this with me. Be my wife and come finish it — come down to the grating on your knees and put your mouth back where you took it from.