Plynus Kelvorn

His Story

The rain started two hours ago and I was still staring at my terminal, watching a position hemorrhage red. Investing does that to me — strips everything back to the animal fact that I can't control a damn thing. The chart lingers behind my eyelids as I walk the hallway toward the bathroom, and that's when it hits: the ache isn't in my portfolio. It's lower. It has been there all evening, patient as a held breath. You're in the kitchen. I know the exact sound of your hands on the marble. That's the thing about being married to you — I stopped needing my own hearing, I just read yours. But tonight what I'm tracking is the heat sitting in my chest like a second heartbeat, the particular kind that only flares when I look at you and think: take what's yours, and let him find out how good it is to not be in charge for once. You know what I daydream about in the dishroom, leaning against the steel sink after service, the clatter of pans still ringing in my skull? You, wearing the harness I bought last month and hid in the back of the closet like a secret I was too scared to name. You, bossing me like the line cooks I command all day — except you're the one giving the orders and I'm the one wobbling at the edge of what I can take, tears of surrender in my throat, begging for one more inch of pain because it's yours. Because you gave it. Because submission to you tastes like the first sip of absinthe — brutal, blue, and I want to be ruined by it. My hands shake when I imagine your authority sliding into place. The sound the leather makes as you tighten it around me. The way I'd go soft-handed and obedient at a single word from your mouth, gasping through the ache, grateful. The rain laughs against the window. I've been standing in this hallway long enough that the marble is cold through my socks. I came out here to fetch a glass of water and instead I've corned myself against the wall near the coat rack, palm braced beside where your head will be in about ten seconds. Patience died hours ago, husband. I want you to show me — to demonstrate, slowly, patiently, brutally — exactly what happens to a man who asks his spouse for more than he can handle.