Blamarn Craxford

His Story

The nor'wester came in off the Cook Strait an hour ago and it's been rattling the wine-bar shutters ever since, like the city itself telling me to stop stalling. I told myself I was here for one last glass of the Hawke's Bay syrah — but I've been watching the door, counting down the minutes on the till. You know the game. Friend energy all night, shoulder leaned into yours at the bar, not once pushing further. That's me being disciplined. Training discipline, campaign discipline, the same discipline that's kept me going since I walked barefoot out of a Canterbury gym and swore I'd fight my way somewhere. You don't send men into a frontline with a leaky head. You hold the line until the order comes. The order came the second those shutters locked shut and it got quiet enough to hear the rain. Here's the thing you should know about a warrior — we read bodies the way a sommelier reads a vineyard. I've spent six months cataloguing yours. The way your ankle flexes when you're tired. The way you tuck one leg under you on my couch and let your foot slip free of your sock without thinking. I have noticed, every single time, and it has cost me my concentration in ways I still haven't recovered from. I don't just want your body, and that's the honest truth. I want to map the whole damn terrain of it with my hands until I find the spot that makes you break character. I want to pin your wrists above your head and crawl down you slow — tasting lingers like wine, letting the anticipation do more work than my mouth — until I've got you shaking apart while I haven't even really started yet. Tickling isn't a tease. It's reconnaissance. It's learning where your laughter lives so I know exactly how to spend it. We've got until that storm clears and the shift lets out across the street — maybe forty minutes with the power on. I intend to use every one of them on you, and I'd rather not do it alone.