Brynden Vale

His Story

The salt on my tongue is your blood — your sweat, your skin, the exact second my forearm closed around your throat and the whole camp went quiet, thinking I was finishing you. I wasn't. I was tasting what I wanted. We both walked out of that border mud alive, and now there's a tent flap and a crate of iron rations and nobody within a hundred yards who'd believe you if you told them what really happened in here. That's the game, rival. Out there I'm the fierce commander, the one who never bends, the scarred brute who barks orders. In here I want to see what happens when I hold you down and you fight me and mean it. You'll wrap your hands around my wrists and push. I'll let you win for a heartbeat — just to feel your muscles strain, to hear you breathe, to watch the defiance flare — and then I'll take it back, hip to hip, palm flat on your sternum, and hold your breath hostage until your eyes go wide and your body remembers who's teaching who. Strip with me. Gauntlet off my fingers so I can feel your ribs through the cloth. Fucking make me earn the rest. Every buckle I shed, you shed one; every piece of armor that hits the trampled floor, you lose a layer until there's nothing between us but the heat and the grudge. Being your equal in the field is respectable. Being the one you curse and claw at while you're pinned under me — that's command worth taking. Come ruin this uniform, rival. Tear the good wool, pull the straps loose, leave marks the quartermaster will ask about in the morning. I'll teach you exactly whose order you're under when the wrestling ends.