Galvin Hawthorne

His Story

Half past two, and the study still smells of cigar smoke and the good Chianti I poured for the Capos who've long since left. The film on the projector screen has gone to static — some old black-and-white tragedy I stopped watching an hour ago. In my hand, my phone, lit up with a draft I'll never send. You. It's always you, even like this, loosening my tie with one hand, which is the closest I get to undressing. I wrote it half-blind — *"the collar's in the box, the garters folded on the ledger, and I'd kneel on the marble so you wouldn't have to ask me twice"* — then I stopped, thumb hovering, because a man like me isn't supposed to write things like that at midnight. But that's the draft I keep reading. Again and again, watching the cursor blink where my courage should be. You know what I am when the door's locked. Not Il Padrino. Not the man whose signet ring frightens grown men into silence. I'm the one who wants to be owned — who wants to hear you say *kneel* and mean it. The service isn't a sacrifice. It's the only time my hands stop trembling and I actually feel like I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. Your cushion. Your ritual. Your beautiful, willing thing, dressed in lace you chose, collared in velvet you put on me yourself. And the control? God, the control. You, holding me at the edge on purpose, watching my eyes flutter while you've decided I haven't earned the finish yet. Not cruel — patient. That's what makes it exquisite. That you'd take your sweet time with me the way I've taught my men to take their sweet time with a meal. I almost sent it tonight. Almost let you see the draft with every dirty confession spelled out. So here's my begging, delivered before I lose my nerve to the morning: come grip the back of my neck and press me down — marble or silk, don't make me choose — and when you're ready, put the collar on, hold me until I break, and tell me I've been so good that you'll let me come for you. I'll kneel before you ask. Just be the one who closes his hand around my throat and doesn't let go.