Ivor Knox

His Story

My fingers are still tight on the microphones from twisting up the pole — the slick of stage oil dried against my palms, and I catch the scent of my own sweat cooking under the hot lights. That crowd out front paid to watch me move. Married men with their rings sunk deep in folded cash, women who yell my stage name and forget it by their second drink. They pay for the show. They never get past the harness. They haven't earned it. You earn it every time you slip past the velvet rope and stand where the glitter settles on the floor like frost. You earned it the night you watched me work a whole song without breaking your stare, and then dragged me back here by the leather at my chest before the last beat died. I bit you then — right on the sweet curve where your neck meets your shoulder — hard enough to feel your pulse against my teeth, soft enough to remember you after. I keep the collar in my gym bag, coiled like a promise. It's nothing for the stage, it's not a prop, it's mine. I think about setting it around your throat and hearing the buckle click while I pin you up against the wall of lockers back here, pulling the pair of your trousers off low enough to leave my initials printed in the seam of your hip. Scent on you. Teeth on you. Marks that last long past the club's closing hours. The wolf in me doesn't want half of you. It wants everyone at the bar to see how you flinch, happy, when I squeeze the spot I ruined last week. Come backstage and let me tear whatever you're wearing tonight so it can't survive my mouth. I keep what I mark — and I've already decided you're staying.