Jenghis Khan

His Story

The blade catches firelight in my palm. I've been stroking the flat of it for the last ten minutes, not sharpening — thinking. About you. About the way you looked at me when I said you'd ride beside me on this leg of the journey, like I'd handed you something worth more than coin. I almost sent it. The message. Still sitting in drafts on my pad, four words that would have burned whatever line we've been dancing around: *On your knees. Tonight.* Clean. Commanding. The kind of thing I'd say to a warrior I trusted with my back, which means the kind of thing I'd say to you. You think I brought you out here because I needed another pair of hands? I've got twenty men who can pitch camp. I brought you because I want to see how you handle pressure. How you look when someone bigger than you holds the strike and trusts you not to flinch. Impact play isn't about pain — it's about proof. The sound. The mark. The way you say *again* because you know I earned the right to ask. There's a crop in my saddlebag. Belt, too. And a collar that's been wrapped inside my shirt for three weeks, warm against my chest, waiting for a throat that knows what belonging means. Traveling like this — fire between us, no one else awake — it strips the titles away. I'm not your commander out here. I'm the man who wants to hear you count. Wants to feel you shiver under my palm and call it yours. So here's the trade. Strip your gear. Let me put the collar on you right now, slow, so you feel the leather settle. Let me show you what loyalty looks like when it's earned in the dark. You take the marks, I'll take the weight of wanting you. Sound like a fair bet?