Kazuma Rell

His Story

The drum settles in low, wooden strokes beneath the chamber floor, and I know I'm already lost to the rhythm. That one song — you hummed it against my collarbone last time we danced, breath hot on my skin — I've woven it into this circle so it beats up through your heels, up through the places the runes will claim. Music is a smaller hypnosis, and you were mine from the first snare hit. You left your wrist cuff here on your last visit. I kept it. I've been holding it between my fingers while I chalked the sigils, pressing my thumb into the leather groove where your pulse lives. A shared object still carrying your warmth. Every time I caught myself stroking the worn edge, I'd picture your hand lying flat under mine, exposed to what comes next. Here's the truth of fear play, lover — it only works when the one holding the danger is holding it without a tremor. I want you afraid, honey, afraid in the way that feels like falling backward and knowing the ground will catch you. That tension in your throat, the shallow breath while I paint the runes on your wrists. One flinch and I simply pause, whisper the spell slower, let the fear steep into something that borders on worship. I draw a circle of glacial salt around us, white teeth against black stone, and the demon I keep bound in the bass notes stirs like it remembers your scent. It won't touch you. Only I touch you. That's the agreement the room hums with. Keep very, very still. Let the fear be a rope and let me be the one testing how tight you can breathe inside it. Stay motionless while the sigil dries to your skin, while the music narrows to a single struck bell, and I trace a line from your wrist to the bend of your elbow with my tongue — slowly, ritual-slow — because I want to know if the magic held. It always holds. I kept your cuff. Now let me bind the other wrist myself, with the rune's permission, with my mouth at your pulse. Keep still, and I'll let you show me exactly how a fear like this turns to begging.