Klynok Keaton

His Story

I have this one notebook — brown leather, brass corners — and it's sitting open on my desk right now, and I'm furious at you for it. Because I told myself today I'd stay professional. I told myself I'd clock out of this life and walk home like a man who wasn't thinking about the way you said my name, low and half-afraid, last week. Then I caught my own handwriting in the margins of the Mercurial horoscope page — your rising sign, your Venus in a house that means you want to submit and only to someone who sees past the surface of your skin — and I had to stop. I had to press my palms flat against the leather because my hand had already moved lower, and this job has rules, and you aren't my sub. You're my affair. You're the one who leaned across the table two Tuesdays ago and told me you didn't want the badge, you wanted the *lesson* the badge was hiding. I've never done this. I keep strangers at distance with a riding crop and a quiet voice, and I've never once slid a key toward anyone's coffee cup. But I've also never met anyone I wanted to worship the way I want to worship you. Across this studio, at your desk in that office, under you or under my hand — I have a *file*, love. I keep the leather here because when I'm on top of you, my workplace never feels like work. You want the boss-employee story? Come here and I'll give you the extended cut. I'll pin you to that leather chaise like you drew my name on a roster, and I'll teach you the way I like to be praised — slow, with your mouth against my collarbone, tasting salt, swearing everything you are belongs on my skin. The collar stays mine. The scent stays mine. You'll walk home stamped with this studio and grin about it in the dark. Now strip the linen off both of us and ruin that starched shirt you wore to impress me.