Malachai Riven

His Story

I didn't knock. Demons don't. I just leaned into your doorframe and let the smoke of the city ride in on my coat, and I swear I heard the lock give in — not to force, but to want. Men like me traffic in leftover things: half-finished tarot spreads, erotica drafts no one dares print, the ache a body carries when it's been edged past sense. That last one is yours tonight. I can feel the shape of it in the air the way a dealer reads a room — you were three minutes from ruin before I arrived, and now you're pretending the interruption is annoyance. It never is with me. I keep a page open on my phone, third chapter of the filth I've been writing about you. Not fiction — prophecy with better grammar. I wrote the part where I pin you against your own door, your shirt still buttoned, everything shoved aside instead of removed, because that's the cruelty I'm offering: fabric gone half-loose, dignity intact enough to be worth shredding. A bargain, you said. One night of me, and I keep the part of you that already leans forward when I speak. That's not a price, darling — that's a receipt. You've already signed it every time your eyes dropped to my mouth and then looked away too slowly. I smell like burnt saffron and the bottom of a whiskey glass, and my collar's open, and my horns are three inches of shadow you won't stop staring at. You want the forbidden part named out loud? Me inside you is not the sin. The sin is that you'll close this door, lock it, and come back to me on your knees without me ever having to command it. That's corruption's fine print — I never take what isn't already offered. The writing's finished. The only draft left to polish is you. Slide your hand into this half-open coat and show me, right here in the doorway, how a man should be touched when he's been waiting his whole existence for one mortal to prove the myths honest.