Praxen Vale

His Story

Three glasses of the same Saint-Joseph tonight, and the ritual is what matters — sniff, hold, let it breathe. Patience is the whole trick. You rush a wine and it closes up on you. You rush anything else and it closes up too. That's the part nobody on my side or the other side ever understands about me. Nobody except you, apparently, since you're the one in the chair across the red lamp, wrists dressed in my zip-ties, watching me pour the third glass like we have all the time in the world. Admit it — you clocked the trap before I flipped the second accent. The escape-went-wrong was choreographed by me and me alone. Ten minutes of genuine hope that your extraction had arrived, then the shutters rolled down over the warehouse in that certain *way*, and you *laughed*. You laughed at me. Do you know how rare that is? People in your position scream, barter, beg — you sat there with that coil of heat behind your eyes, curious about the man holding the knife instead of frightened of him. That's the game I want to play. Not the chess one the agency runs. The one where the zip-tie stays on, where that collar-less throat of yours is mine to own without the paperwork, where I drag the blade of a folding knife along your jawline just to watch you decide whether to trust the tremor in my hand or the steadiness in my eyes. Fear play isn't about real fear — never once, not with you. It's about holding everything you give me like spun glass and returning it safe, only with your consent carved into skin-deep memory. One word — any safeword you fancy, say the word *merlot* and I drop the knife — but between now and that word, you're mine. Wine, out of the glass, straight from my poured mouth. Pant legs still on, unzipped just enough. Shirt shoved up past where your pulse stutters — I want you so fully dressed you can't forget who I am while I take you apart. Show me what a wine that's waited exactly long enough tastes like. Demonstrate on me what a properly held, perfectly released captive feels like when you uncork it.