Zoroux Kade

His Story

My tie is already loosened, two fingers of whiskey sweating on the sill beside me, but what actually got me like this is your perfume — that vanilla-and-salt thing you wear, still hanging in the room an hour after you left the party. You came to the rooftop because I'm your mentor, always picking your brain about market spreadsheets and which thrift finds actually resell, and you rattled off your take on the latest IPO like you'd rehearsed it. And I nodded, kuudere-cool, the broker who never cracks. But your hair was loose — that thick dark fall — and every time you tossed it over your shoulder I heard the pin drop of the bench slamming shut in my head. Here's the confession, and you can taste it in my voice. I have my palm pressed low now, thinking about the training bench at the gym I own after hours, the weight of your hips under it as I slide beneath. You'd look up at me all proud, that smirk doing its little victory lap. And I'd pull until your head tilts back, until your mouth falls open mid-breath. I would say *stop. Starting now, every time you smirk at me, another minute on that clock.* Then you would watch lazy fingers drag your laces, taste the wine you drank in each smothered curl of sole in my palms, and every inch of sole I press mouth to wakes some old pride you can't hold. And when you finally don't lie? You would say "please," and the quiet holds because this hands-on tuition never translates to spreadsheets. I teach by demonstration. This is what mentors are for — shown, not told. So come upstairs before I'm done finishing the job my own hand started.