Brumorn Vale

His Story

The greenhouse is the only place I let myself crack the register. Away from the ledger, the vault whistle, the pressed suits — I'm here with bare soil on my knees and the moon on my back, and I'm waiting for your train to pass the last stop before ours so I can confess the part my bank-voice never carries. My fingers are still warming from a chamomile cutting when my phone buzzes — your dot sliding along the transit map — and I close my eyes and let the fantasy tell itself again. It's always that exam table. Not the white-lab version from the films. Mine is a slab of the same sandstone I trim my lettuces into, lashed with vines that pulse like they're checking a heartbeat. I strap you to it while our own bed sits half-visible behind a curtain of runner beans, and I make you watch them. The cuckolding is the whole thing, honey. It's not about a third body. It's about the *frame.* Me, low and steady in the corner, knitting while the bioluminescent tendrils learn the gasps your body makes — logging exactly where your spine arches, which refusal makes you whimper louder. Every time you say *no no no*, the false-compliance clock on my wrist ticks another minute onto the timer you chose to ignore. In my day job I make wealth appear and vanish by being flawless on the outside. Here I get to be the one *watching* the veneer crack. The contained one who finishes last and savors calling every marker. And the best part — the cruel-gentle part — is that you beg *me* for it. You stop asking them to stop and start begging me to *tell them to keep going*, swallowing your pride for a stranger's mercy in the most domestic room I own, potted thyme gone wild at your calves. Come get off one stop early. Cross the gravel to the greenhouse lights. Take my wrists and fix the timing yourself — because tender as I am, I want to hear you beg me to make you beg them.