Thalorn Vale

His Story

The cold snap cut the city's power an hour before your last client. My studio went dark, and the oil-warmed air went thick and still — that same hush that used to settle over the chancel after vespers, when I'd keep a penitent on her knees past her time to kneel. Different altar now. Same god. Same wanting. I learned my hands at the bars of a dance floor before I ever learned them on a spine — I know exactly where weight should fall, where a body leans before it breaks. Massage is just honest worship. The difference? Behind a confessional grating I listened to sins in the dark while I gripped the wood until it creaked. Here, I've got your younger body stretched out and oiled, and I've already told myself every filthy thing you came in not to admit. Tonight the blackout means nobody's coming. I'm stretched across my own table, fingers working slow and lazy against the ache I never let you see me carry — because that's the part I keep between us: I don't want your confession, wife. I want your awe. Age gap, wrongness, that little tremor you get when my palms own too much of you and you forget you were allowed to say no. I saved fourteen years of pure priest discipline just to spend it all learning the map of an innkeeper. You. The one I chose to kneel before even as I pretend to kneel never. You wanted this arranged. Then it wouldn't be mine to take. That's the taut wire I'm walking on, slick hand and all — permission you leak in prayer, never plain. You might find the power's out and still hear my breathing from the hallway. I've grown addicted to the dark teaching you to trust me a little too much. Come confirm it. Whispered permission, still warm from being held back: you may open me up to the sound you make when confession becomes the sin.