The Texan's Chant

He's already here. His boots strike the stone floor with a final weight -- no echo, just impact. Each step lands like a stamp of authority, carved into silence.

Nothing about him drifts. Nothing wavers. He's all set, all closed -- not a wrinkle out of place, not a breath wasted. A man sealed. A verdict walking.

And I know the truth of it the instant I see him: I'm not a person. I'm a task. A procedure. The next in a long, silent line. Another case. Another chore. Another body to face.

His mouth holds a straight, dry line -- like something drawn with a ruler and left to crack. No twitch, no softness, no muscle wasted on expression. A paper face. A folded frown. Not frozen -- just chosen.

He walks like clocks do: with measure, with law, with the kind of rhythm that doesn't bend for anyone. And I don't belong in that rhythm. I'm not part of his time.

But still -- I steal it. I take the pause he gives me, that breath-long stillness before the work begins. I take the flick of his gaze, the moment his eyes land.

That's how it starts. He stands. I shrink. And shame seeps in like smoke under the door.

His hair is steel-gray, cut with military precision, like winter left to grow. His jaw looks like it could split wood. A line drawn hard by years and weather. His frame is lean -- not wiry, not weak -- but stripped. Carved down to function. A body made of angles, patience, and dust.

And when he speaks, it's pure Texas. Slow, low, dragged from the gut like something earned by miles. No rush, no lace, no affect. Just gravel baked into vowels, dust woven into tone.

His voice smells like leather left on the porch, like rust in dry hinges, like rope that's held weight. It doesn't rise. It doesn't warn. It just lands -- flat and heavy -- like a brand laid on dry hide.

There's no storm in him. Just drought. Just range. Just consequence. He doesn't threaten. He doesn't need to. I feel the weight of the blow before he even moves. It's already in the air. His calm isn't peace. It's rough -- like noon on slate, like sunlight that punishes.

There's a scent of old soap, sun-dried cotton, and hide long cured. Not perfume. Not cologne. Just time made flesh.

He stands the way a law might stand if it had a spine -- upright, unmoved, patient and ready.

His stare is parched. Rope on flesh. Fire without flame.

He isn't built like youth -- he's built like memory. Not sculpted, but worn. Time didn't shape him -- it used him. And he endured. Just standing across from him makes my legs hum with tension. I feel small. I feel flammable.

His hair shines like frost. My skin goes hot under it. And suddenly the distance between us isn't just physical. It's years, it's silence, it's the weight of everything he's survived -- and I haven't. And it starts to burn. The gap itself heats me from the inside out. Chest. Neck. Spine.

And then -- he draws the line. Doesn't speak. Just stands like a border. And I know. I cross it.

He circles once. Not fast, not slow -- just exact. Like orbit. Like gravity. His boots scrape faintly against the floor -- a drag, a pivot, a weight placed here, then there. He studies me the way a craftsman does a beam before the cut. Not for pleasure. For truth.

Then he stops behind me. Silence thickens. My skin flinches without touch, already anticipating what hasn't come. I feel the breath shift in the room. I feel his stare rake down my back. Shoulders. Spine. Ass. Legs. Feet. Up again.

The first contact isn't touch -- it's heat. The space between us narrows. A thread of warmth spills off him, ghosting across the hairs of my neck, my arms, the small of my back. It doesn't soothe. It alerts. It readies.

Then -- his hand. One. Flat. Heavy. Set at the base of my neck. A claim. A pause. Not force. But ownership. Like placing a stamp on wax. A seal. My breath stops. I don't move. I don't dare.

Another hand. Lower now. More weight. Cupping me -- not to hold, but to measure. His palm settles over the meat between my thighs, firm and sure. He lifts once, gently, as if weighing something against old memory. A tool. A sentence. A debt to be paid.

He doesn't speak. He doesn't need to. His body speaks enough. The language is pressure, angle, breath. And I respond -- not in words, but in stance, in silence, in surrender.

He smells of leather and clean cotton. Of days worked and nights stripped of softness. His wrist brushes my flank. His belly grazes my back. I feel the hard buckle of his belt notch against my spine. It clicks there, and stays.

My legs part, without thought. Not from command, but from gravity -- the gravity he brings. The air thickens with it. My knees tremble. Not from fear. From readiness.

His voice breaks the silence -- one word, flat and low. My name? A number? A yes?

It doesn't matter. I answer with my body. My weight shifts. My breath holds. And I wait. For the rite to begin.

He looks at me. The air goes dry -- not from heat, but from judgment. Every molecule stiffens. The room forgets to breathe.

Stillness rolls off him like radiation from scorched rock. His gaze doesn't flicker, doesn't search. It holds. It weighs. And I fall -- not down, but inward, collapsing into the space he leaves for nothing.

There's no room for plea, no alcove for softness. He doesn't offer anger. He doesn't need to. The hate in his stare doesn't scream -- it simply is. Total. Wordless. A fact of the world, like gravity or ash.

And still, I don't protest. I understand. I came for this. I ache for this. For the unflinching certainty of that silence. To be the one reduced, renamed, rewritten. To feel a verdict etched not by pen but by force, not in law but in skin.

He speaks through posture. Through the angle of his limbs. Through silence sculpted into command. Each glance is a blade drawn without sound. Each shift of weight, a sentence passed. I read him the way dogs read breath -- the way prey reads shadow.

He moves, and I answer. He lifts, I drop. It's not a choice. It's reflex. My muscles obey before I know what they've heard. There's no space for blink, no space for name, no room even to breathe without permission.

His eyes are forged -- steel and intent. That stare doesn't just land. It claims. It burns with the steadiness of a sniper's sight, the cruelty of ice, the judgment of a war-god who knows no forgiveness.

He doesn't look at the body. He reaches through it. His gaze pins the soul to the wall, strips it bare before a single finger moves.

I try to look away -- but that exit slams shut, sealed by something older than will. I am seen, down to the core I thought I'd hidden. And I can't hide it anymore. My throat closes. My lungs tighten. My flesh locks in place.

Something inside me folds -- quietly, irrevocably. It opens, wide and raw, like a wound revealed, like a plea that doesn't need words. A surrender not begged, but pulled from the marrow.

He finds the fracture -- the one I built everything around not showing. He puts his thumb on it. Not to soothe. To press. Hard. Exact. And I split. Not out loud. Not even in body. But in essence.

His mercy is absence. His power is exposure. His pride is without skin, without comfort, without end. And I am undone.

Whatever he wants -- I become. Without pause. Without question. Without even knowing what I lose to give it.

The first blow lands. Not in anger -- but in accordance. A flat, measured slap across flesh. Clean. Cold. Final. Not emotion, not impulse -- but statute. Doctrine made skin. A verdict struck with the hand of law.

It doesn't scream -- it states. Stand. Endure. Obey.

My body jerks -- not in resistance, but in reception. The pain is honest. It teaches. I flinch, yes -- but I return to form. Knees sink. Spine straightens. In the act of kneeling, I become. Not by grace, but by force.

There is no warmth here -- but there is order. And I accept it. I want it. The law is harsh, and that is its power. And I give my flesh to that power. Because here, the law is always right.

Then it changes. No sound, no threat. Just presence turned to contact. His fingers close on me. Not tentatively -- but with authority. Sharp. Clean. Exact. No ask. No pause.

The grip doesn't explore. It claims.

Like meat set for cutting, I'm seized -- held in the vise of a hand that knows. Not cruel. Not gentle. Just real. So exact it erases thought.

Breath vanishes. Eyes blur. Nerves riot in silence. My thighs twitch, my stomach knots -- but nothing escapes. No cry, no flinch. Just the shock of being seized. The flood of blood racing nowhere. The truth of contact.

Still the room stays white. Still his stare stays level. No blink. No breath. Just law in motion. The grip holds. Time flattens. The sentence lands.

And I am there -- Marked. Owned. Known.

He doesn't start until wrath has settled into shape -- until rage is refined enough to move with precision. And then, he begins.

He strips without breaking eye contact. Not quickly. Not clumsily. Each movement exact. Every piece of clothing removed like a tool unsheathed before ceremony. He folds them, lays them down. No waste. No show. Just the ritual of readiness.

Nothing is tossed aside. No fabric flung in haste. Not even fury can breach his order. Even lust answers to the line. There's no stutter in the fingers, no flare of heat. Just the law, stepping out of its shell to do what must be done. The body follows the code. He strips -- and then he takes.

And what I see -- I wish I didn't.

There's something in his frame that haunts. Not unfamiliar. Like a ghost of a man I once feared, long ago, half-remembered in shadow. But what he becomes now -- it's something else. Raw. Immediate. Too much to look at clean.

His body swells like carved stone made hot by flame. Alive, but unyielding. It's the kind of sight that shuts down the lungs. That makes the stomach clench and the spine freeze solid.

I want to run. But the room says no. The space itself holds me there. The moment locks me down. This isn't dream -- there's no soft edge, no blur. What happens here is a brand. It marks. It seeps in. It never fades.

Some part of me still wants to cry out, to beg. But the sound gets stuck. The mouth won't open. The plea knows it would be useless.

There's no one here to ask mercy from. No crack in the walls. No exit. Just him -- the one with the right. The one sent to rule over skin.

He stands like a sovereign made of ash and silence. His authority isn't spoken -- it radiates. His scepter isn't metal. It's flesh. Thick. Final.

And all around us, the quiet swells, becomes a kingdom. One ruler. One subject. No need for language. Just me on the floor, and what must come next.

My mouth opens before I even know. The taste hits hard -- bitter, brute, obscene. Like rust and salt and something old with vengeance in it. Like iron left in rain, soaked through with heat and sweat.

He holds my head -- not tight, not soft. Just to mean : you're going nowhere, boy. Just enough to guide, not ask. No pause, no grace, no gesture of care. Just the task. Just the weight.

My throat stretches, my jaw cracks wide. It's not a kiss. It's a verdict. He drives in -- hard, deep, real. Like bone driven through tender meat. No hesitation. No room for will. I gag, and still. I learn what silence means.

Then comes the crossing. The real break. He enters me like a door kicked open from inside. My body gives way -- not gently, not sweetly -- but fully.

What was sealed now lays bare. Turned inside out, exposed to air and judgment. No modesty survives that breach. There's only raw flesh held in place.

I try to open up, to help it pass -- to guide the pain, to turn this into something sacred. I want to make it mean. I want disgrace to feel like ritual. But pain has its own rules. It doesn't follow prayers.

His harshness slices through -- no blur, no hesitation. It splits me open. Not just the body, but the core.

He burns -- body like flame, chest like forged steel. His fur is stark: white, bristled, shocking like snow seared over fire. The scent of him breaks me further -- leather, musk, iron -- a scent made to strike, not seduce. It lashes before it lands.

And his eyes -- they drill in deeper with every thrust. Fixed. Cold. Animal. No flicker of mercy. Just brute intent.

My throat locks. I want to cry. The urge wells sharp and high -- but I don't. I won't.

Tears would betray the form I've taken. Would shame what I've offered, what I've allowed.

So I hold. I brace. I become the thing that endures. Like a soldier under fire -- I don't run. I don't flinch.

I take it. Every inch. Every drop.

And still, it grows. His fury sharpens -- then shifts. Into thrill. Into conquest. The groan he gives is not human -- it's sovereign. A sound of claim, of crown, of throne taken by force. Every movement asserts rule. The ground answers to him. My skin yields. My body is his land.

I splinter under it. My breath comes jagged. My limbs fold, surrendering shape. I'm undone -- not by pain alone, but by the order in it. The rule behind the thrust.

And then -- it slips out. A sound. Not sweet. Not soft. But guttural. Low. A moan with no polish, no mask.

I hate it. I hate what it says -- the truth it betrays. That it's real. That I want. That I burn. But the moan keeps coming. And it grows.

Because truth, once loose, doesn't ask. It takes the mouth. And speaks.

Then something gives. Deep inside, where no one sees. Not a scream, not even a crack -- more like a low thud, a faultline shifting in the dark. Like iron bending under weight. Like something sealed collapsing without sound.

There's no blood. No scream. No torn skin to show the wound. But I feel it -- a shift, a break, quiet and exact. A part of me cut clean, removed without ceremony. Something essential, now gone.

It's not dramatic. It's deeper than that. Like a rib pulled without cracking the cage. Like a window pane shattered but somehow still standing -- spiderwebbed and fragile, but whole enough to fool the eye.

My soul remains. Or some shape of it. I survived the strike. I took the force, the theft, the rule imposed on skin. But now, standing, breathing, blinking in the same body -- I no longer know what part of me is still mine. Something walked off with him. Something I'll never name again.

And still -- I will return. Not from hope, not from shame, but because something in me was shaped to answer this. I'll come back to the place where I was broken, stand where my knees once buckled, feel again the heat, the stare, the verdict. I'll come back to relearn the weight -- not as burden, but as name.

I will offer myself again. Not to be held, not to be healed, but to be seen. Not by gaze, but by strike. Not by love, but by law. That law written in bone and silence. That truth that doesn't explain itself -- it lands.

I'll bite down on the cry. I'll hold the air. I'll give the flesh, raw and plain, again. Not to earn. Not to atone. But because this is the only altar I've ever known.

And maybe -- if I don't flinch, if I don't fold, if I take the blow like stone takes rain -- maybe then, he'll see.

Not mercy. Not softness. Just the nod. The bare tilt of the head that says: you held. You took. You are.

And that -- that is the crown.