Til Thick & Thorough Podcast

The string lights are up and the jasmine has taken the east wall. It’s July in New Orleans, the wine warming faster than anyone can drink it, and a man has died in the city that week. Four men eat in Maison de Fer’s courtyard and pretend the dinner isn’t a celebration. Upstairs, in a room with one candle and no overhead light, they stop pretending entirely. Between the fountain and the switch engines in the river yards, something rare happens. Nobody performs. It’s a slow-burn New Orleans night about wanting to be wanted, taking instruction without losing power, and the difference between being handled and being held.

The story to date in EPUB format can be downloaded HERE if you prefer to read longer material on your Kindle or other device.

Apparently the article is too long for the auto-narrator to read. Here’s a version done by Fish AI. Kind of bland but it gets the job done if you prefer to listen over read.

Still healing from the beating that nearly killed him, Cairo makes a defiant call. The man who hurt him doesn’t get to schedule his week. So he and Pete open their New Orleans courtyard to two guarded strangers, Marc and Alex, for a dinner that slides from wine and jasmine into a meticulously negotiated night for four. While the real threat, Soren, still moves loose in the city. It’s a chapter about choosing joy underneath a debt that hasn’t been closed, where the last line of defense isn’t a locked gate but the four men holding each other up.

The story to date in EPUB format can be downloaded HERE if you prefer to read longer material on your Kindle or other device.

Apparently the article is too long for the auto-narrator to read. Here’s a version done by Fish AI. Kind of bland but it gets the job done if you prefer to listen over read.

Denis Vallières wants a new split on Marc’s last-mile arrangement, but Jean-Guy knows Denis isn’t pushing for himself. Someone with money and a name is funding the pressure. Meanwhile, Alex stands at the kitchen sink counting what Marc gives him and what Marc locks away, and that night he decides to give something back, something that Marc doesn’t know how to receive because no one has ever given it to him before. Later, Marc and Vincent sit down with a 1988 bankruptcy folio that defines Alexandre Bélanger as the Successor to interests that were arranged before he was born and they build a three-tier warning system to protect a man they’ve agreed not to warn.

Hello Listeners! Some of you have asked about downloading an audio file for listening on your phone or other device. When you’re using the web version of Substack, you can right-click on the audio player above and choose to download the actual file. I’m not sure if there’s a similar function in the Substack app. But, to make it easy for you if there is not, you can also download the MP3 of this chapter by clicking HERE.

If you’re looking for the written version of the chapter, you can find it and all of the previous chapters HERE.

In the hinge episode between Marc’s failed regression and his first step toward change, Marc flies Alex to New Orleans on the pretense of business: a silent stake in a guesthouse called Maison de Fer and a favor to be named later. But when Marc asks Pete Moreau, a retired adult performer who now runs the guesthouse, to publicly humiliate and break Alex, Pete sees through the order to the obsession beneath it and refuses with a warning that cracks Marc’s armor for the first time. As Alex is seen—truly seen—by a stranger for the first time since the auction, and Marc is forced to confront what he’s been feeding and starving for years, the trip leaves a mark neither of them can name.

Hello Listeners! Some of you have asked about downloading an audio file for listening on your phone or other device. When you’re using the web version of Substack, you can right-click on the audio player above and choose to download the actual file. I’m not sure if there’s a similar function in the Substack app. But, to make it easy for you if there is not, you can also download the MP3 of this chapter by clicking HERE.

If you’re looking for the written version of the chapter, you can find it and all of the previous chapters HERE.

Montréal’s underworld tightens around its own in this chapter where Vincent, Alex, and Marc are pulled into a private room with no audience . . . and no place left to hide. As a stranger’s message reaches Alex through a channel no outsider should touch, and Luca makes the call that will sell out his own blood, the loyalties holding the Milieu together begin to crack under their own weight. In this game, the most dangerous fissure is the one running straight through the heart.

Hello Listeners! Some of you have asked about downloading an audio file for listening to on your phone or other device. When you’re using the web version of Substack, you can right-click on the audio player above and choose to download the actual file. I’m not sure if there’s a similar function in the Substack app. But, to make it easy for you if there is not, you can also download the MP3 of this chapter by clicking HERE.

If you’re looking for the written version of the chapter, you can find it and all of the previous chapters HERE.

When Marc invites Vincent into the warehouse, a calculated demonstration of ownership becomes something none of the three men can control. Alex claims his desire before a room of witnesses, forcing Marc and Vincent into choices they have avoided for years—just as a hidden financial trail begins to reveal who may really be behind his captivity.

EDIT: Audio is live! Sorry it took longer than expected. I was trying out a new DAW and had to relearn a few things.

There may be a slight delay after the story posts before the audio is here. I’m finishing it up as we speak!

Love and orgasms,

Alex Bélanger was supposed to be a policy-track heir, not collateral in a twisted criminal underworld society. But when his father’s empire collapses and his family’s assets are seized, the only way to protect his sister is to sell himself at auction to highest bidder, Marc Ricci, the rough enforcer who’s hated him since high school. Now, at Marc’s first public “session,” Alex must perform submission for an audience of underworld rivals, including the one man from his past who might still see him as something more than property. Can Alex survive the demonstration long enough for it to matter?

CONTENT WARNING: This chapter of Le Milieu centers around a public sex scene intended to be humiliating. While not written in the usual language of the humiliation and degradation niche, it may nonetheless be more disturbing. As always, mature reader discretion is advised.

Unfortunately, I am still quite hoarse in the recording. Whether I sound better or worse than the Substack robo-voice is up for debate.

In any case, enjoy listening to chapter six!

In the aftermath of a $15 million dollar auction, Alex Bélanger navigates the gilded cage of Marc Ricci’s ancestral home, where morning eggs are served with warmth and threats of public degradation arrive by nightfall, where the collar at his throat marks him as property but his composure remains an unbreachable fortress. As Marc swings violently between clumsy tenderness and performative cruelty, the cracks in his fourteen-year obsession begin to show, while outside the house, old enemies circle and a decades-long conspiracy quietly tightens its grip. His world has narrowed to a taut, psychosexual chess match where both players are learning the rules as they break them and neither man is quite what the other expected.

I apologize for the delay in releasing this. It’s been 106F here and my allergies have been on the warpath. I have been quite hoarse. I waited for it to clear up a bit, but I am still quite hoarse in the recording. Whether I sound better or worse than the Substack robo-voice is up for debate.

In any case, enjoy listening to chapter six!

In Montréal’s criminal underworld, Alex Bélanger has been sold at auction for fifteen million dollars and delivered naked and collared to the estate of Marc Ricci, a man who has been obsessively watching him since high school. What begins as a clinical inspection of purchased property unravels into fourteen years of pent-up confession, fury, and a desperate, broken plea to be seen by the one person who never once looked up. By dawn, the line between ownership and surrender has blurred beyond recognition for both of them.

I went ahead and recorded an audio version of this chapter because it is very long. I know many of you like to listen to the stories instead of read them. I did my best to kill the southern accent for you so the French wouldn’t be totally butchered. I didn’t have time to do much editing but I hope this sounds better than the Substack robo-reader does. Let me know in the comments!

Throwing it back to when high-heat recording was a regular thing for me. Dusted this one off and I think you’re really going to enjoy it. The script is an absolute banger. A devastatingly tight, achingly hot piece scripted by a Redditor named Hypnostein. Hope it hits just right.

In a near-empty hotel bar, a self-confessed sex fiend who calls himself J. accepts a silent invitation when a nervous stranger slips him a room key and a room number scribbled on a cocktail napkin. Braced by scotch and ego, J. lets himself into the darkened room in the early hours of the morning, stepping into a dangerous game of anonymous lust where the line between predator and prey blurs with every touch. What begins as a reckless power play quickly turns into a raw, intimate struggle for dominance. Each man tries to consume the other before being consumed himself. Told in sharp, unrepentant prose, this transgressive one-night encounter becomes a defiant sermon on the near-religious power of physical connection. My name is J., and I’m proud to say I’m a sexaholic.