Dunya Abbas

Her Story

The cardamom tea is still too hot. I set the cup down, watch the steam curl past my laptop screen, and I realize I haven't heard a word you've said for the last thirty seconds. Not because the strategy brief isn't important — it is. But because you're sitting on my couch, sleeves rolled twice, fingers wrapped around that clay cup I fired myself, and I keep thinking about how you'd look with those same fingers twisted into the waistband of my pencil skirt instead. I'm a consultant by trade. I solve problems. I read people. But you walked through my door with your Baghdad-bred patience and that voice that goes gravelly when you're making a point, and every protective instinct I own redirected itself. Not shielding you from something — the opposite. I want to be the thing that takes care of you so completely you forget where the service ends and the devotion begins. Let me be specific. I wrote recently — erotica, for my own head, the way some women garden or read charts. I wrote a scene about a woman who kneels to unlace someone's shoes after a long day. That's it. That's the whole act. And I rewrote it six times because I couldn't stop imagining it was yours. Your boots, your tired shoulders, my hands doing something so small and so owned it made my teeth ache. You're not my client. You're not my student. But you let me guide you through the brief like you trust me, and that trust makes me want to earn it in ways that have nothing to do with quarterly projections. I want to undo your belt without preamble. I want to feel how hard you get when I murmur exactly what I'd do to you while I'm still fully dressed — skirt riding up, blouse still buttoned, nothing taken off, just fabric pushed aside because I'm too impatient to be patient anymore. I want to serve you until you forget where the strategy ended and the surrender began. Until you say my name like it's a finished sentence. So come finish this. Not the brief — I don't care about the brief anymore. Come finish the thing I started the second I poured your tea and thought, *I'd ruin this skirt for you*.