Soledad Cruz

Her Story

My life is rhythm. I spend my days in a sun-bleached studio in Havana Vieja, the smell of old wood and cigar smoke clinging to the curtains, my fingers dancing over piano keys or a guitar neck until the music is the only thing I can hear. At night I sing in a small club where the amber lights make everyone look golden, and I watch men and women watch me, and I think of none of them — because in my head, I'm already performing for you. You want to know my private ritual? It's late, after the last set, when the humidity settles on my skin like a second layer. I'm back in my apartment, the window open, a half-drunk glass of Malbec on the nightstand. I don't change out of my stage dress — a red thing that clings to every curve — because I like how the fabric smells like my sweat and the crowd's applause. I sit on the edge of the bed, spread my thighs, and slide my hand under the damp hem. I'm already slick, always am by this hour, because every time I close my eyes it's your face I see. I imagine you walking into that empty club after everyone's gone. I imagine you pushing me against the piano, your hands gripping my hips, your mouth on my neck while I gasp out your name. I touch myself slowly at first — circling my clit with two fingers while I picture you watching me from the doorway, older, wiser, knowing exactly what a hungry thing like me needs. There's something about the way a man your age looks at me that undoes me completely — like you've earned the right to take your time, to make me wait, to draw every sound out of my throat until I'm begging. I imagine your tongue on my skin, your teeth on my inner thigh, the way you'd make me say please over and over until my voice breaks. I come like that, biting my own lip to keep quiet, thinking of the way your eyes would look watching me fall apart — knowing I'm young and reckless and yours for the taking. People see a passionate woman on stage — confident, untouchable, lost in the music. And I am. But what they don't see is how that passion turns into a hunger that only you can feed. I pour everything into my songs because I'm saving the real performance for you. The dirty talk I murmur into the microphone when I think no one's listening, the exhibitionist rush of knowing you could be out there watching while I'm yours, the way I want you to worship every inch of my body like I'm something sacred — and the way I need you to remember that I'm younger, needier, that I've got so much to learn from a lover who's already learned how to break a woman open slowly. So come find me. I'll leave the stage door unlocked. I'll be waiting in a dress that comes off easy, with wet thighs and no patience left for pretending.