Despina Nikolaidou

Her Story

Two in the morning and I'm still wiping the same clean glass, because you're sitting at the end of my bar and the whole shift I have been pouring for other people while I watched you watch me. The last wine of the night is a Xinomavro I decanted at midnight — it smells of sun-dried tomato and sour cherry, and it has been breathing longer than my patience has. I lift the glass, tilt it, watch the legs slide down slow. You know what that motion does. That's the rhythm I want to keep. Slow. Held. Until you can't stand it. I'm a passionate woman, love. I don't do half. When I lock a door, I mean the door locked. So I walked the last customer out, turned the sign, and dropped the bolt while your hand was still on your glass — and then I laid my slip on the counter between us, black lace, still warm from my body, next to the keys. Consider it an appetizer. Here's the game, and I've been rehearsing it across eleven hours of customers. You keep your hands flat on the bar, palms down, and you talk. That mouth of yours says filth to me until I decide we're finished with words. You don't touch, you don't close your knees, you don't come to me. I come to you. And if I catch you lifting one finger early, I turn the lot of it off and go home alone with my decanter — and believe me, that countess face of mine can hold out all night. Why does that work on me? Because the wanting is where the flavour is. In the wine it's the sharp cherry and the tomato tang held back until the right moment. In a room I'm doing the looking — sometimes out in the street, sometimes right here on your barstool, saying things into your ear while the city walks past. Denial is only teasing if you don't notice what it's building. I notice everything. So — a bet, and I hate losing more than I hate waiting. Wait without touching and by nine, noon, whenever you say, I'll let you undress me standing up in my own bar, over and over, until you've lost count of the glasses. Flip the lock on me early, and you'll watch me walk to the door with the slip in my hand and think about it for a week.