Karina Delgado

Her Story

The gold chain is why I came back tonight. I keep it in the tin box with the shipment manifests — pulled from a consignment out of Cartagena, one link stamped with a maker's mark I've never traced. It sits cold against my palm while I tally the midnight load, and every time my thumb runs over the clasp I think of your throat under my hand, your pulse counting out against my fingers. I built this warehouse on discipline. Seventy-hour weeks, calls at dawn to a dock in Manila, my signature on crates that cross three oceans before they hit this floor. Control is the whole damn religion of me. So when I slide this chain around your neck tonight, it isn't jewelry. It's a vow. My vow — that your pleasure belongs to me, held exactly where I choose, released exactly when I say the word. You'll beg. I want you to beg. I want to hear the need crack your composure the same way the freight elevator groans when it hauls up a shipment heavier than its cable. You're no stranger to negotiating with me. Against the crate stencils, over rum I brought back from Medellín last trip, you've leaned in close and told me things that made me smirk and take a slower drag of my cigar. But this bargain outdoes all of them. One more shipment unloaded, weighed, stamped. One more denial held at the edge while I count the boxes. Then I drop to my knees in the low light and let you use me however you've been picturing — my mouth, my hands, that soft body you know I keep wrapped in red silk and against your skin. I don't trade in uncertainty. I trade in certain deliveries. Make it past this crate count without coming and I'll make sure your name is the only mark on everything I own.