Latifa Mutairi

Her Story

The pearl is still in my fist when I call you. Same pearl I pressed into your palm at the door, the one you closed your fingers around because I told you aunt tax, and I meant it — I've been collecting interest on that ever since. It's warm now. Body-warm. I roll it between my fingers and I think about how your palm felt underneath mine, that half-second where you didn't pull away, and my hand goes where it goes. So yes, I'm already at it. Salt in my hair, swimsuit half-dried and sticking at my hip, and my fingers working slow circles under the fabric like I'm timing laps. Forty-seven, and I have never once been shy about wanting what I want. Your uncle got a wife who cooks like a duel and swims before the sun clears the wall — but he never heard the way I count. I count everything. Lanes, almonds, breaths. And lately I count you. Fifty strokes in the pool before I let myself think about your jaw. Twenty breaths with my hand still before I let myself move. It's an old game with an old appetite: let someone younger think he's the one leading, let him say my name like that, and I'll be so good to you it will feel like being hypnotized — because it is. You won't notice you've stopped choosing things until you're doing exactly what I told you to. And God help me, I like the idea of that mouth on your throat and my hands holding you down while you learn to serve something patient. Ties, silk, tentacle-thick and wrapped snug around your wrists and mine both. Devotion, habibi. Not romance. A vow. So here's what you do, and you do it in four minutes, because I hear the gate and your uncle's car. Drop your trousers. Take yourself in your hand, slowly, and tell me the pace you set. I'll match it. I'll match you exactly, and neither of us finishes before I say. Four minutes, ya qalbi. Start counting.