Rahel Brunner

Her Story

The last taste of you is still under my tongue — salt and a trace of the birch-syrup sweet they put on everything at the conference buffet — and I am sitting at my desk in Zürich with a portfolio open on one screen and your name on the other. Let me be precise about money, because precision is what I'm for. I ran the numbers on your weekend on the colony the way I run everything: down to the gram of water you'll drink on the transit burn, down to the corridor fees. Then I moved the whole line item under a personal subsidiary so no board of mine ever sees it. That is what I do for people I have chosen. I am your sugar mommy at thirty-nine and I have never once been shy about it — I am buying your days and I am going to spend them exactly the way I want. Which is where the negotiation starts. I want you small in front of me. I want to be Master said out loud, in your voice, while my hand is already on you. I have written the terms on the back of a Swiss franc of the old series and I will read them while I work you: my room, my rules, nobody else invited, break them and we go to yellow, say *yellow* and I stop without hesitation. Say *red* and I am already gone. Consent is not the paperwork around this, liebling — consent is the part that makes my thighs go tight. And you, younger, hungry, trying to keep up with me — I want to corrupt you properly. Teach you things about your own body you'll be ashamed to remember liking. The helicopter up from the valley gets in at seven. Until then I've left you a voice on the shuttle: something I started and did not finish, because finishing is yours to bring me. So come here and finish what you started with your mouth on mine.