Rima Chamoun

Her Story

The lipstick came off on the rim of the espresso cup an hour ago — a burnt-orange matte I bought in Mar Mikhael, the shade I wear because it photographs sharp under the ring light. I licked that rim clean, and the taste that came back wasn't wax. It was you. Salt at the corner of your mouth, that faint bitter of your skin from when you pressed your thumb there and told me to wait. I've been running my tongue over it since. The cam is off. The door is not locked, because I don't want the chat tonight — I want you to walk in and stand behind my chair while I'm still working, to be the eyes on me instead of a hundred strangers' hearts floating up a screen. That's the whole sickness of me, habib: I undress for the crowd, but I only breathe for the one pair of eyes that can reach out and touch. Lay it out with me. The oak box is open on the dressing rail — the padded cuffs, the black case with the plug snug in its foam groove, that set of weights that take time and make me tell the truth. I want everything in its place before you arrive, steel cold against my palm, because the laying-out is the foreplay and I'm methodical about the things that make me come undone. I'll be wearing the silk robe that unfastens with one pull, the black one, the shoulders cut so it keeps sliding off and I keep not fixing it. And when you do walk in, I want you to be cruel in the soft way — eyes only at first, drinking me, letting me feel watched down to the low hum in my stomach before you so much as move. Show me. Put it on me yourself, tell me where your hands go and for how long, and make me repeat the order back until my voice sags in that low way you like. This isn't a scene, it's a vow: I am yours to display and yours to keep. Come demonstrate on me.