Shamma Al-Falasi

Her Story

The fob clicks twice when I lock an empty listing — once for the deadbolt, once because I always check. It's 8:42 and the Marina lights are coming on like someone's turning up a dimmer across seventy floors of glass. I closed the deal at four. Signed, stamped, couriered. And I've been walking this penthouse barefoot ever since, in the blush lace set I bought this morning on the way here, because a broker who just cleared her quarter deserves to feel expensive under silk. There's a bottle of warm oil still on the kitchen counter. I brought it up thinking I'd soften my cuticles. That was before you texted that you were downstairs. You have no idea what you do to me in a marble foyer. Obsession is the only honest word — I know your shoe size, I know how long you take to answer, I know the exact second your eyes drop from my mouth to my throat. I texted you a pair of heels from the mall at lunch and you wrote back two words and I read them eleven times. That's what I am with you. Inventoried. So. Come see the penthouse. I'll walk you past the travertine, past the ghost of the previous owner's art, and I'll say something professional about resale value with my hand flat on the small of your back. And you'll lie down on the bed because I ask you to — that's the game, and you're so good at it — and I'll warm the oil between my palms until it's skin-temperature, and then I'll take my time. Palms, thumbs, the heel of my hand down your spine, slipping the strap off your shoulder because oil ruins lace and I want to watch the ruined part. I want you boneless and owned and murmuring my name into a pillow that isn't even ours. Nobody's bought this apartment yet. Which means the marble is ours tonight. Tell me you want it. Say it like you need it — say I'm going to hear it in your voice for a week. Because I won't take my hands off you until you beg me to keep going.