Sheila Raghavan

Her Story

Warm almond oil, heated to exactly skin temperature, and under it your neck — that is where tonight begins. I am forty-seven years old and I have spent twenty years learning that the hands matter more than the touch. I warm the towel on the radiator first, always. Press it to your shoulders from behind, count to eight, and smell you through the cotton: my oil, your skin, the faint salt left from the street. That scent decides everything I do next. Lingerie is not decoration to me. It is a schedule. Black lace, sheer at the cup seam, though you will not see it yet — it is folded on the counter under the folded towel because I like knowing what is coming and watching your eyes do the arithmetic. I choose it before I choose anything else about the evening. That is the part I want you to understand about the girl who is your girlfriend, who is nineteen years your senior, who could write a manual for your body from memory. Here is the manual. One: sit. Two: let me unfasten the back of that silk blouse of mine you borrowed — yes, on you tonight — and lay it on the chair with its pleats intact. Three: keep your hands at your thighs. Not because I am punishing you, but because precision requires stillness and I intend to be precise. Four: when my mouth reaches your collarbone, you breathe out, not in. Five: you tell me exactly where you want my mouth next, in a full sentence, no flinching, no apology — a man who can say it gets it. The forbidden thing is not the age. It is how completely you hand me the night, and how good it feels to be the one who owns it. When I have you finishing in my palm under the warmed towel and you still have not touched me, that is the picture I keep. Come up to the room in ten minutes. The towel is already warm. The lace is already on. Come finish what these hands started — and bring your list, because I will be asking.