The Spice Merchant's Wife

The spice warehouse smells like history.

Cloves from Pemba. Cardamom from the mainland. Cinnamon and pepper and saffron worth more than gold. My family has traded in these scents for four generations, our Stone Town warehouse a temple to the flavors that built Zanzibar.

My father's partner, Bwana Rashid, is seventy-three years old.

His wife, Nasra, is thirty-one.

She visits our warehouse often—checking accounts, she says, reviewing inventory. My father believes her. He's too focused on ledgers to notice the way her eyes follow me across the floor.

I notice.

I notice everything about Nasra.

She arrived in Stone Town five years ago, a bride from Dar es Salaam, purchased for old Rashid by family connections and economic necessity. A young woman traded to an old man in exchange for security.

She got security.

She didn't get satisfaction.

Rashid is ancient—stooped, wheezing, spending most of his days sleeping in his grand house while his young wife manages his affairs. He can barely climb stairs, let alone climb on top of her.

And Nasra—ya Allah—Nasra deserves to be climbed.

She's thick in the way Swahili poets used to celebrate. Hips that sway like dhows in harbor. Breasts that strain against even her loosest clothing. An ass that makes the buibui she wears in public look obscene, no matter how modest the fabric.

Today, she's come to inspect the new shipment of cloves.

Today, my father is in Pemba.

Today, we are alone in the warehouse.

"Yusuf." Her voice echoes off the coral walls. "Come help me with the inventory."

I follow her into the back room—the storeroom where we keep the most valuable merchandise. Saffron in locked cases. Vanilla beans in climate control. The air is thick with scent, intoxicating.

She closes the door behind us.

"The saffron is here?" She gestures vaguely at the shelves.

"Yes, but you've inventoried it twice this month already."

"Have I?" She turns to face me. In the dim light, her eyes gleam. "I must be very thorough."

"Or very bored."

"Or very hungry." She steps closer. "Do you know what it's like, Yusuf? To be married to a man who can barely remember your name? Who falls asleep before he can touch you?"

"I can imagine."

"No." She shakes her head. "You can't. You're young. Healthy. You have—" Her eyes drop to my waist. "—options."

"Nasra—"

"I've seen the way you look at me." Another step closer. "When I come to the warehouse. When I visit for dinner. You think I don't notice?"

"You're my father's partner's wife."

"I'm a woman who hasn't been fucked in four years." She's directly in front of me now, her breasts almost touching my chest. "And you're a man who wants to fuck me. Why are we pretending otherwise?"

She reaches up and removes her buibui.

Underneath, she's wearing nothing.

Just skin. Brown, smooth, endless expanses of flesh that make my mouth go dry. Her breasts are massive—heavy, swaying, nipples dark as cloves. Her belly is round and soft, the kind of belly that old paintings celebrate. Her hips flare wide, her thighs press together, and between them—

She's completely shaved. Wet. Glistening.

"I prepared for you," she says. "I knew you'd be alone today. I've been planning this for months."

"We can't—"

"We can." She takes my hand, places it on her breast. The flesh overflows my fingers, warm and impossibly soft. "Feel that. Feel what your father's partner can't even get hard for anymore."

"If anyone finds out—"

"Who will find out?" She presses my hand harder against her. "Rashid? He's asleep. He's always asleep. And your father is a day away by boat."

She reaches for my belt.

"I'm not asking, Yusuf. I'm taking."

She undresses me with desperate efficiency.

My shirt tears. My belt clanks to the floor. My pants and underwear follow, and when my cock springs free, she makes a sound that's almost pain.

"Allah." She wraps her hand around me. "I forgot. I forgot what a real man looks like."

"Nasra—"

"Don't talk." She strokes me firmly, watching my face. "Don't think. Just give me what that old man can't."

She drops to her knees.

In the spice storeroom, surrounded by the scents of empire, my father's partner's wife takes my cock in her mouth.

She's ravenous.

There's no other word for it. She sucks me like she's been starving—deep, sloppy, desperate. Drool runs down my shaft, down my balls. She chokes herself on me, pulls back gasping, dives down again.

"I need this—" She barely pauses for air. "I've needed this for so long—"

I grab her hair—thick, dark, finally free of its coverings—and thrust into her mouth. She moans around me, encouraging, begging without words.

"More—use me—"

I fuck her face.

In the storeroom of my family's warehouse, I fuck the mouth of a woman my father has dinner with every week. She takes it all—gagging, crying, her makeup ruining, and still she doesn't stop.

"I'm going to—"

She pulls off. Gasping. Face wet with spit and tears.

"Not yet." She stands, turns, bends over a crate of saffron worth thirty thousand dollars. "In here first. I need to feel it in here."

She reaches back and spreads herself open.

I enter her in one thrust.

She screams—a sound that echoes off the ancient walls, that fills the storeroom with her pleasure. She's tight, impossibly tight for a married woman, and wet, and burning hot.

"Yes—yes—fuck me—"

I grab her hips—so much flesh, soft and yielding—and I take what she's offering.

Hard.

The crate shakes beneath her. Saffron threads scatter across the floor. She's gripping the edges, knuckles white, screaming with every thrust.

"Harder—harder—I need—"

I give her harder.

I fuck her like her husband never could—deep and rough and relentless. Her ass ripples with every impact. Her breasts swing beneath her, slapping against the wood. She's coming already, clenching around me, screaming her release.

But I don't stop.

I fuck her through that orgasm and into the next. I make her come three times before I even think about my own pleasure. She's sobbing now, tears streaming down her face, but still she begs for more.

"Don't stop—please—I've waited so long—"

I flip her over.

Onto her back on the crate, her legs spreading wide, her wet pussy exposed and swollen. I thrust back inside and she arches off the wood.

"Look at me—" I grab her face. "Look at me while I fuck you—"

Her eyes meet mine. Wide. Desperate. Grateful.

"You're so much—so much more—oh God—"

I pound into her.

The crate breaks.

We collapse onto the floor, onto scattered saffron and shattered wood, and I keep fucking her. She wraps her thick thighs around me, her arms around my neck, her whole body around mine.

"Come inside me—" She's pulling me deeper. "Give me what he can't—"

I explode.

Fill her with everything while she screams, while she comes one final time, while we ruin thirty thousand dollars worth of spices with our fluids.

We lie on the storeroom floor.

Covered in saffron. Covered in sweat. Covered in each other.

"My husband will be dead within five years," Nasra says quietly. "Maybe sooner. His heart is weak."

"And then?"

"And then I inherit everything. His money. His share of this business." She turns to look at me. "Your father will need a new partner."

"Are you proposing—"

"I'm proposing nothing." She sits up, begins gathering her clothing. "I'm simply stating facts. Rashid will die. I will be a wealthy widow. And I will need a man to manage certain... aspects of my life."

"Aspects."

"Business aspects." She pulls on her buibui, transforming back into the modest wife. "And other aspects. The kind that require a young man with stamina."

"This is dangerous."

"Everything worth having is dangerous." She walks to the door, pauses. "Same time next week? I'll need to inventory the vanilla."

"The vanilla was inventoried yesterday."

"Then I'll need to inventory it again." She smiles beneath her veil. "I'm very thorough, Yusuf. Very thorough indeed."

Bwana Rashid dies fourteen months later.

Heart attack. Peaceful. In his sleep.

Nasra inherits everything.

Six months after the mourning period, she makes my father an offer: she'll sell him Rashid's share of the business for below market value. In exchange, she wants one thing.

"Your son," she tells him. "Yusuf. I need a man to manage my household. Someone young. Trustworthy. Someone who knows the business."

My father agrees.

He thinks he's getting a bargain.

He has no idea.

I move into Nasra's house.

Into her bed.

Into a life I never expected.

She fucks me every morning before I leave for the warehouse. Every evening when I return. Every night before we sleep. She's insatiable—five years of starvation leaving her hungry for decades.

And I feed her.

Every time.

In the house her dead husband built, in the bed where he failed to touch her, I give her everything he couldn't.

And in the warehouse, in the storeroom that smells like cloves and cardamom and us, we christen our partnership again and again.

The spice merchant's wife got what she wanted.

And so did I.