I Paid to Have Sex

I’m on the flight back, my thighs still burning from friction, teeth marks on my neck hidden by a scarf, and a feeling of emptiness that only comes when you know you’ve just experienced something you won’t have again anytime soon.

He fucked me in ways I didn’t know were possible.

Against the wall of the room, in the sand of the private beach, under the stars while he grabbed my hair and called me “goddess.”

Seven days.

Twenty-three orgasms.

I counted them all. It had never been like this before.

“You’re just another desperate tourist,” a friend told me when I said where I was going. Fuck that. Desperate? Maybe. But at least now I know what it feels like to have a man look at me like I’m the only meal after months of starvation.

On the second night, I asked him why he desired me so much. He laughed. “You don’t understand. You think we want your bodies. But what we really want is your gratitude. We want to see you fall apart, lose control, scream without shame. That’s what turns me on.”

I stayed silent.

I’d never heard a man talk like that before, as if my pleasure was his prize. The men back home fuck you like they’re completing a chore. They kiss you like they’re afraid they’ll mess up your lipstick.

They touch you like you’re a piece of art that can’t be damaged.

He devoured me. Left me raw.

And then looked me in the eyes and asked: “What else do you want me to do to you?”

That’s when I understood why so many of us travel to the other side of the world to find this. It’s not the exotic appeal. It’s not the tanned skin or sun-sculpted body. It’s the feeling of finally being seen.

It’s as if desiring a woman after thirty is forbidden back home.

As if our pleasure has an expiration date.

“Do you have others like me?” I asked him on the third night, after he made me come twice in a row.

“Of course,” he answered without hesitation, while massaging my back. “I have the blonde who comes every spring, the redhead who cries after sex, and the quiet one who tips me extra to pretend she’s my only one.”

He didn’t say it cruelly. There was no malice in his voice, no shame in his truth. It was transactional—but never cold. Somehow, that honesty made it more intimate.

And I knew then: I wasn’t special.

But for seven nights, I got to pretend I was.

I paid for that illusion. For the safety of surrender. For the right to take up space in someone’s arms without having to apologize for wanting too much.

He never flinched at my hunger. He welcomed it. Matched it. Fueled it.

The morning I left, he kissed my temple and whispered, “Remember how this felt. Don’t let them make you small again.”

I cried in the cab to the airport. Not because I’d miss him, but because I’d tasted something I might not find again. Something so many women are starving for but are too afraid to ask for.

It wasn’t the sex. It was being consumed.

And in that consumption, I remembered that I am still fire.

Still wanted.

Still alive.