Alhamdulillah, the weekend is over. It is good to be back with my children at school. They are so pure, and it reminds me to be gentle with myself, too.

But I must confess something I have been thinking about. I was at the library yesterday, in a quiet corner. A man sat down at the table across from me. He was reading, but he kept glancing over. He was not handsome in the American movie way, but there was something… a quiet strength. It made my heart beat very fast.

I began to imagine a different kind of fantasy. Not one of being thrown down and used, but of being… seduced. Of him getting up, walking over, and simply asking if he could join me. Of our knees touching under the table. Of him, so calmly, reaching under my long skirt while we both pretended to read. His fingers finding the edge of my panties, then slipping beneath them to touch my wet cunt right there in the public silence. I imagined having to bite my lip to keep from making a sound as he rubbed my clit slowly, deliberately, with just the tips of his fingers. The risk of being seen, of being a good Muslim woman being fingered to a quiet, shaking orgasm in a public library by a stranger… it felt so much more intimate than any violent daydream. It felt like a shared secret. A corruption that was chosen, not forced.

To feel his fingers inside me, to feel my own slickness on his hand, and then to watch him stand up and walk away, taking that scent with him… it is a thought that will not leave me. Sometimes, the most forbidden thing is not the act, but the quiet, knowing look that passes between two people who have shared something no one else can see.