Inever understood the slang term for sucking toes, "shrimping," until I saw her at dim sum, sucking the succulent meat out of her shrimp-in-shell, that tiny pointed tongue of hers darting into the pink carapace while her teeth held the two halves taut. Salt shone on her plump lips, making them look wet, engorged.

I'm not normally a foot girl. My feet move me through the world, and that's all. They're not particularly noteworthy or deserving of adornment or attention. But for her, they're the center of the erotic world. When I think of her, I think of toes curled in her crotch, clutching her clit, weaving through pubic curls.

First thing she did, the night I took her home, was offer to shine my boots. That seemed a little silly; I only wore dainty ankle boots, hardly worth the effort. It took me awhile to realize that wasn't what she was really after. That she thought of it as foreplay. That the true treat lay inside.

I finally figured it out one night when I was lying on the couch. It was summer, my sandals were off, I had my foot propped up on the pillow at the end of the sofa; my hands held some cheap paperback. She came in from the kitchen and didn't say a word, just knelt at the end of the couch and kissed my pinky toe. I put down the book. She smiled a shy smile, then bent her head and took my toe in her mouth. When she slipped her tongue into the crevices between my toes, I swooned, and she smiled, but her eyes stayed fixed to my foot in concentration. Her hair fell in front of her face as she moved her tongue down my arch and instep. She attended to my foot like it was the sweetest meat of all, nibbling my toes like hors d'oeuvres. She was practiced, expert, and could have spent hours there. I could have let her.

Later her mouth moved up my leg, leaving lipstick traces on my calf, inner thigh, but I could tell that it was an afterthought, to make me happy. She'd already had her treat. When her head was finally buried in my crotch and she'd put that tongue to a more conventional use, I slipped my foot up her skirt, between her legs. When I hooked the edge of her panties with my big toe and pulled them aside, I could feel her heat against the ball of my foot already, and when I rubbed against her lips it was like walking on ice, she was so slick. She moaned, muffled by my thighs, and if I'd had my toe inside her then I would have felt her clench in ecstasy, I'm sure of it.

There's no special word in the language to name the recipient of a fetishist's attention. But there should be. I was her willing subject from then on, the canvas for her affections. I wanted to watch her indulge. That was my turn-on.

It was later that weekend that we went to dim sum together, and I saw her with the shrimp. I shuddered, and felt a twinge along my calf. She looked at me then, as if she'd felt that quiver, and smiled. Then she sucked the succulent meat from the head of a shrimp in her hands, its small dark eyes opaque, staring out at nothing. She popped the head into her mouth and grinned, crunching loudly. She licked the salt off her lips, and then, off each delicate fingertip. Her lips were glossy, and I was getting warm.

I knew what I was, then: a delicacy, something to be harvested, consumed.

I was ready.

Lori Selke is the Features Editor at Scarlet Letters. She has written for, among others, On Our Backs, Black Sheets, and FaT GiRL.