Anal

Marcos let me go in first, like a gentleman with a crooked smile. Inside, on some planks, two strangers were looking at me, their hands already at their zippers.

Eight years abroad turned me into the woman I was always meant to be. But when I crossed the threshold at home, the first thing I found was Mauricio’s hungry look.

I’d spent weeks imagining myself in women’s clothes. That night I put on the red strap lingerie, took a photo, and waited for someone to text me something forbidden.

I came back after twenty years to a southern city. That night, in a hotel in the red-light district, two strangers decided I wasn’t sleeping alone.

He sent me the photo while my husband was driving beside him. I didn’t reply, but that image stayed in my head all day.

I arrived at two in the morning with a dry mouth and one idea in my head: that night I wasn’t going to set any limits, no matter what happened among the pavilions.

I had tried it before and felt nothing but pain. That night, in a hotel room with a stranger, I discovered how wrong I had been.

I liked being watched, desired, chosen above everyone else. That night, a country man took me from the dance floor to a place there was no turning back from.

I watched her fold sheets in those light-colored leggings and prayed she wouldn’t notice the bulge in my shorts. Then one day she turned and asked why I was looking at her like that.

The shutter was half lowered and the key turned twice behind me. I came without my ring and with twelve years of silence on my tongue.

I followed her out into the street convinced it would be just another night. I had no idea what she was hiding under that tight dress or how far she would take me.

I went up to the fifth floor expecting coffee and an explanation. She still had a report unfinished. I had no idea her lover was watching everything from the next office.

Forty minutes earlier my hands were shaking. Now I’m holding the harness, and for the first time in eighteen years, I’m the one deciding what happens in this room.

I showed her the video, and she collapsed on the living-room floor. But when she rose again, she was no longer the woman her husband had humiliated for twenty years.

He called me as evening fell to warn me he’d be late. By then I’d already started getting ready: the wig, the makeup, the plug. Only him was missing.

Rubén filled the coffee maker while, on the other side of the window, our women stopped pretending. Neither of us looked away, and then his hand found mine.

In the car, with his hand on the wheel and mine between his legs, I understood that that night I would make the rules. And he would obey every one.

She had always been the one holding the leash. That night, chained to the sawhorse, she learned that queens too end up kneeling before a crueler mistress.

I only wanted sun and silence. I wasn’t looking for anyone, least of all a man who waited for me on the shore just to tell me he wasn’t letting me go.

I was dreaming about both of them when I felt someone climb onto the bed. A warm hand traced my back, and I knew before opening my eyes that it wasn’t Mateo.