AdrianCABA

My husband left at six in the morning. He arrived at seven. That one-hour gap was all I needed to start cheating without guilt.

I had promised him a different kind of gift: that weekend I wouldn’t decide anything. He would take the reins, and I would only have to obey and let myself go.

It was July, I was ruined and desperate. I crossed my sister’s garden looking for help; my nephew was waiting by the pool with a smile I didn’t know how to read in time.

Rage pushed her to get out of the car in the middle of the highway. What she never imagined was that she’d end the night in the cab of a trucker she’d just met.

I walked through the door expecting a normal party. Instead I found a patio full of girls in bikinis, no other men, and a hostess with a smile that was anything but friendly.

I thought enduring ten hits would be easy. I didn’t count on her enjoying every one of them, or on how much I’d end up enjoying them too.

Every Christmas we hid our secret under modest clothing. This year I opened the door with my wife kneeling and bound in the living room, waiting for the guests.

I had spent a year swallowing his taunts in silence. That afternoon, when he grabbed my shirt to humiliate me, my hand found exactly where to squeeze.

He never confessed that attraction. Until I saw her leaning at the bar, wrapped in synthetic fur, looking at me like a predator choosing prey.

Marina knew exactly where to touch to make Lucía’s body stop obeying her. That night, in the hotel’s dim light, she decided to find out how far her curiosity went.

Twenty years separated Mariana from her teacher, but when that hand stopped at her hip during rehearsal, she knew the look in her eyes had changed.

Since I was fifteen, I’d kept quiet about how badly I wanted to kiss her. Now, sitting across from me with that same smile, I wasn’t going to let the chance slip away again.

She had been with her boyfriend for five years and had never doubted. Until that black-eyed woman stared at her on the platform and something broke inside.

Six days before my wedding, I saw her leave the café. I hadn’t seen her in years, but my body recognized her before I did.

She carried a pistol hidden in her stocking and an impossible mission: get close to the most dangerous woman in the room without desire betraying her too soon.

The night she threw me out, I dreamed of my own corpse rotting in an empty workshop. I woke up soaked in tears, with her asleep a handspan from my skin.

I went back to the room quietly so I wouldn’t wake him, and found him with my underwear between his fingers and the sheet pitched up like a tent.

I arrived alone at a freshly moved-into floor, wearing tight leggings and a thin sweater. The mover looked at me differently when he closed the door, and I knew I wouldn’t be leaving unsatisfied.

The show was over, the drums had gone quiet, but the fire carnival had lit between her legs was only just beginning to burn.

I turned my back to the camera, moved my hips slowly, and waited. I only wanted a stranger to tell me what to do with my own body.