It Took Him One Word to Make Me Submit That Night

The connection had been brutal from the very first message. Whole weeks talking through a screen, discovering that this man seemed to read me from the inside, to anticipate what I kept to myself. And yet, as I waited at the bar on Mendoza Street, I could only think of one thing.

What if I don’t like him in person and all the magic disappears?

I saw him come in before he saw me. I recognized the way he walked, unhurried, as if the whole place belonged to him. My skin, always so shy, said yes long before I did. And when his eyes found me, I knew he liked what he saw too.

I’d spent the whole afternoon rehearsing in front of the mirror how I was going to behave. Distant, controlled, a woman who doesn’t give herself away on the first date. I had chosen the dress carefully, repeated to myself a hundred times that I wasn’t going to let how much I wanted him show. And it was enough to see him cross the threshold for all that planning to dissolve like sugar in hot water.

He sat on the stool next to mine and the heat of his body reached me before his cologne did. He said nothing for a few seconds. He just watched me, with that calm of his I already knew from the phone calls, and I felt him undress me without touching me.

—What are you having? —he asked, resting one elbow on the bar, far too close.

—Hummm —I swallowed, nervous—. I think I’ll have some caramel.

A clumsy laugh slipped out of me. It was stupid, one of those private jokes we’d built in messages. But he didn’t laugh. He smiled faintly, as if he’d just confirmed something, and that smile made the hair on the back of my neck rise.

I stood up without thinking and he kissed me. It wasn’t a greeting kiss. He devoured my mouth right there, with people all around, one hand closing around my waist as if I’d belonged to him forever. I was nervous, shaking, and even so my panties started getting wet at once.

I wanted to take him home then and there. But he had other plans.

—Sit down —he said softly—. We’re having a drink first.

And I obeyed. I sat across from him, with a coffee I hadn’t even ordered, my hands itching to touch him. My whole instinct was screaming at me to throw myself on him, and yet I held back. I had always held back. My whole life had been that: a woman who clenches her teeth and keeps what burns inside.

But that night something was forcing its way out.

***

His mouth came back to mine between one phrase and the next, and I could no longer hide what I wanted. That animal instinct rose up my throat. He played with me however he liked, stopping just when I needed him most, leaving me breathless.

—Look at you —he murmured, loud enough for a couple at the next table to turn their heads—. You can’t even sit still.

My face burned. There were eyes on us; it was impossible not to notice the desire we were giving off. I pressed my legs together under the table and felt the wetness between my thighs. Something in his voice flipped a switch in me completely. Or maybe it wasn’t the voice. Maybe it was just his presence, the way he looked at me that made me lower my head, made me want to serve him.

And that filled me like I’d been waiting for it for far too long.

I thought about all my previous relationships, about the men who had asked me to take the initiative, to decide, to be the one in control. And how, each time, some part of me had gone out a little more. With him it was the opposite. The less control I had, the more alive I felt. It was a truth I’d been avoiding looking straight in the face for years.

There was something inside me that had been locked away for years, a part of me that kept slipping through my fingers without my noticing. A part that, deep down, wanted to break free for real.

—Let’s go —I said, and my own voice sounded чужд to me.

He left some bills on the table without hurrying and held out his hand to me.

***

From the bar café we went to his apartment, and from the entryway to the bed, devouring each other. My hips moved on their own, of their own will. I was grinding my pussy against his thigh, which had slipped between my legs, and it was one of his comments that pulled me out of the haze.

—You’re so desperate.

I felt ashamed. I had never done anything like that, had never rubbed myself on anyone like a horny animal. But there was a thick fog covering everything, like when a beast is hungry and sees only prey, nothing else, nothing around it. Naked on the sheets, I could only think of one thing.

—I need more caramel —I whispered.

That was the word. The one we’d agreed on through so many messages. The one that meant more, the one that said without saying it that I wanted him not to stop, to go further.

I went down until I had him in my mouth. His hands closed on my head and he started using me to his rhythm, without asking permission. I gagged, tears sprang to my eyes, and even so that animal instinct slipped out of my hands and took over. The fog came back, thicker. I only wanted more. More. I pleaded with my eyes.

—Please —I managed to say when he let me breathe.

I could barely recognize myself. That night I was a stranger even to myself. But I didn’t care. I needed him and I begged him, making it clear what I was at that moment: a hungry woman, a woman who needed to feel him everywhere. I would have given him anything, because everything felt fucking good.

Every command of his found in me an obedience I hadn’t known I possessed. I didn’t recognize myself and, at the same time, I had never felt more like me. As if my whole life had been a disguise and only now, naked and surrendered, the real woman was appearing.

His hand climbed to my neck.

—Stay still —he ordered.

And he squeezed. Not hard, just enough. Feeling his fingers close made me lose my mind, and while he did it he spoke to me in a low voice, words that sank into me. My pussy got even wetter, if that was even possible.

***

When I finally felt him inside me, it was devastating. He bit my body and I licked him, covered him with bites, marking him the way he marked me. He slapped my face, the first one soft, the second firmer, and my cunt only throbbed harder. He spat on me and I pulsed again.

The monster I had always kept behind a closed door was already halfway out of the room.

I had fed it in silence for years, in the dark, in fantasies I had never confessed to anyone. In the shyness with which I apologized for wanting. In the nights when I touched myself imagining exactly this and then felt ashamed at dawn. And now that monster was breathing in the open for the first time, and discovering it wasn’t scary. That it was simply me.

He smiled at me, and that smile said something I understood without words: this is what you need, and even if you fight it, there’s no going back now.

—Say it —he demanded.

—Caramel —I obeyed.

I was still in the fog. Between moans of pure pleasure I felt how he filled me, how he took me the way I had begged to be taken, the way I felt I deserved. Everything he said seeped into my bones. It felt good. It was what I had always wanted, without daring to name it. He read my needs too well, better than anyone before him.

—Come —he said.

Part of me laughed inside when I heard him. It was impossible; that wasn’t how my body worked, nobody made me come on command. But my pussy pulsed to the rhythm of his voice, I followed that voice as if it were the only real thing, and I gave it to him.

Once. And again. And again, until I lost count.

I didn’t understand it. It was impossible and yet it was happening. I could only witness how his voice went through me. Because he wasn’t talking to the shy woman who held herself back in bars. He was talking to that monster that was now showing itself, head bowed and smiling. That was the one giving him what he asked for. The one shutting off my thoughts, one by one.

I was both his victim and my own.

***

Afterward we lay tangled in the messed-up sheets, sweaty, my breathing still broken against his chest. He stroked my hair slowly, as if the last few minutes had never happened, as if he hadn’t just split me in two.

—Are you okay? —he asked, and for the first time his voice was truly soft.

I nodded against his skin. The words wouldn’t come. Part of me was still looking for the way back, trying to put together the woman who had walked into that bar just a few hours earlier. But that woman wasn’t alone in there anymore.

I surrender, I thought. Not all the way yet. But I surrender.

He lifted my chin with two fingers, forcing me to look at him.

—Next time —he said— you won’t hold back in the bar either.

It wasn’t a question. And I, who had spent my entire life keeping everything behind a door, knew I was going to throw it wide open.

—Caramel —I answered.

And he smiled, because he already knew what that word meant.