That Morning I Taught Her to Obey Underwater

Mariana and I woke up tangled together, naked and still sticky from the night before. It was when I stretched, with the first light slipping through the half-closed blind, that I remembered that it had been different. Not because of her, who already knew my quirks, but because of me: after so many years of looking after myself, of always putting a latex barrier between desire and risk, for the first time I had felt her with nothing in between. Skin against skin. That left a strange buzzing in my body, as if I had crossed a line with no way back.

—You look like you didn’t sleep at all —she murmured, without fully opening her eyes.

—I slept enough —I answered.

Enough to want more.

It was Saturday and the borrowed house was silent. We decided to go for a walk, to clear our heads, even though the heat was still there, lurking under the clothes we put on reluctantly. We walked aimlessly until, near the station, we saw the discreet sign of a sex shop between a pharmacy and a pawnshop. Mariana squeezed my hand. No need to say anything.

We went in like any couple walking into any store, except no couple goes through those aisles with the look she had. Lewd, incandescent, reading every shelf as if it were a menu. I chose something small and specific: a silicone plug, the exact size so I could feel it for hours without it becoming too uncomfortable. A day-long idea. She, on the other hand, swept half the counter away before I could even see what she was putting in the basket.

—Are you going to tell me what you bought? —I asked.

—Tonight —she said, and let the sentence hang there like a sweet threat.

We went down a long street to a bar with sticky tables and yellow light. I ordered two coffees no one touched. Under the table, I handed her the small box with the plug. She opened it in her lap, looked at it for a second and, without losing her smile, got up and went into the back bathroom. She took long enough. When she came back, she was walking with a new caution, a stiffness in her hips only I understood, and she shot me a look that said it’s in, I’ve got it in me already. The arousal of knowing her like that, marked by one of my orders, in some random bar, kept me hard all the way back.

***

Back at the house, Mariana left the bags on the kitchen table and announced she was going out to buy something for lunch. The door shut and the house fell silent again. I had a more vulgar urgency than desire: I needed to piss, badly. I walked down the hall toward the bathroom already loosening my belt, not thinking about anything else.

I pushed the half-open door and froze.

Carla was in the shower.

The half-drawn glass framed her like a painting: water running down her back, steam clinging to the walls, the dark mass of her hair plastered against her neck. She was the other one staying in the house that weekend, the one who had barely exchanged two sentences with me, the one who had that sideways way of looking that I had chosen to ignore. Until that moment.

She didn’t jump. She didn’t cover anything. She turned her head just enough to nail me with her eyes through the steam and kept rubbing the bar of soap over her body, slowly, as if she’d been waiting for me. Time got stuck in the doorway, with me on one side and her on the other, neither of us making the move to cut short what was happening.

—Are you going to keep standing there staring? —she said, and there was no shame in her voice. There was challenge.

I closed the door behind me. That was all. Closing it was accepting.

She understood the click of the latch as an answer and raised the stakes. She soaped her small breasts, letting them slip between her fingers, ran the foam down her belly and took it lower, to the wet mound growing between her legs. She touched herself without hurry, eyes half-lidded, and every time one finger sank into her she let out a low, rough sound that bounced off the tiles. She smiled at me between moan and moan. She knew exactly what she was doing to me.

I wasn’t thinking about my bladder anymore. I yanked my pants down and grabbed my cock, which had been hard since the bar, and started jerking off against the steam while she put on a show. We didn’t touch. We were a meter apart and, even so, that was the most intimate thing I had done in a long time: two strangers masturbating in front of each other, measuring one another, without a single word of affection between us.

—Faster —I ordered, surprised by my own voice—. I want to see you come first.

She obeyed. She braced her back against the tiles, spread her legs and worked herself with two fingers while the water poured over her face. The moans turned into short gasps, and when her thighs tensed and she bit her lip to keep from crying out, I knew she had come for me, because I had told her to.

I couldn’t hold back any longer. I crossed the meter separating us, grabbed her wet head with one hand and came over her face, in spurts that mixed with the shower water. She didn’t pull away. She kept her face lifted, mouth open, taking it, smiling like someone receiving a prize.

***

I hadn’t let go of the last drop when my body shifted gears. The urgency that had driven me to the bathroom came back all at once, impossible to stop, and a hot stream burst out of me and began to soak her. For an instant I thought she would step back, that it would break the spell.

She did the opposite.

She threw her head back, ran her hands through her hair as if combing it with them, and opened her mouth to taste it. The liquid slid off her lips, ran down her throat and breasts until it disappeared down the drain, along with the soap and everything else. She was looking at me as she did it. She wanted me to see how far she was willing to go, and I saw it, and in that gesture I understood that this woman wasn’t looking for a lover. She was looking for a master.

When I had emptied myself completely, I lifted her by the chin and kissed her, a dirty, long kiss she returned hungrily. Then I spat in her face, slowly, looking her in the eyes to see what she would do.

—You’re a filthy slut —I told her, in a low, firm voice—. A bad girl who needs someone to set boundaries for her. Tonight I’m going to set them for you. And now wash yourself properly, you pig, because I don’t want to smell you when I come back for you.

She didn’t protest. She didn’t frown. She licked the spit from the corner of her mouth with the tip of her tongue and lowered her eyes for a second, just long enough to let me know that the word “master” was exactly the one she had been waiting to hear. She nodded slowly.

—Yes —she murmured—. Tonight.

That single syllable, said under the water, was worth more than any promise. It was a contract. I would give the orders and she would follow them, and the two of us were going to find out how far that rope could be stretched before it snapped.

***

I pulled my pants back up with hands that were still trembling a little. My heart was pounding against my ribs, not from fear, but from that mix of power and vertigo that only appears when someone gives you control over their pleasure and their humiliation at the same time. Carla turned off the tap behind my back and started drying herself off, calm, as if what had just happened were only the prologue to something much longer.

I opened the bathroom door and almost collided with Mariana, who was coming back with the lunch bags hanging from her arms and her breathing ragged from running up the stairs.

—I forgot my keys —she said, laughing at herself—. Are you okay? You’re all red.

—The hot water —I replied, and took one bag from her hand so she wouldn’t see my face—. Carla’s showering, let her finish.

Mariana nodded, unsuspecting, and went into the kitchen to unpack. By one meter, by the click of a latch and by the cold back of a door closed in time, she hadn’t caught me. That narrow margin should have scared me. Instead, it turned me on even more. The secret was an extra layer of arousal, an invisible leash that now tied me to the two women in that house in different ways.

Behind the wall, the shower kept running. Carla hummed something softly, satisfied, while she got ready for a day of waiting. And I, leaning against the kitchen frame watching Mariana put the food away without suspecting a thing, began counting the hours left until night.

Because that night, I had promised, she was going to find out what it meant to belong to someone. And I intended to keep every word.