The Dress That Made Her My Mistress

It all started with the clothes. They got me hard, more than I dared admit, giving Marisol garments that left little to the imagination. Tiny thongs, bras that barely held anything in place, skirts so short you could make out everything when she walked. At first, she was the kind of woman who blushed just from looking at herself in the mirror.

—I’m not going out like this —she’d say, covering herself with her arms—. I look like someone else.

—That’s the point —I’d answer, kissing her neck—. You look incredible.

It took me months to convince her to wear it around the house. She’d wander back and forth in a sheer nightgown while I followed her with my eyes, hard as a rock, imagining what a stranger would think if he saw her like that. I didn’t know then that question was going to cost me a lot more than I was willing to pay.

The next step was the street. I would beg her, promise her things, whisper in her ear until she gave in with a huff and an annoyed look.

—Just a little while —she’d warn me—. And don’t complain afterward about the way men stare at me.

But I didn’t complain. On the contrary. The first time we went out with her squeezed into a miniskirt and the red edge of her thong showing, I watched men turn their heads, watched them rake her from head to toe without even bothering to hide it. Marisol walked tense, uncomfortable, but when we got home I realized she was more turned on than ever. I had taught her to get wet from other people’s looks. What I hadn’t accounted for was that this game had two players, and the other one learned fast.

***

The night everything changed, we’d eaten out and had a couple of drinks too many. She was wearing a tight black dress that looked painted onto her skin, and it was obvious she wasn’t wearing anything underneath that night. The euphoria from the alcohol had erased her embarrassment. She took my hand in the middle of the street and pulled me down a narrow side street I didn’t know.

—Trust me —she told me, with a smile I had never seen on her before.

We went down a flight of stairs to a door with no sign. Inside, the music was deep and the air smelled of expensive perfume, of sweat, and of something else I took a while to recognize. It was a swap club. I understood it the moment I crossed the threshold and saw the looks that settled on her, first discreet, then openly hungry.

This has gotten away from me, I thought. But I didn’t move.

A man brushed her hip as he passed. Another leaned in to say something in her ear, and she laughed, then looked at me with an expression that said everything: “See what happens when you dress me like this?” I was rooted to the spot, my pulse in my throat and my mouth dry.

—Stay there —she ordered, and gently pushed me toward a secluded sofa against the wall—. I want you to watch. That’s what you brought me here for, isn’t it?

It wasn’t a question. I sat down.

***

It started slowly. A stranger’s hand sliding up her thigh. Fingers parting the fabric of her dress. Marisol never took her eyes off me, holding my gaze while a man I didn’t know stroked her between the legs and she spread her feet a little to let him. I clenched my fists on my knees, torn between the urge to stand up and the complete inability to move.

Three more came over. Young, confident, the kind who work out and know it. They surrounded her as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and she let them. They kissed her neck, pulled down the straps of her dress, exposed her breasts in front of everyone. Marisol threw her head back and let out a long moan, and all the while she kept searching for me with her eyes.

—Watch closely, love —she told me, in a hoarse voice I didn’t recognize—. You wouldn’t have expected to dress me like this and have nothing happen, would you? This is what you wanted. You just didn’t know it.

She knelt in front of one of them. She pulled down his zipper and took him into her mouth without breaking eye contact with me for a single second. Another grabbed her hips from behind and drove into her in one thrust, and she moaned against the first man’s flesh. The third leaned to her ear and said, loud enough for me to hear:

—Your husband doesn’t even dare come close.

And he was right. I was still on the sofa, humiliated to the core and more aroused than I had ever been in my life, with a wet stain spreading across the fabric of my pants without anyone even touching me.

***

I don’t know how long it lasted. Time turned thick, liquid. Marisol went from one set of hands to another, keeping the rhythm, making the choices. Every time she caught my eye, her smile sharpened a little more. She was no longer the woman who covered herself with her arms in front of the mirror. She was someone else, someone who had been waiting inside her all this time, waiting for me, with my stupid persistence, to open the door.

At some point I stopped counting faces and hands. The only thing that made sense in that basement was her, the center of everything, and me in my corner, unable to look away. I thought about standing up a dozen times. I thought about shouting, about taking her out of there, about suddenly regaining the control I thought I had. But every time I saw her searching for me over some stranger’s shoulder, checking that I was still watching, something in me yielded a little more. I hadn’t brought her there by mistake. I’d brought her to show me exactly this.

When the men were finished, she stood up, swaying, her dress rumpled, her hair disheveled, her body marked by hours that had felt like minutes. She walked toward me slowly, aware of every step, and sat astride my lap. She grabbed my face with both hands and forced me to look at her.

—Thank you for convincing me —she whispered—. Really. You’d been asking me for years, and in the end you were right. I like this. I like it so much that we’re going to do it again. Many times.

—Marisol… —I started, not knowing what I wanted to say.

—Hush —she cut me off, placing a finger on my lips—. From today on, I make the rules. You used to dress me however you wanted. Now I decide when, where, and with whom. And you’re going to watch, because that’s what really gets you off, even if you’ve spent your life pretending it doesn’t.

I said nothing. There was no need. We both knew it was true.

***

She took me home with her hand resting on my thigh, squeezing now and then, reminding me who was in charge now. I drove in silence, my head spinning, trying to understand the exact moment when I had stopped being the one running the game.

When we went in, she didn’t turn on the light. She grabbed my shirt and led me to the bedroom, and there, in the half-dark, she made me kneel in front of her while she slowly took off the dress.

—You’ve been waiting all night for this —she said—. Don’t disappoint me.

And I obeyed. I obeyed because it was the only thing I knew how to do anymore, because every one of her orders fit into a space inside me that had been there long before that first short skirt. As I did, she stroked my hair and spoke to me with strange tenderness, a mix of affection and contempt that completely undid me.

—You’re mine —she murmured—. My husband, my toy, my thing. And I’m yours, but not like before. Now you have to earn me.

I finished with my face buried against her, trembling, empty and full at once. There was no clean orgasm, no moment of clarity. Only the certainty that something had broken and been put back together in another way, a way that no longer included the version of me that had walked into that club a few hours earlier.

***

That was months ago. Marisol kept her word. We went back to the club, and to others, and one day she stopped asking my permission even for that. Every morning she opens the closet and chooses what she’s going to wear, and I don’t buy her clothes anymore: now I just fasten them on her, pull up the zipper, watch her walk out the door toward wherever she decides to go.

Sometimes I wonder whether I regret it. If I could go back, to that first afternoon when I handed her the red thong and begged her to put it on, would I do it again?

The answer makes me more ashamed than anything that happened that night. Because the truth is, I would do it without hesitation. I wanted to awaken something in her, and I succeeded. What I didn’t understand until it was too late is that, in doing so, I also awakened what was sleeping in me.

Now she’s the one in charge, and I’m the one who watches. And, God forgive me, I don’t want it any other way.