The First Time I Gave Him My Word

The first time I said the word «red» it did not leave my lips as a cry or as a whisper. It was a decision, and that changed everything.

Andrés and I had been together for four years. We met in a secondhand bookstore in the Carmen neighborhood, both looking for the same poetry collection. He gave it up first, I bought him a coffee afterward, and three weeks later we were sleeping in the same bed. Our sex life was never boring, but for months I had been turning over something I didn’t dare ask for out loud.

One February afternoon, while he was reading on the sofa and I was pretending to look at my phone, I blurted it out.

—I want you to tie me up.

He slowly lifted his eyes from the book, as if he needed a couple of seconds to make sure he’d heard correctly.

—Tie you up how?

—My hands. And… —I swallowed— I want you to be in charge.

There was a long silence. Not awkward, but dense. Andrés closed the book on his lap and looked at me with that full attention he reserved for important conversations.

—Tell me everything —he said.

So I did. I told him about the nights when I had imagined handing him control, about the things I had read in secret, about the fears I had. I confessed that I didn’t want violence, I didn’t want humiliation, I didn’t want real pain. I wanted to feel that for a while he was deciding for me. I wanted to trust someone to the point of not being able to defend myself and still know I was safe.

Andrés did not laugh. He didn’t treat me like I was saying something strange. He nodded slowly and said:

—I’ve never done this. But I want to do it right.

***

We spent two weeks talking before touching anything. He read on his own, I made him lists. Lists of what I wanted to try, of what made me curious, of what I didn’t want to come anywhere near. I explained that blood, visible bruises, and insults about my body were hard limits. I explained that light spanking, blindfolds, simple restraints, and games of control over my pleasure were things I did want to explore.

He did the same. He told me he wasn’t comfortable with choking or with any game that might leave a mark the next day. He told me that, above all, he was terrified of hurting me without realizing it.

—That’s why we’re going to use words —I told him—. Green, yellow, and red. Like traffic lights.

—And if my mouth is covered?

I had thought about that. I took a stress ball out of the drawer and put it in his hand.

—If I drop it, you stop.

Andrés nodded. That conversation was probably the most intimate moment we had had in four years.

***

The first night we tried it was a Friday. He came home from work with a small paper bag: a dark blue silk scarf, bought at a notions shop in the city center, and a white cotton blindfold. Nothing else. We had agreed to start small.

We had pasta for dinner. We each drank a single glass of wine; nothing to cloud our judgment. Then he stood up, cleared the dishes without saying a word, and when he came back to the table, he looked at me differently.

—Come to the bedroom when you’re ready —he said.

It wasn’t a disguised order pretending to be an invitation. It was a real invitation. I could have said no. I could have said “another day.” Instead, I finished my wine, set the glass on the counter, and walked barefoot down the hallway.

Andrés had turned on two small lamps. The bed was made. The scarf and the blindfold were waiting folded on the nightstand, next to the stress ball. He waited for me standing up, hands in the pockets of his pants.

—Repeat the words for me —he said.

—Green, yellow, red.

—And if you can’t speak?

—I drop the ball.

—Good.

He came closer. He moved my hair away from my face with a gesture he had made a thousand times before, but that night I felt it differently. It was the same Andrés and at the same time it wasn’t.

—Take off your clothes —he said.

I did it. Not hurriedly, not theatrically, I simply did it. I folded my T-shirt over the chair, took off my jeans, my panties, my bra. When I was naked in front of him, I did not cover myself. It was the first time nakedness had had that weight, as if every millimeter of skin were an answer to something he had not yet asked.

Andrés took the scarf. He gestured for me to sit on the edge of the bed and offered me my wrists. He tied them himself, not too tightly, leaving a finger’s width of slack. He checked that I could move them without the silk cutting into me.

—Color? —he asked.

—Green.

He laid me on my back. He lifted my arms above my head and secured the free end of the scarf to the headboard with a simple knot, the kind that comes undone by pulling one end. He had practiced.

Then he took the blindfold. Before putting it on me, he looked me in the eyes.

—If at any moment you want it off, say so.

—Green —I repeated.

I was left in darkness.

***

What happened next probably lasted half an hour. In my memory it is much longer. Andrés didn’t do anything spectacular, and that was what surprised me most. Without sight, anything he did multiplied. He ran the tip of one finger along my collarbone and I felt it all the way through me. He blew across my stomach and my skin prickled down to my thighs.

He stayed silent for a long time. I could hear my own breathing and the rustle of his clothes against the edge of the mattress. At one point, I felt something cold on my sternum, too small to identify right away, and I almost screamed. It was an ice cube. He slid it very slowly downward, tracing an icy path from the center of my chest to my belly, stopping at the edge of my navel and then going lower still, with a cruel and delicious patience, until the cold made me writhe against the restraints. I asked him what it was with a broken voice and he laughed softly and didn’t tell me.

—Color? —he asked when it started melting between my breasts.

—Green.

Things happened that I no longer remember in order. A feather on the inner side of my thighs. His lips in the hollow of my neck, not biting, just breathing. His open hand on my stomach, flat and firm, reminding me with a gesture that he decided when I moved. The only thing I could do was lie there, listen, and feel.

At one point he tried something new. He slid his hand between my legs, barely a touch, and pulled away when I started moving toward him. He did it again. And again. The third time I let out a wordless protest.

—When I decide —he said.

That sentence undid me. Not because of the sentence. Because of the tone. It was kind, it was affectionate, and yet it wasn’t a suggestion.

—Green —I said, almost pleading.

This time he didn’t just brush against me. He parted my legs carefully, with a confidence that made me bite my lip. His hand went slowly down between my thighs until it found the slick heat of my sex, and when he noticed how soaked I was he let out a low, almost satisfied breath. He touched me first with two fingers, just the entrance of my vulva, and then opened his hand a little more to rub me with his palm, firm and exact, making the center of my body tighten in response. I arched my back against the bed, tugging on the scarf, and my scalp burned from the pressure of the fabric.

—That’s it —he murmured, more to himself than to me.

He kissed my abdomen, then my pubic mound, then the insides of my thighs, all the while touching me with unbearable slowness. There was no hurry in his hands. There was method. He knew when to sink one finger deeper, when to stop pressing, when to come back down to my clit and make circles that tore a wet, shamefully loud moan from me, bouncing around the room. I finally felt his tongue where his hand had been, a brief, hot caress that sent a violent shiver through me.

—Fuck —I said, unable to stop myself.

—That’s right —he answered, and the smile was audible in his voice.

***

There was a second when I almost said yellow. Not because anything frightened me, but because the intensity was too much and I didn’t know where to put it. My eyes filled with tears beneath the blindfold, for no specific reason, and the stress ball—which I had stopped gripping without realizing it—rolled to the side of the bed.

Andrés noticed instantly.

—Hey —he said, stopping everything—. I’m here. Talk to me.

—I’m fine. It’s just… a lot.

—Color?

I thought about it. I really thought about it, with no theatrics.

—Yellow.

He stayed still. He didn’t take off the blindfold, he didn’t untie me, he simply put one hand on my chest and left it there, heavy, while I breathed. Three long breaths. Four. On the fifth, I felt myself back inside my body.

He stroked my hair, then my cheek, with a tenderness that made me realize the knot in my throat wasn’t fear, but need. I wanted more. I wanted his fingers again. I wanted him to keep pushing me slowly to the edge and holding me right before I fell.

—Green —I said.

—Are you sure?

—Sure.

I wanted him to continue. I wanted more.

***

This time his hand did not withdraw. It found that I was soaked and stayed there, unhurried, without urgency, drawing slow circles that measured each of my breaths. Every time I lifted my hips toward him, he stopped. Every time I went still again, he resumed. He was teaching me the patience of my own body, and I was learning at breakneck speed.

I heard him take off his shoes. I heard him unbuckle his belt, his jeans, everything he was wearing. He didn’t show me, I couldn’t see it, but the sound of his clothes hitting the floor was enough. The bed dipped under his weight when he climbed over me, and for the first time all night I felt his naked skin against mine. His chest was hot, his stomach firm, and his hard erection brushed my thigh before finding me for real.

—Don’t come until I tell you to —he said in my ear.

I nodded. I couldn’t do anything else.

His fingers returned, this time with a different rhythm, more determined. One of them sank into me, forcing its way in slowly, while his thumb kept punishing my clit in precise circles. Then it was two fingers, and then three, and the stretching tore from me a gasp so broken I was ashamed of how obscene it sounded. He didn’t stop. He finger-fucked me with filthy patience, driving me to the limit, pulling out and pushing in, going deeper every time my hips sought more. I felt his mouth on my chest, on my neck, in the hollow between my collarbone and my ear, licking my sweaty skin as if he wanted to taste all of me.

—More —I begged him, with no dignity left at all.

—I’m giving you everything.

The phrase made me moan. My wrists pulled at the scarf every time my body arched on its own, and the silk tightened just enough to remind me that I wasn’t in command. When I finally felt the tip of his cock seeking my entrance, I went still, soaked and trembling, waiting for the thrust with a desperation that made me furious.

He leaned over me and brushed my mouth with his.

—Tell me if you want me to stop.

—Don’t stop.

Then he entered me slowly, forcing his way in centimeter by centimeter, with an almost cruel firmness. I felt him go all the way in, filling me completely, and the moan that escaped me was so loud I didn’t care that I couldn’t see. He stayed still for a moment, breathing hard, as if he too needed to get used to the feeling of having me like that, tied up, blind, completely open for him. Then he started moving. First slow. Then deeper. Then with a hard rocking motion that made the mattress creak beneath our bodies.

—Like that —he said, and his voice turned rough—. That’s how I like to see you.

He fucked me without hurry and without mercy, alternating long thrusts with shorter ones that sent shivers from the nape of my neck to my feet. Every hit of his hips against mine made me feel him in my belly, in my chest, in my lips. I let out sounds I didn’t recognize as mine: gasps, whimpers, a repeated “yes” that wasn’t aimed at anything specific and, at the same time, at everything. His hand returned to my sex to keep rubbing me while he penetrated me, and the combination left me breathless, pinned to the bed, taut as a bow.

—Don’t come —he repeated, lower.

—I’m… I’m close.

—I know.

He took me to the edge once more and then left me hanging there. He withdrew just enough to make me protest, and came back in with a hard stroke that made stars explode behind the blindfold. The absolute control of his pauses drove me crazy. I wanted to move my hips, seek him out, chase him myself, but my tied hands prevented it and that helplessness excited me even more, beyond any shame. When he finally said “now,” it was against his fingers and against the headboard, and my whole body shook in silence because I had no air left to scream. He didn’t rush. He kept his hand where it was until the last wave ended on its own, and only then did he kiss the inside of my wrist, where the scarf had left a very faint pink mark.

Then he kept moving inside me, slower, deeper, until I felt him starting to lose rhythm. He pulled back slightly, rested his forehead against mine, and let out a deep moan, held back at first and then fully released, while he came inside me with a long shudder that tensed his thighs. I felt him spill hot and thick, and the aftershocks of his orgasm left me trembling again, still sensitive, still tied up, still his in that exact instant. He didn’t pull away right away; he stayed inside, breathing hard, as if he’d decided to remain there until the world sorted itself out again.

***

He took off the blindfold before the scarf. The lamp light blinded me for a second. Andrés was propped on one elbow beside me, hair tousled, looking closely at me as if he wanted to check that I was still myself.

—Hi —he said.

—Hi —I answered.

He untied my wrists by pulling the right end. The silk slid to the floor. He massaged my hands slowly, one and then the other, rubbing the spots where slight marks had been left and had disappeared two minutes later.

Then he went to the kitchen and came back with a glass of water and two squares of dark chocolate. He got into bed with me and fed them to me himself, one by one, as if I were incapable of holding them. Maybe I was.

—Are you okay? —he asked.

—Yes. I don’t know. Yes.

I laughed and cried at the same time. He didn’t panic. He had read that too. He held me from behind, fitting his body against mine, and stayed like that until my breathing had completely calmed down.

***

The next morning we ate breakfast in silence for a while. My wrists were perfectly fine, with no marks at all. I did have, though, a strange feeling in my body, as if I had shed a weight I didn’t know I was carrying. Andrés passed me the coffee and asked me in a text message, not out loud, how I had slept. I answered from the other side of the table, also by text, and the two of us laughed at our own shyness.

—Do we repeat it? —he asked at last, aloud.

I thought about it. I really thought about it.

—Yes. But next time I want to tie you up.

He raised his eyebrows. Set the cup down on the table.

—Negotiable —he said.

We made another list. We learned other words. We bought other things. But everything that came after was built on that first night, and that first night was built on a silk scarf, a stress ball, and three words: green, yellow, red.

Submission, I learned that night, is not weakness or surrender. It is a very precise form of trust, and the only way to practice it well is to know exactly when and how to say no.