The Lesson the Boy I Humiliated Gave Me

The last thing I remembered was the noise of the bar and Sofía’s laughter as she told me some joke or other. I’d had two drinks, no more. I remember Adrián coming closer with that crooked smile of his, offering me a sip from his glass “to take the cold off.” I laughed in his face, like I always did. And then the floor started moving.

When I opened my eyes, I was no longer in the bar.

My head was heavy and my tongue felt like rags, with a strange metallic taste. I tried to move and discovered I couldn’t: my wrists hung from a steel bar bolted to the ceiling, and my feet barely brushed a cold cement floor. I looked down and felt my blood turn to ice.

I was completely naked.

“Good evening, princess.”

The voice came from behind me. I pulled against the ropes to turn around and saw him seated in a folding chair, legs spread, a glass of whisky in his hand. Adrián. The same Adrián I’d been calling “the ugly duckling” of the group for two years. The one who laughed when I laughed at him. The one who, one night, drunkenly confessed he loved me, and whom I had sent packing in front of everyone at a karaoke bar.

“What the fuck did you do to me?” I spat at him. “Untie me right now or I swear I’ll kill you!”

I was bluffing. I had to be bluffing. Adrián was a nobody, a guy with no presence, no sex appeal, no balls. He was trying to scare me. The moment he saw me fight back, he’d cave and call a cab.

He got to his feet without hurrying. He started circling me slowly, looking me over from head to toe like someone evaluating a used car. I turned with him as far as the ropes allowed, ready to make it very clear which league each of us played in.

“Tonight I’m going to teach you manners, Mariana,” he said from behind me.

“You pig!”

I felt a sharp slap on one ass cheek and then two hands groping for my breasts from behind. I reacted like an animal: I lowered my head and bit down hard on his right forearm with all the strength I could muster. I tasted his skin, heard him cry out, and I knew that if the ropes had given me a couple more inches, I would have torn the flesh right down to the bone.

Adrián stepped back beyond my reach. When he came back into my field of vision, he was holding something he hadn’t had before: a long whip, braided leather, with a tip finer than a finger.

“So that’s how it is,” he said, blowing on the mark of my teeth. “Change of plans.”

“If you touch me with that I swear to God I’ll—”

“I’m going to give you as many lashes as it takes for you to understand where you are and who’s in charge. I won’t stop until you’re a good girl. Do you hear me?”

“You couldn’t if you tried, asshole.”

I lost sight of him behind me. I heard the crack of leather slicing through the air a tenth of a second before the lash crossed my ass. It was pain I’d never felt in my life: a line of fire from one side to the other. Before I could react, the second one was already coming down.

“Aaaah! Son of a bitch!”

“I warned you.”

“Stop!”

“Not a chance.”

The third caught me in the same spot. The fourth a little lower. The fifth climbed up to my kidneys and tore a scream out of me that surprised even me. I, who could stand half an hour in the sauna at the gym, couldn’t handle five whip strokes.

“I’m going to whip that mouth out of you, Mariana.”

“Animal!”

“And that spoiled little-girl stare too.”

Each blow landed on skin already burning from the last one. The leather bit into me like hot shards of glass. I wanted to fight back, wanted to spit at him, wanted to convince myself he’d back off soon. But by ten lashes, tears were spilling down my face on their own and I couldn’t stop them.

“Stop, for fuck’s sake, stop!”

“I still haven’t heard you apologize for the bite.”

“Go to hell!”

I felt him move around to stand in front of me. I thought of lunging at him with another bite and he noticed: the ropes wouldn’t let me. Adrián smiled.

“Good girls don’t bite. We’re going to continue.”

The next stroke crossed my thighs, just below my ass, where the skin is thinner. I screamed so hard my throat hurt. The next one licked my hip and the whip’s tip struck me two inches above my sex. I ran out of breath.

“Careful, damn it!” I panted. “You almost hit me there!”

“Then you’d better start behaving.”

“Aaaah!”

“I’m still waiting.”

I don’t know how many came after that. I only know that at some point, my pride snapped like a dry branch. I swallowed saliva tasting of salt and said, my voice in tatters:

“I… I’m sorry.”

The next lash told me it hadn’t been enough.

“Louder. Clearer.”

“Adrián, I’m sorry, forgive me for the bite, please!”

The whip stopped.

***

I heard him walk slowly until he was behind me. I felt his hands on my punished ass cheeks and nearly passed out from the pain. But his hands didn’t hurt me any more, they just rubbed me, almost gently, as if he were measuring his work. Then they slid up my waist, brushed the outline of my breasts from below, and moved away.

“Good. Now you’re apologizing. That’s the first step.”

“Untie me, please.”

“No.”

“Adrián…”

“I told you I wasn’t going to stop until you were a good girl. Apologizing is only the beginning.”

I heard the crack again. This time the blow landed in the middle of my back and my torso jerked forward as if someone had plugged me into an electric cable. My breasts bounced, free and exposed. Before I could recover, another blow on my ass pushed me back the other way.

“I’ve already apologized!”

“The second step is humiliating you.”

“What?”

“Humiliating you, Mariana. Right down to the bottom. To places you’d never have gone on your own.”

“Ow!”

“We’ve got all night. When you come up with something humiliating enough, I’ll stop for a while.”

The next blow caught me in the back and the tip of the whip curled around to the front. The end struck my right breast full on, right on the nipple. Everything went white. I screamed and twisted as if he’d driven a needle into me.

“Not there! Please, not there!”

“Then hurry up.”

I had to say something. Anything. My mind wasn’t working through the pain, but I understood the rules of the game: he wanted me to offer myself. He wanted the girl who laughed at him to ask him, in her own voice, for what I’d never have let him have at the bar.

I swallowed.

“Adrián… touch my tits. Please.”

“What did you just say to me?”

“Adrián, please, touch my tits! Touch my nipples. Use your hands. Do whatever you want with them.”

The whip stopped again.

Adrián came closer and wrapped one arm around my waist. His other hand slid up my belly and took one full breast, calmly, unhurriedly. He squeezed it. He pinched my nipple until it hurt, then eased off. He played with both of them as he pleased, while I, tied up as I was, could do nothing but breathe in short gasps and feel how my body, traitorous thing, started responding to hands all over me I had not asked for but had begged for.

“Very good. You’re learning.”

“Is that all? Untie me?”

“No.”

The next lash hit my ass again, and I understood the game wasn’t over. It had only changed phase.

***

“Fuck off, Adrián, no more, please…”

“You’re still not humiliating yourself for real.”

“I let you touch my tits!”

“Any drunk bitch in a club lets you do that. Keep going.”

“Ow! Damn it!”

“Think.”

I thought. My mind, blank with pain, found the next step only because it was obvious. If the breasts weren’t enough, the next places were the ones the whip had left alone so far.

“Adrián…” I panted. “Touch my pussy. Touch it. Touch my lips and my clit. Please.”

“Again.”

“Please, Adrián, I want you to touch my pussy, to play with my clit.”

I’d heard myself say many things in my life, but I didn’t even recognize that sentence. Adrián came up behind me and slid his left hand between my thighs. His fingers found my lips and opened them without any delicacy. With his other hand he reached around to the front and started rubbing my clit in small circles, with a skill I would never in a million years have suspected in him.

My body betrayed me again. I started moving, just a little, slowly, against his hand. And he noticed.

“Look at that,” he murmured against my ear. “The princess had been wet for a while.”

“Shut up.”

“No, Mariana. Today we talk. That’s what we’re doing today. Talking.”

He took his hands away. I breathed. And then the whip came back.

“But I already…!”

“There’s one last thing left.”

“What else do you want?”

“You know what I want. You’ve known since you opened your eyes. You just have to say it out loud.”

I knew. Of course I knew. And it terrified me. Not because of the sex, but because of what asking him would mean: Adrián, the ugly duckling from karaoke, the boy I’d turned down in front of the whole crowd. But pain had done its work. Pride had gone down the drain with the tears and the screams.

“Adrián,” I said, my voice rough, almost like another woman’s, “fuck me.”

“More detail.”

“Fuck me from behind. Fuck me in the ass. Please.”

“Why?”

“Because I deserve it. For being a bitch. For laughing at you. For calling you what I called you.”

I pushed my hips back as far as the ropes would allow. My breasts hung free in front of me, my legs spread, my ass offered up as I had never offered anything in my life. I closed my eyes and heard myself say:

“Please, Adrián. Put your dick in my ass and do whatever you want. I’m nothing but a whore who’s owed you this for two years.”

I heard the zipper. I heard the click of the belt. I heard his steps moving in behind me, parting my thighs a little wider. And then I heard something, almost a sigh, that wasn’t his but mine: a mix of fear, relief, and something else I didn’t want to name.

When he entered me, it hurt. It hurt as if I were splitting apart. I let out a scream that bounced off the cement, but he didn’t ease up. He gripped my waist with both hands and started moving slowly at first, then harder, until my breasts bounced with every thrust and the ceiling bar creaked above me.

I don’t know how long it lasted. I know that when he came inside me, I had my forehead against my arm and my cheeks wet, and that my body, against all odds, had tightened into something like an orgasm.

Adrián slipped out of me slowly. He kissed the back of my neck with a tenderness that made no sense at all. And my own mouth, the same mouth that had spat at him two hours earlier, said in a low voice:

“Thank you, Adrián. I deserved it.”