The Night I Learned What My Place Under Her Was

I met Irene at a work dinner, and for a full hour I believed I was the one seducing her. I talked to her about myself, about my travels, about the things that are supposed to impress a woman. She listened with a half smile, stirring the wine in her glass, and every so often she asked me such a precise question that it left me exposed. By the time coffee arrived, I had understood something uncomfortable: I was not the one directing that conversation. I never had been.

—You have a pretty mouth —she told me as she said goodbye, looking at it as if she were calculating its usefulness—. It’s a shame you almost always use it to show off.

I didn’t know what to answer. She had already turned away.

It took her three weeks to write to me again, and when she did it wasn’t an invitation, it was an instruction. An address, a time, and a sentence: “Be punctual and come hungry for something else.” I arrived twelve minutes early, standing in front of her door, going over excuses in case I changed my mind. I didn’t.

***

Her apartment was tidy, warm, with nothing out of place. She let me in, offered me a drink I never touched, and sat across from me in a dark velvet armchair, legs crossed and with a calm that allowed no hurry.

—I want to make a couple of things clear before we go on —she said—. What happens here is not about you. You’re not going to come looking for your pleasure, or to prove to me how good you are. You’re going to come to serve. Is that clear?

I should get up. I should say this isn’t my thing.

But I didn’t get up. I nodded, and something in my chest loosened when I did, as if I had spent years waiting for someone to tell me exactly what to do.

—I can’t hear you —she said, without raising her voice.

—Yes. That’s clear to me.

—Yes, ma’am —she corrected.

—Yes, ma’am.

She smiled for the first time for real, and it was a smile that had nothing soft about it.

***

She made me kneel in the center of the room, on the wood floor, without a cushion. She said the floor would help me remember where I was. Then she stood up and walked around me slowly, studying me from above, letting me feel the weight of her gaze on the nape of my neck.

—Hands behind your back —she ordered—. You’re not going to touch me until I say so, and I may never say so.

I crossed my wrists behind my back. The simple gesture changed my whole body: suddenly I was aware of my breathing, of the cold floor on my knees, of how exposed I was without anything to do with my hands.

Irene was wearing a straight skirt to the knee and a dark blouse. She sat again on the edge of the armchair, right in front of me, and slowly lifted her skirt, inch by inch, looking me in the eyes the whole time so she wouldn’t miss my reaction.

—Tonight you don’t serve me with your hands —she said—. Come closer.

I moved forward on my knees. Every step was clumsy, humiliating, and she enjoyed it. When I was close enough, she placed the sole of her foot on my shoulder and pushed me back, just to make sure she could.

—Slower. You’re not in a hurry. Your time, from now on, is whatever I lend you.

Her skirt was lifted high enough to let me see the wetness between her thighs, the edge of her underwear parted by the very hand with which she held herself with insulting confidence. I kept staring, swallowing, my mouth already dry and my heart beating faster, and she let out a short, satisfied laugh when she noticed how thrown off balance I was.

—Look at me properly —she said—. You’re going to learn where you’re needed and where you’re not. And now you’re going to use your mouth.

She grabbed my hair and pulled me between her legs. The smell of her hit me at once: heat, skin, arousal, a raw intimacy that left no room for poetry. She opened her legs wider and forced me to tilt my head until my breathing collided with her sex, wet and throbbing. I ran my tongue over it first with hesitation, testing the surface, and immediately she pressed my head against her with a low moan.

—Like that. Lower. Don’t be delicate.

I obeyed. I opened my mouth and licked her without elegance, eager to do the job well, putting my tongue where she wanted it, tracing the soft center of her vulva, the slick slit, the clit already swollen and sensitive under my mouth. Irene arched forward and cursed under her breath, one of those curses that didn’t seem meant for anyone and still lit up the whole air.

—That’s it —she said, breathing harder—. Suck me like your life depends on it.

I obeyed with more hunger. My mouth grew soaked, my chin shining with her slick, and she began moving against me in a rhythm that grew less and less restrained. I held on as best I could, my hands still trapped behind my back, doing the only thing I was allowed: opening my tongue wider, burying myself in her, licking her cunt with the exact persistence that made her shiver. When I felt her tense, I sucked her clit carefully and then more firmly, alternating pressure and tongue, until she let out a more broken sound, less elegant, with no mask left at all.

—Good —she murmured—. Like that. Don’t stop.

***

She ordered me to lie on my back on the rug. I did. The white ceiling, the lamp switched off, my own breathing too fast. I heard her stand up, heard the rustle of fabric, and then her shadow covered the light.

She stood over me, one leg on each side of my head, and from below everything was different: the curve of her thighs, the skirt gathered in one hand, the expression of someone who decides. There was nothing uncertain about her. She lowered herself very slowly, bending her knees, until the heat of her body was only a couple of fingers away from my face.

—You’re going to breathe when I let you —she said—. You’re going to use your tongue the way I teach you, no more and no less. And if you do it well, I might thank you. If you do it badly, we’ll repeat it until you learn.

And she sat down.

The world shrank in an instant. I stopped seeing the ceiling, stopped seeing the room, stopped existing as something separate from her. Her cunt covered my mouth and nose, warm and firm, and for a second instinct made me want to turn my head. She didn’t allow it. A hand pressed against my forehead and held me in place, without violence, with the certainty of someone who knows I won’t move.

—Still —she said from above—. Work.

And I worked.

My tongue found its way on its own into the thick wetness of her sex, finding folds, layers, the living pulse of her arousal. She moved on my face with a control that soon began to break, and I felt in her thighs the first contraction of her loss of composure. I held her as best I could, my mouth buried in her, licking from her entrance to her clit, sucking hungrily, moving back down, clumsy at first and then more exact each time. Irene began to breathe in broken pulls.

—There —she said, almost breathless—. That. Exactly there.

At first it was pure clumsiness. I searched, probed, not really knowing what she wanted. Irene corrected me with short words, barely moving: up, softer, not there, there yes, slowly. She rewarded every success with a tiny change in her breathing; every mistake, with a silence heavier than any scolding. I learned her geography by making mistakes, until my lips and tongue began to understand what she never had to explain twice. Her body responded to the center, to the exact pressure, to the rhythm of suction, and I refined the movement until I felt her truly trembling.

She let me breathe in intervals she decided. She lifted herself barely a few centimeters, just long enough for me to take air, and came back down before I had finished filling my lungs. That absolute dependence —air itself granted by her will— disarmed me more than anything else. I wasn’t thinking about my pleasure. I didn’t even remember I had one. I was only thinking about her, her rhythm, doing it right. My own arousal throbbed hard against the rug, ignored, heavier and heavier in my pants, while her sex opened and contracted against my mouth.

—Better —she murmured, and the word ran through me whole—. Much better. Keep going exactly like that.

She began moving on my face with slow motions of her hips, setting the rhythm herself, using me in the exact way she needed. I was seat and tool at once, and for the first time in a long while I didn’t have to decide anything. There was nothing to prove, nothing to direct. Only to obey. And obeying, I discovered, could be a kind of peace I had never felt before.

Her wetness soaked my face. My tongue ached from working so much, but I didn’t slack off. Every time she tightened more, I insisted a little more, licking with greater pressure, sucking the most sensitive point until her breathing turned rough and disordered. I felt her tense all the way through, her hips trembling over my mouth, and then she grabbed my hair hard, not to pull me away but to pin me there while she let herself go.

—Don’t stop —she said, and the order was no longer cold, it was almost a plea disguised as a command—. Don’t you dare stop.

I didn’t stop. Even though I was short of air, even though her knees were trembling on either side of my head, even though my own body was burning, ignored, against the rug. None of that mattered. Her pleasure was the only thing entrusted to me, and I clung to that task as if it were the most important thing I had ever done.

When she came, she did it by pressing herself against me with no consideration at all, choking me in her heat while a deep sound rose from her chest. Her cunt clenched shut over my mouth with a force I hadn’t expected from her, and the first spasm ran through her legs before spreading through her whole body. She came on my tongue with brutal, wet, overflowing tension, and I felt the hot flow fill my mouth and spill down my chin while she kept trembling, still mounted on my face, squeezed out by her own orgasm. Her thighs closed over my temples with a force that made me see stars.

She held me there, without letting me have any air, until the last shudder went through her body and only then lifted herself just enough for me to breathe.

I sucked in huge mouthfuls of air, dizzy, my face soaked and my heart battering my ribs. I had never felt so used. I had never liked it so much.

***

Irene stood up with a calm she had already fully recovered, pulled her skirt down with two precise motions, and sat back down in her armchair as if nothing before had disturbed a single strand of her hair. I was still on the floor, not knowing whether I was allowed to move.

—Stay there —she said, reaching for the glass of wine she had left untouched at the beginning—. I like looking at you like this.

She took a sip, unhurried, watching me over the rim of the glass. I waited —for a word, permission, any sign that I had done enough. She took her time giving it to me, and I understood that the delay was part of the game. She made me wait to remind me that waiting was my work too.

—You did well for a first time —she said at last—. You have a lot to learn, but the raw material is there. —She crossed her legs—. Next time it’ll be longer. And you’ll bring that mouth of yours with less bragging and more usefulness. Is that clear?

—Yes, ma’am —I answered, my voice rough.

She smiled, satisfied, and I knew that word —ma’am— was going to mark every night that came after. She made a small gesture with her hand, pointing to the door, giving me permission to get dressed and leave. Not a kiss, not a hug, not another word. Only the certainty that I would come back as soon as she ordered it.

I went out into the street with my knees still marked and a new feeling lodged in my chest. That woman from the dinner, the one who had listened to my boasting with a half smile, had seen in me something I didn’t even know was there. And against everything I thought I knew about myself, the only thing I wanted in the world was for her next message not to take three weeks.

It took four days. I arrived twelve minutes early.