The Pact of Going Barefoot That He Sealed with His Tongue

Renata hadn’t worn shoes for three years. The only things adorning her feet were two thin silver rings, one on the index toe of each foot, and nothing else. No sandals, no stockings, no leather soles like any other woman would have used to cross a wet sidewalk. She walked barefoot through the apartment, through the patio, over the cold tiles of the laundry room, and over the warm asphalt of the street when she went downstairs to buy bread.

She didn’t do it as punishment. She did it because at the end of every day she knew what the reward would be.

Tomás was waiting for her. And when she came in through the door, the soles of her feet darkened with the day’s dust, he was already kneeling, ready to lick every footprint of the path she had walked.

I walked more than usual today, she thought that afternoon as she climbed the three flights of stairs without an elevator. He’s going to have work to do.

Neither of them considered themselves the other’s master. She was not his submissive in the sense understood by people who look from the outside, and he was not her owner. There were no contracts, no written rules, no safeword noted down on any paper. What existed between them was something else, older and simpler: respect, love, and a carnal desire that hadn’t worn out with time.

***

The pact had been born almost by accident, one summer night.

Renata had gone out for a walk without shoes, half as a joke, challenging herself to feel the neighborhood under her skin. The tiles still held the sun’s heat, the puddles from the afternoon rain wet her heels, and the sand from the construction site on the corner worked its way between her toes. When she came back, her feet were a mess: gray, rough, with a little crust of dirt stuck to the arch.

She expected Tomás to laugh. Instead, he looked at her for a long moment, knelt without saying a word, and took her right ankle in both hands.

—What are you doing? —she asked, not moving.

—Let me —he said, and that was the only thing he said.

What came next was unlike anything she had ever felt before. Tomás’s tongue traveled over the entire sole, from heel to the base of the toes, slow, without disgust, almost reverently. He cleaned the dirt from the arch with his lips. He took each toe into his mouth, one by one, and lingered on the little toe as if it were the most valuable thing in the house.

Renata held on to the doorframe. She didn’t understand why her heart was pounding like that, or why heat was rising up from the back of her neck, but she didn’t ask him to stop.

That night they promised each other things. Fidelity, first. Complicity, after. And in the end, the strangest and most theirs of all: she would live barefoot, for him and because of him, and he would care for and venerate her feet every night, without exception, as long as what they had lasted.

At first it was strange for both of them. Renata had to learn to step differently, to calculate where she put her weight, to recognize glass by touch before the sole of her foot did. Tomás had to accept that this was not a one-night whim, but a way of loving each other they would sustain with their bodies. The first few weeks she came back with her feet hurt and he healed them with the same mouth with which he later worshipped them. With time, her skin toughened, calluses appeared at the points of support, and those rough patches, far from frightening him, became what he most sought with his tongue.

***

Three years later, the ritual remained intact.

That afternoon Renata closed the door behind her and leaned against it. Tomás was already in the living room, with a towel folded over the arm of the sofa and the jars lined up on the low table: the thick cream, the almond oil, the thinner one that smelled of eucalyptus. He had everything ready, as every night.

—Come here —he said, patting the sofa.

She crossed the room leaving faint marks on the floor, sat down, and stretched her legs over his lap. Tomás took her left foot first. He lifted it to face level, turned it slowly to look at the dirty sole in the lamplight, and something in his jaw tightened.

—You walked barefoot through the construction site again —he murmured.

—Only along the side —she replied, with a smile that was anything but innocent—. I knew you’d like it.

He didn’t answer with words. He lowered his head and ran his tongue over her heel, where the skin was harder, more weathered by three years of going without protection. Renata closed her eyes.

Tomás’s mouth worked with a patience she knew by heart and that, even so, surprised her every time. He traced the edge of her foot, climbed the arch, lingered on the callused forefoot as if he wanted to soften it by force of saliva and attention. He gently nibbled the heel’s roughness, without hurting, just enough for her to feel the edge of his teeth after the heat of his tongue.

There’s nothing like this, Renata thought. No one else in the world knows what I feel right now.

He cleaned the dirt from between her toes with the tip of his tongue, one by one, and when he reached the big toe he enclosed it entirely with his lips and sucked. Renata let the air escape through her nose. The silver ring was cold against his hot mouth, and that contrast —metal and tongue, cold and fire— went through her like an electric current.

—The other one —she said softly.

Tomás let go of the left foot and took the right one. He repeated everything with the same devotion, without hurrying. The sole, the arch, the heel, the toes. When he was done cleaning them with his mouth, only then did he reach for the oil.

***

The massage was something else entirely.

Tomás dripped a few drops of almond oil into his palms, rubbed them together to warm it, and began pressing his thumbs into the arch of her foot. Renata felt something inside her come undone. His hands knew every point, every tendon, every knot the day had left behind. He pressed the heel with the base of his palm, slid his knuckles along the sole, carefully pulled on each toe until the joint gave with a barely audible crack.

—You have the most beautiful feet I’ve ever seen —he said, without looking up—. And they’re more beautiful this way, worn down, than the day I met you.

—They’re yours —she answered—. That’s why they’re like this.

He lifted his head at that, and for an instant they looked at each other. There was nothing submissive in her eyes, nor anything domineering in his. There was mutual surrender, an agreement the two of them upheld in equal parts and that neither of them could quite explain.

Now the oil glistened on her insteps. Tomás kept going down with his hands, kneaded her calves, opened her knees just a little. Renata felt the shift in the air before he said anything.

***

She lay back on the sofa and let him lift her legs. Tomás settled himself between her thighs, on his knees on the floor, and rested both feet on his shoulders, the still-oiled soles facing the ceiling.

That was always how it ended. With her feet on his shoulders, he leaned forward and entered her slowly, all the way, holding her by the hips. Renata arched her back. The friction of the oil against his skin, the weight of her own bent body, her heels resting against the curve of Tomás’s neck: everything added up into one dense sensation that had no name.

He moved with the same patient rhythm he used to lick her. Without rushing, measuring each thrust, attentive to every change in her breathing. Every so often he turned his head to bite the edge of her foot, to pass his tongue over the sole once more, without ever stopping moving inside her.

—Don’t stop —Renata begged, her voice breaking.

—I’m not going to stop —he said—. Never.

The tension kept building in silence, like a tide. Renata dug her fingers into the sofa fabric, felt the heat gather in her lower belly and spill over all at once. She bit her lip to keep from crying out and still a rough sound escaped her throat. Her legs trembled on his shoulders.

Tomás followed close behind. He drove deeper, faster, until his whole body tensed and emptied inside her with a dull growl and a long exhale, his face buried against the arch of her right foot, barely biting the callus on her heel like someone biting something he loves.

***

Afterward they stayed still, she stretched out on the sofa and he still on his knees, his cheek resting against her ankle.

Renata stroked his hair with her foot, slowly, sliding the sole over the back of his neck.

—Tomorrow I’m going to walk to the market —she said—. The long way.

Tomás smiled against her skin and kissed the top of her foot.

—I’ll be waiting for you —he replied—. Like every night.

And she knew it would be so. That the next day she would go out barefoot again, with her two silver rings and nothing else, to gather dust and dirt and neighborhood footprints on the soles of her feet. Not out of obedience, nor as punishment. But because at the end of the road there was him, kneeling, waiting to venerate every step she had taken away from his mouth.