The Tutoring Session That Became Their Worst Lesson

The principal’s office had that kind of silence that’s imposed on purpose. The blinds half-drawn, the dark wooden desk, the framed diplomas on the walls. Everything arranged to remind whoever walked in that power belonged to other people there, and that the best thing they could do was accept it and leave as quickly as possible.

Laura, Carmen, Beatriz and Silvia took a seat without saying a word. The four of them were hovering around forty, though none of them looked that old. Laura was thirty-seven and worked as a designer from home. Carmen, a year older, had spent half her life on voluntary leave. Beatriz was a martial arts instructor, something the other three mentioned rarely in public and which, in this particular moment, was going to be very relevant. Silvia taught acting at a theater school in the neighborhood, which explained, at least in part, why she always carried a handbag full of objects most people would not consider essential.

They were women from a quiet neighborhood, the kind who let someone else go first in the supermarket queue and smile when interrupted. That air of calm was precisely what would later confuse the two men most when they tried to explain what had happened inside that room.

The principal, Mr. Aguado, stood behind his desk. Fifty-something, silver hair combed with too much care, and rectangular glasses that gave him the air of an academic who had not read much. He hadn’t bothered to greet them when they came in. The tutor, Mr. Marcos, was in a corner with his arms crossed. Bald, with a few days’ growth of beard and the permanent expression of someone who had been waiting all day for this moment.

—Right —Marcos began without preamble, in the tone of someone who had no intention of hearing anything they were told—. Enough is enough. Your children painted the courtyard wall, set off firecrackers in the materials storage room, and emptied a canister of oil over the desks in sixth grade’s classroom. That isn’t a prank. It’s pure and simple vandalism.

He spat when he talked. Silvia noticed and shifted slightly out of the spray.

—With all due respect —Silvia said, her voice calm—, what you’re describing happened in a school with two hundred students. Why do you assume it was ours?

—Because we have witnesses —Aguado replied, interlacing his fingers on the desk in a pose meant to seem solemn—. And because it’s not the first time. I have the report here. We’re talking about a minimum fifteen-day suspension.

—Fifteen days —Carmen repeated, measuring every syllable.

—At minimum —Marcos stressed, with a small, very satisfied smile that did him no favors at all.

—You call our children savages —Laura said without raising her voice—. Am I hearing that right?

Aguado leaned back in his chair with the ease of someone who had spent years in that office and believed he had never been wrong.

—What I said is that those children’s behavior is unacceptable. And that you, as mothers, have a responsibility you are clearly not fulfilling.

It was that “clearly” that changed the temperature in the room.

Laura looked at Beatriz. Beatriz looked at Silvia. Silvia looked at Carmen. It was an exchange of a fraction of a second, a wordless conversation the two men failed to read in time.

Beatriz got to her feet.

She didn’t do it slowly, she didn’t do it theatrically. She simply stood, went around the desk in four steps, and drove her knee into the tutor’s stomach with the precision of someone who had spent twenty years training. Marcos folded forward, breathless. Before he could react, he took a sharp blow to the back of the neck that sent him straight to the floor.

Aguado took exactly two seconds to rise from his chair. The two seconds it took Carmen to move behind him and lock his arms behind his back in a hold that would not give.

—Stay still —Carmen said in the principal’s ear, in a voice that was in no hurry at all.

The office fell silent.

***

Laura closed the blinds. Silvia threw the deadbolt on the door. Then a thin nylon cord came out of Silvia’s bag, the kind used on boats. Strong, soft to the touch, practically harmless-looking.

—I always carry it —Silvia explained, though no one had asked—. Just in case.

Beatriz and Carmen hauled Marcos off the floor and sat him in a chair. Silvia tied his wrists behind the backrest with knots that would not give, the same ones her father had taught her as a child on the family sailboat. Marcos had gone white, eyes wide open. He was breathing through his nose with effort.

Aguado was still immobilized by Carmen. He tried to resist once. Only once. Carmen tightened the hold and he immediately understood he wasn’t going to win that struggle. They sat him in another chair, next to his tutor, and tied his hands the same way.

The four women stood in front of the two men. The two men stared at the floor, the ceiling, anywhere but at the four women standing before them.

—Look —Beatriz said, in the same tone she used when explaining something in class—. The situation is very simple. You withdraw the suspension, destroy the file, and this never happened. We all walk out of here the way we came in.

Aguado raised his head. He was still trying to cling to the remnants of the authority with which he had started the meeting.

—You’re crazy —he said—. I’m going to report you. I’m going to…

Laura’s slap rang through the whole room. It wasn’t hard, but it was deliberate. Her palm flat against the principal’s right cheek. The mark stayed on his skin for several seconds.

—Were you going to say something? —Laura asked.

Aguado shut his mouth.

Marcos had his jaw clenched and a thread of sweat at his temple. He looked at the principal, eyes wide.

—Fermín —he said in a low voice—. Please. Withdraw it. Let them go.

—I’m not giving in to…

Carmen covered his mouth before he could finish the sentence. She did it calmly, almost tenderly.

—Don’t finish that sentence —she advised him—. Seriously. Don’t finish it.

***

Beatriz moved behind the principal’s chair and took his head in both hands, tilting it back until his throat was exposed. It wasn’t an unbearable position, but it was one Aguado couldn’t get out of. He realized he had no control over his own body at that moment, and that sensation was entirely new to him.

—Listen to me carefully —Beatriz told him in the ear, in an almost kind voice—. Our children have their problems. We’re not blind. But you’ve spent years treating the families at this school as if you were the only adults in the room. As if the rest of us should just nod and leave. That ends today.

Aguado tried to speak. Beatriz tightened her grip on his head.

—Not yet. First you listen.

Carmen had sat on the edge of the principal’s desk, legs crossed, calmly reviewing the file. She turned the pages unhurriedly, lifting her gaze from time to time.

—Here there are two pages —she said—. Paint, firecrackers, oil. Ten-year-old boys’ pranks. And the response is a fifteen-day suspension. —She closed the folder and let it drop onto the desk—. How much do you charge when you behave the way you’ve behaved with us today?

Marcos let out a sound that might have been a protest or might have been something else. Laura looked at him with her head slightly tilted. Then she looked at the other three.

—I think —Laura said slowly, taking off her jacket and placing it carefully over the back of the empty chair— that these two need a lesson that stays in their bodies. One that can’t be told anywhere without making them look like idiots.

Silvia smiled for the first time in the whole meeting. It was a slow smile, the smile of someone giving herself permission.

—I agree —she said.

She went up to Aguado and, without taking her eyes off his, unbuckled his belt. The principal instinctively squeezed his legs together, but with his hands tied to the backrest he couldn’t do anything else. Silvia pulled his trousers down to his ankles, and then his briefs, with the same calm she might have used to peel a piece of fruit. The principal’s cock appeared shrunken, a pink, embarrassed lump between hairy thighs. Silvia snorted with laughter.

—Look at that —she said—. The way he shouts in meetings and then this.

—Please —murmured Aguado, his voice completely unlike the one he’d had five minutes earlier—. Please, no.

—Now you say please —Carmen replied, sliding off the desk—. How polite you’ve become, Fermín.

Carmen knelt between the principal’s legs. She didn’t do it in submission. She did it because from there he could see her better. She took his soft cock in two fingers, almost with disgust, and started fondling it while looking him in the eyes.

—It’s going to get hard —she told him—. I know it and you know it. And that’s going to fuck up the rest of your life, because you’ll know it got hard while four mothers from the school treated you like the last loser in the neighborhood.

Aguado closed his eyes. Carmen spat on the tip and began jerking him off with a hand slick with saliva, loose wrist, with no tenderness whatsoever. The principal’s cock responded within seconds, swelling between her fingers until it stood rigid and curved upward, betraying him completely.

—There it is —Carmen said—. You disgust me.

She took it into her mouth without warning. Aguado let out a short, involuntary moan, which Beatriz echoed with a dry laugh from behind the chair. Carmen sucked him with the precise technique of someone who doesn’t want it to last too long: tongue working the head, lips tight around the base, right hand pumping the shaft in time with her head moving up and down. The principal writhed in the chair, thighs trembling, the nylon cords marking his wrists.

—Look at me while I suck you —Carmen ordered, pulling it out of her mouth for an instant—. Look at me, Fermín. I want you to remember my face every time you come into this office.

She took it back in to the hilt. Aguado opened his eyes and looked at her, because he had no choice. His face burned, red with humiliation and the effort not to cum right there.

Meanwhile, Laura had taken care of Marcos. She had pulled down his trousers less gently and yanked his cock out of his briefs. Marcos was already half-hard. That earned him a very ugly smile from Laura.

—Ah, so you were already into this before we started —she said—. Perfect.

She hiked her skirt up to her waist, pulled her panties down one leg until she took them off completely, and sat astride Marcos, facing away from him. She gave him neither a kiss nor a caress. She grabbed his cock, positioned herself above him, and sank onto it in one motion, letting out a deep gasp that sounded more like effort than pleasure.

—Don’t move —she told him—. I’ll move.

Marcos wouldn’t have been able to move even if he wanted to. He was tied up and Laura was heavy on top of him. She began riding him with her hands braced on his knees, going up and down at a controlled, almost methodical rhythm, staring fixedly at Silvia while she fucked her son’s tutor. Silvia met her gaze, leaning against the wall, one hand slipped inside her own pants. She was masturbating without any hurry, watching the spectacle like someone rehearsing a scene.

—He’s shaking —Laura reported, never stopping her movement—. He’s going to cum in a second. Like a child.

—No, please —Marcos managed to say—, please, not inside…

Laura laughed with her mouth open. She sprang up, Marcos’s cock slipping out of her pussy with a wet sound, and slapped the inside of his thigh.

—You don’t get to decide where you cum today, sweetheart.

She sat back down on him, this time facing him. She took his face in both hands and made him look at her while she fucked him harder, rocking her hips against the tutor’s pelvis, her tits bouncing against his shirt. Marcos had his mouth open and his eyes glassy. He lasted less than a minute. He came inside her with a muffled groan, his face twisting as if it hurt, and Laura bit his lower lip at the exact moment he emptied himself.

—There —she said, sitting up—. Inside, just like you asked not to.

She moved away, revealing the semen beginning to run down her thigh. She made no move to clean herself. She turned to Beatriz and shrugged.

—Your turn, if you want.

Beatriz shook her head without smiling.

—I’d rather watch Carmen finish.

Carmen was still kneeling in front of Aguado, sucking him with a steadiness that had already started to feel cruel. The principal had his eyes squeezed shut, jaw trembling, his whole body straining forward against the ropes. He was holding back. He was fighting not to cum in the mouth of the mother who had come to defend her child.

—Let it go —Beatriz told him—. Cum already, Fermín. It’s written all over your face.

—I don’t… want to…

—It’s not about what you want.

Beatriz came up behind him and bit his ear. She spoke very softly, in the voice she used on the mat when she wanted a student to block a strike on the first try.

—Cum in her mouth. That’s an order. Cum, and swallow it inside yourself too, because from today on you’re going to carry this moment stuck to your brain every time you see a mother walk through that door.

Aguado let out a long, filthy moan. He came in Carmen’s mouth with his cock vibrating against her tongue, thrusting his pelvis forward with the little strength he had left. Carmen didn’t swallow. She pulled away, let the semen hang for a second from the corner of her lips, and then spat everything out, very slowly, onto the principal’s trousers that were still bunched around his ankles.

—There you have it —she said, standing and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand—. A souvenir.

Silvia took her hand out of her pants without having finished, with no urgency whatsoever. She fastened her button and straightened her shirt. She went over to the two men, who were breathing hard, one with Laura’s cum still damp on his cock, the other with spit and semen dripping onto his knees.

—I just wanted them to let me go —Silvia repeated, imitating the voice Marcos had used before—. How sad. Not anymore.

Laura, meanwhile, was pulling her panties and skirt back into place with almost domestic calm. She ran a hand through her hair. She wiped the inside of her thigh with a handkerchief she took from her bag and dropped it, very carefully, into the trash can next to the principal’s desk.

—Another souvenir —she said.

She went over to Aguado, bent down until she was level with him, and patted his cheek twice.

—How many years have you been at this school, Fermín? —Silvia asked from the other side.

Aguado didn’t answer.

—Twelve —Silvia answered for him—. Twelve years. And in twelve years no one has said this to your face. So listen carefully: respect doesn’t come from the title you’ve got hanging on the wall. You earn it. And today you didn’t earn it.

The principal looked at her. Silvia didn’t look away. In the room there was nothing but the breathing of the two men tied to their chairs, one with his cock still out and shrinking again, the other sweating with his mouth open.

—If either of you says anything after today —Beatriz said, finally letting go of Aguado’s head—, we’ll be back. And we won’t be so nice.

—And if anyone asks you —Laura added—, this meeting was perfectly normal. The files were archived by standard procedure. Understood?

Marcos nodded before she finished the sentence. Aguado took a little longer, but he nodded too.

***

They pulled the pants back up on both men with the same indifference with which they had pulled them down. Aguado asked, in a voice completely unlike the one he’d had at the start of the meeting, to have his hands untied just enough to open the desk drawer.

They did it.

He took out the file. The two pages of notes. He tore them slowly, into four pieces each, and deposited them in the metal wastebasket beside the desk, on top of Laura’s handkerchief. He did it very carefully, like someone trying to prove he still controlled something, even though he controlled nothing.

Then Carmen tied his hands again.

—Why? —Aguado asked—. I’ve already done what you wanted.

—So we have time to get out —Carmen said, tightening the last knot—. Ten minutes. Then you can call whoever you want.

—No one’s calling anyone —Marcos said from his chair, his voice stripped of all the irritation from the beginning—. I just want them to leave.

***

They left together through the beige-tiled corridor. Beatriz nodded to the secretary, who looked up from her desk. The secretary nodded back without asking anything.

In the parking lot, the eleven o’clock sun lit everything with a brightness that was almost ironic.

Carmen was the first to laugh. A brief, contained laugh, glancing around to make sure no one could hear them.

—I can’t believe we did that —she said.

—I knew you were going to pull out the cord —Beatriz told Silvia—. The moment you put your bag on the chair, I knew it.

—What are you talking about? I didn’t know.

—Yes, you did.

—I didn’t —Silvia insisted, though she was smiling.

Laura was leaning against the hood of her car, arms crossed, gaze fixed on the school façade. She wasn’t laughing, but there was something on her face that looked a lot like satisfaction. She could still feel Marcos’s semen damp against the fabric of her panties. It didn’t bother her.

—Do you think they’ll say anything? —Carmen asked.

—No —Beatriz said without hesitation—. Men like them don’t talk about these things.

—Why not?

Beatriz opened her car door.

—Because they’d have to explain how they got hard.

Silvia was the last to start her car. She stayed a moment looking at the school’s gray façade, the first-floor windows, the blinds of the office she herself had lowered. She wondered whether Aguado and Marcos were still in their chairs, trousers stained and breathing in short gasps, waiting for someone to come in, or whether they had already managed to free themselves.

She didn’t care in the slightest.

She started the car and drove away.