What I Learned on My Knees in Damián’s Workshop

She had no reason to be so disturbed. What she had seen was perfectly ordinary: a man alone in the back shed, pleasuring himself with his hand. That she had caught him was an accident, a chance push of the door at the worst possible moment. That she got aroused, too, was understandable. What no longer seemed normal to her was the desire to stay, to kneel down, to feel that inside her.

No, that was not normal at all.

Because Damián was neither young nor the kind of man Mariana would have turned to look at in the street. He was twice her age. He had huge hands stained with grease, broad shoulders, the calm of a large animal that filled the whole room without moving. They had hired him to repair the roof of the country house where she was spending the summer, alone, far from everything.

—Sorry —Mariana murmured from the threshold—. I thought you’d already left.

—I’m almost done —he said without haste, without covering anything, looking her in the eye.

Yes, he was older, rough, smelling of sweat and work. But there was something in his stillness that left her breathless. And he had a colossal cock, still in plain sight, that she wanted with a strength that frightened her.

She took a few steps toward the center of the shed, her hands clasped behind her back. She wanted him to look at her. To notice her figure, the curve of her waist under the thin dress, that she was a woman and that she desired him. It was the first time in her life she had flirted like that, without a net, with a man who didn’t give her even a smile in return.

Damián was wiping his hands with a rag. He knew perfectly well what she was doing, and he knew why.

Mariana sat on the edge of the worktable, legs stretched out, ankles crossed. She didn’t dare do more.

—You should go back to the house —he said, coming closer.

—I don’t want to go back to the house.

He brushed her hair with the back of his hand. Soft, freshly washed, like a woman who has never had to ask twice for anything. Then he slid his palm down to the thigh she offered him and caressed it slowly, measuring her.

—I’m not a good man —he said.

—I know.

He dragged his hand up the inside of her thigh in one sudden motion, almost to her groin, and Mariana let out a short moan that shamed her more than any word.

***

—Lift your dress —he ordered, and stepped back to look at her whole body.

She was burning to please him, but the order, said like that, without asking permission, left her frozen in place. This is not what I came looking for, she thought. And yet she did not move toward the door.

—You don’t have to talk to me like that.

—I’m going to talk to you however I want —he answered, with a calm that admitted no argument—. And you’re going to decide whether you stay or leave. Now.

Mariana stayed. That was her entire answer.

She lifted her dress to hip level, first slowly, then yanking the last stretch up, looking at the ceiling so she wouldn’t look at him.

—Happy?

Damián kept her like that for an eternity, without touching her, letting silence do the work.

—Take your shoes off.

It wasn’t a difficult order. She was only wearing a pair of delicate sandals. With a flick of her feet, she let them fall to the cement floor.

—Look at me.

Holding his gaze was the hardest part of all. She was dying of shame. But she did it. She looked at that man twice her size, who watched her half-naked the way someone assesses something he already considers his own.

—Spread your legs.

She obeyed. She separated her feet, which she had kept together until then, knowing very well what came next and wanting it with a mixture of panic and need.

—Take the dress off completely.

She slid the straps down with two fingers and let the fabric glide over her body to the floor. She covered her breasts with her hands out of pure reflex.

—No. Hands on the table —he said.

She didn’t obey right away. Damián came closer, took her wrists without any roughness, and set them on the wood himself, opening her legs a little wider too.

—When I tell you to do something, you do it —he murmured near her ear—. This isn’t a punishment. It’s what you came looking for, even if you still won’t say it out loud.

Mariana closed her eyes and nodded. That was exactly it, and discovering it humiliated her and aroused her in equal measure.

***

—Kneel and come —he said, sitting on the only chair in the shed to take off his boots.

This time she obeyed without a protest. She crossed the few feet of cold concrete on her knees that separated her from him, feeling small, exposed, given over.

—My feet —he ordered.

They were dirty, sweat-soaked from a whole day of work under the corrugated roof. Mariana brought her face closer slowly, and when her tongue touched the rough sole she knew she was crossing a line of no return. She kissed his instep, ran her tongue between his toes, cleaned him with a devotion she didn’t recognize in herself. She felt profoundly humiliated. And she had never been so turned on.

At one point, Damián grabbed a handful of her hair and lifted her head. He wasn’t gentle. She didn’t cry out: she swallowed the yank and looked up at him from below, her eyes shining.

—Good girl —he said, and those two words cut through her more deeply than any order.

He had taken his cock out. He wasn’t even fully hard and yet he seemed impossible. He pressed it against her cheek, ran it over her lips without letting her take it yet, playing with her impatience.

—Do you want it?

—Yes —she whispered.

—Ask for it.

And she asked. With words she would never have imagined saying, on her knees on the floor of a shed, in front of a man she barely knew. She asked for it, and he let her take his cock into her mouth until tears sprang to her eyes, guiding her with a hand on the nape of her neck, setting the rhythm, reminding her with every thrust who was in charge there.

When he was done, he didn’t let her go right away. He kept her still, catching her breath against his belly, stroking her hair with something close to tenderness.

—Tomorrow you don’t have anything to do at the house —he said—. You come here early.

It wasn’t a question.

***

Mariana went back to the house at dusk. She went in without turning on the lights, went up to her room, looked at herself in the mirror. Her hair was mussed, there was a red mark on her wrist, her lips were swollen. She brought her fingers to the mark and, instead of erasing it, pressed it a little, as if to reassure herself it had been real.

She didn’t sleep. She spent the night going over every order, every silence, every time her body had obeyed before her mind. And she discovered, with uncomfortable clarity, that she wasn’t waiting for the next day out of fear, but out of desire.

It was so easy. So damned easy.

At dawn she did not dress all the way. She put on a long shirt over her naked skin and went down to the shed when the dew was still on the grass.

Damián was waiting for her. And he wasn’t alone: there were two other men with him, older too, weathered, who watched her come in with the same ownerly calm she already knew.

—I told them about you —Damián said, not getting up—. They wanted to see it with their own eyes.

Mariana stopped in the doorway. Part of her knew she could still turn around. The door was still open behind her, the morning was still hers. One step back would be enough.

—Well? —he asked, holding out his open hand, without forcing her—. No one’s going to touch you if you don’t come in on your own.

It was that detail, the choice, that finally undid her. They weren’t dragging her: they were letting her decide, and deciding was the most humiliating and the most liberating thing of all.

She unbuttoned the first button of her shirt.

And stepped inside.