What I Learned on My Knees in Damián’s Workshop

There was no reason she should have been so shaken. What she had seen was perfectly ordinary: a man alone in the shed out back, pleasuring himself with his hand. Her discovering him had been an accident, a coincidence caused by pushing the door open at the worst possible moment. That she had become aroused was understandable too. What no longer seemed quite so normal was her desire to stay, to kneel, to feel that inside her.

No, that was no longer 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 enormous hands stained with grease, broad shoulders, and the calmness of a large animal that filled the entire room without moving. She 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 doorway. “I thought you’d already left.”

“I’m almost done,” he said unhurriedly, without covering himself, looking her in the eyes.

Yes, he was older, rough, and smelled of sweat and hard work. But there was something in his stillness that left her breathless. And he had an enormous cock, still in plain view, that she wanted with an intensity 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 beneath the thin dress, that she was a woman and that she wanted him. It was the first time in her life she had flirted like this, without a safety net, with a man who did not return so much as a smile.

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

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

“You should go back to the house,” he said, approaching.

“I don’t want to go back to the house.”

He brushed the back of his hand over her hair. Soft, freshly washed hair, belonging to a woman who had never had to ask for anything twice. Then he lowered his palm to the thigh she offered him and stroked it slowly, assessing her. His fingers, rough and large, warmed her skin in a slow line that made her arch her hips slightly, seeking more.

“I’m not a good man,” he said.

“I know.”

He suddenly ran his hand up the inside of her thigh, almost to her groin, and Mariana let out a short moan that embarrassed her more than any words could have. He did not stop. He barely pushed aside the fabric of her dress and let two fingers trace the wetness through her underwear, feeling how open she already was for him. Mariana squeezed her thighs together, trembling, while he watched her with the filthy calm of a man who knew exactly what effect he had.

“Look at you,” he murmured. “You’re already soaked.”

She swallowed, unable to answer. The humiliation rose up her neck like fire. It aroused her too, unbearably.

***

“Lift your dress,” he ordered, taking a step back to look at her whole.

She burned to please him, but the order, given like that, without asking permission, left her frozen. This isn’t what I came here for, she thought. And yet she did not move toward the door.

“You don’t have to treat me like that.”

“I’ll treat you however I want,” he replied, with a calmness that allowed 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 her hips, slowly at first, then yanked the last bit up, staring at the ceiling so she would not have to look at him.

“Happy?”

Damián kept her there for an eternity without touching her, letting the silence do the work. His eyes fixed on her crotch, on the skin already gleaming with desire, on the small patch of dampness showing beneath the fabric. Mariana felt her legs go weak.

“Take off your shoes.”

It was not a difficult order. She was wearing only delicate sandals. With a movement of her feet, she let them fall onto the concrete floor.

“Look at me.”

Holding his gaze was the hardest thing of all. She was dying of embarrassment. But she did it. She looked at that man twice her size, watching her half-naked as though evaluating something he already considered his.

“Spread your legs.”

She obeyed. She separated the feet she had still kept together, knowing very well what would come next and wanting it with a mixture of panic and need.

“Take the dress off completely.”

She slipped the straps down with two fingers and let the fabric slide down her body to the floor. Purely by reflex, she covered her breasts with her hands.

“No. Hands on the table,” he said.

She did not obey immediately. Damián approached, took her wrists without roughness, and placed them on the wood himself, opening her legs a little farther as well. Mariana remained there, exposed, breathing quickly, her nipples hard and her entire skin prickling.

He bent down slightly, took one breast in his enormous hand, and pinched the nipple between his thumb and forefinger. Mariana arched with a muffled gasp. His other hand continued downward, between her thighs, until it found her soaked. There was no ceremony: he pushed aside the scant fabric still covering her and buried two fingers inside her, slowly at first, then with firmer pressure that made her release a broken whimper.

“When I tell you to do something, you do it,” he murmured beside her ear. “It isn’t a punishment. It’s what you came here looking for, even if you haven’t said it out loud yet.”

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

He withdrew his glistening fingers and showed them to her before bringing them to his mouth. He licked them slowly without taking his eyes off her, as though savoring his own claim over that body. Mariana felt a hot jolt in her belly and had to bite her lip to keep from begging.

***

“Kneel and come here,” he said, sitting in the only chair in the shed to take off his boots.

This time she obeyed without a protest. She crossed the few meters of cold concrete on her knees, feeling small, exposed, surrendered.

“My feet,” he ordered.

They were dirty and sweaty from a full day of work beneath the corrugated-metal roof. Mariana brought her face closer slowly, and when her tongue touched the rough sole, she knew she was crossing a line from which there would be no return. She kissed the instep, ran her tongue between his toes, and cleaned him with a devotion she did not recognize in herself. She felt deeply humiliated. And she had never been so aroused.

At one point, Damián grabbed a handful of her hair and lifted her head. He was not gentle. She did not cry out: she swallowed the pull and looked up at him, her eyes shining.

“Good girl,” he said, and those two words pierced her more deeply than any order.

He had taken out his cock. It was not even completely hard, and yet it seemed impossible. It was big, thick, heavy, its skin taut, the dark, wet tip glistening. 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 for it. With words she never would have imagined herself saying, kneeling on the floor of a shed in front of a man she barely knew. She asked, and he let her sink her mouth down until tears sprang to her eyes, guiding her with one hand at the nape of her neck, setting the pace, reminding her with every thrust who was in charge there. Mariana opened her mouth wider, swallowing the impossible size of that cock, feeling it brush the back of her throat and saliva escaping from the corner of her lips. Damián growled low, satisfied, and held her head while she sucked and licked, alternating tongue and lips, desperate not to fall short.

He began slowly, then harder, moving in and out of her mouth with short thrusts that made her cough and moan at the same time. Whenever she relaxed, he tightened his grip and made her continue. Mariana found herself looking at her own fingers, clenched around her thighs, and at the sweat running down her chest. She was trembling all over, wet, sore, happy in a way she was ashamed to admit.

When he finished, he did not let her go immediately. He kept her still, catching her breath against his belly, stroking her hair almost tenderly.

“You have nothing to do at the house tomorrow,” he said. “You come here early.”

It was not a question.

***

Mariana returned to the house at nightfall. She went in without turning on the lights, climbed to her room, and looked at herself in the mirror. Her hair was tousled, a red mark circled her wrist, and her lips were swollen. She brought her fingers to the mark and, instead of erasing it, pressed it a little, as if to confirm that it had been real.

She did not 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 was not looking forward to the next day out of fear, but out of desire.

It had been so easy. So damnably easy.

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

Damián was waiting for her. And he was not alone: there were two other men with him, older as well, weathered, who watched her enter with the same proprietary calm she already knew.

“I told them about you,” Damián said without getting up. “They wanted to see for themselves.”

Mariana stopped in the doorway. Part of her knew she could still turn around. The door remained open behind her, and the morning was still hers. All it would take was one step back.

“Well?” he asked, extending his open hand to her without forcing her. “No one will touch you unless you walk in on your own.”

It was that detail—the fact that she had a choice—that finally brought her to surrender. They were not dragging her in: they were letting her decide, and deciding was the most humiliating and liberating thing of all.

She undid the first button of her shirt.

And stepped inside.