What She Had Kept in Her Bag Wasn’t a Gift

Diego had been sending messages to that address for sixteen years. At first it was a film forum, then a voice chat, then the Telegram number Carla gave him when the servers started to empty out. Sixteen years of conversations that began late and ended when the screen turned itself off. They had talked about everything: films, music, fears neither of them would have admitted out loud to anyone else. But they had never met.

Until today.

The meeting point was a café next to the metro station, in the center of Valencia. Diego arrived ten minutes early, ordered a coffee he didn’t finish, and chose the table farthest from the inside. He knew nothing was going to happen between them. Carla had made that clear more than once, bluntly and without cruelty: they were friends. Good friends. And that was all they could be. Diego accepted it. Or at least that was what he told himself, even if the few times he had jerked off thinking about her voice were no small detail.

When he saw her cross the street, he was left speechless.

Carla was wearing a red dress. Not the discreet red of a work dinner, but a red that asked for attention and demanded it. Diego identified the fabric before she reached the table: PVC. Shiny, structured, clinging to her body as if someone had made it directly on her skin. Her breasts showed under the taut material, without a bra, the nipples erect, pushing through the plastic like two hard buttons. The dress ended well above her knees, and her thighs shone in the afternoon sun as if they’d been varnished. He had mentioned that fetish only once, in a message sent at three in the morning, in that confessional tone darkness gives you. Carla had read it. Carla remembered it.

—You’ve spent years talking about cinema —she said instead of greeting him, in that voice Diego knew from the Telegram audios and that in person sounded deeper, more deliberate—. Today we’re going to the movies.

She gave him the obligatory two kisses. Diego felt the brush of the PVC against his arm when she leaned in, and his cock twitched inside his trousers before his mind could intervene. He felt it swelling against the zipper, thick and completely out of control, and prayed the cut of his trousers would hide the bulge.

—Yes —he managed—. To the movies.

They walked to Diego’s car. He drove following her directions, as she pointed out each turn with a finger with black-painted nails. Diego found it hard to keep his eyes on the road. Carla’s thighs, covered in that shiny fabric, caught the light from every streetlamp, and he had to remind himself they were friends. Just friends. Even if his cock, already completely hard inside his trousers, thought otherwise.

—Pull over here —Carla said when they reached the parking lot of a shopping center on the outskirts—. In the back. Where there’s no one.

Diego obeyed without asking why. He parked in the farthest corner, next to a column and a delivery van. He switched off the engine. Carla didn’t move. She kept staring ahead, her hands folded over the handbag in her lap, and when she spoke, her tone had changed completely.

—Diego. I need you to listen very carefully.

He looked at her. Something in her expression had changed. The brown eyes he associated with long conversations and late-night laughter now seemed colder, more calculated. It was the same Carla, but she was also someone else.

—I know exactly what you think when you look at me —she said—. I know you’ve had a hard-on since I crossed the street. I know you’ve been jerking off thinking about me for sixteen years, so don’t lie to me. And before this afternoon gets misread, I’m going to make sure everything is very clear between us.

Diego felt his face burn. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t need to.

She opened the bag. Diego expected anything: a phone, some keys, a handkerchief. He didn’t expect what Carla pulled out with both hands and set on her own lap with all the calm in the world.

It was a chastity cage. Small, chrome, with a finish that had nothing to do with the cheap contraptions Diego had seen online on sleepless nights while jerking off. This one was different. Heavy. Serious. The kind of object that leaves no doubt about its purpose. The ring at the base was thick, the curved bars ended in a small pee hole, and the lock was tiny but unmistakable.

Diego felt the floor drop out from under him. And at the same time, against all logic, his cock jolted inside his trousers.

—You’ve got five minutes —Carla said—. The shopping center bathrooms are on the left as you come in. If you take longer than that, I’m leaving. And I’m taking the key with me.—She paused briefly—. And I’m warning you: this cage isn’t like the cheap catalog ones. This one’s special. You’ll notice why in a little while.

Diego opened his mouth. He wanted to say there was no need, that she could trust him, that he hadn’t brought condoms because it hadn’t even crossed his mind that anything would happen. But while he tried to find the words, his body had already made the decision for him. He felt heat in his cheeks. He also felt, with a shame he didn’t know where to put, that his cock had been telling him for several seconds exactly what it thought of the situation, swollen and hard and throbbing against the fabric.

He got out of the car with the cage in the pocket of his trousers, walking stiffly to hide the bulge.

The shopping center bathrooms smelled of pine disinfectant. Diego went into the first free stall, locked the door, and stood there with the cage in his hand. His heart was pounding in his temples. All rational arguments had evaporated. All that was left was the cold weight of the metal between his fingers and the clear awareness that Carla was counting the minutes.

He unbuckled his belt. Lowered his trousers and underwear to his thighs. His cock sprang out completely hard, thick, the head shiny and a thread of precome hanging from the tip. Diego looked at it for a second with a mixture of pride and resignation: he had never been this aroused in his life, and that erection was precisely the problem. The cage wouldn’t fit. He had to get it down.

He closed his eyes. Tried to think of neutral things, invoices, his boss, what he was going to eat for dinner. His cock ignored him. He had to squeeze his balls painfully with his left hand, to distract his body from what it wanted. It took a long, long two minutes for his cock to give in and subside enough.

He slipped the thick ring behind his testicles, one by one, carefully. The metal was icy and his skin tightened at the touch. Then he guided his still half-soft cock into the chrome tube. It fit with a precision that was unsettling: as if someone had taken the measurements in advance. Though that was impossible. Or was it?

He fitted the lower piece to the upper one. Passed the lock through the holes. The metallic click as it shut was one of the clearest sounds Diego had ever heard in his life. It echoed inside the stall, inside his stomach, inside whatever remained of his awareness.

He tried to move. The cage had a weight he hadn’t anticipated. It hung between his legs like a strange object, a new organ that didn’t fully belong to him. And inside it, he was already starting to feel it: when he tried to get hard again —just to test it, out of almost clinical curiosity— his cock slammed against the bars and a dull pain shot up through his lower abdomen. It was special, yes. It was inflexible. There was no way to grow inside there.

He pulled his underwear back up, then his trousers, then his belt. He came out four and a half minutes after going in.

He washed his hands without looking in the mirror. He walked back to the parking lot with his head down, aware of each step, of each rub of fabric against metal, of the new weight tugging slightly at his package with every stride. He reached where he had parked and stopped dead.

The car was gone.

Diego looked around. Counted the columns. He hadn’t mistaken the level. The car was gone. And the phone, which he had left in the door compartment, was gone too.

It took him exactly eight seconds to understand what had just happened.

Then he heard the horn. A sharp sound that rang through the whole level of the parking lot. Diego turned and saw his car three spaces up, with Carla behind the wheel. She was laughing hard, with a full, open laugh he had never heard from her before. In her right hand she held something up to the window, turning it so Diego could see it clearly under the neon lights.

The key to the cage.

Diego walked toward the car on legs that didn’t fully obey him. He got into the passenger seat. Carla was no longer laughing, but the smile remained fixed at the corner of her lips as if it were permanent.

—Is it on already? —she asked without looking at him.

—Yes.

—Show me.

Diego unbuckled his trousers in the passenger seat, heart in his mouth, and lowered the zipper. Carla turned her head, looked at the chrome cage pressed against the lowered underwear, and nodded slowly.

—Nice —she said—. Suits you.

She stretched out her hand and tapped the metal twice with her nail. The sound was tiny and it rang in Diego’s head.

—Pull your trousers up. We’re going to the movies.

***

The theater was almost empty when they arrived. A couple in the back row. An older man toward the center. Carla chose the seats at the edge, the farthest from the others. When they sat down, the cage had been on long enough for Diego to understand exactly what it meant to have no control over the situation. His cock tried to swell every time Carla’s thigh brushed his, and each time it hit the bars with a dull pain that was almost worse than pleasure.

The lights dimmed slowly. The movie, an action film Diego had chosen weeks earlier without imagining he would be watching it under these circumstances, began with a chase sequence that nobody in the theater paid attention to.

Diego less than anyone.

Carla leaned toward him when the screen filled the room with noise.

—Before this really gets going —she whispered—, there’s one more thing.

She took something out of the bag. A small package, badly wrapped, and next to it a tube of lubricant. Diego looked at it without understanding yet.

—You’re going to the bathroom and putting this in —she said—. The lubricant, carefully. I don’t want you coming back with your trousers stained.—She paused, deliberately—. That would be a shame for both of us.

Diego opened the package in the half-dark. He needed a moment to identify what he had in his hands. When he did, he had to press his fist to his mouth to control the sound trying to come out of his throat.

It was a butt plug. Not small. Not the kind one would choose for oneself the first time. Black, with a wide silicone base and a body that narrowed toward the tip but had a thickness in the middle that made Diego grit his teeth. And at the base, a small plastic cylinder gave it away: vibrator. With a remote receiver, no doubt.

—You’ve got until the trailers end —Carla said, and turned back to the screen as if nothing had happened.

Diego stood up.

The corridor to the bathrooms seemed longer than ever. He walked with the package tucked under his arm, feeling as if what he was about to do were written across his forehead even though nobody paid him the slightest attention. He went into the farthest stall, locked the door, and leaned his back against it for a moment before beginning.

The space was cramped. The cage complicated every movement. He undid his belt again, lowered his trousers, pulled off his underwear completely, and left it hanging from one knee. He opened the lubricant. He poured a generous amount over the plug, coated it with his hand until the silicone was slippery, and then smeared some over his fingers.

He bent forward, placing one hand against the stall wall. With the other he spread one cheek and brought his fingers to his ass. The lubricant was cold. He closed his eyes when the first finger went in. Tight. Tense. He forced himself to relax his sphincter while he moved the finger in small circles. Then he slipped in a second finger. The feeling of invasion was doubled: the cold of the lubricant and the awareness that this was only the warm-up.

He withdrew his fingers. Took the plug. Set it against his ass and began to push.

The tip went in easily. But when he reached the thickest part, his body tightened by instinct and he had to stop. He took a deep breath. Pushed again, more slowly, biting his lower lip. The sphincter gave way all at once and the plug swallowed itself up to the base with a sharp motion that made him stifle a moan against the stall wall. He stayed bent over, hands braced, feeling the solid thickness installed inside him, filling him, pressing against places he hadn’t known he had.

His cock tried to harden inside the cage. The pain from the bars dragged him back to reality.

It took another minute to pull himself together. He cleaned up as best he could, pulled his underwear and trousers back up, fastened his belt. Every movement shifted the plug a millimeter inside him, and his brain sent confused jolts to his groin that the cage wouldn’t let him release.

When he was done and had fastened his belt, something had changed in the way he perceived his own body. Every step back to the theater was different from the last. The plug was constant, undeniable, impossible to ignore. He walked with his legs slightly apart and prayed nobody noticed.

Carla looked at him when he sat down. She said nothing. She just nodded once, briefly, as if a hypothesis had been confirmed. Then, without taking her eyes off the screen, she stretched out her hand and squeezed his thigh. Diego felt the heat of her palm through his trousers and his cock gave another useless lash against the metal.

—Good boy —Carla whispered—. You’ve got it all the way in, right?

—Yes.

—Good.

The movie had been on for twenty minutes when Diego felt the vibration.

It wasn’t intense at first. It was barely a hum, just enough for Diego to have to make a conscious effort not to react. But the hum was there, vibrating against his prostate, against every nerve in his ass, and his cock swelled inside the cage with every wave. He glanced sideways at Carla. She had the phone in her hand, screen angled toward her, and didn’t look back. She managed the controls with her thumb as if she were answering a message.

The vibration increased.

Diego gripped the arms of the seat. On the screen, someone was chasing someone else across the rooftops of a city he never managed to identify. The sound in the theater covered everything. The vibration kept rising, steady, unbroken. The plug pressed against his prostate with every pulse and his cock, which had been trying to get hard for more than an hour, had started leaking precome against the cage. Diego could feel the moisture running down the base of the tube, soaking his underwear.

—Carla —he said, very low.

—Shut up —she replied, without taking her eyes off the screen.

—Carla, please.

She leaned toward him, without looking away from the screen, and spoke in his ear in a voice so low and so calm it sounded as if she were reciting a recipe.

—Please what? Please stop? Please turn it up more? Tell me in words what you want, Diego. Tell me your cock is trying to get hard in a cage that won’t let it. Tell me your ass is full and your precome is dripping down inside your trousers. But don’t say “please” as if I were going to do anything other than what I’m already doing.

Diego closed his eyes. His head was spinning. He wanted to beg her to stop and at the same time he wanted to ask her to turn it to the maximum.

—Please… more.

Carla smiled. She turned it up a notch. The plug went from a steady hum to stronger pulses, rhythmic waves that embraced his prostate from the inside out. Diego bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted iron.

—Look at me —Carla whispered.

He turned his face. She had her eyes fixed on him now, not on the screen. The light from the movie lit her face in flashes. The PVC dress reflected every flash as if it were a second polished skin.

—Do you realize what I’m doing to you? —she said very softly—. I’ve got your cock locked in a cage. I’ve got your ass full of a plug that vibrates whenever I want. And in a couple of minutes you’re going to come like that, inside the cage, without touching yourself, without getting hard, without anything. You’re going to come in my closed fist, Diego. Just as I’ve imagined you for twelve years.

—Fuck.

—Shut up. And hold it until I tell you.

He tried to think of the parking lot, of the cold metal, of anything that wasn’t the constant, rhythmic pressure giving him no way out. The cage did its work with precision. There was no possible escape in either direction. His body was trapped between the two metal pieces and Carla’s will, and that combination was impossible to sustain for too long. The plug kept throbbing inside him, blow after blow against the exact spot, and with every blow a current climbed his spine that he didn’t know how to release.

—Now —Carla said in his ear—. Come now.

When it happened, there was no warning. A spasm that ran through his whole body from bottom to top. Diego shoved his fist into his teeth so he wouldn’t make a sound. The screen in front of him blurred for a few seconds. His cock, trapped and soft inside the cage, began to release semen without contracting, without thrusting, without anything an ordinary orgasm had: only a thick, abundant dripping that seeped through the bars and soaked his underwear and the crotch of his trousers. It was a ruined climax, slow, endless, one that never fully discharged and left his whole body shuddering in small convulsions without final release.

Carla lowered the phone.

She turned toward him with a calm that was almost cruel. She slid her hand inside Diego’s clothes without hurry, without checking whether anyone was looking. She slipped her fingers in through the waistband of his trousers, passed them over the cage —Diego muffled a groan when the touch hit his still-sensitive cock— and soaked them in the warm semen still dripping everywhere. Then she withdrew her hand slowly, with two fingers shining and sticky in the dim light from the screen.

Carla held her fingers out in front of him.

Diego didn’t wait for her to say anything. He started licking her fingers slowly, one by one, while the film on the screen went on without him. The taste of his own semen flooded his mouth, salty, thick, slightly bitter. Carla put the two fingers deep into his mouth and he sucked them as if his life depended on it, his tongue circling them, sucking, cleaning them completely.

—Good boy —Carla said, very low. There was no irony in her tone. Only a cold, almost satisfied statement—. Very good boy. Swallowed it all. Like you’re supposed to.

She turned the vibrations up to the maximum.

Diego gripped the arm of the seat so hard his knuckles went white. His cock, hypersensitive after coming, kept trying to harden against the bars of the cage and each pulse of the plug was now a stab of mixed pleasure and pain he couldn’t process. He felt a second wave of residual semen sliding down his crotch and bit the back of his hand to keep from moaning out loud.

—Please —he whispered—, please, not anymore…

—Shh. Three more minutes. And if you move again, it’ll be five.

Carla leaned back in her seat with all the calm in the world, crossed her legs, and looked at the screen. At that moment, with the theater lights casting shadows over her profile and the PVC dress shining in every flash from the film, Diego understood something he hadn’t understood in sixteen years of conversations.

Carla’s sweetness was real. And at the same time it was exactly what the title promised: he should never have been fooled.

When she finally lowered the intensity, Diego was drenched in cold sweat, his trousers soaked inside, and the plug still humming softly against a prostate that no longer knew whether it wanted more or less. Carla stroked his thigh once with her open palm. A nearly maternal gesture, after all the rest.

—There’s an hour and a half left —she said—. Try to pay attention to the movie.

Diego didn’t pay attention to the movie. For the rest of the screening, Carla played with the remote at irregular intervals: she turned it on for thirty seconds, turned it off, waited ten minutes, turned it on again. She kept his cock trying to harden against the bars for an hour and a half, leaking threads of residual precome nonstop, with his ass permanently tensed around a plug that never shut up.

***

When they came out into the corridor, the artificial light was far too intense after so long in the dark. Diego walked beside Carla toward the exit, aware of every step, of the parking lot cold starting to seep in through the automatic doors. The plug was still inside him, now switched off but solidly present. His underwear was soaked in dried semen that stuck to his thigh with every step.

In the parking lot, under the orange sodium lights, Carla stopped beside the car and looked at him for the first time since they had left the theater. It wasn’t the calculated look from before. It was the other look, the Telegram look, the one from long nights.

—Are you okay? —she asked.

—Yes —Diego said.

—Good.

She opened the handbag and gave him back the car keys. She didn’t take the cage key out. He knew she wouldn’t yet. Carla didn’t change the terms halfway through: she had said no until they got home, and that was what was going to happen.

They got into the car. Diego started the engine. The seat pressed against the plug and he had to adjust his position in silence.

Carla was looking at the road.

—Next week —she said, as if picking up a conversation interrupted moments before— there’s a French film I want to see.

Diego glanced at her.

—Original version?

—Of course.

Diego nodded and looked forward again. Valencia slid past the window in traffic lights and shuttered storefronts. He thought about the parking lot, the cinema bathrooms, the weight of the chrome cage, and the sixteen years that had led to this seat, this night, this road.

—I can look up showtimes tomorrow —he said.

Carla smiled. It wasn’t the diabolical smile from the dark theater. It was something smaller, more private, more like the person he had known on the other side of a screen for half his life.

—That —she said—. Look up showtimes.

They drove in silence. Diego thought he wanted to thank her, though he didn’t know exactly for what or how to phrase it without sounding strange.

—Thank you —he said at last.

Carla didn’t answer right away. She let two green lights go by.

—Not yet —she said—. Not yet thank me.

Diego didn’t ask why. There was no need.