I Cheated on My Husband at the Cartagena Convention

The insurance company where I worked always held its annual convention in Cartagena, and it always followed the same script: flight from Bogotá, five-star hotel facing the sea, boring conferences during the day, and an endless corporate party at night. I’d been going for seven years. Sergio, my husband, barely even asked anymore when I packed my suitcase. He trusted me. It was one of the things I liked most about him, and one of the things that would weigh on me most the next day.

I arrived at the hotel at noon and went up to change before lunch. Thirty-eight years old, two kids, eight years of marriage, and a body I took care of with discipline because I wanted to, not because I needed compliments. In the mirror I checked myself without nostalgia. I wasn’t bad. Sergio told me I looked better than when we got married, and I believed him even though I knew it was his duty to believe it.

—Where did you disappear to, Lorena? —Renata’s WhatsApp lit up while I dried my hair.

—I just got here. Want to go down to lunch?

—I’ll wait for you in the lobby in fifteen.

Renata was my right hand in the Bogotá office. Thirty-two years old, single by conviction, and one of those women who walk into a place and force half the men to look at the floor because it burns to look straight at her. We got along from day one. I brought the cool head and the contacts; she brought the shamelessness and a knack for closing policies that bordered on black magic. Hernán, our regional boss, adored us because we made his numbers every quarter.

Lunch was long, the afternoon conference was endless, and by the time dinner came around I was already counting the hours. I went up to dress. I took a short black dress out of the closet, fitted at the waist, with a modest neckline. Red underwear, because even I need reminding sometimes that I’m a woman and not just an executive. Mid heels so I wouldn’t be limping at two in the morning. I looked at myself one last time and thought that night I was going to drink a little more than I should.

The party in the main ballroom was exactly what I’d expected: two hundred coworkers from across the region talking about policies, commissions, and quarterly results. By eleven-thirty I was fed up. Renata had gotten tangled up in a conversation with two directors from the Pacific zone, and I took advantage of it to slip away.

—I’m going to get some air —I told her in her ear.

—Hold on another half hour, don’t leave me alone with these guys.

—I make no promises.

I walked out into the main hall and, instead of going up, I veered toward a small side bar that was practically empty. Two waiters were polishing glasses behind the counter, oblivious to the rest of the world. I sat on one of the stools and dropped my purse.

—Can I get you something, ma’am? —the younger one asked.

—A brandy. Straight.

—Right away.

I watched them calmly while they prepared my drink. The younger one had to be about twenty-six, slim, with curly brown hair and an easy smile that looked rehearsed. Attractive, yes, but the kind of attractive man who already knows he’s attractive. The other was different. Older, in his thirties, tall, broad-shouldered, with a shaved head and a very neatly trimmed short beard. Black shirt, black tie. He didn’t look at me. He polished glasses with the same concentration you use to disarm a bomb. And that, precisely that, irritated me. It irritated me so much that I decided that night I was going to make him look at me.

—Excuse me —I said, directly to him—. Do you know how to serve a brandy too, or do you only wash glasses?

He looked up for the first time. His eyes were dark, almost black, and the way he held my gaze made me feel like he’d spent months getting ready to return it.

—I serve whatever the lady asks for —he replied, unhurried.

—Lorena.

—Diego.

Diego. I repeated it silently while I took the first sip of brandy to my lips. The younger one was busy with his own thing, chatting with a guest who had come up for something. Diego and I were practically alone at our end of the bar.

—Don’t you have to work the party? —I asked.

—I was assigned the outside bar. Only the ones sneaking away come in here.

—Then tonight is going to be very boring for you.

—That depends.

He said it with exactly the right tone. Not one millimeter too much, not one too little. And my mouth dried out and my cunt got wet at the same time, insultingly precise. It had been years since a man had made me feel that specific thing, that thing that starts in your stomach and goes lower without asking permission, that thing that makes you squeeze your thighs under the bar so it won’t show. I took another sip, slowly, and crossed my legs so the dress would ride up a little higher.

—And you? —he asked—. Are you bored?

—Miserably.

—How many days are you staying?

—Three.

—That’s a long time for a bored woman.

I laughed. A low laugh, without opening my mouth much. I was going to answer him when I saw Renata coming down the stairs. When Renata comes down a staircase, there’s no way not to look at her. Metallic pink dress, sky-high heels, hair loose. She reached the bar, squeezed my arm, and looked at the two waiters like someone sizing up a ring.

—I see you were very bored —she said quietly.

—Very.

—Which one do you like?

—The one in black.

—Good choice. I’ll take the other one.

She ordered a martini and leaned against the younger one, who served her immediately as if he’d been waiting for her all night. Within ten minutes they were already laughing. Within fifteen, the tips of his fingers were brushing hers over the bar. Renata closed policies and closed men with the same technique: patience and a smile at the end.

I stayed on my side, with Diego in front of me. We talked little. I asked him things I wasn’t all that interested in, and he answered with that economy of words some men use like a weapon. At one point he set down the glass he’d been drying and leaned forward, resting his forearms on the bar. I looked at his arms, thick, with the veins standing out under his rolled-up shirt, and I imagined one of those hands between my legs with such clarity that I had to close my eyes for a second.

—Are you married? —he asked.

—Yes.

—And does that matter to you?

I went silent. Too much silence. When I looked up, he was still waiting for the answer.

—Not tonight —I said.

He nodded once, very slowly.

—I finish in forty minutes.

—Room four fourteen.

—I’ll be there.

I finished the brandy in one gulp and climbed down from the stool. As I got down I felt the red underwear sticking, soaked, and had to clamp my thighs again, this time to walk straight. Renata was busy and I didn’t interrupt her. I went up the elevator alone, looked at my reflection in the bronze mirror, and saw a woman I hadn’t recognized in a long time. I didn’t feel sad. I felt something like hunger.

***

He arrived at twelve-thirty-two. I know because I looked at the clock when he knocked on the door. I had showered, put perfume behind my ears and on the inside of my thighs, left the lights low, and run two fingers through my cunt before opening, to calm myself, and had only managed the opposite. I opened the door in a robe. Diego came in without speaking, closed the door with his foot, and held my gaze the way he had at the bar. That look broke me down.

—I came —he said.

—I can see that.

—Do you still want this?

—Yes.

He kissed me without warning. It wasn’t soft. He held me by the nape with one big, hot hand and forced my mouth open. I kissed him back with the same fury as the decision I was making. I thought about Sergio once, about my home in Bogotá, about my children sleeping. Then I didn’t think about that anymore. The robe opened on its own, or almost. Diego’s other hand slipped inside, moved up my bare stomach, and squeezed one whole breast, weighing it the way you weigh fruit at the market. My nipple pressed into his palm and I moaned into his mouth.

—You were waiting for me —he murmured against my neck.

—I’ve been waiting half an hour.

—Half an hour touching yourself, I bet.

—A little.

—Show me how.

He shoved me against the wall of the room’s hallway and kissed me again, this time slower, biting my lower lip just when I thought he was about to let me go. His hands slid down my back to my ass and he gripped me hard, lifting me just enough for me to feel, against my belly, what he had under his pants. A hard cock, long, thick, trapped sideways against the fabric, pushing as if it wanted to break through. I made a sound I hadn’t made in years and reached for his fly with my hand. I squeezed him through his pants, measuring him, and he bit my neck in response.

—Diego.

—Tell me.

—I don’t have all night.

—I do.

He took me to the edge of the bed and sat me down. He slowly unbuttoned his black shirt, watching me the whole time, as if forcing me to really see him before going on. When he let the shirt fall to the floor, I lost my breath. It wasn’t a gym body. It was a body worked by life: broad shoulders, flat chest, a stomach marked without exaggeration, a dark line of hair running down from his navel and disappearing into his pants. I ran my hands over him and left scratch marks without meaning to. I leaned in, unfastened his belt, and pulled down the zipper. I loosened his pants and slipped my hand into his boxer briefs without asking permission.

The cock sprang out when I pulled the fabric down, hot and veined, the head already wet. I grabbed it at the base, weighed it, and found my hand barely fit around it. I ran my thumb over the glans and a thick drop stuck to my finger.

—Look what you had tucked away —I murmured.

—For you.

—Shut up.

I leaned forward and took it in my mouth all at once, as far as I could reach, and he let out a rough gasp and buried his hand in my hair. I sucked his cock slowly at first, pulling it out to the edge of my lips only to swallow it again, wetting it with saliva until it shone. I ran my tongue flat under it, from base to head, and then focused on the tip, teasing it between my lips and tongue while I wanked him with my hand. He looked down at me with that face men get when you’re making them lose the thread. I shoved him to the back of my throat, coughed a little, my eyes filled with tears, and did it again. I grabbed his balls with my other hand and squeezed them carefully.

—Holy shit, Lorena.

—You like how I suck your cock?

—Don’t stop.

—Later.

I pulled his cock out of my mouth with a wet sound and lay back on the bed, drawing him along with my hand. He stripped off the rest of his pants, kicked off his shoes, and stood naked, kneeling at the foot of the bed, with his cock aimed straight at my face.

—Lie down —he ordered.

I did. He pulled the robe all the way off me and left me sprawled on the bedspread, naked except for a thin chain I’d worn around my neck since my wedding day and neither of us mentioned. He knelt at the foot of the bed, grabbed my thighs with both hands, and spread them without ceremony. I felt exposed past a limit I didn’t remember. He looked at my cunt up close, unhurriedly, as if deciding where to start.

—Look at me —he said.

I looked at him. And then he lowered his head and started to eat me with a calm that bordered on cruelty. He passed his whole tongue over me, flat and broad, from bottom to top, from the entrance to my cunt to the clit, and stayed there, circling slowly, sucking me between his lips and letting go, barely brushing me with the tip just when I was already pushing my hips against his mouth. His lips barely touching me, two fingers going in and out of my cunt setting a rhythm that was completely his, curled upward, hitting a spot that made me clamp my thighs around his head. I gripped the sheets as if they could save me from something. He slipped in a third finger without asking. His tongue locked onto my clit with an insistence that was no longer caressing, it was work. I came sooner than I would have liked to admit. It wasn’t a polite orgasm. It was a scream I had to cover with my free hand, while he kept his head down, sucking and licking between my legs like he was halfway through a job, squeezing every last contraction out of me.

—Diego, please —I murmured when I couldn’t take it anymore.

—Please what?

—Get on top. Fuck me.

—Say it properly.

—Fuck me already.

He came up. He leaned over me and kissed me on the mouth. I could taste myself mixed with him. With one hand he grabbed his cock and ran it up and down my cunt lips, still not entering, soaking the head, rubbing it against my clit until I trembled again.

—No condom? —he asked.

I gave him the exact seconds needed to say the right thing. I didn’t use them.

—No condom.

He went in slowly, centimeter by centimeter, never taking his eyes off me. I opened my mouth to moan and he covered it with his. He kissed me while he buried himself all the way in, and then stayed still for a few seconds to let me get used to him. I felt him pulsing inside. He filled me in a way I hadn’t remembered a cock could fill me, and that single thought made me clench around him on purpose so he’d feel it.

—Like that —he murmured—. Squeeze my dick.

Then he started moving. Slowly at first, measuring me; pulling almost all the way out only to slam back in to the balls with that sharp thrust of the pelvis that knocked the air out of me. Then harder; then like we’d both been putting off this meeting for years and only had an hour left to reach it. The bed started banging against the wall with a noise I no longer cared about.

—Look at me —he kept saying—. Don’t close your eyes.

I looked at him. I dug my nails into his shoulders and looked at him. He hooked my legs over his shoulders, and from that angle he drove into me even deeper. I could see his stomach hitting mine, the cock coming out shiny from my cunt and sinking back in, and I couldn’t stop looking at it. He brought one hand to his mouth, licked his thumb, and put it over my clit, pressing me slowly in circles while he kept fucking me. I came again, silently, clamping my mouth against his forearm.

At some point he flipped me over, put me face down, lifted my hips, and entered from behind again. The first thrust made me moan with my face buried in the pillow. With one hand he held my neck down into the pillow and with the other he steadied my hip. He slapped my ass, hard, and the sting mixed with pleasure in a new way. He slapped me again. Then he grabbed my hair from the nape, yanked me back, and forced me to arch while he drove into me with long thrusts.

—Look how I’ve got you —he said in my ear—. Married, with red ass cheeks, and begging.

—Yes.

—Say it.

—I’m married.

—And what am I doing to your cunt?

—Whatever you want.

—Again.

—Fuck me however you want, Diego, please.

His voice came low against my ear, telling me things that in another life would have shamed me and that night made me come again, biting my forearm so I wouldn’t wake the whole hotel. My cunt throbbed around his cock in waves and he didn’t stop, kept pounding me while I came apart.

—I’m going to finish —he said after a while, his voice already breaking.

—Not inside.

—Sure?

—Sure. On top. On me.

He sped up. He drove the last thrusts into me with such force they sent me face first into the mattress, grunting through his teeth. He pulled out at the last second, grabbed his cock, and came over my back and ass in two, three, four thick spurts of hot semen that ran down my waist to the hollow of my back, marking me like a confession. I felt a drop slide between my ass cheeks and didn’t move to wipe it away.

He collapsed beside me, breath ragged, and pushed my hair off my forehead with a tenderness I hadn’t asked for and that disarmed me more than everything before. He ran a finger through the trail of semen on my back, slowly, as if signing it.

—Are you okay? —he asked.

—Yes.

—Are you calm?

—Tomorrow I’ll see.

He gave a low laugh. A short laugh, without malice.

***

He stayed until four. In the middle, when I already thought I was at peace, he leaned back against the headboard, grabbed me by the waist, and sat me on top of him. I lowered myself onto his cock, hard again, and rode him slowly, bracing my hands on his chest, looking down at him while he sucked my tits one by one, biting my nipples just enough with his teeth. I came on top of him with my knees shaking, and this time I let him finish in my mouth. I knelt on the floor at the foot of the bed and sucked him until he filled my tongue with thick, salty semen. I showed it to him before swallowing. He loved that.

We never talked about Sergio, or the room, or the hotel. We talked about nonsense, like two people who had known each other from before. He told me he studied engineering at night, that he had two years left, that he lived with his mother in a neighborhood I didn’t bother learning the name of. I told him small lies about my work, things that sounded true. At four-ten he got up, dressed in silence, and kissed my forehead, not my mouth, and that felt more intimate than everything that came before.

—Will I see you again? —I asked, not knowing why I was asking.

—I’m at the bar every night until Saturday.

—Okay.

When he closed the door, I stayed in bed staring at the ceiling. My body hurt in places I hadn’t used in a long time. My cunt was swollen, my nipples burned, and his taste was still in my mouth. I thought about Sergio. I waited to feel guilty. Guilt didn’t come. Something else came, stranger, a weird calm, as if a part of me I hadn’t even known was missing had been returned. Tomorrow I’ll see what I do with this.

Renata texted me at nine.

—Breakfast in fifteen. Tell me everything.

—There’s nothing to tell —I replied.

And I smiled to myself, in a room that smelled like a man and dried semen on the sheets, knowing perfectly well that that same night, before going up to pack my suitcase, I was going to go back down to the bar. Just for a brandy. That’s what I told myself. Just for a brandy.