I’m writing this so I won’t forget the man I betrayed

I have to get my emotions in order. I arrived at the therapist’s office in a sea of tears, falling apart every time I tried to explain what had happened. Full of pain, shame, disgust at myself. In the first session I could barely concentrate on learning how to breathe so I wouldn’t shake.

My therapist suggested that, if I could, I should write. That I should put my thoughts in order on paper. And it’s something I have to do… for Mateo. He asked me to explain it to him and I honestly didn’t know what to say. I was in shock. There was so much I had to process: how I had destroyed everything in a single night and what path had led me to this hell.

That path that I may have enjoyed at the time, but which, when I retrace it, burns me like embers. I hope that, as I go over it again, I’ll find the keys that turned me into this. Or was I always a monster pretending in front of him? Did two versions of me coexist, one facing Mateo and another behind his back? But I don’t think such deep pain can be born from someone who didn’t love him.

I hate myself.

Yes, that must be it. A self-annihilating hatred had to be bigger than the love I was supposed to protect.

I consider myself a normal girl. A young woman who, when her curves started to show, began to get looked at everywhere. Men’s world becomes kinder in front of a pair of tits. That should have given me confidence, but it had the opposite effect: the stares and the harassment made me shrink. I became shy, insecure about my body, a little introverted.

I met Mateo at university. He was a normal guy, just like me. He wasn’t the most athletic, nor the tallest, nor the best-looking. But the way he looked at me was different from everyone else’s. He would go all dreamy over me even when he tried to hide it. With him I didn’t feel harassed; he was genuinely interested. I came from a relationship in which I had been cheated on — the asshole Damián, hormones and morals gone wild — and that had made me even more insecure.

It was in that state of vulnerability that Mateo came closer, with an attitude that I now recognize as something more than friendship. Maybe to cheer me up, maybe to win me over. He managed both. He was a safe place. Steady. An insecure person needs someone to rest from the strain with. So I fell in love little by little, detail by detail, kiss by kiss, night by night.

The sex was good. Almost always I took the initiative, because I simply liked it a lot. Watching him come undone beneath me, moaning my name, drove me wild. I knew how to please him, where he liked it, how to use my lips, my hands, my voice. I knew what to whisper in his ear to make him lose his mind. He also knew how to work me with his fingers; he no longer needed a map to explore my body. We had learned how to reach heaven together.

***

Like that time I discovered that makeup sex was something else. I don’t remember the fight; I think we’d had some kind of disagreement at a party. What I do remember is how we got to the apartment and he took me like never before. I was wearing a short, tight dress, and he cornered me against the hallway wall before he even turned on the light.

—I love how that dress looks on you. I couldn’t wait to have you here —he whispered in my ear, his lips brushing my ear, then moving down my neck to my shoulder. He pressed me against him, his hands on my breasts, his hot breath raising gooseflesh on the back of my neck.

—Do you like it, baby? I wanted to turn you on… —I managed to say while one of his hands slid underneath my underwear.

It was the first time I had felt Mateo like that, like a beast, with rough, direct movements. In another context I would have been scared, but that night even the edge of pain turned me on.

—Do whatever you want with me —I begged him, and he didn’t even need to be asked.

I started moaning louder when I felt his fingers go inside without warning. I don’t know when he took my dress off, but when I realized it I was naked and he was still dressed. That was when I should have stopped thinking; I couldn’t anymore. I was overflowing with sensation and can only reconstruct what happened from the scattered scenes I remember.

He turned me around and kissed me deeply while holding me by the neck. With his other hand he kept rubbing me, sliding his fingers in and out. He pushed me just enough to pull back and look at me: flushed, wet, breathing hard.

—You’re completely mine now, Carla —he said, running his eyes over me from top to bottom. I’d been his for a long time; maybe he was just branding it into my soul once and for all—. Touch yourself. For me.

I obeyed without hesitation while he slowly took his clothes off. If he wanted a show, he would get one.

An amber light filtered through the window, brushing our bodies in the middle of the darkness. The air was heavy with the scent of us, of desire and a fight already resolved. He said nothing, only breathed deeply, watching me like a resting predator that knows its prey is offering itself. His silence was an order stronger than any word.

I brought my hands to my breasts and began to knead them slowly, eyes closed, focusing on the heat rising from my own skin. I had never touched myself for anyone, not even like that for myself. I pinched my nipples, already hard, and a moan escaped me. I left one hand up top and slid the other over my stomach. I opened my eyes to look for him.

And there he was, sitting in the armchair, his cock in one hand, stroking himself in the same rhythm with which I was exploring myself. I could feel the voracity in his body, his blazing eyes fixed on me.

Heat pooled between my legs, that nectar already running several inches down the inside of my thighs. I brushed my lips and another moan slipped out on its own; my knees went weak, but his stare held me up. I closed my eyes again, skin prickling, my fingers burning me. I rubbed harder, tracing circles, exactly with the intensity my body was demanding. When I opened them again, his hand was moving in perfect sync with mine. It wasn’t him and me, not even a we: we were a single closed sequence where nothing else existed.

I wet one finger and slid it in slowly, feeling my body receive it with a spasm. My breathing broke, the moans grew more intense, my hand moved on its own, imitating the force with which I remembered him in his best moments. I slid in a second finger and my legs almost gave out. A burning jolt shot up the back of my neck like lightning, and between gasps I said his name.

Mateo.

I felt him as the cause and destiny of everything that was happening to me. Alone, I would never have been there. Alone, I would never have known that my body could answer him without his touching me.

—Now, please —I begged, drooling. We had created a wordless code: he knew what I wanted, and we both understood that, if he didn’t tell me to stop, I wouldn’t stop.

He smiled, a slow, ferocious expression.

—Come here.

His deep voice shook me inside. I knelt and he took me by the hair to set the rhythm. He kissed me again with fury, I think he even bit me, and without saying a word he guided my mouth to his cock. I licked it all, not leaving a single inch untouched, clinging to him, satisfying a hunger that had grown in that room. I felt him push into my throat and stay there for a few seconds, until I got used to it. It was a spectacle of saliva, and I discovered that when his savage desire and mine mixed together I could surrender completely, enjoying being at his feet.

—Ride me already, I want to eat those tits —he ordered.

I moved eagerly to ride him, magnetized by his gaze.

—Aaah —I moaned as I took him all in at once; I felt him drive into me in more than one sense. I think I had never been so wet, so open to making him part of me. That night I discovered the intimate function of sex, the pleasure of mutual surrender, of merging with another person until the edges disappear.

He began to lick my breasts, to nibble them, leaving not a single spot unsavored. He was possessed, giving me the best fuck of my life. I took his head to guide him to my nipples. I felt something vibrating all through me, growing, until it suddenly stopped with the first smack on my ass. That brought me right back into the ring.

—Like that, keep going… please —I panted.

He slapped my ass again and started kneading it while keeping his mouth on my breasts. I was already in a trance where I was free to be completely his. My body trembled with every blow, with every suck. He started brushing me from behind with one finger. It was so unusual that I stared at him in disbelief, but I didn’t stop him: it was a primitive pleasure, almost transcendental.

I trembled inside again, started screaming, and he sank that finger and his face between my breasts at the same time, pulled me against him with all his strength, and panted like the beast he embodied. His cock began to pulse; he was coming inside, and feeling the spurts throbbing I managed to scream out a deep orgasm, arching my body before letting go of all the pleasure I had been holding in. I collapsed onto him, trembling, regaining my calm.

We stayed like that for what felt like eternal seconds, in his arms. I could feel his breathing settle beneath my head resting on his chest. His hands stroked my back and I matched my breathing to his. He kissed me again while he settled me onto his legs.

Warm honey was leaking between my thighs. I took some with my fingers and sucked them instinctively, not wanting to waste a drop. He took it as a provocation.

—You’re a complete slut. I love it —he said.

He stood up, left me sitting there, spread my legs and slid his fingers into me again. I was moaning again, no longer knowing whether it hurt or tickled, in ecstasy. He pulled them out coated in a mixture of my juices and his cum and brought them to my mouth.

—You wanted to taste, baby.

That outrageous image clouded my judgment and lit me up in an instant. I licked them eagerly, cleaning his hand, and he sank them in again to give me back that potion we had invented together.

Then he picked me up and threw me onto the bed. He spread my legs and, without further ado, started fucking me hard while we melted into a kiss. He sucked my lips, my neck, my shoulders, my breasts. I had a championship Mateo making me his with every thrust, and all I could do was answer with moans, holding him and pushing him toward me. I didn’t care about anything that might happen that night.

—Like that, hard… keep going —I managed to scream—. Again, baby. I’m going to come again.

It didn’t take long for me to reach another orgasm. It was too much, I don’t know how else to say it: more than I had ever felt. I screamed, my body exploding and tightening, and immediately I felt another hot surge filling me as I gasped. Our bodies had lost their borders; I didn’t know where mine ended and his began.

I could barely react, a stupid smile stuck to my face. We were both a mess. They must have heard us all the way across the building, and I didn’t care.

—What the hell just happened? —I said, still shaking.

—I just made you mine, Carla.

I looked at him with that satisfied expression, utterly in love, with a sparkle in my eyes. I was his, of course I was. A truth as sacred as that night’s encounter. We hugged, we kissed, I looked him in the eyes.

—I love you, Mateo.

***

That certainty, that mutual possession, is exactly what is strangling me now. What the hell happened to us? At what point along the road, by your side, did I lose myself so completely as to do to you what I did? I loved you. Of course I loved you.

That’s why I’m writing this: so I won’t forget the man I was capable of betraying, and so I can understand, once and for all, what night I stopped recognizing myself. There’s still more. My therapist says there’s a lot more. And for the first time in weeks, I think she’s right.