My Brother-in-Law Wanted to See the Photos My Husband Took of Me
The cursor moved awkwardly across the screen, taking little detours, as if the hand controlling it were no calmer than the rest of my body. Tomás was breathing slowly, measuring each click, and I understood that he was as frightened as I was of what we were about to do.
—I don’t know. I’d like to start slow —he said, brokenly, without daring to look at me.
—Then start with that folder —I suggested, pointing to one my husband had named with a title that said it all.
It was Hugo’s catchall drawer: a collection of stolen photos, taken without my knowing, almost always while I was asleep. Images that, far from bothering me, had always made me feel a mix of tenderness and lust. Knowing that my husband needed to catch me off guard in order to keep a memory that was slipping through his fingers seemed to me the most honest form of desire. That now it was his brother opening them one by one was something very different.
The first images hit us with a wave of nostalgia. Four very low-quality captures, taken from a video call back when cameras were bad and the connection worse. We must have been between eighteen and twenty, no more. On the screen I looked very young, wearing a cheap white T-shirt and nothing underneath. The fabric, almost transparent, let my breasts show through.
Tomás moved on to the next one, where I had tied the shirt in a knot under my chest to make them stand out even more. And then came the reveal: the T-shirt disappeared and my younger self was brazenly on display before the camera. My brother-in-law went through the photos backwards, savoring the blurry details, fascinated by that version of me he had never known.
He’s looking at what his brother looks at in private, I thought, and felt heat creeping up my neck.
The cursor jumped ahead years at a time. The quality leapt to high definition. Now these were photos from an ordinary night. I was asleep, wearing only a tank top and black lace briefs. A close-up of my buttocks separated by the seam, my legs, the soles of my feet, as I lay on my side. While he zoomed in on the areas he found most interesting, I split my attention between what I was seeing on the screen and what it was doing to him. For the moment he was only using one hand to brace himself on the armrest, but the rest of his body couldn’t hide it: under his trousers there was a bulge growing with every image.
The sequence continued. More sleeping photos, this time completely naked. An overhead shot of my breasts falling outward. Tomás enlarged the area around my nipples, not knowing the next photo was a macro of one of them, so close you could make out the pores in the skin and the rough texture of the areola. And to close, my sex in extremely high definition. Two images of almost clinical quality, the shaved pubis, the lips barely parting to reveal the pink entrance.
His arousal was now impossible to hide. The pressure distorted the fabric of his pants, and he shifted in the chair, searching for an impossible position.
—Do you like what you see? —I wanted to know, my mouth dry.
—I like it —he admitted, almost voiceless.
—Me too. In the end, it turns out my sister is very lucky to have you at home.
—Would you like to touch me? —he proposed, without thinking twice.
—I’d love to. But you know I’m not going to do it —I declined, with more regret than conviction—. What I do want is for you to do it. For you to take it out and let me watch you.
The little guilt I had left evaporated the moment he unbuttoned his fly and freed it. He held the base with his left hand, pulled the skin downward, and began a slow, familiar motion that brought out a few transparent drops from the tip. I looked away for a second, not out of modesty, but because the comparison with Hugo flashed through my mind uninvited, and genetics can be very capricious.
—Do you feel like continuing? —I encouraged him, sinking into the chair.
—And you? —he shot back, brokenly, without stopping.
—I do —I managed to say, bringing my knees together to contain what was beginning to spill over.
The album ended with a different image: my feet trapping an erection, me face down. One of those times when I ask my husband to rub cream on me and indulge his habit of giving me sole massages. A pastime that is almost always the pretext for me ending up stroking him with my toes.
—How good are you at that? —Tomás asked, nodding toward the photo.
—I feel a little clumsy, but your brother loves it. And I go weak when someone touches my feet. They’re one of my most sensitive spots —I confessed.
—Can I ask you to do it for me? —he insisted, with the longing of someone pursuing a firm purpose.
—You know what I’m going to answer, right?
—Yes. But maybe one day you’ll make a mistake. Or you’ll regret having said no —he added, breathing hard.
—I don’t blame you for keeping at it —I conceded, almost silently begging him to do it.
I watched him exaggerate the motion, holding at the bottom for an instant, as if he wanted to sink into his own hand. He was producing so much fluid that, if it hadn’t been transparent, I would have sworn he was already done. His knuckles dragged crystalline strands that stretched without breaking. As for me, I was sure I needed no help at all to straddle him if he offered. And the desire to do it was beginning to overpower the little willpower I had left.
I parted my legs and slipped my right hand under my underwear, desperate to ease the agony caused by the mere friction of the fabric. I stroked my clit with the pads of two fingers while the wetness invited them deeper. I pushed them in as far as I could and a muffled moan escaped my throat.
—Can I watch you do it? —he asked, in a thin voice.
His words snapped me back to the living room, to the gray afternoon beyond the window, just barely preventing me from exploding too soon. And that only drove me more insane.
—What more do you want to see that you haven’t already seen on that screen? —I asked with difficulty.
—What’s on the screen is from years ago. This is now. And you’ve already seen me. It would be fair, wouldn’t it?
—Your sense of fairness is a little warped. Must be because all your blood is far from your brain —I answered, and despite everything, I laughed.
—Please… —he whispered.
That “please” moved me so much I couldn’t bring myself to refuse. I stood up to slowly take off my leggings and underwear, and took the opportunity to remove my shirt too, leaving me in nothing but a white bra with sheer cups. I sat back down, dragged his chair to face mine, and rested my heels on his armrests, completely exposed to his gaze. I parted my lips with two fingers and started again, slowly. He copied me, now with both hands.
—Do you like what you see? —I asked, letting my head fall back, giving myself over to it.
—It’s much better than on the screen —he assured me, speeding up the pace—. And you? —he asked back, not taking his eyes off me.
—Much better. At first it scared me a little. But once I got past that, I can’t stop thinking about how I’d have to go about eating it.
—And have you found a way? —he prodded, slyly.
—Didn’t you want to keep looking at photos? —I cut in, before things got completely out of hand.
—Okay —he accepted, somewhat disappointed—. Which one do you recommend?
—Depends what you want to see me doing.
He turned back to the screen and, as he did, my left foot slipped off his armrest and fell into his lap. My toes came to rest on his hot hardness. I pulled it away as soon as I overcame the temptation to bring the other one along too, but not before indulging myself by putting a little pressure on it, until I felt him shudder all over.
—Please —I scolded him, in a tone much closer to pleading than anger.
—Sorry —he apologized, trying to concentrate on choosing.
If I were him, I wouldn’t have known what to pick either. The folder names were so suggestive it was hard to decide, but I understood why he chose the only one that promised video instead of still photos. And that was what he found: another compilation folder, this time of recordings my husband had made of me over the years.
—Fuck —he gasped at the thumbnails.
—Fuck, yes —I chimed in, exaggerating, at what was appearing on the monitor.
—Any advice? Right now I’m incapable of judging anything clearly.
—The one with the weird name and numbers. You’re definitely going to like that one.
The choice wasn’t random. The name referred to the room and the date it was recorded: our bedroom, on our wedding anniversary. I hit play and leaned back again, legs open, ready to enjoy the screening as much as his company.
The video had been recorded from the side of the bed, with the phone propped on a stack of books acting as an improvised tripod. The frame tightened around my head, resting on Hugo’s abdomen, and on his erection, which my left hand kept entirely at my disposal. I looked straight at the camera before stroking my cheeks with it, luxuriating in the softness and the warmth, feeling how he trembled and arched his hips, trying to rush things along. I used my mouth like a receptacle, pushed until I touched my own hand with my nose, and withdrew slowly, leaving him shining with saliva.
—Like that —I whispered to my brother-in-law, intensifying the rhythm of my fingers.
—L-like what? —he managed to say, without taking his eyes off the screen.
—The answer to your question from before. Whether I’d found a way to eat it —I clarified, looking at his arousal—. Like this. Like I’m eating your brother’s there.
Tomás couldn’t help using both hands again, alternating his gaze between the video and my body, as if he didn’t know which of the two would make him come first.
—Please. I need to touch you, or for you to touch me. Something —he goaded me, on the edge.
—Wait a moment. I’ve got an idea —I conceded, taking pity on him. And on myself.
I stood up and went over to the bag I’d left in the foyer. Inside I kept my favorite toy, the one controlled from my phone. I was so wet it was no trouble at all to slide it into me, leaving only the little antenna outside, pressed against my clit. I turned it on at the lowest setting and went back to him, reclaiming my seat in the chair, with the red light blinking between my legs like a warning signal.
—Look at your phone —I told him, fiddling with mine.
—What is it? What did you send me?
—A link to control this —I explained, pointing to the light—. I can’t let you touch me. But this isn’t touching me, right? It’s something else.
Tomás opened the link with trembling fingers. It took him a second to understand it and, when he did, a slow smile crossed his face. He cranked up the intensity all at once, and the toy came alive inside me with a vibration that tore a cry from me, one I didn’t bother to hide. He watched me from his chair, the phone in one hand and the other busy with himself, finally in possession of something of mine without breaking the one rule I had given him.
He played with me for several minutes, raising and lowering the intensity as he pleased, learning which pattern made me arch my back and which left me on the edge without quite pushing me over. I let him do it, surrendered, watching him work himself at the same pace, the two of us trapped in that invisible thread that passed through no hand.
When he finally let me go, he did it with a long, steady command that gave me no respite. The orgasm shook me from head to toe, and the last thing I saw before closing my eyes was Tomás spilling over his own stomach, looking at me and not at the screen, repeating my name in a voice so low I could barely hear it.
We stayed silent for a long while, catching our breath, not daring to name what had just happened. We hadn’t done it. Not completely. And yet we had crossed something that could not be undone.
—My brother will never know about this afternoon —he said at last, still breathless.
—No —I answered, gathering my clothes from the floor—. But you and I will. And that, from now on, is going to be the hardest thing.
I closed the laptop carefully, leaving all those images asleep inside. I knew that folder would never be looked at the same way again. And deep down, I also knew that this would not be the last afternoon my brother-in-law and I would spend alone.
