My wife came back marked and ordered me to kneel

Lorena came into the apartment dragging her feet, with her hair disheveled, her lips swollen, and a dark smear climbing up her skirt to her hip. The torn fabric stuck to her thigh, sweaty and dirty, marked by fingers that had pawed at her without letup. She didn’t even fully close the door: she left it ajar, as if inviting the hallway air to come in with her.

Damián was still where she had left him hours earlier, standing in front of the window, swallowing hard without daring to turn around. He had been waiting for her since midnight. He knew where she had been and with whom, because she herself had sent him three messages that night to remind him.

—Aren’t you going to ask anything, idiot? —Lorena said slowly, as she took off her heels and let them fall onto the wooden floor.

Each shoe hit with a dry thud. Damián closed his eyes for a moment.

She sat on the edge of the dining table with feigned care, as if sitting down were a punishment. But her eyes were shining with something that wasn’t exhaustion.

—They left me wrecked —she laughed, and lifted her skirt to her waist so he would have to look—. See this? Red, swollen, open. They used me however they wanted, without asking permission. They pulled my hair, they bit me, they spat on me. And here you are, waiting for me with the little light on.

A thick white thread slid slowly down the inside of her thigh. Damián saw it fall onto the parquet and had no idea where to look.

—One of them grabbed me by the arm and told the others, “She’s coming in wet, she’s asking for it.” They pinned me against a wall, bent me in two, made me scream. And I came, Damián. Three times. They put me on all fours and tore me apart until I begged them to stop, but none of them wanted anyone to stop.

Damián stayed mute. His mouth tasted like metal. Every word from her was a stone dropping on top of him, impossible to brush away.

—Want to know the worst part? —Lorena lowered her skirt with a theatrical gesture and dusted her knees off—. This afternoon, while you were busting your ass at the office, Bruno came by. Your friend Bruno, the one who always stays for the last drink when you invite him over. The one who looks at my ass when you think nobody notices.

She brought a hand to her chest and stroked the hard nipple through her stained shirt.

—He rang the bell with some stupid excuse, a box of wine you’d asked him to bring. I opened the door in a robe. He didn’t even say hello. He grabbed my waist, spun me around, and shoved me against the fridge. He pulled my underwear down with one hand and put it in me right there, standing up, with the breakfast dishes still unwashed.

Damián closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them again, she was staring straight at him from the table.

—He whispered in my ear, “Does your husband do this to you? Does that worthless bastard fuck you like this?” And I told him no, not you, never you. I told him harder, not to stop. He came inside me, squeezed my hips until they were bruised, and left without saying goodbye. As if I were trash. Trash he could use and then hand back to its owner.

She sucked the tip of her finger, slowly, looking him in the eyes.

—Then I went out for a walk. A car passed, a guy rolled down the window and told me, “Get in.” I didn’t even ask his name. I got in. He pulled my underwear down in the seat, spread my legs, and fucked me right there, on an empty street, with the windows fogged up and the seat belt digging into my back. He came inside and then opened me with his fingers and licked me until I was clean. He told me “delicious,” he told me “slut,” he told me to come back whenever I wanted.

She’s lying, Damián thought. She has to be lying. But something in the way her voice cracked at the end of each sentence told him she wasn’t.

—And in the end there was Sebastián. That huge guy from the gym who makes you nervous when you run into him in the elevator. You were right to be nervous. He took me to a room behind the bar, threw me onto a sticky table, and shoved it in my ass without warning. It burned, it stung, and the others were laughing: “Take it, babe, take it.” And I took it. I took it all.

Lorena opened her legs again, slowly, letting another white drop fall to the floor.

—I’m broken, Damián. I walk crooked. And you’re here, staring, not knowing what to say.

She came up to him and brushed his chin with two firm fingers. She smelled of stale perfume, alcohol, other bodies.

—You’re my husband. That doesn’t give you the right to anything. Not to ask, not to have an opinion, not to cry. You’re the one who waits. The one who cleans. The cuckold.

Damián lowered his head. He wasn’t looking at her. He hadn’t looked at her for months.

***

She climbed down from the table without hurry and stood in front of him, barefoot, with her skirt stained and her mascara smudged. She spread her legs brazenly and showed him everything she had brought home.

—What are you looking at? —she spat—. Want to taste what real men left me? Or are you going to stay nailed there like a piece of furniture?

Damián didn’t answer. Lorena took his head with a firm hand and pushed it down. It wasn’t a violent shove; it was enough.

—Kneel. On the floor. Like the dog you are.

He let himself fall. His knees cracked against the parquet. Lorena climbed onto the table again, settled herself with her legs wide open, and pointed her hips at him.

—Clean me. Get everything they left inside me out with your tongue. I don’t want a single drop left. Not one.

Damián plunged in without thinking. His tongue began to work over her with an urgency he didn’t recognize in himself. He could taste her, hot and swollen, full of a чужой flavor that burned his mouth. He went down to her ass, dirty and open, and licked there too, eyes closed, thinking of nothing but obeying.

—That’s how I like it —she purred, stroking her breasts through the torn shirt—. Eat up all the other man’s cum. Look how it’s dripping down your chin. Do you like the taste of other men, baby? Do you like being humiliated like this?

She shoved his head harder against her sex.

—Don’t stop. Bruno left me full in the back and it’s still leaking. Clean it all. Harder. Deeper.

Damián groaned against her flesh. It had been a long time since he had felt her this close, and it shamed him that such closeness was only possible this way, with his mouth full of other men’s semen. But he didn’t stop. His tongue moved on its own, sticky, fast, defeated.

—You’re a floor rag —she said, almost affectionately—. Look at what you are. Swallowing other men’s cum, sucking what they left on me. And you love it. Look how it’s staining you down there.

Lorena arched, gasped. A wave ran through her from the nape of her neck to her sacrum.

—You make me come, you son of a bitch. With your filthy tongue, like a slave. And you make me come anyway.

With a sudden movement she pressed his head against her sex and came over his face. She smeared the wetness across his nose, his lips, his forehead. Damián swallowed without thinking.

—There. Swallow the mix. Mine and theirs. That’s how you like it, isn’t it? Tell me yes.

He nodded, face buried between her thighs. He had no voice.

Lorena pushed him away with her foot. Not with violence: with contempt.

—That’s enough. Back to your corner, dog. You’ve served your purpose.

Damián crawled until his back hit the wall. His face was shining. His breathing was ragged. His chest rose and fell at a rhythm he couldn’t control.

Lorena adjusted her skirt, lit a cigarette, and looked at him sideways with the crooked smile of someone who had won a long time ago.

—Good cuckold. That’s how I want you.

***

The cigarette smoke rose slowly to the ceiling. Damián was still on the floor, against the wall. Lorena watched him with a disgust that seemed careful, rehearsed for weeks in front of the bathroom mirror.

—You know what, baby? —she said, taking a long drag—. While you were busting your ass in that mediocre office, I was fucking another guy in this very bed. Here. In the bed where you climb on me with that sad little thing you’ve got between your legs. A real man. One of those with a cock. He wrecked me completely. He came inside me so many times I was dripping all day.

Damián had his eyes fixed on the parquet. Each word fell on him like a stone.

—And yes. He got me pregnant, cuckold —she spat—. I’ve been carrying another man’s child inside me for three months. And here you are, licking up the leftovers.

She climbed onto him in one sudden motion. She rode him on the floor with rage, as if punishing him with her body. She moved fast, hard, laughing through clenched teeth, a mix of pleasure and fury.

—Want to know how it happened?

And Damián saw it. Against his will, he saw it. He imagined her naked on their sheets, riding some faceless guy, moaning with her mouth open, with the other man’s hands dug into her ass. He saw her come and start again. He saw their bed shaken by the violence of a чужой body. A bed for two, stained by three.

—And it wasn’t just him, either, huh?

Damián lifted his gaze only slightly. She leaned down and spat on his cheek.

—In the bathroom of a club, last Saturday. When you thought I was with my cousin. I don’t even remember the guy’s name. He saw me come in wearing those short shorts you gave me for my birthday and followed me without saying a word. He grabbed my hair, shoved me against the sink, and jammed it in me without asking permission.

She looked at him with mockery, with dirty delight in her voice.

—He didn’t even take my clothes off. He shoved the shorts to one side and put it in me like that, unprotected, without asking anything. He fucked me fast, dirty, hard, like I was something he could leave on the sink when he was done. And he came inside. Every last drop.

She bent down until her mouth was right by his ear.

—And I came too. No guilt. Soaked. I left the bathroom with other men’s cum dripping through my underwear and sat at the table outside with you. You ordered me another beer and told me I’d never looked prettier. What an idiot.

Damián closed his eyes.

—I walked out of the club with my ass sweating and my shorts all shoved up in the middle. I passed right by you at the bar and laughed. You smiled back. That good-husband smile that makes me want to spit on you every time I see it.

Lorena got off him, wiped her hand on her T-shirt, and walked to the window. She typed something into her phone without hurry, as if she had all the time in the world.

—Oh, right —she said without taking her eyes off the screen—. Tomorrow we’ve got the obstetrician appointment at ten. You’re coming with me. You’re going to listen to the heartbeat of the child that isn’t yours. And you’re going to smile like an exemplary father. Like the good cuckold you are.

Damián didn’t answer. He had nothing to answer with.

She walked naked into the bathroom, back straight, the marks still red on her waist and thighs, the lit cigarette between her fingers. The door closed without violence, as if nothing mattered anymore.

Damián remained on the floor, against the wall, face wet and the taste of three other men in his mouth. Tomorrow he was going to smile at the doctor’s office. He was going to squeeze Lorena’s hand when the heartbeat sounded. He was going to smile because he no longer knew how to do anything else, and because in some dirty corner of himself, he had begun to understand that he didn’t want to learn.