The Mechanic Knew Too Much About Me

Since that afternoon with the movers, my husband had stopped being enough. It wasn’t really his fault. It was the fault of what I had discovered about myself: that I needed to feel used, that something in me lit up when someone treated me as if I deserved nothing else. That awareness made me ashamed. And at the same time I couldn’t stop thinking about it every time Rodrigo kissed me with his usual tenderness.

—Are you okay? —he asked me one night, afterward.

—I’m perfect —I answered, staring at the ceiling.

I was not okay at all.

The weeks passed. I learned to live with that tension lodged in my body, that constant tingling that found no release. I dressed differently when I went out. More fitted. I wasn’t aware I was doing it, or so I kept telling myself as I put on the black leather pants that traced every curve without effort.

That Tuesday I went to the supermarket downtown. For days the sky had been threatening rain and I had ignored the clouds. I took the pickup, not the small car, because I wanted the space. When I walked into the supermarket, I noticed the looks right away: the guy in frozen foods, the stock clerk, two men by the carts. I didn’t care. Or almost.

I shopped slowly. I liked walking those aisles with the certainty that someone was following me with their eyes. I paid, loaded the bags into the truck, and when I pulled out, the sky suddenly opened up. A light rain first, then a real downpour.

I had only a few blocks left to home when I heard the dull thud underneath the bodywork, that unmistakable sound that drops your stomach through the floor. I pulled over. I got out with the water beating against my shoulders and saw the rear tire completely flat, lying against the wet asphalt.

I tried to keep going slowly. The pickup swayed and made a noise that scared me. Rodrigo was very careful with vehicles, and I didn’t want to imagine his face if I handed him something worse than what I had found.

Half a block away, through the rain, I made out the red sign of a garage. I ran.

***

The place smelled of burnt grease and rain coming in through the half-open gate. Tires were stacked to the ceiling, there was a workbench covered in tools, and in the back a brown leather couch that had seen better days. The man at the counter looked up when I came in.

About forty-five. Dark-haired, solid build. Hands stained with grease, forearms marked by years of physical work. He wasn’t the kind of man Rodrigo would greet on the street. He looked me over without shame, from the feet up, lingering where he shouldn’t.

—How can I help you, miss? —he said, and the word “miss” sounded like a private joke.

—I got a flat tire. The pickup’s out there —I answered, pointing toward the street—. I didn’t want to move it anymore because the steering wheel feels weird.

He nodded, asked for the keys with his palm extended. I handed them over. When he took them, his fingers brushed mine a second longer than necessary.

He went out into the downpour; I stayed watching from the gate. He maneuvered the pickup inside the shop with a precision that surprised me. Then he came back, shaking the water from his shoulders, and pulled off his soaked T-shirt without asking, as if I wasn’t there.

—With this rain I can’t work outside —he said—. You’ll have to wait a while. Sit down.

He pointed to the couch.

I sat on the edge, with the grocery bags at my feet and my blouse plastered to my body by the water. He settled at the other end, legs apart, elbows on his knees, watching me with that calm of someone who knows he has time.

—You live nearby, right? —he asked.

—A few blocks away.

—I’ve seen you pass by.

Of course he had seen me pass by.

The rain hammered the corrugated roof. Outside, the headlights of passing cars were barely visible through the curtain of water. Inside, it was just him and me and that uncomfortable silence I didn’t know how to fill.

Then he took out his phone.

He unlocked it slowly, like someone in no hurry, and turned the screen toward me with a smile that wasn’t polite.

I went cold.

It was a photograph. Me. In a situation I recognized at once, even though I wished I didn’t: the day with the laborers, in that warehouse, with my clothes half-off and the face of someone who has stopped resisting. It wasn’t blurred or low quality. It was perfectly sharp.

—No... that’s not me —I managed to say. My voice came out broken.

—Don’t play games —he replied, still smiling—. That little face of yours has a very good memory.

He turned the phone toward himself again. I heard the sound of a video. My own voice, mixed with the rain, saying things that burned in my ears.

I didn’t move. I felt my heart pounding in my throat.

He ran his free hand over his thigh, slowly, without taking his eyes off me.

—Come here —he said—. I want to see if that little mouth works the same in person.

That word. The tone. The way he said it, as if he already knew the answer.

I stood up.

***

I walked toward him without my legs shaking, even though everything else was. I knelt on the cold cement floor. He didn’t move, only leaned a little forward and waited.

I unbuckled his belt. Then the button. Lowered the zipper.

What I found wasn’t what I expected. It was big in a specific way, without narrative exaggeration: simply big, dark, completely hard. I stared at it for a second before I could react.

—You like what you see? —he asked from above.

—Yes —I answered, and it was true.

I started slowly. With my tongue first, tracing from the base to the tip, memorizing the weight, the heat, the smell of sweat and cheap soap. He didn’t touch me at first. He just watched, his arms stretched over the back of the couch, completely in control of the situation.

When I took him all the way into my mouth, he made a deep sound that went straight to my belly.

—That’s it —he muttered—. Just like that.

He took my head with both hands. Pushed. I tried to keep the rhythm but he set his own, deeper, more insistent, not caring whether I could take it or not. Saliva gathered at the corners of my lips. I closed my eyes.

—Open your eyes —he ordered—. I want to see you.

I opened them. I looked up at him from below. Something about that position, about looking at him from the floor, made me clench my thighs.

—You suck cock like a pro —he said, and there was no insult in his voice, only a cold observation that hurt in exactly the right way.

I pulled myself up in one motion. I stood and he held me by the waist, drawing me against him. His hands traveled over the soaked blouse, pressing my sides, my ribs, my chest. When he squeezed my breasts over the fabric I let out a sound I hadn’t thought I’d make.

—So sensitive —he said, almost to himself.

Without warning he turned me and shoved me toward the stack of tires piled against the back wall. He held me with one hand on the small of my back while with the other he pulled my leather pants down over my hips. He wasn’t gentle. I didn’t want gentle either.

—What good hips —he murmured from behind me.

—Then use them —I answered without turning around.

***

I felt his fingers part the fabric of my underwear. A second of silence. Then the pressure. He opened me with two fingers first, wetting me, preparing me his way, without asking anything, and the contact made me let out a long, trembling breath. The garage was cold, but between my legs there was already fire.

—You’re soaked —he said, running a finger through my slit, slowly, as if he wanted to hear me—. And you like being treated like this.

—Yes —I said, with my face pressed against the rubber of a tire—. Like that. Don’t talk to me nicely.

He gave a low laugh and lifted my hips a little higher. I heard the sound of his belt against his own body, the rustle of clothes coming down, the firm movement of someone who isn’t thinking about anything but fucking. Then came the push.

The first thrust was slow and it cost me. He entered hard, opening me all at once, and I bit the rubber of the tire in front of me to keep from making a sound.

—You’re tight —he said.

—Loosen me up.

The second was easier. The third went all the way in and I let out the air in a rush, my arms stretched over the tires to hold myself up. He stayed still for a moment, as if evaluating. Then he started to move.

There was nothing romantic about it. It was a man fucking me bent against the material he worked with, in a greasy garage, while it rained outside and my grocery bags were still on the floor beside the couch. It was exactly what my body had been screaming for for weeks.

—Does your husband fuck you like this? —he asked between thrusts.

—No.

—Why not?

—Because he doesn’t know I need this.

He laughed under his breath and picked up the pace. I pressed my forehead to the tire and closed my eyes. The sound of the two of us, mixed with the rain on the roof, filled the place in a way that made me dizzy.

He grabbed my hips with both hands and drove harder, with that steady rhythm that doesn’t ask but imposes. My legs began to tremble. I felt something tightening in the center of my body, gathering.

—More —I begged.

—More?

—Harder.

I heard him exhale. The thrusts changed cadence, shorter, deeper, with a weight that crushed me against the tires with each one. My leather pants were already on the floor, and the damp fabric of my underwear had given enough to leave me completely at his mercy. He was driving his cock in and out with brutal precision, hitting that place inside me that made my back arch and my legs open wider without thinking.

—That’s it —he said, pressing himself against my nape—. That’s how I like you: still and open.

I moaned, unable to help myself, and he grabbed my hair to force me to lift my face.

—Look at me when I’m fucking you.

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, my breathing torn apart. His forehead was sweaty, his neck tense, his jaw clenched from pushing so hard. I liked seeing him like that, focused, using his whole body to tear me apart from the inside.

—Do you like being a hole for me? —he asked.

The question pierced me more than the thrusts.

—Yes —I said, almost voiceless—. Fuck me right. Fuck me like you’re going to leave a mark on me.

He answered with a sharp thrust of his hips that tore a muffled cry from me. Then he held me even tighter and started fucking me for real, without pause, making the tires screech against the wall with every shove. I clung to the rubber, trembling, feeling pleasure fill me from my belly to my thighs, to my chest, to my throat.

When I hit the edge, I did it in silence, jaw clenched and knuckles white on the rubber, because cars were passing outside and the gate was only barely shut. The orgasm came in tight waves, small and repeated, and he didn’t let up. He kept driving his cock into me until he made me cry from the effort, until I emptied around him and was left panting, soft, on the verge of falling.

—That’s it —he murmured—. That’s how I wanted you.

***

He turned me around without pulling out. He laid me back on the couch with my own shoulders sunk into the old leather and himself on top, looking at me face-to-face for the first time during the whole thing.

—Pretty —he said, and it was the only kind thing he said all afternoon.

Now he kissed me for real. A filthy kiss, with tongue, with his mouth full of my taste and his, while he kept moving inside me. He held me by the waist and changed the angle, going deeper from above, forcing my legs open over the couch, thighs trembling and body still sensitive from what had come before. He touched my breasts, pinched a nipple through the wet fabric, and I arched with a moan.

—Do you like it like that? —he asked, licking my neck.

—Yes. Don’t stop.

Then he fucked me harder. The couch creaked beneath us. The rain kept hitting the roof. His hips slammed against mine with a wet, repeated sound that made me dig my fingers into his shoulders. I opened wider, no shame left, letting him in all the way. I could feel every pulse of his cock inside me, every thrust like a blow that realigned something in my body.

—Look at you —he said, glancing down where we joined—. You’re almost ready to come again, aren’t you?

I couldn’t answer. I only nodded, breathless, because I felt it again: that beautiful pressure in my belly, that knot forming once more with every thrust. He leaned in further, sucked one breast, then the other, and left my bra twisted and soaked over one shoulder. The garage air smelled of hot rubber, metal, raw sex without embellishment.

—Tell me —he insisted.

—I want you to fill me —I blurted out, without thinking—. I want you to come inside me.

He saw it coming and smiled like a satisfied animal.

He finished with three long thrusts and a growl he half-suppressed. I felt it inside me, hot, without warning, filling me with a thick rush that made me clamp my eyes shut. He stayed still for a second, still buried inside me, breathing hard over my open mouth, and then slowly pulled out while I kept trembling on the couch.

He stood up. He buttoned his pants. He went to rummage among his things and tossed me a cloth jacket so I could wipe myself. Then he went out into the garage, checked the tire, and got back to work as if nothing had happened.

I put my pants on. The blouse was ruined. I straightened it as best I could.

Ten minutes later, the pickup was ready.

—How much do I owe you? —I asked.

He looked at me for a second before answering.

—Nothing. You already paid me.

And then, while he gathered his tools:

—Come by tomorrow if you want. I can check the pressure on the other tires.

I didn’t answer. I took my grocery bags, climbed into the pickup, and drove off. Outside, the rain had eased to a drizzle.

***

Rodrigo came home an hour after I did. He asked why I smelled different. I told him I had run through the rain when the tire went flat and that the mechanic around the corner fixed it for me.

—What mechanic? —he asked.

—One nearby. Expensive, they say. He didn’t charge me anything.

He looked at me for a moment. Then he nodded and went to change.

It was his wife who got the flat. That’s what I thought while I put water on to boil for dinner, my hands still a little shaky and something still wet sliding along the inside of my thigh.

I didn’t go the next day.

I went on Thursday.