The Modest Wife of My Colleague Asked for More

Esteban was the commercial director of the company where I worked. Forty-seven years old, immaculate suit every morning, two children, a reasonable mortgage, and a life ordered down to the last detail. Cristina, his wife, was the perfect complement to that image: forty-four years old, always wearing loose clothes, muted colors, a measured smile that barely showed her teeth.

I had run into her a couple of times at company events and she had never said more than three sentences to me. Still, I had felt her eyes on me. That sidelong look that snaps back into place the moment you catch it, only to return minutes later as if no one had noticed. Under that nun’s clothing, there was a woman.

I was dragging around a divorce that was a couple of years old and the curiosity of a man with no one waiting for him at home.

***

The company Christmas dinner that December was the first turning point. We ate in a restaurant with white tablecloths and mediocre wine, toasted to a year no one actually remembered, and a group of us decided to keep the night going at a nearby nightclub. Esteban, one of those men who gets bored as soon as the music gets loud, holed up at the bar with two drinks and a coworker just as dull as he was.

Cristina stayed on the dance floor with the other wives and me. She was wearing a black dress that did her no favors at all, but that night she had decided to put on lipstick, and on her, that was almost an act of provocation.

When the first slow song came on, I didn’t have to ask her for anything. I offered her my hand and she took it as if she had been waiting for someone to do that for hours.

—You smell good —I said, pressing my face close to hers.

—You do too.

Her breasts were firmer than that loose clothing suggested. They pressed against my chest and instead of pulling away, she settled in. I slid my hands down her back until I had them on the curve of her hips, and from there to her ass, slowly, giving her time to move away if she wasn’t willing.

She didn’t move away. She pushed her pelvis forward, found my erection, and stayed there, rubbing against me to the rhythm of the song as if it were the most natural part of dancing.

—If your husband sees us, we’re both fucked tomorrow —I whispered in her ear.

—My husband never looks.

She said that without bitterness, almost like a scientific observation. But she said it while pressing her hips even tighter against mine.

Before things got out of hand, I let her go with the excuse that I was going to get a drink. I didn’t feel like explaining anything to Esteban the next morning.

***

I ran into her again three days later in some shopping galleries in the city center. We were both carrying absurd last-minute shopping bags. I invited her for coffee in a discreet place, and there, without meaning to, we stopped pretending.

—Esteban is the only man I’ve ever been with —she confessed while stirring her coffee—. We met in high school. I got married when I was twenty-two. And I don’t know, everything just started fading away.

—Fading away?

—We make love four times a year. Maybe five if there are long holidays. The last thing he wants after dinner is to fuck me.

It was the first time I’d heard her say a harsh word. She said it softly, looking down at the cup, as if the word embarrassed her more than the confession.

—And you?

—I manage. There are pages on the internet. There are very long afternoons when the kids are at school.

I leaned across the table and kissed her. At first she startled, looked around, made a move as if to pull away. Then she gave in and kissed me back with a tongue that had spent years training in silence.

Nothing else happened that afternoon. I didn’t ask for her number. I didn’t promise to call again. I already had enough problems and I didn’t feel like adding a coworker’s wife to the list.

***

Spring brought her back. The company organized a management convention in a small city, three hours from ours, for the weekend, and the wives were invited. I arrived at the hotel on Friday in midafternoon, showered, and went down to the lobby. There she was, sitting on a sofa with her husband, flipping through a magazine.

Esteban greeted me with his usual slap on the back. Cristina looked up, smiled like a stranger, and went back to the magazine. But before lowering her eyes, she gave me two seconds of a look that was anything but strangerly.

During dinner I was seated beside her. She between her husband and me. Halfway through dinner I let my hand fall beneath the tablecloth and put my fingers on her knee. I waited for her to move away. She didn’t move away: she spread her thighs just enough to invite me higher.

I went higher. I slipped past the stocking, past the garter, found skin and, higher still, found fabric already soaked through with her panties. I pressed her clit twice with my thumb and she bit her lip hard enough to leave a white circle.

I took my hand away. I didn’t want Esteban finding out because of some stupid slip. She shot me a look of furious, passionate anger that made me laugh inside.

When dinner was over, Esteban got involved in a card game with two executives and a sales rep. Cristina went out to the garden to smoke. I waited a couple of minutes and followed her.

The hotel garden was poorly lit and opened onto a service area where no one had any reason to pass through. I found her leaning against a low wall, a half-smoked cigarette between her fingers. I took the cigarette from her, crushed it against the wall, and kissed her without preamble.

—Not here —she said between kisses.

—Here, yes.

I pushed her toward a shadowy corner beside a hedge. I slid my hand under her skirt, pulled her panties aside, and sank two fingers into her. She was so wet they went in without effort. She started trembling before I had even moved much.

—Please —she gasped—. I’ve been thinking about this since December.

I spread her legs, dropped my pants just enough, and lifted her, bracing her against the wall. She wrapped her thighs around my waist, I held the backs of her knees, and I drove into her slowly, letting her feel every centimeter.

The first full thrust ripped a moan out of her that I had to silence with my mouth. From there, she took over. She moved with the rage of years held back, biting my neck, whispering filthy things in my ear that I never would have thought her capable of saying.

We came almost at the same time. I lowered her carefully to the ground, handed her a tissue, and straightened her skirt. Her lipstick was smeared, her eyes were shining, and she had a new smile.

—Tomorrow, after breakfast, in my room —I told her—. Four-twelve.

She nodded without speaking and went back into the hotel through the main entrance. I went out into the street to take a walk and smoke a cigarette myself.

***

The next morning I skipped the first session with the excuse of an urgent matter. At ten-fifteen, Cristina knocked on the door of four-twelve.

This time there was no hurry. We undressed slowly, almost calmly, and looked at each other on the bed without touching for a few seconds. She had a body that that loose clothing hid with almost insulting cruelty: heavy breasts with large dark nipples, a narrow waist, hips that looked painted on.

—How many years have you been hiding this? —I asked her.

—Too many.

I ran my tongue down her neck, over her breasts, over her belly. I reached her sex and stayed there for a good while, until she came the first time, gripping my hair so hard I thought she was going to rip it out. The second time was with two fingers inside her. The third was when I finally penetrated her, on my knees between her legs, with her ankles over my shoulders.

That morning Cristina learned things about herself that twenty-two years of marriage had not taught her. And I confirmed that the most modest woman in the office was, underneath that turtleneck sweater, the horniest woman I had found in years.

***

Back in the capital, weekday meetups started at my apartment. She’d arrive in the afternoon, after dropping the kids off at extracurricular classes, and leave around seven-thirty to pick them up. Three hours. Sometimes two.

One day she surprised me with black lingerie, cheap lace but effective. She told me she had bought it for me. I thanked her for the detail and took it off in thirty seconds.

We fucked every way she could think of, and she could think of quite a few. One afternoon, after several months, she asked me for anal. Her husband had never done it to her. She wanted to know what it felt like.

—Slowly —I warned her.

—Whatever. But try it.

She was so soaked underneath that I could use her own fluids to get her ready. I put in one finger, then two, and when she stopped tensing up I guided the head in patiently. I slid all the way in after a while, and from there she took control: she asked for spanks, called me a bastard, ordered me to tear her apart.

There was absolutely nothing left of that modest, shy woman.

***

Things went wrong the way these kinds of stories usually do. She started calling me at odd hours. She started complaining that I saw her too little. She started talking about deadlines, about weekends, about openings I had no intention of giving her.

I told her to open a profile on a dating site. To put up photos without her face, write a clear ad, and let the internet do the rest. She’d have more than enough men eager for her.

She agreed. The following month, when we met, she told me she already had three steady lovers. The month after that, five. We started seeing each other less and less.

***

Three months passed with no news from her. We met again one afternoon and she confessed, almost proudly, that she was pregnant. It wasn’t Esteban’s.

—And how do you know?

—Because he hasn’t touched me in almost a year.

—And what are you going to do?

—Have it. And tell him it’s his. It’s the easiest thing for everyone.

Months later Esteban came into the office handing out cigarettes. I congratulated him, asked about the mother, sent my regards. I felt something strange doing it, but life goes on.

A year later I learned they had divorced.

***

I didn’t hear from Cristina again until two years later. I was out for drinks with a friend at a bar on the outskirts of town, and when I walked in I saw her sitting on a stool, in a very short dress and with a drink in her hand.

She stood up the moment she saw me, hugged me warmly, and dragged me to a secluded table. She told me the divorce had been expensive: Esteban had hired a private investigator, had gotten proof, and had won custody of both children. The alimony he paid her was just enough to survive on.

—And this way I’m better off —she told me, laughing—. Before, I fucked for free. Now I get paid.

I ordered two drinks. We talked for a long while, not about sex, but about the kids, about her mother helping her see them on weekends, about how life had turned everything upside down.

When I left, my friend, who had stayed at another table watching the scene, asked me if it was worth it.

I told him yes. And I also told him that that woman, the most modest one I had ever known in my life, had the horniest one inside her. The thing was, it took her forty-four years to realize it.