The Night My Ex Tried to Steal Camila from Me

My name is Lieke, and my parents died in a plane crash before I had even turned one. They were cultural attachés at the Danish embassy in Athens, and they had asked their best friend, Henri, to take care of me if anything ever happened to them. Henri kept his word, adopted me, and for the rest of my childhood took me with him to every embassy where he served as a French consul.

That’s why I speak four languages, and why, by the time I was eighteen, I had packed and unpacked my suitcase more times than I could count. When Henri told me he was going to remain in Spain permanently as ambassador, I almost cried with relief. I wanted to study business without having to say goodbye to everyone every two years, and that was exactly what I did. I worked my ass off until they admitted me to the school.

During my first month, I discovered what everyone already knew: the business school cafeteria was a disaster. The psychology cafeteria, on the other hand, had a reputation for cooking like God. One October afternoon, I crossed campus, went in with my tray, and found every table occupied except one. Sitting at that one by the window was a girl reading an open book over her plate.

“Excuse me, can I sit here?” I asked.

She slowly lifted her face. She wore thick-framed glasses that covered half her forehead, and her eyes were such a green that I stumbled over my own words.

“Sure,” she said. “My name is Camila.”

“Lieke. Why do you have the whole table to yourself?”

She smiled as if the question were a trick.

“Because I’m the lesbian architecture geek. People would rather eat standing up.”

She said it so naturally that I laughed. I confessed that I was bisexual and that I hadn’t wanted to look at anyone for two years. Camila fell silent for a second, then lowered her eyes to the book and went on reading. But when we said goodbye, without looking at me, she said:

“I’ll be at this table tomorrow too.”

I was. And the next day, and the day after that. In less than a month, we weren’t eating alone anymore: we were eating together, and everyone else kept their distance. I didn’t care. Every time Camila bit her lip while thinking, I lost the thread of whatever I was saying.

***

The first time I kissed her, we were both drunk. It was after the February exams. I convinced her to come to a party at the dorm by badgering her, and that night she, who had never tried a shot, discovered aguardiente with the worst possible consequences. By one in the morning, she had drunk four and was laughing to herself. I sat her on a secluded sofa so her dizziness would pass, and when she turned her face toward me, she kissed me without warning.

It was an intense, clumsy, lingering kiss, the kind that puts the world in order for a few seconds. Then she fell asleep with her head on my shoulder. I took her upstairs to my room because hers was two floors higher and I could barely manage my own. I undressed her, put one of my T-shirts on her, and tucked her into bed. I fell asleep with my arms around her back, thinking of nothing but the warmth of her body.

In the morning, she woke up disoriented. She saw herself in her underwear and, for an instant, panic crossed her face.

“Nothing happened between us,” I said quickly. “You were worse off than I was, and I couldn’t get you up to your room.”

“Thank God,” she replied. “I wouldn’t have liked the first time you fucked me to be with this hangover.”

“Who told you I was going to fuck you?”

“Your kiss yesterday. And the fact that I’ve been dying for you to spread my legs.”

My mouth went dry. I gave her a painkiller and let her sleep a little longer. I want this to last a long time, I thought before closing my eyes.

***

I called Henri that very afternoon.

“Dad, I’m staying at the dorm this weekend. I’ve met someone special.”

“I’m very happy for you, sweetheart. And how are her grades?”

I smiled. Henri knew me far too well. Before Camila, I had been in a relationship that nearly destroyed me: a bisexual girl who made me believe she was in love with me while using me as bait to make her ex jealous. Once she’d succeeded, she left me in a café with half a cup of coffee in front of me. I spent three months unable to sleep and another three without speaking to anyone but Henri. He knew that, which was why he always asked about grades, not looks: a good student wasn’t so easily fooled by someone like her.

“The best in the entire architecture school,” I told him. “And by far.”

“Bring her to dinner whenever you like.”

It took us four months to arrange it. In the meantime, Camila and I moved slowly, the way two people who love each other move when they have fears hanging around their necks. There were kisses, hands beneath blouses, breasts squeezed over bras, and fingers slipping as far as the waistbands of our panties without going any farther. Whole nights in her room biting each other’s lips and stopping dead before stripping completely, our pussies soaked and our breathing ragged. I told her everything about my ex, leaving nothing out. Camila listened to the end and said only, “I’m not her.”

***

On the Saturday when everything finally came undone, we had dinner at an Italian restaurant Henri had recommended. It was cheap, the pasta tasted like a memory, and Camila left the restaurant saying she was keeping that house forever. We hailed a taxi, and I told the driver to take us to the new club half the university had been talking about.

The line was long. It moved in fits and starts, and during one moment of inattention I saw her: my ex, two places ahead of us in line, with her best friend beside her. She hadn’t seen me. My expression changed, and Camila noticed immediately.

“What’s wrong?”

“My ex,” I murmured.

She squeezed my hand without saying anything. We got inside twenty minutes later, and for the first hour I managed not to think about her. The club was packed; we found a tiny patch of space on the dance floor and pressed ourselves together. I kissed her with an intensity that surprised even me. Camila returned the kiss without hesitation, her tongue deep in my mouth and one leg slipped between mine, rubbing her thigh against my pussy over my dress. I thought I was at peace.

I wasn’t. My ex had seen us. I recognized her smile before she came over: that smile I had learned to fear back when I still believed she was mine.

Camila and I decided to stop for a drink. I was dying to pee, so I told her to order while I went to the bathroom. The line was amazingly quick for once. When I came out, I looked toward the bar and my heart sank: my ex had approached Camila and was whispering in her ear.

I moved forward, pushing through the crowd, but a bottleneck formed between the dance floor and the bar, forcing me to stop three yards away. I could hear them, though they couldn’t see me.

“Are you sure you want to leave with frigid Lieke?” my ex was saying. “I guarantee you’ll fuck better with me. That one doesn’t even know how to eat pussy.”

I clenched my teeth. Camila didn’t even flinch.

“Listen, gorgeous,” she replied, with a calm that melted me. “Tonight Lieke is going to eat my pussy until she leaves me dry, slide her tongue all the way inside, and fuck me with her fingers up to the knuckles while you masturbate thinking about us.”

“And who do you think you are? I can have any woman I want.”

“Maybe. But none of them will soak your panties the way I’m going to soak hers tonight. So move aside—I have my girlfriend waiting to fuck me senseless.”

Her friend tugged at her arm and whispered something to her. My ex saw me appear just then. She said nothing. She turned around and vanished into the crowd without looking back at us.

“So, your girlfriend?” I asked Camila, my voice trembling with something that wasn’t fear. “And who did you say was going to eat your pussy?”

“You. And we’re taking too long—I’m soaked from listening to myself talk.”

***

I took her by the hand and we left. On the way in, we had passed a small hotel on a parallel street. We went in almost running. I asked for a room, and we rode the elevator kissing against the mirror, her hand under my dress squeezing my ass over my thong while mine was inside her cleavage, pinching one of her nipples until she moaned into my mouth. By the time we closed the room door, both our dresses were halfway down and our panties were showing underneath.

Under her loose clothes, Camila hid a body I hadn’t expected: small, firm breasts with dark nipples already hard; narrow hips, a smooth belly, and a shaved pussy with glossy wetness spilling from it and running down the inside of her thigh. I tore her dress all the way off, yanked open her bra, and shoved her panties down to her ankles. I pushed her against the wall, caught one nipple between my teeth, and sucked it hungrily until I heard her let out a long moan. I kissed her neck, her shoulders, her other nipple, her belly, then slowly lowered myself until I was kneeling between her legs. She braced herself against the wall with her hands spread wide, not knowing where to put them, her breathing jerking her chest.

“Open up,” I told her. “I want a good look at your pussy before I eat it.”

She spread her legs as far as she could. I put one hand on each thigh and opened them even wider. Her sex was swollen, her lips glistening, her clit poking out like a dark pearl begging for a mouth. I moved closer and gave her a first long lick, from bottom to top, gathering all the juice running down toward her ass. Camila let out such a loud moan that I was afraid it could be heard in the hallway.

“What you do to me… what you do to me,” she repeated between gasps.

“What you wanted. I’m going to eat you until you beg for mercy.”

She didn’t beg for mercy. She grabbed the back of my head with both hands and shoved her pussy against my face. I kept working with my tongue, unhurried, learning her rhythm: a slow circle around her clit, sucking it wholly between my lips, a pause to lick the entrance to her pussy and push the tip of my tongue deep inside, then back up again. I slipped two fingers inside her and curled them, searching for her spot. She clenched them so tightly with the walls of her pussy that I had trouble moving them. I pumped slowly, pulling them out soaked to the last knuckle and sliding them all the way back in while I sucked her clit without pause.

“I’m coming, I’m coming, you’re making me come,” she gasped, her voice broken.

I squeezed her ass with my free hand, pressing her harder against my mouth, and drove my tongue right where she needed it. When she came, her knees buckled and she gushed onto my chin, a hot, thick flow that ran down my neck. I held her up so she wouldn’t fall and kept licking her calmly through the last contraction. Then she laughed, a hoarse laugh, and looked down at me with a gleam that left me defenseless.

“Take that off,” she said, pointing to my dress. “Now it’s your turn, and I’m warning you, I’m not going to show any mercy.”

I pulled it down and let it fall. I took off my bra and panties, already soaked from hearing her moan so much, and stood naked in front of her. Camila looked me up and down, licked her lips, and gently pushed me onto the bed. She climbed on top, sucked both my nipples one after the other, biting them just enough to make me arch my back, then moved down my belly, leaving a trail of saliva. She opened my legs with both hands and lowered her face slowly, never stopping her gaze from meeting mine.

What happened next was something I had never experienced: no one had ever read my body the way she read it that night. She began with a kiss on my mound and moved down in tiny licks along my outer lips, circling my clit without touching it, forcing me to lift my hips to seek out her mouth. When she finally caught it between her lips and sucked it, I came in less than a minute, with a spasm that left my legs trembling. She didn’t stop. She pushed her tongue inside my pussy, long and firm, fucking me with it while squeezing my clit with her thumb. I came again, screaming into the pillow. The third orgasm nearly blew me apart: she pushed three fingers all the way inside me, thrust hard, making a wet sound that filled the room, and sucked my clit without stopping until I convulsed with both hands gripping the headboard. I had to ask her to stop so I could catch my breath.

“Stop, stop, I can’t take any more,” I gasped, my voice hoarse. “No one has ever made me feel this way in my life.”

“I’m still hungry,” she replied, licking her lips shining with me. “Don’t even think we’re finished.”

She lay on her back and beckoned with one finger for me to climb up. I positioned myself above her backward, in a sixty-nine, offering her my pussy while I sank into hers again. I felt her tongue attacking me from below just as I drove two fingers into her and caught her clit between my lips. We ate each other at the same time, moaning against each other’s pussies, coming almost simultaneously and starting again without a break. We changed positions again and again: me on all fours with her behind me, biting my ass and fucking three fingers into my pussy; her riding my face and fucking my mouth with her sex until she came on my tongue; both of us rubbing pussy against pussy, scissoring, looking into each other’s eyes as our climaxes rose together. We spent nearly the whole night like that, giving each other pleasure until dawn came through the window and we lay there embraced, sweaty, the sheets soaked and the smell of sex clinging to our skin, without speaking.

***

Until the end of the academic year, no one in the school moved away from our table again. If anyone tried, she was the one who said something that made them unwilling to repeat it. We both got the best grades again, and at last we arranged the dinner with Henri at the embassy.

Camila arrived nervous, wearing a navy-blue shirt and white trousers that made me forget for a second that we were going to dinner with my father. I had put on a white blouse. Henri greeted her at the door with a small smile and held out his hand. It took only two words from her about the Tintoretto in the foyer for them to become tangled in an art conversation that lasted through dinner. Henri leaped from one name to another, and Camila followed without hesitation: Baroque, Gothic, Mannerism, the twentieth century. I understood half of it and enjoyed the other half by watching them.

After coffee, Henri gave her a tour of the rooms and left me alone in the sitting room. When they returned, my father had the look he got when he genuinely liked something.

“She’s brilliant,” he told me as he said goodbye. “Take care of her.”

On the drive back, Camila rested her head on my shoulder.

“Your father is wonderful,” she said. “And he knows so much.”

“You didn’t exactly hold back either. Can we officially consider ourselves girlfriends now?”

“Not yet,” she replied with a laugh. “We still have to have dinner with my family.”

I went white. Camila laughed even harder and, still laughing, kissed my temple.

“Relax,” she said. “You won the club. We’ll fight the battle with my parents together. And tonight, when we get home, I’m going to fuck you so thoroughly you’ll even forget your own name.”