The Shoe Fitting That Changed Everything

The four of us arrived in Salamanca on the morning train, with more suitcases than we needed and the pretext of a wedding on Saturday. My wife and her brother Rodrigo had been looking forward to that trip for weeks, an excuse to reconnect with people they hadn’t seen in a long time. Valeria, Rodrigo’s girlfriend, was the unknown quantity in the group: we had barely spent two years crossing paths at family gatherings, enough to know her superficially but not enough to know what to expect from her on her own.

We checked into a hotel in the old quarter, two adjoining rooms on the second floor. The plan was simple: no car, no return times, with the nights free to make the most of them. On Thursday afternoon, my wife and Rodrigo went to visit a school friend who lived in the western district. I made plans with Valeria for the next day: we agreed to meet at noon in the lobby to go out for tapas and wander around the city.

I went down a few minutes early and ordered a coffee at the hotel café bar. She arrived late, with two large bags hanging from each hand and that smile people get when they know perfectly well they’ve done something they shouldn’t have.

“Where on earth are you coming from with all that?” I asked.

“Shoes,” she said with a matter-of-factness that left no room for argument. “For the wedding. I saw them yesterday in a shoe shop in the square and I couldn’t help myself. They’re perfect.”

“How many pairs?”

“Three. Maybe four. Don’t look at me like that.”

“I’m not looking at you any particular way.”

We went out in search of bars in the center. We spent the morning moving slowly through cobbled alleyways, choosing the pinchos by smell rather than by the menu. January’s cold was dry and persistent, and whenever the wind picked up we looked for the first doorway to shelter in. We ate standing up, from bar to bar, and when we could take no more we decided to head back to the hotel before it got even colder.

On the way back, Valeria stopped in front of the window of the same shoe shop she’d passed that morning. She rested her fingers on the glass with the expression of someone taking a silent inventory.

“The problem now is that I don’t know which ones to wear,” she said. “I’ve gone a bit crazy and I like them all.”

“Want me to help you choose?”

She turned to me with an expression I took a second to decipher.

“Would you do that?”

“Of course. Give me a little fashion show and we’ll decide together.”

She smiled in a way unlike all her smiles that morning. Slower. More calculated.

“It’s a deal.”

***

We went up to her room. I sat on the small sofa at the foot of the bed, ready to take it seriously. Valeria went into the bathroom with the bags and took a few minutes. When she came out, she was wearing the skirt and stockings she intended to wear to the wedding: a black skirt above the knee, dark stockings with an almost imperceptible pattern in the fabric. No shoes yet. Just the stockings and the skirt, standing in the doorway, waiting.

The first pair was a high, narrow-heeled pump with gold beaded details on the strap. She put them on sitting on the edge of the bed, carefully, and when she stood up and took the three steps allowed by the space between the bed and the window, I knew they were too formal for her. Too predictable.

“Pretty,” I said. “But let’s keep looking.”

“Yes, I don’t really like them either.”

The second pair was black, with a higher heel and a thin ankle strap. I had seen them once at a family dinner, hanging under the table, and they had caught my eye then. Now, with the short skirt and dark stockings, the image was more intense. I forced my face to stay still.

“The third,” I said.

Valeria took out the last pair with a kind of ceremony: black and dark green shoes, open at the heel, with a ribbon that tied around the ankle. She held them for a moment before bending down to put them on. In that gesture, in the curve of her back and the way she braced one hand on the floor to keep her balance, something tightened in the air of the room.

“Those,” I said before she could ask me.

She straightened slowly and looked at me with a smile that knew exactly what my reaction meant.

“I don’t know why, but I knew you’d like these.”

She made a small movement of difficulty as she tried to fasten the ankle ribbon. Without thinking, I got up from the sofa and knelt at her feet. It was the most natural gesture in the world, or at least that’s how I justified it at the time. I took her foot carefully and threaded the ribbon through the eyelets more slowly than strictly necessary.

Valeria stood up and walked slowly around the room. There was something in the way she did it, aware that I was looking up at her, that was hard to ignore. It wasn’t just confidence. It was something else.

“These,” I repeated. “Without a doubt.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

She sat back down in front of me, still kneeling on the floor. She lifted one foot slightly and extended it toward me with a naturalness that was anything but natural.

I untied the ribbon calmly. My fingers circled her ankle and didn’t withdraw immediately. I slid my palm to the sole of her foot, without pressure, just the contact of an open hand, and Valeria didn’t pull her foot away. She stayed completely still, watching me.

I lifted my gaze to her face.

She still had that slow smile.

I brought her foot to my mouth and kissed her toes slowly, one by one, without taking my eyes off hers. She let me do it. My lips traced the arch of her foot until they reached her ankle, and at no point did she try to pull away.

The other foot, the one still wearing the shoe, slid across the carpet and rested in the fold of my legs. The tip of the heel found my crotch without any accident about it. What was there couldn’t be hidden.

Valeria moved her foot slowly, first the heel and then the instep, sliding the shoe’s leather over the fabric of my trousers with a pressure that was completely deliberate.

I got up just enough to undo myself. She watched without saying a word. I rested her bare foot on my shoulder and began kissing her leg from the ankle upward, while with my other hand I held the foot that was still shod. The heel brushed my side. The leather of the shoe against my skin.

I sucked her toes one by one with my tongue, tasting each one separately, while her shod foot pressed against my erection and moved it with a slowness that drove me crazy. The flat sole of the shoe against my skin, the leather of the instep sliding up and down.

I took that foot in my hand, intending to take her shoe off completely. The moment I did, Valeria leaned back onto the bed and spread her legs.

***

I bent over her and started kissing her legs from the ankles, moving up very slowly. The skirt was above mid-thigh. My lips followed the inner seam of her stockings. When I got high enough to see what she was wearing underneath, I stopped for a moment.

Just panties. Completely soaked through.

I pulled at her hips to place her on the edge of the bed and knelt between her legs. I put my mouth directly over the fabric and my tongue followed every crease that could be made out through the wet material. Her hips sought my mouth without her seeming fully aware of it.

I lifted my hands and pulled her skirt up to her waist. The underwear was exposed, dark and clinging to her vulva, clearly outlining the bulge of her arousal. I looked at her for a second before lowering my head again. I licked the soaked fabric, first down the center and then with the tip of my tongue working its way between the openings of her legs. She let out a short, dry moan, and a broken laugh escaped her from pure tension.

“Fuck,” she murmured. “You don’t seem very worried about choosing shoes.”

I answered with my mouth, pushing my tongue harder against the fabric until the damp, salty smell filled my nose. Valeria opened her legs wider and let one hand fall on my head, not to move me away, but to push me a little further. The pressure was clear, direct, as if she knew exactly what she wanted from me and had no intention of hiding it.

I stood up and undressed her slowly: first the blouse, then the skirt. I left her in her panties and stockings. I took the edges of the panties by the hips and pulled them down very slowly, kissing every centimeter of skin that was exposed in their downward path. When I had them in my hand, I used them to blindfold her.

“What are you doing?” she asked, but she didn’t take them off.

I didn’t answer.

With her lying down and unable to see, I traced her body with my mouth from jaw to throat and downward. The neck, the collarbone, the space between her breasts. With my lips on her skin I could feel her breathing speed up and become uneven. Her nipples were completely erect when I reached them. I circled them with my tongue, tugged gently with my lips, let them slip free and caught them again, while I felt her hands gripping mine more and more tightly.

I went down the center of her stomach to her navel and stopped there, playing with my tongue while her hips began to move on their own, seeking more. I opened her legs with my hands and pressed my mouth between her thighs. I licked her slowly at first, parting the wet flesh with my tongue and plunging straight into that dense wetness that was already spilling everywhere. Valeria arched against the bed and let out a long, disordered moan that broke in her throat.

I kept licking patiently, prying her open more with my fingers, pressing my tongue against her clit and then dropping back down to the center, where everything was slick and hot. Her breathing turned into little gasps of air. She moved against my face, rubbing herself shamelessly, looking for the exact angle to take more. When she realized I wasn’t going to stop, she let out an almost inaudible “yes, like that,” almost a plea.

I ran my fingers over her entrance, wet and trembling, and slid two inside her slowly. Valeria opened her mouth in a silent scream. I eased off and went back in, setting a deeper rhythm, while my tongue never left her clit for even a second. The bed creaked with every thrust of her hips. She clamped my head between her legs with a force that was almost desperate.

“More,” she said, shameless now. “More, fuck.”

I obeyed. I worked her with my mouth until I felt her tension suddenly give way, her thighs loosening and her whole body shaking in a first hot, long, involuntary orgasm. I didn’t let her rest. I kept going with my tongue, with my fingers, with exactly the right pressure, until she began trembling again. The second left her voiceless; the third made her twist her hips against my face with a blind, brutal impulse.

***

I stood up and entered her in one movement, slowly and all the way to the hilt. Her legs rose of their own accord to my shoulders. We stayed still for a moment, completely fitted together, feeling the weight of one another.

I began to move calmly, pulling almost all the way out and sliding back in with the same slowness. She took the panties off her eyes and brought them to her mouth. Her moans came muffled through the fabric.

The rhythm grew more intense without either of us deciding it: it simply happened. Her hips rose to meet mine, and I pushed harder. The bed hit the wall with a rhythm neither of us tried to control.

At some point she grabbed my arms, forced me to stay still, and with one movement put me underneath her. She straddled me and started moving on her own, her hands braced on my chest and her eyes closed. Each downward stroke was deliberate, deep, until she bumped against my pelvis. She rose up on her knees and let herself fall again, over and over, setting the pace she wanted, with an almost ferocious concentration.

I held her hips and pulled her against me, feeling how she widened and swallowed me whole with every drop. I watched her bite her lip to hold back a scream, though it didn’t help much: the sound came out anyway, rough, shredded by the friction and the hard slap of her flesh against mine. I took her by the thighs, guided her a little higher, and she answered by sinking down with even more hunger, making the mattress tremble beneath us.

I came like that, underneath her, for what seemed to me a very long time.

Valeria pulled away and lay down beside me. A few seconds later she asked me, without opening her eyes and in a very low voice, to touch her again with my mouth.

I did. And among the wet folds and the flavor of the two of us mixed together, she came three times in a row, forcing herself to writhe against the pillow with her face buried in the fabric. The last time she trembled so much she had to grip the sheet to avoid falling off the bed. I kept sucking, licking, and slipping my tongue inside with ferocious patience, until I left her exhausted, breathing in gasps, her legs still open and her nails dug into the mattress.

When she finally went still, I lay down beside her and stayed there for a while looking at her, both of us sweaty, the room smelling of sex and damp fabric. She turned her head, opened one eye, and smiled as if she had just gotten her way.

“The shoes,” she said. “I know which ones I’m wearing.”

***

That night the four of us had dinner together at a restaurant in the center. Valeria arrived in the black and green shoes, the ankle ribbon tied with the same precision as before. Rodrigo told her she looked beautiful. My wife asked her where she had bought them.

I said nothing. I just looked at the knot at her ankle for a second, remembered who had tied it, and went back to my glass of wine.