The Stranger in the Woods Comforted Me After Fighting with My Husband

That morning we both got up on the wrong side of the bed. I don’t even remember how it started —an unpaid bill, a comment about my mother, a cup out of place— but ten minutes later Tomás and I were shouting in the kitchen, spitting things at each other neither of us would dare repeat in front of a stranger.

—If you can’t stand me that much, you know where the door is —he told me.

And I, instead of biting my tongue as I’d been doing for so many years, grabbed the jacket off the back of the chair and left.

I slammed the door so hard the frame shook. I went down the three flights of stairs without waiting for the elevator, eyes burning and throat tight. When I got out into the street, I didn’t even know where I was going. I walked aimlessly, first along the avenue, then down a narrower street, then along the dirt path that circles the town and leads into the pines.

The woods swallowed me as if they’d been waiting for me.

There, among the trunks, I stopped holding back. I cried with that rage you never cry in front of anyone, face swollen and shoulders trembling. I walked for minutes or perhaps hours, I don’t know. I only remember the smell of resin, my shoes filling with dirt, and the feeling that every word Tomás had said to me that morning weighed on my chest like a stone.

I didn’t see Adrián until I had him right in front of me.

—Ma’am, are you all right? —his voice was deep and calm, almost shy.

He had a worn green uniform and a backpack slung over one shoulder. He was tall, taller than my husband, with the scruffy beard of a man who spends his days far from mirrors. On the breast pocket he wore an embroidered patch: “Forest Nursery.”

I wanted to answer that I was fine, that I’d just gone out for a walk, but the words turned to stones in my mouth and all that came out of my throat was another burst of sobbing. He didn’t say anything. He rested his hands on my shoulders, gently, as if afraid to startle me, and drew me against his chest.

The uniform smelled of tobacco and firewood.

—Walk with me —he said only.

I followed him without thinking. I don’t know at what point I decided that this stranger was a refuge. Maybe it was when he put an arm around my back and pressed me against his side so I wouldn’t trip over the roots. Maybe earlier, in the first instant, when he spoke to me in the low voice of a man who knows that behind every cry there’s always something broken.

We walked in silence to a little cabin hidden in a clearing. Slate roof, narrow windows, a chimney sending up a thin thread of smoke. He pushed the door open and invited me in.

—I don’t have much. I’ll warm you up a coffee.

Inside there was a table, two chairs, a cast-iron stove, and a cot pushed against the wall. The dark wood walls were covered with maps and old photographs. Without thinking, I sat on the bed —there was nowhere more intimate— and let my head fall onto the pillow. I cried again, but this time more slowly, the crying of someone emptying out.

Adrián brought me a steaming cup. He sat beside me on the edge of the cot and waited until I took the first sip.

—Do you want to talk about it?

—My husband and I… —I began, then stopped—. It’s nothing new. But today was different.

—You can stay here as long as you need.

I drank the coffee in small sips. He watched me without hurry, with the patience of a man used to waiting for dawn and for game. When I handed him back the cup, he set it on the stove and returned. This time he sat closer. He slipped his arm around my shoulders and I, without thinking, rested my head against his chest.

What am I doing?, I asked myself. But I didn’t move.

He took a handkerchief from his pocket —it was huge, almost a sheet— and dried my eyes with a care I hadn’t expected. His fingers brushed my cheeks, then my lips, then my neck. It wasn’t a rough movement. It was a slow descent, as if he were drawing me.

—Lie down —he said—. You’re exhausted.

I obeyed. He helped me lift my legs onto the quilt, took off my shoes one by one, and set them on the floor carefully. Then he sat at my feet and began pressing my ankles with his thumbs.

—Your feet are cold —he murmured.

What came after that, I don’t know when it stopped being a massage. His hands moved up my calves, slowly. When they reached my knees, he parted them a little more, just enough to slide up to my thighs. I closed my eyes. Not to pretend I wasn’t noticing, but because I was afraid to open them and discover that I did notice.

—If you want me to stop, tell me —his voice sounded very close.

I said nothing.

His fingers reached the edge of my underwear and stopped. He waited. He waited so long I had to lift my hips myself, in a gesture that betrayed me more than any words could have. Then he understood and slid the fabric aside. I felt the cabin’s cold air hit my cunt and I knew, without needing to look, that my panties were soaked, stuck to my lips, betraying me in the worst —or best— possible way.

—You’re shaking —he said, and by then he was already using tu.

—Keep going.

It was the first word I’d spoken since I lay down.

***

He pulled my panties down over my ankles with unbearable slowness and left them hanging from one foot, as if he didn’t care if I had them there as a keepsake. He spread my legs with both hands, pressing my knees against the mattress, and stayed there for a few seconds looking at my open cunt without saying anything. I felt shame and heat at the same time, and the two things squeezed inside me until I was breathless.

—God, you’re so wet —he said at last—. It’s running off you.

He lowered his head between my thighs without ceremony. The tongue came first to the damp fold and then to the center, and I arched my back with a moan I didn’t recognize as my own. Tomás had never touched me like that. Tomás had always been in a hurry, had a schedule, an excuse, a hand that went straight to the goal without preamble, a clumsy finger rubbing my clit as if trying to light a wet lighter. Adrián, on the other hand, licked me as if he’d been waiting for this moment for months and had no other business left on earth. He started with the outer lips, one and then the other, sucking them whole into his mouth. Then he moved to the opening, pushed his tongue in as far as he could and drew it out slowly, dragging it over my perineum. He rose again and pressed his stiff tongue hard against my clit, pushing the hood with his closed teeth, and that was when I screamed for the first time.

—Keep sucking me, please —I begged him, and I was startled by the sound of my own voice—. Right there, don’t stop.

He gave a short laugh against my cunt and the hot breath made me shiver. He hooked his hands under my thighs and lifted my hips off the mattress to eat me better, his nose buried in my mound and his beard scraping the skin from the bottom of my lips until they burned. He sucked, licked, slurped, and every so often he drew back a centimeter to blow on me, and I shook as if he’d poured ice water over me.

One of his hands went up to open my blouse, button by button, without stopping eating my cunt. When he freed my tits from the bra, he yanked the cups upward without unfastening it and stroked them with his open palm, not squeezing at first, letting the skin get used to another hand. Then he started pinching my nipples, gently at first, then with two fingers twisting and tugging, and I felt every sting go straight down to my cunt, adding to what his mouth was doing down there.

His mouth left my sex and went up to a nipple. He sucked it whole, his tongue rasping the tip, and the other hand took the place of his tongue between my legs. Two fingers. Slowly. Inside. He curved them, searching for something, and found it: a spot behind the bone that made me shoot my heels up at once.

—I don’t want to hurt you —he said.

—You’re not. Put more in.

He added a third finger and started fucking me with his hand, slowly, twisting it inside me, while he kept sucking my tits from one to the other without pause. I could feel my own juices running down my ass to the cot and I didn’t care. I grabbed his head with both hands and pressed his face against my chest.

—You’re going to make me come just with your fingers —I warned him.

He lifted his head and looked at me. His eyes were dark and there was a brief smile on his lips, unassuming, shining with me on them.

—Hold it in. I want you to come with my cock inside you.

I closed my eyes, biting my lip.

—Are you sure you want to keep going?

—Yes.

—Say it again.

—Yes. Fuck me already, please.

Then he sat up, undid his belt with a calm that seemed impossible to me, and pulled down his pants just enough. I looked without wanting to, and what I saw was unlike anything in my house. It wasn’t just a matter of size —though that too—: it was thick, with prominent veins, the head purple and already shiny from how hard he had it. It was a matter of the way he carried it, the way it rested on me, with natural weight, unapologetic. He gripped his cock by the base and ran it along my cunt lips up and down, soaking it completely before going in, and I had to clench my teeth not to beg him.

He grabbed my hips, lifted my skirt up over my stomach, and went in.

The first thrust stole my breath. He buried himself all the way in at once and I felt him opening me from the inside, filling me in a way I wasn’t used to. The second made me clench my fists on the sheet. By the third I wasn’t thinking anymore, there was no husband, no argument, no house, no street, not even woods. There was that body on top of mine, setting a rhythm slow at first and then firm, that cock going in and out with a wet smack that filled the cabin, and my body answering as if it had spent years secretly learning the choreography.

—Look at me —he asked—. I want to see your face while I’m fucking you.

I opened my eyes. His beard scratched my chin every time he leaned down to kiss me. His teeth were white and his hair was stuck to his forehead with sweat. He shoved his tongue into my mouth and that was when I realized he was letting me taste myself, and instead of disgust it made me squeeze his ass with my heels to drive him in deeper.

—Harder —I asked against his mouth—. Fuck me harder.

He straightened up on his knees, grabbed the backs of my thighs, and bent me almost in two, my feet pointing toward the ceiling. From that angle he drove in deeper, with thrusts that shook my whole body upward and made my head knock against the wooden wall. Every slam of his hips against my ass sounded like a slap, and with each one I let out a moan I no longer tried to hide. At some point I heard myself saying things I had never said out loud —not to Tomás, not to anyone— and I heard myself asking for more, asking for everything, asking without shame.

—What a tight fucking pussy you’ve got —he gasped—. You’re milking my cock.

—Keep going, keep going, don’t stop…

He dropped one hand and found my clit with his thumb while he kept fucking me. He rubbed it in circles, never breaking the rhythm of his hips, and I felt something coming down on me too big for the cot, for the cabin, for my whole life.

I came for the first time with his fingers dug into my hips and his face buried in my neck. It wasn’t a polite shiver. It was a jolt that bent my back and made me scream against his shoulder, frightening myself. I felt my cunt clench around his cock in spasms and I noticed how it tightened around him again and again without my being able to control it. And he didn’t stop. He kept pushing, gathering up the tremor as if he knew that after an orgasm the body is open for another, pulling almost all the way out and then driving back in to the hilt, in a sweet torture that left me crying again, but from pure pleasure.

***

When my breathing settled again, I realized I was completely naked. I didn’t remember at what point the blouse, the skirt, or the bra had disappeared. Adrián was beside me, propped on one elbow, his cock still hard and shining against his thigh, running his eyes over my body as if studying a map he had just discovered. He slipped two fingers between my tits, slid them down my belly, and pushed them back into my open cunt, drawing them out soaked so he could suck them in front of me.

—Your husband —he said—, does he ever treat you like this?

—Not like this.

—And from behind? —he asked, bluntly—. Has he done it to you in the ass?

I shook my head. My face burned.

—Do you want to?

I didn’t have time to answer fully. He turned me over on the cot, laid me face down, and placed a pillow under my hips so my ass stuck up. He spread my cheeks with both hands and I felt his gaze there, in a place where no one had ever looked so calmly. He spat. The spit landed right on my hole and ran slowly downward, and he spread it with his thumb, nudging just a millimeter inside. I felt his hand slide between my ass cheeks with deliberate slowness, first wetting itself in my cunt, which was still leaking, and then carrying that wetness back there. One finger, then another. He opened me and closed me, twisted inside, withdrew, came back. And each time I felt a shiver that I couldn’t tell if it was fear or curiosity, or all of it at once.

—It’ll hurt a little at first —he warned—. If you want me to stop, I’ll stop.

—Don’t stop.

I heard him spit into his hand and smear his cock, dragging his palm from base to tip. Then I felt the hot head against my hole, pressing without going in yet, searching for the angle.

—Breathe, my love. Let the air out.

I did it slowly. The first sting made me clench my teeth and bury my face in the pillow. The head of his cock forced its way in with a pressure that brought tears to my eyes all at once, and for a second I thought about asking him to take it out. He stayed still, waiting for my body to adjust, whispering things against the back of my neck I don’t remember but that anchored me to the bed. When he started moving, he did it in millimeters, measuring every inch against my reaction. He pulled out a little, pushed in a little more. Pulled out, pushed in. And without realizing it, he had me all the way to the base, his balls resting against my cunt and his breath coming hard against my ear.

—There, now you’ve got all of it —he told me—. Look at how well you take it in the ass.

The pain lasted less than Tomás’s pride that morning. After that it was only fullness, a new sensation, that vertigo of discovering that the body has maps one has never bothered to open. He started fucking me slowly, drawing almost all the way out and thrusting back in to the hilt, and with every thrust a rough moan escaped me that I had never heard from my own throat. I lifted my hips to take him better, arched my back like a cat, and heard him let out his breath through clenched teeth, a broken gasp that let me know he was surprised too by how well we fit together.

—How you squeeze —he growled—. I’m going to last very little like this.

He slipped one hand under my belly and went back to my cunt. He pushed three fingers into me and started pumping them at the same rhythm as the cock in my ass, and I felt filled from both sides at once, split open, helpless, happy. The sound of both wet holes squelching beneath his body filled the whole cabin and I wasn’t trying to stay quiet anymore. I was saying filthy things into the pillow, begging him to give it to me harder, not to stop ever, to come inside me.

He picked up the pace. Now he was really fucking my ass, with short, sharp thrusts, one hand in my hair and the other on my hip. My cheek was crushed against the pillow and saliva was dripping from the corner of my mouth and I didn’t care at all.

I came again, almost without warning, cheek pressed to the pillow and fingers dug into the sheet. It was a strange, deep orgasm that started in my belly and ran up my back, raising every hair on my skin. I felt his soaked fingers inside my cunt and his cock buried in my ass and everything throbbing at once, and I screamed into the pillowcase with a scream the cabin’s wood swallowed whole. He emptied himself soon after, growling my fake nickname against my nape, and I felt his hot spurts releasing inside me, one after another, while he kept thrusting more and more slowly, milking every last drop. He collapsed onto my back, breathing in broken bursts. He didn’t pull away right away. He stayed there, braced on his forearms, kissing my shoulders as if it were the last thing he’d do in his life, with his cock still softening inside me and his cum leaking between my ass cheeks.

When he finally pulled out, he did it with reverent slowness. I felt the emptiness all at once and also the warm thread sliding down my perineum to the sheet. He bent down, ran his tongue over that trail, cleaning me completely, and came up to kiss me on the mouth, and I opened my lips and accepted his dirty tongue as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

***

He helped me get dressed with the same calm with which he had undressed me. He drew the stockings up my legs as if they were made of glass. He fastened my bra from behind without pulling on the hooks. When he put my panties on me, he bent down and gave me one last kiss above the pubis, over the fabric, leaving a damp mark only I would notice. When he put my blouse on me, he kissed the back of my neck and left the kiss there for a few seconds, like a signature.

—What’s your name? —he asked at last.

I gave him a name that wasn’t mine. Not out of distrust, but because I felt that afternoon needed to exist outside my normal life, in a compartment Tomás and no one else could reach.

—I live here alone. Any day you feel like taking a walk, you know where the path is.

I didn’t promise anything. I didn’t even dare say “thank you,” because the words felt too small. I stepped to the door, looked at the empty path, and went out into the cool air with my legs still trembling and his semen still trickling inside my panties.

As I walked, I felt a slight stinging, a physical trace that stayed with me for the whole way back. It didn’t bother me. On the contrary: every step reminded me of it and every step made me smile inwardly, with a small secret smile, the first of the day. The wet fabric rubbing against my swollen cunt and open ass was the best souvenir I could have taken with me.

When I got home, Tomás stood up from the sofa as if he’d been waiting for the elevator to ring for hours. His eyes were red and his tie was undone. He hugged me before I could take off my jacket, and he said everything people say in these cases: that he was sorry, that he hadn’t meant it, that it wouldn’t happen again.

—I’m sorry too —I answered, and let him kiss my forehead.

While I prepared the dinner he himself had started cooking as an act of contrition, I looked down at my hands. They still smelled of resin. I poured myself a glass of wine and, under the table, pressed my knees together to feel that sting once more, and I noticed how the other man’s cum kept moistening my underwear beneath the skirt my husband had right in front of his nose.

Blessed argument, I thought.

And I smiled at my husband with a sweetness he couldn’t understand.