The Virtual Lover Who Agreed to Meet Me in Valencia

Bárbara never fit into narrow molds. Not out of conscious rebellion, but because her nature simply overflowed any boundary anyone tried to set for her. From a young age she lived with an intensity that made those around her uncomfortable. She thought in images, felt in concepts, loved with body and mind in equal measure.

At forty-seven, she was a fully formed woman. Separated, independent, athletic, mother of two daughters, one twenty-four and the other eleven. She had a fortune that did not come from ambition, but from freedom: everything she had built was a reflection of her judgment, her intelligence, and the discipline with which she managed every decision. Now she was facing a new project, a test that demanded intuition and absolute self-confidence, something only someone with her experience could take on without trembling.

That confidence was not arrogance. It was the natural result of a life lived on her own terms, a freedom carefully cultivated and boldly preserved. Everything about her conveyed a calm authority, a presence that commanded respect without needing words.

Eduardo belonged to another landscape. Fifty-five years old, self-employed, a sales consultant with his own office in a town in inland Valencia. Married for nineteen years. His life was not unhappy, but it was predictable. He had done everything that was expected: work, family, stability. No shocks, no excesses, no vertigo.

They had met years earlier in a chat room, almost the way so many people meet today: without intention and without too many expectations. A light conversation led to deeper ones. From the start, Eduardo felt that Bárbara inhabited a territory he had no access to. Not only because of her culture or her professional world, but because of the way she narrated life. She talked about cities, trips, and past lovers with the same ease others used to talk about the weather.

Sexuality appeared quickly. Not as a provocation, but as a logical extension of the way she expressed herself. Bárbara spoke of desire the way she spoke of anything else: without shame, without fear, without needing to justify it. For Eduardo, that was a crack. Through her words he began to discover a version of himself he had not known existed. He fantasized. He got aroused. He looked forward to their conversations with an anxiety he had never felt before.

They had never met in person. Only a few photos he studied carefully, memorizing gestures, looks, the lines of her body. Bárbara knew what she provoked. She always had, and it didn’t bother her. For her, Eduardo was a safe space, a conversation without demands, a place where she could let out thoughts, memories, and confessions. Sometimes, too, just a way to pass the time.

For him, on the other hand, she was a contained obsession.

For years they maintained that virtual, intermittent relationship. Messages that appeared and disappeared, text exchanges loaded with tension and shared fantasies. Eduardo built scenarios in his head; Bárbara inhabited them without attachment. Until one day, almost without drama, they decided to meet.

She was traveling to Valencia for work and suggested getting together. The proposal came wrapped in neither solemnity nor promises: it was direct, almost casual, as if it were just another coffee, though they both knew it wasn’t. Eduardo felt something inside him becoming disordered. It wasn’t just nerves; it was the physical sensation that an internal structure, carefully held together for years, was beginning to crack. What had always lived in the safe territory of fantasy now threatened to occupy a real, tangible, unpredictable space.

And that day arrived. Eduardo waited at the AVE station with his heart racing, far ahead of time, mentally replaying past conversations, written words, shared silences. He knew what Bárbara looked like from the photos, but he had never breathed the same air as her, never sensed her real volume, her energy, her way of being. When the train stopped and passengers began to get off, his attention became absolute. Everything else vanished: the noise, the voices, the flow of anonymous bodies.

He saw her.

Bárbara appeared with a small suitcase and a serenity that contrasted with his inner chaos. She did not seem to be searching for him anxiously; she simply moved forward naturally, as if she knew she would be found. She walked with a firm step, her body upright, her expression calm. When their eyes met, she smiled. It was not a wide or exaggerated smile, but a slight, knowing smile, charged with experience, seeming to say she understood exactly what was happening.

Eduardo felt the images had not prepared him for this. There was something about her that could not be photographed: the way she occupied space, how she seemed to alter the surroundings around her, her effortless sensuality. And in that instant he understood that the admiration he felt was not only desire, but a profound form of surrender.

They moved closer. The space between them narrowed with a tension-laden slowness. They greeted each other with two kisses. The contact was brief, socially correct, but enough for him to feel the warmth of her skin and the perfume that until then had only floated at a distance. Eduardo babbled incoherent phrases he would barely remember afterward, because his mind was several seconds behind his body.

—You’re more nervous than I expected —she said, without mockery. Her tone was soft, almost complicit, and rather than embarrass him, it exposed him even more.

—It’s just that… —Eduardo broke off, unable to form a coherent sentence. The words got stuck between thought and mouth, replaced by an awkward smile that gave him away.

Bárbara smiled a little more. She added nothing. It wasn’t necessary.

They went for coffee at a nearby café he suggested. They picked up the conversation with the same initial awkwardness, as if both needed to adjust reality to the expectation accumulated over years. Eduardo could not stop looking at her. The perfume she wore—sweet, intense, penetrating—wrapped around him in an almost physical way, provoking an immediate reaction he had to hide by changing position and focusing on his cup.

Bárbara noticed. She always noticed those things. She was more than used to every involuntary gesture she provoked in men, and that, far from unsettling her, confirmed her.

They talked about their current lives, about the everyday, about the things that almost never had a place in the chat. Eduardo listened more than he spoke, not out of disinterest but out of fear of saying something banal that would break the delicacy of the moment. He felt that every gesture of hers confirmed everything he had imagined and, at the same time, surpassed it.

When she suggested going to the hotel already, Eduardo nodded almost wordlessly. He had booked the room days earlier, with a mixture of excitement and fear: excitement for what might happen, fear of not measuring up. They went up together. The trip to the elevator seemed endless to him. Inside, the silence became thick, charged, and each second seemed to stretch as they ascended floor by floor. Eduardo felt the pulse at his temples and his hands not knowing where to put themselves. He preferred to keep quiet rather than risk breaking that fragile balance.

When they entered the room he stood still. The space opened before him like a stage he had not rehearsed for. Bárbara left the suitcase, unbuttoned her coat, and turned toward him. She looked at him for a few seconds, assessing not only the man in front of her, but everything behind him: years of words, accumulated desire, waiting.

She approached slowly, unhurriedly. Each step seemed calculated to prolong the journey, not shorten it. The air between them grew dense. There was no haste, only a gradual closeness that reduced the distance until he could clearly smell her perfume and feel the warmth of her body. That proximity disarmed him.

Bárbara lifted a hand and brushed his face. The gesture was slow, deliberate. Her index finger traced his nose and descended to his lips. There was no urgency, only an intimate check, a silent way of taking possession of the moment. Eduardo kissed her finger, licked it cautiously, and closed his eyes instinctively, feeling his body react before his thoughts did.

She set the pace. She always did. She neither sped up nor stopped: she held the moment with a precision that increased desire instead of relieving it. Every movement seemed to tell him to wait, to hold on in that exact point of tension. Eduardo let himself be carried away, overwhelmed by the certainty that he was living something he had wanted for years.

Soon they shed their outer clothes, with the urgency of those who need to strip away layers in order to breathe. He took her by the waist and tried to kiss her, driven more by reflex than by decision. However, she refused the kiss without harshness, offering him other ways to delight himself. There was no discomfort in her gesture, but a soft firmness, an invisible boundary that remained intact.

It was a rule she had imposed on herself after a brutal episode in the past that forever fractured her relationship with that particular gesture. Kissing, for Bárbara, had ceased to be an act of intimacy and become a trigger. It was not a rational or negotiable decision, but a deeply rooted reaction, a form of protection her body imposed even when her mind wanted something else.

I had to try, he thought, knowing some of her fears. He did not reproach the gesture: he understood it as a test of limits he already knew but needed to confirm. His hands roamed over Bárbara’s back, and one of them slid downward, seeking the curve of her hips. In that movement there was respect and acceptance, a silent way of saying that he understood and was willing to move within the territory she allowed.

—I like you a lot —he admitted, almost in a whisper, feeling as if he were revealing something deeper than simple desire.

She smiled without answering. Her silence was a form of control, a response that neither granted nor denied. In that balance, they both fell onto the bed, drawn by inevitable inertia.

Eduardo took off her sweater awkwardly, afraid that time might run out from one moment to the next. Then he did the same with the bra, unable to stop. He looked at her for just an instant, enough for the image of her breasts to imprint itself on him, before leaning over her with anxious devotion. His hands moved over her skin, explored, learned, while his mouth lingered where desire became most obvious. One hand slid lower, seeking more, stopping between her legs, confirming what he had already intuited from the moment he saw her appear on the platform.

She let him. She moved just enough, managing the wait. With sure gestures she unfastened his pants, took them off, and stood before him almost naked. Eduardo felt desire rising in him like a wave difficult to contain. His impatience made waiting impossible: he stood, took off his jacket and shirt with quick, unceremonious movements.

She took a moment to savor the scene. He did not have a gym body, nothing especially striking, rather the opposite: a normal body, recognizable, unvarnished. And yet, at that moment, the tension had reached a point of no return, one of those instants in which experience gives way to pure expectation.

He positioned himself over her, seeking full contact, and both bodies met skin to skin, sliding, recognizing each other in a slow friction charged with intention. Eduardo’s hands advanced with restrained urgency until they collided with Bárbara’s on that very same path, as if both were following an identical map without having agreed on it. Hers descended with determination, seized his buttocks, and squeezed with unexpected force. The gesture drew a short moan from him, a mixture of surprise and pleasure.

His mouth traveled over her skin with deliberate slowness, rising to the earlobe and then descending along the neck. His hand slid over her stomach, caressed it, and circled the pubis before continuing down the leg. His tongue traced the nipples, lingered, and slowly descended over the curve of her abdomen, drawing circles around the navel and seeking without disguise the moisture between her folds. She held her breath when he parted her legs and lingered there, unhurried, spellbound.

Bárbara’s hands gripped her lover’s head, tangling his hair between her fingers, setting a rhythm that guided the movements of his pelvis: slow, intense, full of intent. Eduardo gave himself over with devotion, attentive to every reaction, aware that he was sharing something that went beyond physical desire. Then she needed to change position. She rose up, laid her lover back on the bed, and settled herself at the level of his sex to take him into her mouth, while he did the same with her in a perfect sixty-nine.

Bárbara also felt the tension building, the restrained urgency accompanying every brush, anticipating the moment when her new lover would penetrate her. Time seemed to stretch, and everything led toward the long-awaited instant when she could finally surrender to full contact.

She sat up, pulled his hair, and shoved him away abruptly. Her eyes pierced through him with a mixture of lust and authority.

—Fuck me.

It was not a plea. It was a direct, firm command, charged with purpose, one Eduardo could not, and did not want to, disobey.

She took his cock and stroked it several times while looking at him, open, claiming him without words. Every gesture of hers subjected him to that mixture of fascination and surrender that left him with no room for choice. The tip met her wetness, brushing it with precision and slowness. A shiver ran through both their bodies when he entered her without pause, and their intertwined sighs marked the pulse of a desire accumulated for far too long.

He began with slow, measured, almost ceremonial thrusts, which soon turned into a crescendo of force and rhythm. Slowness gave way to urgency, and urgency to pounding in which nothing mattered anymore except the feeling of being completely alive. Eduardo ceased to be master of his body; every fiber was subordinated to the pleasure consuming him, guided by an intense, absolute presence that handled him with the confidence of someone who knows the limits of desire.

The climax hit him without warning, a burst that swept him away like an unstoppable current. However much he tried, his body rebelled, and everything surrendered to the impulse. But Bárbara knew exactly what to do and, without breaking the closeness, turned around and reversed the roles with an authority that electrified the air. She began to move over him with a firm, determined cadence, riding him confidently with every motion. His cock remained hard, responding to the cadence of her body, while each movement sent waves of pleasure through him from head to toe.

Her hands clung to his shoulders for support and control, accompanying each thrust with her own rhythm, burning hot. Eduardo felt he did not have enough hands to encompass the body that dazzled him: his fingers traveled over her breasts, explored her back, sought the curves of her hips, wanting to hold on to every centimeter of skin.

Bárbara closed her eyes and let go, letting her body set the pace. The passion intensified, a shared fire that enveloped them and distorted time. In that rocking motion there were no doubts or limits, only them and the force of their desire.

The orgasm tore through her without restraint. Her gasps grew more intense, more urgent, and every convulsion of her body revealed the intensity of what she felt. Her back arched, her hands clutched at him, and he knew how to recognize the exact moment when one climax overlapped with another, and another after that, like a torrent sweeping everything in its path.

For the second time, and unable to avoid it, her convulsions dragged Eduardo along with her. There was no control or resistance: every fiber of his being surrendered to the absolute force emanating from her body, her sensuality, her gaze. His hands sought to embrace her, but they were not enough to encompass what coursed through him. In that instant he was not the owner of anything; everything was subordinated to a woman who dominated him without effort and lifted him into a pleasure he believed impossible.

Bárbara collapsed, spent, letting the mattress receive her without conditions. Her breathing slowly returned to a serene rhythm, while the sweat of the encounter still clung to her skin. Eduardo now looked at her with different eyes, without the anxiety that had consumed him. He wanted to speak, to confess what he had felt, but something stopped him. He knew words would be useless to capture the density of the moment. For her it had perhaps been just another instant; for him, an experience that transcended.

They lay back in silence, breathing the same air. She surrendered to sleep first, her body relaxed, her breathing steady, and he watched her without hurry, admiring every line, every curve that now seemed even more perfect to him because of the calm surrounding her. After the intensity, exhaustion closed over Eduardo like a warm wave, and he allowed himself to give in to fullness, convinced that something essential had happened.

***

He woke alone.

The room was gone. The hotel was gone. The smell of perfume was dissipating into an air that was no longer the same, and with it the intensity of a moment that had seemed eternal faded away.

He was in his bed. In his house. In his life. Everything seemed normal, ordinary, but Eduardo knew, with a clarity that hurt, that nothing would ever be the same again. Everything he had felt now remained suspended, like an echo reverberating in his chest.

For a few seconds he stayed motionless, trying to cling to the remnants of the dream, to the warmth of her hands, to the intensity of her eyes. His heart beat hard, reminding him that what he had lived did not belong to the real world, but that, even so, it had left an indelible mark.

He understood, with serene sadness, that Bárbara returned to the only place where she had always existed for him: his imagination. There she was perfect, vibrant, unattainable, and every memory of the encounter became a silent treasure, a moment stolen from time, impossible to touch. And yet, she had never been so real.

He had never felt with such certainty the presence of someone who ran through him and transformed him. His eyes grew damp. For an instant, between the sweetness of memory and the sting of longing, Eduardo allowed himself a broken smile, because even if it had all been a dream, something essential, something alive, had existed, and it would remain with him, intact, forever.

Dedicated to the one who knows she is.