What Happened at the Spa While My Wife Slept

The first light had just begun to break over the roofs of the housing development. It was not yet six, and dawn was slipping through the blinds, drawing white bars across the floor. Ernesto was still seated on the sofa, a cigarette between his fingers and one leg crossed, waiting for me to pick up the story where I had left off the night before.

I was listening to him from the other side of the kitchen counter, leaning on my elbows, with my pipe lit and a coffee growing cold in the cup. We’d been at it for hours. Ernesto had been my wife’s friend since before I appeared on the scene, and that was precisely why it was hard for me to tell him certain things. But it was also precisely why I felt I needed to get it off my chest.

—So what happened at the pool? —he asked, without looking up—. Camila stood out as much as I imagine?

—They looked at her, yes. Everybody looked at her. —I took a sip of coffee and let it go down slowly—. You know what she’s like. When she walks into a place, people turn their heads. But there, at the Espejos’ farm, it was different.

—The bikini?

—The bikini, yes. A black bikini with thin strings that split her ass in two and left her cheeks bare, barely covered by two triangles that disappeared between her ass cheeks every time she walked. On top, two tiny triangles that squeezed her tits and made her nipples show through as soon as they got wet. But more than that, it was the way she let herself be looked at. Marcos and Lorena, the hosts, organized a game in the water. Some silly thing with a beach ball, in pairs, where you ended up colliding with just about anyone. The game was only an excuse. The sun, the heat, the bodies close together... the idea of “liberation” Lorena kept talking about was taking shape with every supposedly casual touch.

Ernesto slowly exhaled the smoke and waited.

—Camila laughed with every one of them. She flirted without a trace of shame. She threw the ball to Mauricio and let him hold her by the waist when he caught it in midair, and I saw crystal clear how his hand slid down to grab her ass under the water, squeezing one cheek with the whole palm of his hand. She didn’t pull away. She laughed, fixed her wet hair, and brushed her thigh against his cock when she swam past him. Romina, wearing a bright pink swimsuit, kept bumping into Daniela on purpose, and the two of them would pull apart laughing, but with their nipples outlined under the wet fabric and their hands lingering on each other’s tits. I was on the other side of the pool, next to Andrés, and I felt my guts twisting in knots.

—But you said nothing.

—What was I supposed to say? That was the rule of the place. We had signed up to come. Camila had decided for both of us after months of insisting.

—And after the game, you had lunch.

—We had lunch. Ceviche, tiraditos, seafood jellies, a pisco sour that made you dizzy with the first sip. Camila sat beside me in a flowing white dress she had bought in Cartagena, cutout and thin, with straps that kept slipping off her shoulders every time she laughed. And she laughed a lot. With Sofía, with Daniela, with everyone except me. Under the dress she wore nothing; her tits showed through and the dark little triangle of her cunt was visible every time the light hit her head-on.

Ernesto rolled the cigarette between his fingers and let out the first venomous line of the morning.

—In that heat, with the seafood and the pisco, I don’t know if it was lunch or a spell. Those two put something in the mix, Mateo. Didn’t you feel it was already crossing a line?

—I did. That’s why, when dessert came, I leaned toward Camila and asked her if we could go back to the cabin. I told her I wanted to take advantage of the free time. She smiled at me, said yes, and the two of us walked the two hundred meters to the bungalow, arms around each other.

I paused. The frustration of that moment still tasted bitter in my mouth.

—As soon as I closed the door, I held her. I slid the straps of her dress down, kissed her neck, her shoulders, bit her collarbone. I slid my hand down her neckline and grabbed a bare tit, squeezed it whole, pinched her nipple until it went hard between my fingers. With the other hand I lifted her dress and ran my palm over her cunt, feeling it warm, just barely wet. I drove a finger in slowly, finding her clit with my thumb. I already had my cock hard as a rock in my pants and I rubbed it against her thigh so she’d feel it. And she kissed me back, yes, her tongue slipped into my mouth for a second, but after a few seconds she put her hands on my chest and gently pushed me away.

—“Oh, my love, wait” —I imitated her voice as best I could—. “I’m wiped out. The seafood sat heavy on me, the sun’s given me a headache. What if I lie down for a bit?” She flopped onto the bed, closed her eyes, and told me to go take a walk. That we’d see each other later.

—Not even enough for a quick one —Ernesto commented, with no apparent ill intent, but with that uncanny ability of his to find the wound.

—Not even enough for a quick one. I was left with my cock standing up under my pants, throbbing, and my mouth still tasting the pisco on her tongue. I left, closed the door, and walked back to the main house, trying to tuck my dick against my belt so it wouldn’t show. Everything had already been cleared away, the plates collected, the dining room empty. I found a six-pack of beer in a corner, popped one open, and sat in the lounge with the idea of closing my eyes for ten minutes. I hadn’t even finished settling in when I heard a voice greeting me.

—The virgin —said Ernesto, lifting both thumbs.

—Lorena. She sat down beside me, grabbed the other beer I had left on the floor for Camila, opened it, and took a long swig. She asked me about my wife. I told her she was resting. Then she told me the afternoon and evening were dedicated to “fun and self-knowledge,” and that she needed my help setting up the spa area.

—And you, being an idiot, said yes?

—I said yes. I followed her. She was wearing an emerald pareo tied at the hip and a white bandeau bikini. Her blond mane fell loose over her shoulders. Very fair skin, green eyes; a Venezuelan beauty, different from my wife. As she walked, the pareo split open at the slit and you could see the start of her thigh up to her hip. In the spa we finished preparing everything: a black silk blindfold on a polished wooden tray, and beside it a Polaroid camera.

—A blindfold and a Polaroid. Man, you don’t need to be a fortune-teller.

—Sofía and Romina arrived first, then Daniela and Andrés. We greeted each other enthusiastically, maybe because of the energy of the place, maybe because by then no one really knew where the limit was anymore. When the six of us gathered, Lorena took charge and explained the game.

I clenched the pipe between my teeth and tried to remember her exact words.

—“Blind man’s buff” —she said—. “But not the childish version. Whoever volunteers puts on the blindfold, hangs the camera around their neck, and has thirty seconds to take three pictures. If in any shot a person is captured, that person removes one garment and hands it over. Whoever is the blindfolded one plays completely naked from the start. If you don’t catch anyone on your turn, you still win, because then you have nothing left to lose.”

—And if you get caught in the photo?

—They lock you in the Turkish bath in the dark for a while. “Punishment or prize,” she said, laughing. No one wanted to be first. The spa’s silence was broken only by the hum of the jacuzzi. Until Lorena got tired and stepped forward.

—“A bunch of cowards,” she told us. “I’ll go first.”

—And she started undressing.

—She started undressing. First the pareo, which slid down her legs like a waterfall of silk. Then the top of the bikini: two white, round tits, with pink nipples standing proudly in the spa’s cool air, pointing at all of us. Finally the thong, unhurried, with a confidence that admitted no argument, slowly dragging down over her hips until it fell to her ankles. She bent to pick it up and there, when she leaned down, her ass parted for a second and I saw her cunt completely shaved, the little pink lips already glistening with something that wasn’t just steam. She stood there in front of us, completely naked, her body shining with the vapor, and without a shred of shame she ran her hands over her tits, pinched her nipples to make them hard, and lowered one hand to her cunt, parting the lips just slightly with two fingers as if she wanted to show us exactly what was there.

—And did she come over to you?

—She came over to me. She put her hand on my arm, and from there she slid it down to the bulge I already had showing in my pants again. She squeezed it over the fabric, closed her whole hand around my cock, and measured it from top to bottom a couple of times with a slow smile. She told me, in a low voice, that I was going to count to thirty and stop the music when time was up. That meanwhile I could hide, dance, do whatever I wanted. I asked her why me. She moved a little closer, pressed her bare tits against my chest, I felt her hard nipples through my T-shirt, and gave me a short kiss on the mouth. Short, but with tongue: she slid it deep into me, touched my palate, sucked my lower lip and bit it. “Because I like danger,” she told me, and without taking her hand off my cock, she squeezed it once more.

—And that was that.

—That was that. She put on the blindfold, hung the camera around her neck —the strap landing right between her tits, pressing them together—, raised her right arm and, when she lowered it, the game began. I started counting. The others scattered through the spa. Romina hid behind the bromeliad planters. Andrés got into the jacuzzi on purpose, making a racket. Sofía crouched near Lorena and brushed her thighs with the gauze of her blouse. Daniela slipped behind the wooden bench and stayed still, barely breathing.

—And you?

—I didn’t move. I don’t know why. I pressed my T-shirt against my chest and stayed standing next to the sound system, counting under my breath. I was hard, painfully hard, pushing against my fly. I knew she couldn’t see me, but I also knew the music was going to guide her toward where I was.

—You wanted her to find you.

—Maybe I wanted her to find me. I’m still not sure. Lorena took three shots. And while she was taking them, blindfolded and unable to see anything, she moved as if she were dancing: one hand on the camera, the other slipping on its own down to her cunt, two fingers buried inside, moving slowly, pulling them out slick and pushing them back in. None of us was breathing. The first click was to the left; the second toward the center, where Sofía was hiding; the third went straight toward the sound system. Next to the sound system was me. I closed my eyes at the moment of the shot, as if accepting the result in advance.

—And the photos?

—When the thirty seconds were up, Lorena slowly removed the blindfold and picked up the three Polaroids from the floor. She licked the fingers she had had inside her cunt, one by one, never taking her eyes off me, before bending down to pick up the photos. She laid them on the table, side by side, and we all came closer to watch them develop in the damp air. The first showed a scrap of Romina’s pink swimsuit and a dark curl in the background. The second, the outline of a leg behind the gray gauze of Sofía’s blouse. The third, a tall male silhouette, hair still a little wet, cut against the sound system.

—You.

—Me. Lorena looked up and stared at me without saying a word. She didn’t smile, didn’t celebrate. She just waited. I took off my T-shirt with a slow gesture and handed it to her. She took it with that enigmatic smile of someone who already knew what was going to happen, and without a word she ran her open palm over my chest, down my abdomen, until she hooked two fingers in the waistband of my pants. She pulled just enough for the fabric to give, and looked at the bulge that was showing. “Later,” she whispered in my ear, sucking on my earlobe, “later it’s your turn to be without this too.”

—And Romina lost too.

—Romina too. She had been the first captured and handed Lorena her whole swimsuit, the only thing she was wearing. She took it off in front of everyone, bending down very slowly, and ended up naked with her small, firm tits in the air and a tuft of black pubic hair over her cunt. Lorena adjusted it at her hips with a knot, because it was way too big for her, and that’s how the first round ended: the hostess half-dressed, Romina naked, and me without a shirt and with my cock throbbing so hard I was afraid my pulse would show through my pants. The innocence of a childhood game and the liberation of adults, all mixed together in the same room.

Ernesto brought the cigarette to his lips and inhaled hard. For the first time that morning, he couldn’t find a joke to throw back at me.

—And Camila? —he asked at last.

—Camila woke up when the sun was already lower. Then she told me about it, much later, when nothing could be undone anymore.

—What did she tell you?

—That she stretched out on the bed, looked around, and didn’t find me. That then she thought, for the first time on the whole trip, that maybe I had gone out to look for what she hadn’t wanted to give me. That she felt a strange shiver, a mix of curiosity and jealousy she hadn’t expected to feel in her own skin. That she slid her hand between her legs, almost without realizing it, and found her cunt wet just from thinking about it.

—Did she suspect Lorena?

—She suspected Lorena, yes. And Daniela too, because Daniela had been piling on the compliments at lunch. She jumped up, looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, and promised herself one thing only: to make herself more of a babe than either of the other two.

—And she went down to look for you.

—She went down to look for me. But that part, Ernesto, I’ll tell you tomorrow.

I crushed the pipe out against the ashtray and held his gaze. For the first time all night, Ernesto didn’t open his mouth.