What Happened With My Boyfriend’s Cousin That Week

It all started because of money, or rather, the lack of it. I had a faculty conference in another city and the lodging would eat up half of what I had saved. When I told Damián, my boyfriend, he didn’t even think twice: his aunt lived in that city and had an extra room. “I’ll let her know and that’s it, she won’t mind,” he told me with that easy calm of his. I hesitated a little, but my bank account mattered more than my pride, so I agreed.

Aunt Carmen picked me up at the terminal and turned out to be one of those warm women who treat you as if they’ve known you all your life. In the car she asked me about Damián, about my studies, about how things were between us. I answered with a smile, feeling a little like an impostor for taking up a place she offered so confidently.

The house was big, two stories, with a long hallway upstairs that led to the bedrooms. Carmen showed me mine, at the back, and then, as we were heading downstairs, she introduced me to her son.

“This is Tobías, my boy. If you need anything, ask him.”

Tobías had to be about twenty-one. Tall, broad-shouldered, with that solid build only the gym gives you when it becomes a habit. I shook his hand, said something polite, and didn’t pay him much attention. He was Damián’s cousin and his mother was right there: there was nothing to look at.

Or so I thought.

The three of us had lunch and, when we finished, Carmen said she had to go out to take care of some errands. She told me to make myself at home and that Tobías would be around. I thanked her and she left. My conference didn’t start until the next day, so I had nothing to do, alone in someone else’s house with a stranger.

I sat in the living room to watch TV and Tobías soon joined me. We started talking. He told me about his training, about playing soccer on weekends, about a girl from his program he liked but didn’t have the nerve to ask out. I listened and answered what he asked me: about my talk, about how long I’d been with Damián, things like that. It was a normal, harmless conversation. At one point he stood up.

“I’m going to work out for a while. My mom’ll be back soon, I won’t leave you alone too long.”

He went up to his room and I stayed downstairs, messing around with my phone. After a while I needed to use the bathroom and went up the stairs. The door to his room was ajar, barely a slit, and as I passed by, curiosity got the better of prudence. I peeked in.

He was changing. Facing the mirror, he took off his shirt and I froze in the hallway. His torso was exactly what the gym had promised: every muscle defined, broad back, narrow waist. He wasn’t the most handsome man in the world, but the body made up for everything else. I felt heat rise up the back of my neck, a low stab in my belly that should not have been there.

I forced myself to keep going to the bathroom. He’s Damián’s cousin. You’re in his house. Behave. I washed my face with cold water, took a deep breath, and went back downstairs, determined not to think about it again.

***

But the body has its own memory, and the rest of the day slipped away in distractions that didn’t work. Night fell, Carmen came back, we had dinner, and around eleven I retreated to my room at the back. I put on my pajamas —short, loose shorts and a long blouse that reached halfway down my thigh— and got into bed ready to sleep.

I hadn’t been there twenty minutes when someone knocked softly on the door. It was Tobías.

“Want to watch a movie?” he asked in a low voice. “Better in here, since your room is far and we won’t bother my mom.”

I should have said no. Instead I slid over on the bed and made room for him. He put something on his phone and we started watching, both of us lying back against the pillows, with a prudent distance between us that didn’t last long.

The movie had steamy scenes, loaded dialogue, bodies tangled together on the screen. I felt the air in the room change. I noticed him adjusting himself, trying to hide it, and I knew he was going through the same thing I was. I turned toward the edge of the bed, supposedly so he wouldn’t see my face, but when I did that, my blouse rode up and the other half of the story was laid out for him.

I caught him looking at me in the reflection of the dark window. Not discreetly: hungrily. And instead of covering myself, I left my hand on my thigh and started stroking myself slowly, as if I were scratching an itch, knowing perfectly well that every touch was for him. My pulse trembled a little. I liked the feeling of doing exactly what I shouldn’t.

I turned to look at him and he didn’t look away. He held my eyes for a long second, put his hand on my hip, and pulled me toward him. I didn’t resist. I let myself be dragged in, he wrapped me in his arms and kissed me, a deep, messy kiss that erased Damián’s name, the house, the conference, everything, all at once.

Then he gripped the back of my neck firmly, almost an order. I understood what he was asking and gave it to him: to do whatever he wanted with me. One of his hands was already reaching for my breast under my blouse while the other guided me to sit on top of him. I felt his hard erection against me and a shiver ran through my whole body.

“Take your pants off,” I whispered, not quite recognizing my own voice.

***

What followed bore no resemblance at all to the prudent girl who had arrived in the car with Aunt Carmen. I slid down, took him in my hand, and brought him to my mouth. It was more than I was used to, and that turned me on even more. I worked without rushing, playing with my tongue, hearing him hold his breath so he wouldn’t make a sound. He held my head, set the rhythm, and I let myself be taken all the way to the edge, my eyes wet and my chin shining.

When I couldn’t take it anymore, he turned me over and put me on my knees on the bed. He lowered his head between my legs and started working me with his mouth, patient, attentive to every reaction, until my legs began to shake and I had to bite the pillow to keep from screaming. The first orgasm hit me by surprise and left me limp, undone.

He gave me no respite. He settled behind me and entered me slowly, filling me little by little, and almost immediately changed the rhythm to something harder. I moaned against the fabric of the pillow and still the sound escaped me. He covered my mouth with his hand.

“Shhh. My mom,” he warned me in my ear, without stopping.

And there I was: on the first night, in my boyfriend’s family’s house, letting myself get fucked by a man I’d known for only a few hours. The idea, far from stopping me, made me hotter. He told me through clenched teeth that he envied his cousin for having me, and I, completely lost, confessed that with Damián I did everything except one thing.

“I never gave him that,” I admitted. “I saved it for others.”

Something lit in him. He squeezed my hips, gave me a firm slap that left my skin burning, and asked if this was my first time. I told him no, that I wasn’t lying. He called me all kinds of things in a low voice, dirty words that in any other moment would have offended me and that that night only melted me more. I told him yes, that tonight I was his, that he should make the most of it.

He took his time. He didn’t seem to tire at all, and I lost count of how many times pleasure shook me from head to toe, wave after wave, until I felt the sheets damp beneath me and no longer knew where one orgasm ended and the next began.

When he told me he was about to finish, I asked for the only thing I still needed. I turned around, took him in my mouth again, and let him finish like that, on my lips and cheek. I stayed still for a moment, marked, silently savoring what I had just done. He got up, gave me one last kiss, and went back to his room without saying much. I fell asleep naked, still with his trace on my skin, feeling more alive than I had in a long time.

***

The conference, which was supposed to last two days, suddenly stretched into a whole week for me. I invented workshops, panel discussions, talks that didn’t exist, any excuse not to go back yet. I texted Damián about how boring everything was, how much I missed him, while every night I waited for Carmen to fall asleep so her son could cross the hallway to my room.

When I finally went back to my city, to my routine and my boyfriend, I knew there would be no after with Tobías. We didn’t write, we didn’t call, there was no goodbye promising anything. It was a week sealed in on itself, a pause that didn’t belong to any other part of my life.

And yet, even today, when Damián hugs me at night and falls asleep, sometimes I close my eyes and go back to that stranger’s house, to that long hallway, to the crack of a half-open door. I admit it without guilt: thinking about it still turns me on like nothing else.