What My Husband Doesn’t Know About the Palmera Hotel

I got out of the taxi half a block from the hotel, as always. That had been the rule from day one: the driver was never to know which door I went in through. I paid in cash, smiled just enough, and walked the last stretch with my bag clutched against my side, feeling the afternoon sun beating the back of my neck under my pinned-up hair.

The Palmera had a side entrance that led to an inner courtyard with two sad-looking potted plants and a receptionist who no longer asked my name. She would extend the key to 304 with a look that was neither complicit nor judgmental, just matter-of-fact. I would give her a brief nod, go up the stairs two at a time, and knock on the door three times, slowly, before turning the handle.

Andrés was already there. He was always there before me.

That afternoon I found him with his back to the window, the curtain half-drawn and two empty glasses on the side table. He had loosened his tie, but he was still wearing his shirt buttoned up, and the contrast made my thighs clench involuntarily. I liked that he was dressed. I liked it even more to take off each garment slowly, like someone who knows she has time.

—You’re late —he said, without turning around.

—I get here when I can.

—You’re late —he repeated, and this time he turned his head just enough for me to see his smile.

I set my bag on the armchair. I took off my earrings one by one, laid them beside the lamp, and only then did I walk over to him. I ran my hand along his back and felt the warmth of his body through the fabric. He smelled of that perfume of his whose name I had never asked, a mix of leather and something darker, something that didn’t exist in my house.

—How long has it been? —he asked.

—Twenty-two days.

—And him, how long?

—Almost a month. And badly.

Andrés let out a low laugh. At last he turned and took my face in both hands, not kissing me yet, looking at me as if he wanted to gauge how hungry I’d gotten this time. It was an old game between us. The longer it had been since my husband touched me, the slower he started. He had explained it to me that second afternoon: “if I come at you in a hurry, I leave you half-finished; if I come at you slowly, I leave you wrecked.” And up to that day, I hadn’t been able to contradict him.

He kissed me at last. Slowly, for real, his tongue asking permission before going in. I felt my knees weaken and held on to the lapels of his shirt. He led me toward the bed walking backward, without breaking the kiss, and when we reached the edge he made me sit on the mattress with a gentle pressure of his palms on my shoulders.

—Stay still —he said.

He knelt in front of me. He started with my shoes: took them off one by one, each one followed by a kiss on the instep. Then he slid his hands up my calf, along the inner thigh, unhurried, lifting my dress until it was wrinkled at my waist. I had put on the black lace lingerie, the one he had silently chosen for me one afternoon, pointing it out in a shop while my husband was elsewhere.

—You’re wearing it —he murmured.

—I always wear it when I come.

—Take it off.

I lifted my hips and slid it down to my ankles. Andrés spread my legs with the backs of his hands, slowly, and stayed looking at me in silence for a few seconds. I saw him run his tongue over his upper lip, saw him breathe deeply through his nose, saw the bulge pressing against the fabric of his trousers. That silence was what drove me wild. The silence in which he watched my cunt open as if it were the first time, as if he hadn’t seen me like that a dozen afternoons before.

—You’re soaked —he said—. I didn’t even touch you and you’re already dripping down your thighs.

—Shut up and do it.

Then he lowered his head.

The first time he did it, months ago, I nearly asked him to stop. My husband didn’t do that to me. My husband had never once put his mouth down there, in fifteen years. I didn’t know what a patient tongue was, a mouth without haste, fingers that only went in when you were already begging for more. That first afternoon I cried. Andrés got scared, lifted his head, and I told him, “keep going, please, keep going,” and I clutched the sheets like I was drowning.

That afternoon I didn’t cry. That afternoon I grabbed his hair, pressed his head against my pussy, and let him do what he already knew how to do. He started by licking me from bottom to top, with a flat, broad tongue, running over me completely from the entrance to the clit. He did that five, six times, drawing a gasp from me each time, until the skin down there was burning with sensitivity. Then he closed his lips around the clit and sucked it slowly, with a steady suction that made me lift my hips off the mattress. I saw his eyes between my legs, dark, fixed on mine, while he sucked me off as if he had nothing else to do in the world.

—Watch me while you come —he murmured against my wet flesh, and slipped a finger inside me.

I felt him go in, felt him curl it forward, searching for that spot my husband had never bothered to find. Andrés had it mapped out. He started massaging it from the inside while continuing to suck my clit, and a few seconds later he slid in the second finger. He opened me, stretched me, licked the inner walls with the tip of his tongue between the thrusts of his fingers. He knew when to slow down, when to increase the pressure, when to use one finger and when two. He knew the exact moment when I stopped breathing before orgasm, and he stayed there, at that precise point, until my voice broke in a sound I didn’t even recognize as my own.

—Oh, God. Oh, Andrés, I’m coming, I’m coming.

I came in his mouth with my legs clamped against his ears, shaking all over, my juice dripping down his chin and fingers. He didn’t stop. He kept licking me slowly, sucking in everything I gave him, while I tried to push his head away because I couldn’t take it anymore.

—Again —he said, without lifting his head.

—I can’t.

—Again —he insisted, and he made me do it again.

This time it was different. He circled my clit with the tip of his tongue, tight little circles, while he pulled his fingers out and pushed them back in with a slow, obscene rhythm, making a wet sound each time. With his other hand he squeezed my breast over the dress, searching for my nipple through the fabric and lace. When he found it, he pinched hard and I arched as if something hot had been driven into me. The second orgasm came up slowly, in waves, and when it burst I had to bite my forearm to keep from screaming and being heard from the next room.

When the second one ended, my legs were trembling. My face was burning. I let myself fall back onto the mattress, my dress still wrinkled at my waist, staring at the white ceiling while he kissed my navel, my belly, the side of my breasts over the fabric. I felt his mouth leaving a trail of my own wetness on me, soaking my skin where he went.

—Come here —I told him.

He sat up and started unbuttoning his shirt, never taking his eyes off me. I sat up to help him, clumsy-handed, and yanked at his belt and his trousers in one motion. When he pulled them down, his cock sprang out, hard, thick, the tip glossy with precome. I stared at it for a second. Then I bent my head and took it into my mouth without thinking, all the way to the back, swallowing it whole until the tip hit my throat and made my eyes water.

—Fuck —he muttered, grabbing my hair.

I sucked him slowly, licking the head, working the frenulum with my tongue, pulling him out for a second to lick him from root to tip like melting ice cream. I grabbed his balls with one hand and massaged them, feeling them heavy, tight, while with the other I held the base and took him back in until I was choking. He didn’t laugh. That was another thing: when the time came, Andrés stopped playing. His jaw was tense, the veins in his neck standing out, and he looked at me with that expression of a man who is being done something to, and has promised himself he’ll take it.

—Enough, enough —he said, pulling my hair back—. If you keep going I’m going to come in your mouth and I still have to fuck you.

—Turn around —he said next, and made me let him go.

I got onto all fours on the bed, propped on my elbows, with my dress still half-off and my back arched toward him, my ass lifted, offered. I felt him settle in behind me, one hand on my hip and the other guiding himself. Before sliding in, he ran the head of his cock along my slit, from top to bottom, soaking himself completely in me, drawing a moan from me every time he brushed my clit. Then he rested the tip at my entrance and pushed.

He went in slowly, millimeter by millimeter, letting me feel every inch as if it were the first time. I felt his thickness opening me, the hot flesh stretching me inside, even the pulse of his cock within me. When he was all the way in, with his balls resting against my pussy, we both went still.

—Look at me —he said.

I turned my head over my shoulder. Andrés had that look on his face, jaw clenched and eyes half-lidded, that look my husband had never worn for me in fifteen years of marriage.

He started moving.

At first slowly, giving me long thrusts, pulling almost all the way out and pushing back in to the hilt, letting me get used to that size I didn’t have at home. Then he picked up the pace. He took my hair gently, joined my hands behind my back with his free hand, and pushed me into the mattress as if he were claiming something I owed him. In that position I had no way to defend myself from the impact: hips against the mattress, breasts flattened, and him taking me from above with all his cock, each thrust hammering my womb, tearing a ragged moan out of me. I moaned into the pillow, bit the sheet, begged him not to stop, begged him harder, begged him for things I had never once said at home.

—Like that, give it to me like that, harder, break me.

—Do you like the way I fuck you, slut?

—Yes. Yes, I love the way you fuck me.

—Say it.

—What?

—What you’re thinking. Say it.

And I told him. I told him my husband hadn’t made me hard in years. I told him no cock had ever filled my cunt like his. I told him that afternoon was saving my week, that without those hours in 304 I would have gone crazy. I told him words that didn’t exist in my daily life, words that only appeared there, in 304, with the curtain half-drawn and the two empty glasses on the table.

He let go of my hands and yanked my hair back, forcing me to arch. Now I was really on all fours, neck stretched, and he was fucking me while looking at my face in profile. He brought his free hand to my pussy and found my clit with two fingers, rubbing it in time with his thrusts.

—Come again with me inside you.

I didn’t have to do anything. The third orgasm rose on its own, driven by his cock and his fingers, and shook me completely. I clenched around him, felt my cunt close around him, heard him give a broken groan and speed up until he started to falter. He told me so with a cracked voice.

—I’m coming, I’m coming, where?

—Inside. Inside, give me all of it.

I felt him come. Felt his cock swell one more time and explode inside me, in hot jets I felt clearly, one, two, three, until he collapsed across my back, breathing into my neck. He held me so tightly I thought he was going to leave marks on my hips. I didn’t care. Marks I could explain. What I couldn’t explain was the semen that would be dripping down my thighs all the way home, or the face I’d bring back to my house that night, that face of a satisfied woman, a woman who no longer settled.

***

Afterward we stayed silent for a long while. He stroked my back with the tips of his fingers, tracing the path of my spine from the nape of my neck to the base of my waist. My face rested against his chest and I listened to his heartbeat slowly settle. Between my legs I could still feel his cum leaking out of me in little warm spurts.

—When will you come back? —he asked.

—I don’t know. When I can.

—Sneaky.

—I’ll let you know —I said, and bit his shoulder.

I got up before he fell asleep. That was another one of my rules: never sleep in 304. Asleep, I was already something else, another kind of woman, another kind of betrayal. Lying with him could be justified to oneself. Sleeping, no.

I washed up in the little bathroom, let the hot water run between my legs until the last drop of him went down the drain. I fixed my hair in front of the mirror freckled with droplets, put my earrings back on. I looked at my face. My cheeks were flushed and my eyes bright, like a teenager’s. I ran cold water over the back of my neck until the mirror gave me back a calmer face, a more married face, a more useful face for going home.

Andrés got up to walk me to the door. He kissed my forehead, not my mouth. That was his thing: the last kiss didn’t go to the mouth so as not to ruin my lipstick, which I had already put back on.

—Take care —he said.

—You too.

***

I went down the Palmera stairs with my legs still weak. The receptionist greeted me with that same workaday nod. I stepped out into the inner courtyard, breathed in the heavy summer air, and walked the two blocks to the bus stop.

On the bus I sat pressed against the window. I watched the buildings without seeing them, my bag on my lap and my hands still. Every so often a movement of my hips reminded me he had been there, that there had been a cock inside me less than an hour ago. When I got to my neighborhood I got off one stop early to walk a little. I needed my body to finish landing.

When I got home, Martín was on the couch, watching a match. He didn’t look at me. He only asked if there had been much traffic, without taking his eyes off the screen. I told him yes, that the avenue was impossible. I poured him a glass of water and left it on the coffee table.

—I’m going to take a shower —I said.

—Okay.

In the shower I leaned against the tiles and let myself cry for a couple of minutes. Not from guilt. From something else. From that exhaustion that comes from realizing there’s no going back, that once the body learns what it is to be properly fucked it won’t accept going back to the other thing, to that routine of twice a month in the dark, without words, without desire, without anything.

I dried off, put on my old nightgown, brushed my hair. I went downstairs to eat what was left over from lunch. Martín was still watching the match. I asked him who was winning. He answered something I didn’t hear.

I went to bed thinking about 304. About the half-drawn curtain. About the two empty glasses. About Andrés saying “you’re late” without turning around. About his cock going in slowly, millimeter by millimeter. I fell asleep right away, with a loose smile on my mouth and thighs still sticky that my husband didn’t even notice.

Tomorrow would be another day. And I’d hold out until my body asked again.