What the Camino Awakened Between the Four of Them

They had been walking for four days when the Camino stopped being a route and became something else.

They had set out from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port with heavy backpacks and the undiminished excitement of people who had never done this before: Marcos and Lucía, together for four years and already familiar with the Camino’s rhythms and silences; Rubén and Sofía, five years into a relationship and a shared life that worked the way things work when they no longer surprise anyone. The plan was simple: three weeks, Santiago, something to remember.

What was not part of the plan was everything else.

From the first day, Sofía was struck by the way Marcos looked at Lucía. It wasn’t possessiveness or surveillance: it was genuine attention, the kind of attention one gives to things that still truly matter. Rubén looked at her too, of course, but differently, with the familiarity that eventually begins to resemble distraction. Sofía knew him well. Too well, perhaps.

The first important night was in Logroño. A long table beneath a vine in the hostel courtyard, Rioja wine, the other pilgrims gradually withdrawing one by one until the four of them were left alone with half a bottle and the stars overhead.

It was Rubén who asked. He asked in the tone of someone who had drunk enough to be curious out loud:

—That tantra you’re always talking about. What exactly is it?

Marcos looked at him for a second, choosing how to answer.

—It’s the idea that the body isn’t the problem —he said—. That you don’t have to transcend it or apologize for it. The body is the path, not the obstacle.

—Any self-help book says that —Rubén said.

—So do the Sanskrit texts that have been saying it for three thousand years, which gives them something of an advantage.

Sofía smiled despite herself. Rubén did too, a moment later.

—And in practice? —Sofía asked. She was looking at Lucía, not Marcos.

Lucía held her gaze for a moment.

—In practice —she said— it means learning to stay very still with a cock buried deep inside you without needing it to move. It means having your pussy soaked for an hour without coming, without wanting to come, letting the pleasure build inside you until there’s no room for anything else.

The silence that followed lasted exactly as long as it needed to. Sofía felt her thighs tighten beneath the table.

***

That night, in the hostel’s shared bathroom, Sofía found Lucía alone. It wasn’t awkwardness: it was the kind of coincidence the Camino manufactured every day, putting people in the same space without warning.

They showered with the naturalness imposed by a lack of privacy. Sofía was slim, with narrow shoulders and hips more pronounced than her clothes usually suggested, small pink nipples hardened by the change in temperature, and pubic hair trimmed into a thin strip. Lucía was something else: abundant, completely confident in her body, without the layer of self-consciousness that made most people inhabit theirs as though it were a borrowed house. Her tits were large and heavy, with broad, dark nipples pointing slightly outward; her pussy was completely shaved, her lips full and visible, with nothing concealing anything.

Sofía caught herself looking at them. Lucía noticed and did not look away.

—The tantra —Sofía said, her throat drier than it should have been beneath the hot water—. How did you get into that, really?

Lucía smiled. It was a smile containing something remembered and something belonging to another mood that was not easy to name.

—Marcos had been doing yoga for years —she said—. I went to my first class thinking it would be awkward and strange and full of people in loose clothes.

—And was it?

—It was exactly that —Lucía said—. And it was also the most honest thing I’d done in a long time.

—Honest in what way?

—In the sense that nobody asks you to pretend you don’t feel what you feel. Quite the opposite. They ask you to feel it more. To stay there with it, without escaping into the next thought. —She paused. She ran her soapy hand over her breast, without coyness, with the naturalness of someone washing—. Most people, when they feel something very intense, run. Pleasure, fear, desire. They run toward something more manageable. Tantra is the opposite: stay still, right there, with all the intensity. Without making it stop.

—And does that translate into something… concrete? —Sofía hated herself for the hesitation at the end.

Lucía looked straight at her. Water ran over her face, down her neck, and between her tits.

—It translates into fucking for three hours without coming —she said—. Into Marcos putting it inside me and staying still while I learn to feel every inch without needing him to move. Into coming ten times in a row because when you give the body time, it opens in places you didn’t know it had. It translates into him sucking me for half an hour before letting me come, and when he finally does, it isn’t an orgasm, it’s a collapse.

Sofía felt her belly contract. A very clear pulse between her legs, moisture that wasn’t from the water.

—Fuck —she said softly.

—Yes —Lucía said—. Fuck is the word.

Sofía thought of Rubén. Of five years and sex that was proper and pleasant and completely predictable. Fifteen minutes, two positions, her orgasm before his, good night.

—And does that change how you are with Marcos?

—It changes how I am with everything —Lucía said—. With today’s exhaustion, with this heat, with the landscape this afternoon. —A very brief pause. Her eyes dipped for an instant over Sofía’s body and rose again—. With certain looks.

Sofía did not ask which looks she meant. The silence that followed contained more information than any possible answer. When she got out of the shower and wrapped herself in a towel, her nipples were so hard they hurt and her pussy was throbbing with an insistence she could not shake even when she returned to bed with Rubén and found him already asleep on his back, snoring loudly.

She touched herself that night beneath her sleeping bag, biting her lip to keep quiet, thinking of Lucía’s tits and the word “collapse.” She came silently, with two fingers, not allowing herself to think about anything else.

***

In Burgos, three days later, Marcos suggested doing some yoga before dinner. They had rented a country house for the night, with a high-ceilinged room, wooden floors, and windows overlooking the Castilian fields.

Rubén arrived twenty minutes after his shower looking as though he had slept inside it.

—Do we have to move? —he asked.

—Just stretch —Marcos said—. The difference between getting up tomorrow and not getting up.

The four of them settled on the floor of the room. Marcos guided them through work on their hips and lower backs that, after four hundred kilometers of the Camino, was pure relief. Twenty minutes, long poses, slow breathing. Rubén did not complain. There was something in Marcos’s tone that made his instructions sound not like instructions but information.

Then came the twists. And afterward Marcos said:

—There’s an exercise Lucía and I do to connect before a long practice. Shall we try it?

They sat facing each other on the wooden floor. Marcos crossed his legs and Lucía did the same, and they moved closer until her knees rested over his thighs, fitted together, their bodies forming a compact, symmetrical knot. She placed her hands on Marcos’s shoulders, her forearms resting on his. He held her around the waist, firmly but without squeezing. And they stayed that way, foreheads almost touching, eyes open, looking at each other.

They said nothing.

Rubén and Sofía watched them. There was something about the image that was difficult to classify: it wasn’t exactly erotic, it wasn’t exactly spiritual, it was something that came before those categories, and for that reason it was more unsettling than either one separately. Marcos and Lucía’s breathing gradually synchronized without either of them doing anything visible to make it happen. At some point they stopped being two people looking at each other and became something else.

—Will you two try it? —Marcos asked quietly, without taking his eyes off Lucía.

Rubén looked at Sofía. Sofía looked at Rubén. They sat facing each other with the awkwardness of people doing something for the first time. Their knees did not fit properly at first. When they found the position and looked at each other with that intention and that closeness, something changed in the air, something they both noticed and neither named.

—Sometimes it’s easier to let go with someone you don’t share everyday history with —Marcos said—. Let’s switch partners. Lucía works with Rubén and I’ll work with Sofía.

The silence that followed lasted exactly as long as it took an idea to become real.

Rubén walked toward Lucía with the expression of a man moving toward something he wanted and had decided not to examine too closely. He sat in front of her. Lucía’s knees were soft and warm against his thighs when they fitted together. At twenty centimeters away, in that position, without the usual distance of dinners and trails, Lucía’s face was different: more present, more detailed. Her dark eyes, which from a distance seemed simply pretty, had an almost intimidating depth up close. Rubén noticed that he had stopped breathing normally without knowing when it had happened, and he also noticed what his own body was doing about it, with an obviousness his sweatpants left no room to deny: his cock had become rock-hard, outlined against the fabric, pointing upward in a way Lucía could not fail to see. When she lowered her eyes for an instant and raised them again without changing expression, humiliation and arousal mingled in Rubén in a single heartbeat.

On the other side of the room, Marcos sat in front of Sofía. His hands circled her waist, and the moment they did, Sofía felt something begin there and end nowhere in particular. She looked at him. His eyes watched her with an attention that was not appraisal but pure presence, without judgment, without an agenda, which was in some way more disconcerting than anything else. Marcos’s thumbs moved once, very slowly, against the thin fabric of her shirt, just above her hip bone, and Sofía felt her pussy suddenly flood with a brutality that frightened her.

—Breathe —Marcos said, speaking to all four of them—. Don’t synchronize, don’t try. Just breathe and let the body do what it wants to do.

What their bodies wanted to do was obvious. No one said it.

***

That night, the walls of the country house were just thick enough for the sounds from the adjoining bedroom to arrive with a clarity that left no room for interpretation.

Sofía was lying beside Rubén when they began. First a rustle, a whisper, something that could have been nothing. Then the unmistakable creak of the floorboards: Lucía getting off the bed and kneeling. Marcos’s breathing changing. A wet, soaked, unequivocal sound: Lucía sucking him. Sucking him slowly, with pauses, with the tantric slowness she had spoken about. Every movement of her mouth over his cock could be heard, the noise of saliva, Marcos’s breathing turning into low moans he made no effort to hide.

—Like that —Marcos said on the other side of the wall, in a low voice that crossed the partitions as though they did not exist—. All the way. Right to the back.

Lucía made a sound with her throat full. A soft gurgle, a controlled choking. She was taking him all the way to her gag reflex. Sofía closed her eyes in the darkness of her own room and felt the blood rushing between her legs.

Rubén heard it too. His breathing changed beside her. He turned toward Sofía. He kissed her with an urgency he had not shown in months, and his hand went straight between her legs. When he found her so wet that his fingers sank in without resistance, he exhaled against her mouth:

—Fuck, Sofía, you’re soaked.

He had never felt her like that so quickly, never with an urgency that wasn’t exactly for him.

On the other side of the wall, the bed began to move. A slow, heavy rhythm, making the bed frame creak with metronomic regularity. Lucía moaned each time, with a deep, open note, as if every thrust drew the air from a different place. Marcos breathed above her without speaking, only the rhythm of his hips against her ass or her thighs; it was impossible to know what position they were in but easy to imagine any of them.

Rubén pulled down his underwear and climbed on top of Sofía without further preamble. He shoved himself into her in a single thrust, all the way, and Sofía arched her back with a moan that escaped before she could think about it. Rubén began fucking her with a force that was not his usual one, driving her into the mattress while Lucía, on the other side, began moaning louder, with the cadence that announced an orgasm while it was still far away.

Sofía closed her eyes and was no longer in her bed. She was in the bathroom in Logroño, with Lucía in front of her, soaping her tits. She was kneeling before Lucía. She was eating her shaved pussy, the dark thighs squeezing her face, Lucía’s hand in her hair telling her where and how much. Sofía’s tongue moved very slowly, with the tantric slowness Lucía had taught her without teaching her anything, sucking her swollen clitoris, taking her time, letting her build.

Rubén thrust against her hard. His cock moved in and out with a wet sound that joined the noises from the adjoining room. The pleasure rose, rose, and hovered on the edge, intense and unbearable, but never quite arriving, because her mind was not there, was not with Rubén, had not been with him for weeks.

—Come —Rubén said in her ear, panting—. Come on, come with me.

On the other side of the wall, Lucía came. A long moan, broken in the middle, which continued for several seconds before dissolving into trembling breath. Then Marcos, with a low growl, a tight “fuck” between his teeth, and the rhythm of the bed slowing to a stop.

Rubén came inside Sofía with two more thrusts and a hoarse gasp. He collapsed on top of her, sweaty and satisfied.

Sofía faked her orgasm with a calculated tremor and a few moans just before his. She hated herself for it for a second, then lay in the darkness listening to the wind among the pines and thinking of Lucía’s hands and the fact that the Camino still had a week left.

When Rubén fell asleep, she got up and went to the bathroom. She sat on the toilet with her panties around her ankles, slid three fingers between her legs, and came in two minutes thinking of Lucía’s mouth on Marcos’s cock, and of Lucía’s mouth on her own pussy.

***

What happened between Sofía and Marcos took place four days later, at the natural hot springs of Outariz, beside the Miño River.

Rubén had a serious blister that had forced him to stay behind at the hostel in Ourense. Lucía had stayed with him, which was what Lucía did, caring for people naturally and without embellishment. Marcos and Sofía reached the hot springs alone, with the heated volcanic stones, the water at forty degrees, and evening falling over the river.

There was no one else there. It was Tuesday afternoon, half an hour before closing. They entered the most distant pool, hidden behind a tongue of rock, with the murmur of the Miño ten meters away and the eucalyptus trees filtering the light.

For a while they said nothing, immersed up to their necks, watching the water flow.

—You haven’t looked at me in three days —Marcos said.

—That’s not true —Sofía said.

—It is. And I know why.

Sofía swallowed. She could feel her swimsuit clinging to her body beneath the hot water.

—Marcos, no.

—Okay.

But he did not move. And neither did she.

Sofía was the one who closed the distance. She crossed the two meters of hot water and stood in front of him, and when she was close enough for their knees to brush beneath the surface, she raised her hands and placed her palms against his chest. Marcos did not touch her. He only looked at her.

—Tell me to stop —she said.

—No —he said.

Sofía straddled him on the edge of the stone, with the water up to both their waists. Her mouth found Marcos’s and they kissed with a violence that had not been present in any of the earlier gestures. Marcos’s hands went to her ass over her swimsuit, squeezing her against him, and through the two layers of fabric Sofía felt that he was rock-hard, as hard as he had probably been for days.

—Take this off me —she said against his mouth.

Marcos slid the straps of her swimsuit down and lowered the top. Her small, firm tits emerged into the afternoon light, pink nipples hardened by the contrast between the air and the hot water. He lowered his head and sucked one, then the other, with a slowness Sofía recognized even though she had never experienced it. He was taking his time. He was doing tantra with her nipples.

—God —she said, throwing her head back—. God, Marcos.

—Shh —he said against her skin—. Breathe. Don’t rush.

He spent five minutes on her breasts alone. Five minutes sucking, nibbling, running his tongue around the nipple without touching it, then closing his whole mouth over it and sucking until Sofía felt she was going to come from that alone. When his hand went down beneath the water, pushed aside her swimsuit, and slid two fingers into her pussy, Sofía came instantly, with a long tremor, gripping Marcos’s shoulders and pressing her face against his neck so she would not scream.

—Fuck —she said when she could speak—. Fuck, fuck.

—The first one —Marcos said, without removing his fingers—. That’s only to make you open.

He lifted her into his arms, water streaming from both their bodies, and carried her to the grass beside the pool. He laid her on her back. He finished removing her swimsuit and took off his own. His cock emerged, curved and thick, swollen in the way Sofía had been imagining for days without allowing herself to.

He knelt between her legs. He opened her thighs with both hands. And lowered his mouth to her pussy with the same calmness with which he had done everything else.

Sofía came three more times before he penetrated her. The first with his flat tongue against her clitoris, very slowly. The second with two fingers inside her, curling as they moved while his tongue never stopped. The third with only the tip of his tongue, barely touching her, tracing something that was not a movement but a suggestion, and which made her collapse with a moan that startled a bird among the eucalyptus trees.

When he finally positioned himself over her and pushed his cock inside, Sofía was already in a state in which she no longer recognized her own body. Marcos entered her in one long thrust, all the way, and stayed there. Still. Buried. Looking at her.

—Don’t move —Sofía said, in the voice of someone who had understood something—. Stay.

He stayed. A full minute, perhaps more. Sofía felt every inch of his cock inside her, the pulsing veins against the walls of her pussy, Marcos’s heartbeat against her own. The pleasure did not recede. On the contrary. It grew in slow pulses, accumulating, becoming dense.

When Marcos began to move, he did so with impossible slowness. Pulling almost all the way out, entering again, pausing for a second deep inside, then withdrawing once more. Sofía began to cry without realizing it. Silent tears ran along her temples into her hair. It was not sadness. She did not know what it was.

—It’s okay —Marcos said, seeing the tears—. It’s normal. Let it go.

She came a fourth time. And a fifth, with barely any transition, when he sped up a little. And when Marcos finally began to fuck her in earnest, close to the end, with the force he had been holding back, Sofía came a sixth time, the deepest one, shaking her entire body from her feet to the crown of her head and leaving her screaming against Marcos’s shoulder with no ability to hold herself back.

Marcos came across her belly, pulling out at the last second, with a low growl. His hot semen landed on Sofía’s wet skin, on her tits, on her navel. He collapsed beside her on the grass.

They did not speak for a long time. Sofía looked at the sky between the eucalyptus trees, semen cooling on her body and the sound of the river below. She thought she ought to feel guilty, but she did not. She only felt her body, clean and still and open in a new way, and that something had arrived exactly where it was meant to arrive.

She went back into the water, washed herself, and put on her swimsuit. Marcos did the same. They returned to the hostel in silence, walking close together without touching.

***

The house they had rented for the final night was outside Santiago, with a garden, a terrace, and views of Galicia’s damp fields. It was absurdly beautiful. Rubén said, “This can’t be real,” and the others silently agreed, each for their own reasons.

It was over dinner that Rubén asked.

He asked in the tone of someone who had waited long enough and decided there was no point waiting any longer:

—Are you aware that something happened on this trip? Do you acknowledge it, or are we going to keep up the performance?

Marcos did not deny it. There was a pause of one second, and then only the stillness of someone who had decided not to lie.

—Yes —he said.

The monosyllable fell onto the terrace and stayed there.

—And you? —Rubén asked, looking at Lucía.

Lucía held his gaze.

—Yes —she said.

Rubén’s chair scraped against the wood when he stood. Not violently: with the movement of someone who needed physical distance to process something too large for the body to contain.

—Fuck —he said. And then again—: Fuck.

He walked to the edge of the terrace with his back to the three of them, looking at the dark fields.

—I’ve been feeling like shit for looking at your ass every day while you were fucking in the hot springs and I was rotting in a hostel with my blister. —He turned around—. The calmest, wisest, most spiritual one. With your tantra and your yoga and your presence. What a hypocrite.

—Rubén —Lucía said, in a low, direct voice—. Stop.

—Don’t you talk to me! —He turned toward her—. You fucked my girlfriend. And I was back at the hostel with my blister like an idiot.

Then he looked at Sofía, who sat with her hands still on the table and her eyes shining, and who had said nothing from the beginning.

—And you, Sofía? Is there anyone you haven’t fucked on this trip?

—That isn’t fair —Lucía said.

—Fair? —Rubén’s laugh was the most painful thing he had said all night—. You’re talking to me about fairness now?

—I can listen to you or I can explain myself —Marcos said without moving—. I can’t do both at once.

—Don’t explain anything to me. —Rubén picked up the remaining bottle and walked inside the house—. Fuck the three of you.

The bedroom door closed.

He did not slam it. That was the most final thing of all.

***

Half an hour later, Lucía entered Rubén’s bedroom.

The room was dim, with only moonlight filtering through the half-open window. Rubén lay on his back in bed, one arm over his eyes, breathing like someone who was awake and pretending not to be.

—Sofía, I told you...

He took his arm away from his face.

Lucía stood in the doorway wearing a white camisole with straps that the moonlight made faintly translucent. Her dark nipples showed through the fabric, as did the shadow of her shaved pubis. Her black hair hung loose. Her bare feet rested on the floorboards.

She closed the door behind her.

She approached the edge of the bed without hurrying, and when she reached him she knelt on the floor with a naturalness that disarmed any prepared response. She looked at him. He looked up at her with the expression of a man whose ground had just been taken away.

—I haven’t come to ask forgiveness —Lucía said—. I’ve come because you’ve been looking at me for twenty days as if you wanted to fuck me, and I’ve spent twenty days wanting you to do it.

Rubén swallowed. He could not say anything.

Lucía placed her hand on his crotch over the sheet. His cock was hard; it had been hard since he saw her in the doorway. She squeezed it, gauging it with her palm.

—This has been wanting to speak for days —Lucía said—. Listen to it.

She pulled away the sheet. She lowered his underwear to his thighs. His cock sprang free, thick and taut, a drop of pre-cum already at the tip. Lucía took it in her right hand, held it, and looked at it as if she were about to study something carefully. Then she lowered her head and took it into her mouth in one motion, all the way, until Rubén felt the back of her throat tighten around his glans and had to bite his lip to keep from coming right there.

—Fuck —he gasped—. Fuck, Lucía.

She rose slowly, lips tight along its entire length, drawing it out to the tip with a wet sound. She gave the glans a small kiss and went down again, even more slowly this time, feeling it sink inch by inch. When she had it deep in her mouth again, she stayed there, motionless, his cock buried to her throat while her tongue worked beneath it with a slow, meticulous movement.

Rubén stared at the ceiling with his eyes wide open. No one had ever sucked him like that. Sofía gave him oral sex as a concession, quickly and mechanically, with the impatience of someone wanting to move on to the next episode. Lucía was sucking him as if she were praying. With presence. With hunger. With all the time in the world.

She kept him that way for ten minutes. Ten. Without hurrying, without speeding up when he gripped her hair, pulling back when she sensed he was too close and returning when he breathed again. She licked his balls, one and then the other, took them into her mouth, ran her flat tongue up his shaft, sucked only the glans with short strokes, savoring it. When Rubén tried to say, “I’m going to come,” she gripped his thighs and did not let him, slowing her rhythm to a point where Rubén felt he would die if he did not finish and would die if he did.

—Not yet —Lucía said, her mouth full—. Hold on.

When she finally released him, she stood up from the floor. She lifted one leg and straddled him. The camisole opened over her thighs, revealing the smooth, brown inner skin. She pulled it over her head in one fluid movement and was completely naked above him, moonlight sliding over her shoulders, her large tits, her belly, her smooth pubis.

Rubén’s hands went to her hips on pure instinct, moved up her sides, found her tits, and took hold of them. The abundant flesh spilled between his fingers with a warmth that was almost impossible to contain. Her broad, dark nipples hardened beneath his palms. A nameless sound came from his throat.

Lucía closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, something was different in them, something the body knows even when the mind does not always have words to name it.

She leaned back slightly, took Rubén’s cock in her hand, and placed it at her entrance. She slid it along her lips without pushing it inside, wetting it with her own moisture, soaking it. Rubén felt the heat of her pussy against the tip and writhed beneath her, trying to thrust upward.

—Stay still —Lucía said—. I’ll do it.

And she descended onto him very slowly, eyes open and fixed on him. Rubén felt her open around him with a heat, density, and tightness that made him close his eyes, then open them again because he did not want to be anywhere but exactly here. It took three short descents and one long one to get his entire cock inside her. Once she had him all the way in, Lucía released a long, deep sigh and stayed still, buried to the root.

—Like that —she said—. Now breathe.

She did not move for almost a minute. Neither did Rubén. He felt Lucía’s pussy pulsing around him from inside, small involuntary throbs, the way her walls tightened around his cock as though memorizing him. When she finally began to move, she did so with the impossible slowness he had heard from the other side of the wall in Burgos: rising almost to the tip, lowering slowly, staying for a moment all the way down. Lucía’s breasts swayed softly with the movement, and Rubén’s hands rose to them again because he could not not touch them.

She tilted her head back. A low sound came from deep inside her.

—Fuck me —Lucía said. And then, more softly—: Fuck me the way you’ve wanted to fuck me since Logroño.

Rubén sat up, embraced her, and turned her over. He laid her on her back on the mattress without leaving her, and climbed on top. Lucía spread her legs wide, lifted them, and wrapped them around his waist. And Rubén began to fuck her the way he had wanted to, with all the pent-up force of three weeks of watching her ass as she walked ahead of him along the trails, with all the anger left over from dinner on the terrace, with everything that he was.

The mattress struck the wall. Lucía moaned loudly and openly, with no intention of hiding it. She let him pound her with complete surrender, moving her hips up to receive him, squeezing him with her legs, her hands on his ass pulling him deeper each time.

—Harder —she gasped—. Deeper.

Rubén fucked her with a clean, almost savage fury. He grabbed her beneath the knees, opened her legs until they were nearly beside her ears, and penetrated her more deeply, with thrusts that made Lucía give a short cry each time.

—Yes —she said—. There. There, fuck, there.

He changed her position. He put her on her knees, her back to him, ass raised, heavy breasts hanging down. He entered her from behind, holding her by the hips, and thrust with all the strength he had left. Her buttocks slapped against his thighs each time, a carnal, dry, obscene crack. He took one of her tits in one hand and squeezed it, finding the nipple between his fingers and pinching it. With the other hand he held her hair, firmly but without pulling, and Lucía tilted her head back to let herself be guided.

—I’m going to come —she said—. You’re going to make me come like this, give me more.

He felt her tense in a specific way, that instant before the body gathers itself and opens, and he gripped her hips harder and drove all the way in with three quick thrusts. Lucía made a long, broken sound and came with a deep convulsion, her whole body trembling, squeezing Rubén’s cock from inside with rhythmic spasms that he felt one by one, dragging him along, leaving him no choice but to follow her.

—Inside —Lucía said, panting against the pillow—. Come inside me.

He came inside her. With a long growl that emerged from somewhere he did not know, emptying himself into her in waves while Lucía continued to come, squeezing him, drawing everything out of him. When it finally stopped, he collapsed onto her back, his cock still inside her, his face buried in her black hair, which smelled of soap and sweat.

They stayed like that for a while. Then Lucía slowly turned beneath him, facing him, his cock slipping out of her with a wet sound and a thread of semen running down her thigh. She embraced Rubén. He embraced her. Without fully separating, feeling his cock soften against her belly.

—Again —Lucía said after a while, her mouth against his neck—. Slowly this time. The way I teach you.

And she taught him. They spent another hour together. Rubén on top of her, barely moving, his cock hardening again without him knowing how, feeling for the first time in his life what Lucía had described that night in Logroño: intensity that sought no outlet, pleasure accumulating, stillness inside another body. Lucía came three more times like that, in slow, long, silent tremors. He did not come again. There was no need. When he finally came out of her, he had nothing left to give and did not feel he lacked anything.

Lucía did not move immediately. She stayed beside him, her head resting on his shoulder, the camisole forgotten somewhere on the floor, her breathing slowly returning to normal. Rubén’s hand lay open and still on her back, asking nothing of her.

Outside, the dark countryside. Santiago twenty kilometers away, waiting with its cathedral and its thousands of years of pilgrims and its absolute indifference to what people did at night in the country houses around it.

Inside, the silence of two people who had just been completely in the same place and knew that tomorrow that place would have changed, and that this did not undo what had been, because things that have happened cannot be undone. They accumulate. They become part of what one is when no one is looking.

Lucía raised her head. She looked at him. He looked at her.

He lifted a hand and brushed a strand of hair from her face, a gesture that was, of everything he had done in twenty days on the Camino, the most honest.

Lucía slowly sat up. She picked up the camisole from the floor. She pulled it over her head. She stood barefoot on the floorboards in the white camisole, her black hair loose, Rubén’s semen still running down the inside of her thigh, without bothering to wipe it away.

She walked toward the door.

At the threshold, without turning around, she stopped for a second.

Then she left.

And Rubén remained alone in the half-light, staring at the ceiling, with something in his chest that was not exactly peace, but resembled it. The place just before peace, when the body has already released everything it had been carrying and the mind still does not know it can do the same.

He closed his eyes.

And for the first time in weeks, he slept without dreaming of anything.