When My Lover Died, My Boyfriend Stopped Being Himself

After that afternoon when I left Renata humiliated on the marble floor of my study, something inside me finally shattered. Dominating her had not been enough. I wanted something more concrete, darker, something with a name and a man’s body. What I wanted was Mateo. And I gave myself to him like someone throwing herself into a dry well, knowing there were only stones below.

For almost an entire year, we lived in a kind of constant intoxication. There were weeks when we saw each other five or six times, hidden away in suites in the financial district or anonymous motels on the outskirts, where nobody asked questions and the only law was cash up front. We also used the apartment he rented on my orders, as soon as I ordered him to leave Renata. I had turned him into my voluntary prisoner, and he had accepted the role with an almost religious devotion.

I, who had been the orderly woman all my life, the one with perfect planners and punctual meetings, began weaving lies with an ease that frightened me. Dinners with nonexistent clients. Urgent trips to Rosario or Córdoba. Invented conferences I “had” to attend for three days straight. Every excuse was a key that opened the door to entire hours devoted to using Mateo’s body however I pleased.

Because that was what had happened between us: the roles had been reversed. Now I wielded the whip, and he kissed it before asking for more. I chained him to the bed, marked his skin until I left red traces on his buttocks, whispered in his ear that he was nothing more than my toy. He loved to beg. He cried when I denied him orgasm for hours, keeping him on the edge without letting him fall, only to grant it to him in the end with a cruelty that tasted like triumph.

And I surrendered myself with the same intensity. I came home with trembling legs, marks on my neck that I had to conceal with makeup, my lips swollen from so much biting. And yet, when Diego embraced me at night with his customary tenderness, my body responded as though a foreign shadow had taken possession of my nerves.

Guilt appeared only now and then, like an unwelcome visitor who arrived without warning. When Diego made me breakfast with his calm smile. When he hugged me from behind while I washed the dishes. In those moments I felt a stab in my chest; I knew I was betraying him in the filthiest way. But my desire for Mateo was a drug stronger than any morality. A drug I injected into myself again and again.

I heard almost nothing about Renata during those months. Diego told me, without attaching much importance to it, that she had resigned from Vega and vanished from the professional world. I wasn’t surprised: her family allowed her such luxuries. Andrés, on the other hand, had moved to Madrid and opened two exclusive clothing boutiques. He messaged me from time to time. More than once he tried to warn me: “Don’t trust Mateo so much; that man owes Renata too much.” I answered him with elegant evasions. I know exactly what I’m doing, I thought, while feeling the weight of the chains I myself had put on my lover.

But then came a morning that shattered the entire illusion.

***

Three days had passed without any news from Mateo. Three whole days without a message, without a call, without one of my orders being obeyed. I wrote to him several times. First in a playful tone, then with the impatience of a woman accustomed to being obeyed, and finally with fear poorly concealed beneath a mask of indifference. Nothing. Only silence.

On the fourth day, while I was making coffee in the kitchen and Diego had already left for work, I turned on the television without paying much attention. The presenter’s voice cut through me like a knife:

—“…was found dead in his apartment in the northern district. According to the initial investigation, Mateo Aldana was stabbed multiple times. The main suspect is his former partner, Renata Cisneros, who apparently could not accept the end of the relationship…”

The cup slipped from my hands and shattered against the tiles. Hot coffee splashed my legs, but I felt nothing. A recent photograph of Mateo appeared on the screen, smiling with that arrogance I had learned to subdue and love at the same time.

Dead. Stabbed. Bleeding out in his own apartment.

The report unfolded with macabre details: the weapon that had been found, Renata’s clothes stained with his blood, witnesses who spoke of violent arguments in the preceding days. A perfect crime of passion. And all of it, according to the story, because he had left her for another woman. For me.

I collapsed among the shards of porcelain. I cried with a sound I had never heard come from my own throat, a hopeless, animal wail. My chest hurt, my hands hurt, my entire skin hurt—the skin he had learned to read by heart.

Because despite everything, despite the original betrayal, despite the manipulations and the drugs with which he had poisoned me at first while obeying Renata, I loved him. I loved him with a sick, absolute devotion. He was the only man who made me feel like a goddess and a slave at the same time. And now that altar was empty.

***

The following days dissolved into a fog. I barely slept. When exhaustion overcame me, I dreamed of Mateo chained to the bed, his voice begging for more. I woke drenched, not knowing whether it was sweat or tears. I lost several kilos. I canceled meetings, ignored my family, stopped answering the phone. I spent hours staring at the bedroom ceiling.

Diego tried everything. He took me to the doctor, suggested therapy, offered me a vacation. I rejected every proposal with monosyllables. One night he tried to make love to me. He was tender, patient, as always. My body responded out of inertia while my mind remained trapped in the memory of Mateo’s brutal thrusts. I had a hollow, mechanical orgasm, and when Diego fell asleep holding me, I cried silently into the pillow.

But one night, something changed.

I had my back to him, staring at the wall without seeing it. Diego came up behind me. His hand rose from my waist to one of my breasts and began caressing it with a new, different slowness. He moved down my belly and slipped between my legs with a determination I had never known in him. His fingers slowly opened me. At first I felt almost nothing. But he persisted, with firm patience, and my traitorous body finally responded.

—Turn around, he said in a low voice that wasn’t his own.

He turned me over, parted my thighs, and lowered his mouth. His tongue was slow, then insistent. I moaned despite myself. Then, without warning, I felt his finger pressing against my anus. I tensed. Diego had never been adventurous with anal sex. In all the years we’d been together, we had done it four times, and always because I had asked. Now he was the one seeking it.

His finger entered slowly, lubricated with my own wetness. A second finger. A third. When I was completely dilated, panting against the sheets, he positioned himself behind me, reached for a lubricant from the nightstand—I hadn’t even known it was there—and pushed firmly.

The initial burning gave way to a wave of pleasure that made me arch my back. Then, without warning, he smacked my ass brutally. The sharp sound echoed through the room.

—That’s it. Open your ass wide for me, he growled in a voice I didn’t recognize.

Another slap, harder.

—You’re my whore. Say it.

His words set me alight like gasoline. I began screaming with pleasure. When I came, my whole body convulsed, and he emptied himself inside me with an animal growl I had never heard from his mouth before.

When it was over, we remained silent. I looked at him from the pillow. His face, always serene, now had a hardness carved in stone, and in his eyes burned a dark fire that seemed to have lain dormant for years. He leaned down and kissed me on the lips with reverent slowness, as if sealing a pact neither of us had spoken aloud.

***

That was not an isolated incident. It became our new normal.

Diego took me against the kitchen counter while I tried to make coffee. He pushed me against the cold shower tiles. He bent me over the desk when I tried to check my emails. His desire had become insatiable, and mine, against all logic, had too.

The following Friday, as we finished dinner, he said in a low voice:

—Put on something pretty. We’re going out tonight.

I looked at him in surprise. Diego had never been one for going out at night. But there was a determination in his eyes that allowed no questions. I put on a short, tight dress, with red lingerie underneath. When I came downstairs, he looked at me with a slow smile I had never seen on him before.

He took me to a place in the old part of the city. From the outside it looked like a discreet lounge. Inside, the atmosphere was different: dim lights, sensual music, expensive perfume mingled with something more primitive. A tall woman dressed in black greeted us and whispered something to Diego. He nodded and turned toward me.

—My love… whatever happens, if you want to leave, we’ll leave. I love you more than anything.

That sentence left me disoriented. Only then, as I swept my gaze around the room, did I understand where we were: velvet sofas, couples kissing openly, half-naked silhouettes. It was a swingers’ club.

We sat on a secluded sofa. On the central dance floor, a couple began an explicit show. The music grew slower. Diego slid the strap of my dress down and left my breasts bare. His fingers moved my thong aside and began masturbating me with expert precision. I was soaked.

A blonde girl approached our sofa. Without asking permission, she sat beside me and kissed me on the mouth. Her boyfriend, an athletic dark-haired man, joined us a second later. Four bodies, four mouths. My mind was spinning, but my body was burning.

At some point the man stood in front of me. Diego looked me in the eyes and said, his voice hoarse:

—If you want… suck him off.

The thrill won out. I did it while looking at him. Then I alternated between the two of them, feeling Diego grow more aroused with every lick from someone else. Someone pulled my thong aside. The dark-haired man positioned himself between my legs with a condom and penetrated me in a single thrust. The blonde sat on Diego and began riding him.

Then I felt something cold against my anus. Lubricant. Fingers. And then a second cock slowly opening me. My first double penetration. And I was having it right in front of my partner.

I came several times in a row, lost in a tide of hands and voices. Diego watched me from the other sofa, buried inside the girl, his eyes shining with a lust that seemed to have no bottom.

***

We continued like that for another two weeks. We went back to the club several times. We made love in parking lots, bathrooms, dark terraces. The adrenaline had me addicted. At times I almost managed to forget Mateo. Almost.

One afternoon I arrived later than usual and found Diego in the living room with two suitcases at his feet. His usually serene face was hardened. There was no tenderness in his eyes.

—We need to talk, Camila, he said in a low voice, as though every word cost him blood.

I froze in the doorway.

—I noticed weeks ago that something was wrong. Your behavior was strange. You went out a lot and hardly sought me out. I decided to hire a detective.

I felt the floor tilt beneath me.

—The report arrived the day before Mateo’s death. The photos. The videos. I was going to confront you that very night. But the next day the news came on, and afterward I saw how broken you were, and my love wouldn’t let me do it. I wanted to comfort you, even though every caress tasted like a lie.

He paused for a long moment.

—I went to the prison to talk to Renata. And that’s where I found out everything. How she had been the one to devise the original plan. How you decided to continue even afterward. The man from Cartagena, what happened with Mateo all those months. She told me with a coldness that froze my blood.

He swallowed with difficulty.

—Instead of hating you, I became afraid of losing you. I thought that if I gave you what I believed you needed—the club, the risks, the other bodies—I could keep you. That’s why I devised all this. But watching you truly enjoy yourself with others, watching you moan for them… in the end I couldn’t stand it. Jealousy was eating me alive. I stopped respecting myself.

He looked straight into my eyes.

—I accepted a transfer to the new office Vega is opening in Miami. I’m leaving tonight.

I threw myself at him, tears spilling uncontrollably.

—Diego, forgive me. Please. I was stupid. I can’t live without you. Give me another chance.

He stroked my cheek with a broken tenderness.

—Let’s give it time, Camila. Maybe someday. But right now I can’t stay.

A soft horn sounded outside. His car had arrived. He kissed me on the forehead, a long, definitive kiss. He picked up the suitcases and left. Before crossing the door, he turned back one last time.

—Sell the car if you want. We’ll sort out the rest as best we can afterward. I never wanted to hurt you.

And he was gone.

***

The following months stretched out like a silent desert. I tried to return to the club, to seek out other bodies, to recover at least that outlet. But it no longer worked. Where there had once been fire, there was only ash. Diego’s departure had dried me out inside in a way even Mateo’s death had not.

I took refuge in work. I sold houses. I closed contracts. I cared for my parents and called my brother more often. I built small anchors, fragile but real. I heard bits and pieces about Diego: he had been promoted to partner, married a woman named Isabel, and they had two children. Sometimes, alone in my apartment, I wondered whether, holding his wife at night, he remembered how he had called me a whore while he emptied himself inside me.

Renata served fifteen years in prison. Andrés kept having children; he now had four. I continued waiting, through the long nights, to find a true love someday. One that did not arise from grief or emptiness. One I would know how to care for without destroying it. A peaceful love that would not need clubs or double penetration to feel alive.

Sometimes, on Sunday afternoons, I sat on the balcony with a glass of wine and wondered whether the woman I had been—the one who let herself be fucked by strangers while her partner watched—was still alive somewhere inside me, or whether she was now nothing more than cold ash.

I didn’t know. I only knew I was still here, breathing, waiting with an almost religious patience for a second chance. Not for another man to save me, but to finally learn not to destroy what I love.