At Eight Months Pregnant, I Gave Myself to the Painter

That Saturday afternoon my husband did what he always did: grabbed the car and went off drinking with his friends, with the excuse that “a man needs to unwind.” I already knew how the story ended. He’d come back after midnight, slurring his words, smelling of warm beer, and collapse into bed without even looking at me.

Since I got pregnant, Mateo had stopped touching me. I don’t know what was going through his head. I think my changing body put him off somehow, my huge belly, my swollen breasts. As if instead of his wife, he now had a stranger in the house.

The problem was that I was feeling exactly the opposite. Eight months pregnant, I was hotter than ever. The hormones had me in a constant state of anxiety, with a fire between my legs that nothing could put out. I masturbated in secret, and even that didn’t satisfy me. I needed someone. I needed to feel a man on top of me, inside me, anything.

Those days we were fixing up the baby’s room, and Mateo had hired a painter to add some color to the walls. A quiet guy, with big hands, who had already spent a couple of days up on the ladder while my husband supervised him half-heartedly.

That afternoon, before leaving, I heard him say goodbye from the doorway.

“See you later, mate. I’m counting on you to do a good job on my wife, you can see how demanding she is.”

“Don’t worry, boss. You’ll remember me,” the painter replied, and I swear that at that moment I didn’t catch the double meaning.

***

The afternoon heat was unbearable. The man painted and painted, with his T-shirt stuck to his body from sweat, and I, trying to be the good hostess, offered him an ice-cold beer and something to snack on. By the second can I could see he was looser, more talkative, and for some reason I started finding him attractive in a way I hadn’t expected.

He wasn’t a handsome man. He was more rough-hewn, with a weather-beaten face and a thick mustache. But he had that presence of a self-assured alpha, the kind you can tell has been through plenty of beds. And in my condition, that was enough to make my mouth water.

“Tell me something, Esteban,” I blurted out, calling him by his name for the first time. “Are you married?”

“No, ma’am. What for? There are plenty of women who are in the mood.”

“Women who are willing, you mean,” I corrected him, pretending to be modest.

“Call it whatever you want. The point is there’s always some woman who knows what she needs.”

I kept looking at him a second too long. He noticed. He set the brush down on the can and wiped his hands on his pants without taking his eyes off mine.

“And have you ever,” I went on, with no brakes now, “been with a pregnant woman?”

“Never had that luck,” he answered, lowering his voice.

“And if I told you today is your lucky day?”

I don’t know where I got the nerve, but I said it without hesitation.

“I’d ask you to explain it very clearly. I don’t want to make a mistake and disrespect you,” he said, though his whole body was already leaning toward me.

“I’ll spell it out for you: I’m dying for it, and my husband won’t be back for hours. Is that explanation enough?”

***

No more was needed. Esteban crossed the room in two steps, wrapped his arms around me, and kissed my neck while squeezing my breasts with that roughness delicate men never have. And it was precisely that roughness that set me on fire. I had missed him without even knowing it.

When his fingers found the wetness on my blouse, he realized I was leaking milk. Far from backing off, he pressed against me like a hungry animal. I tore off my blouse and bra in one yank, and he stared for a moment at my naked breasts, swollen, before diving in to suck on them with an eagerness that made me moan.

I didn’t stay still. I slid my hand down to his crotch and grabbed him over the fabric. I felt him grow, harden, until I couldn’t help letting out a gasp of surprise. I never imagined a guy like that was hiding something like that. Just thinking about having him inside me made my throat go dry.

I knelt on the floor covered in plastic sheeting and paint drips, and took him into my mouth like I’d been starving for years. I licked him all over, slowly, running my tongue along him, kissing him, lost in a lust even I didn’t recognize. Esteban held my hair with one hand and looked down at me, panting, still hardly believing what was happening.

“You’re a lot hotter than you look,” he murmured.

“You have no idea,” I answered before swallowing him down again.

A while later he had me naked, lying on my back on the table where he kept the rollers, my legs open and his mouth between my thighs. I’d gone months without a tongue down there, and the pleasure was so intense I had to bite my forearm to keep from screaming and alerting the neighbors.

When he finally penetrated me, he did it carefully because of my belly, but without losing any force. He was an inexhaustible lover, the kind who knows how to keep up the rhythm for hours. I gave myself over completely, ready to give him whatever he wanted. And give it to him I did, even what I’d never given Mateo, screaming between the pain and the pleasure of having him where he shouldn’t have been.

At that moment I completely forgot I was a faithful, proper wife.

That afternoon the baby’s room stayed half-painted. There were more urgent things to take care of, and the paint could wait.

***

Esteban left around midnight, long before my husband showed up. At the door he promised he’d come back the next day to “finish the job,” and we both knew he wasn’t talking about the walls.

That night I fell asleep with a stupid smile on my face. He had left me satisfied like no man had in years. But he had also awakened something inside me that I no longer knew how to turn off. I fell asleep wanting more. More of him, more of his body, more of that feeling of doing something forbidden just feet away from my sleeping husband.

The next day the doorbell woke me up. I knew right away who it was. I jumped out of bed, put on a short, sheer robe with nothing underneath, and went downstairs barefoot to open the door. I felt shameless, exposed, and I loved it.

I opened the door expecting to find him alone. And for a second my heart stopped.

Esteban hadn’t come alone. Behind him were three more men, all staring at me with their eyes fixed on my body barely covered by the thin fabric. I felt myself go red all the way to my ears.

“Hello, beautiful,” he said with a crooked smile. “I brought backup to finish faster.”

I should have been outraged. I should have slammed the door shut. But the truth is something in me flared even more at knowing I was desired by all of them at once. I liked that he spoke to me like that in front of the others, as if I already belonged to him, as if everyone knew exactly why they had come.

***

Esteban took my hand and, to my astonishment, led me straight to my own bedroom. There, sprawled on the bed, snored my husband, lost in the drunkenness of the previous night. The mere idea of doing it beside him, without him finding out, turned me on in a way I couldn’t even explain.

The four of them had me for hours. I went from one set of hands to another without rest, changing positions, trying them all. While two held me down, another filled my mouth, and the fourth waited his turn while caressing me. The most incredible part was feeling two of them take me at once, a sense of fullness I had never experienced, while off to the side my husband kept sleeping off his hangover, oblivious to everything.

I felt like the most shameless woman in the world, letting those strangers do anything to me, in my own bed, next to the man I was supposed to respect. And the more I thought about how forbidden the scene was, the more aroused I got.

They used me until they were satisfied, and left me lying on the mattress, undone, trembling, unable to move. It took me a good while to catch my breath, still not fully believing what had just happened.

For the days it took to finish painting the baby’s room, needless to say, those scenes repeated again and again. My husband never suspected a thing. To him, the painter was simply doing a slow, meticulous job.

Today, with my son already born and routine back in the house, I look at the sky-blue walls of that room and nobody imagines what happened between them. It’s my secret. The secret of the proper wife who, for one week of pregnancy, stopped being proper entirely.