I confess what happens to me on every work trip

My name is Valeria, I’m twenty-five years old, and I work as a consultant for an international logistics company. If that doesn’t tell you much, I’ll put it another way: I live in airports. Monday in Monterrey, Wednesday in Bogotá, Friday back home just in time to unpack my suitcase and pack it again.

I’m not complaining. I like my life exactly like this.

I’m dark-skinned, with shoulder-length brown hair, and a body I don’t hide and don’t intend to hide. I wear clothes that fit me well because I’ve earned them: dresses that define my waist, heels when the airport allows it, lingerie I order from a shop in Mexico City because nowhere else do I find what I’m looking for. I’m not one of those women who try to blend in. I’m one of those who know exactly the effect they have and don’t apologize for it.

I have a life at home, orderly, with routines and commitments. And I have another life that begins every time I get on a plane.

This is about the second one.

***

The conference in Guadalajara that year lasted three days. I arrived the first day in the afternoon, straight from the airport, with six hours of flight fatigue weighing on me and the certainty that I needed a long shower and something strong to drink. The hotel was one of those with a marble lobby, silent elevators, and beds that tempt you to stay longer than you should. The kind of place that puts me in a good mood immediately.

I checked in, went up to my room, showered for twenty minutes, and put on the only black dress I always carry in my suitcase for these occasions. Tight, sleeveless, with a neckline that doesn’t ask permission. It’s my uniform for conference nights.

The bar was almost full when I went downstairs. People from my industry, interchangeable suits, predictable conversations. I sat at the counter, ordered a whiskey on the rocks, and opened my phone with no real intention of looking at anything.

—Did you escape the seven o’clock roundtable too? —a voice on my left asked.

I looked up. The man speaking to me was a little over thirty, no tie, the kind of face that isn’t perfect but works very well in person. What caught my attention wasn’t his looks but his gaze: direct, straight to the point, without that disguised insecurity some men have when they approach a woman alone in a bar. This one knew exactly what he was doing.

—I escaped everything —I said.

—Good judgment —he replied, and ordered the same as me.

His name was Rodrigo. I found that out five minutes later, when the conversation stopped being just polite small talk. We talked about work during the first ten minutes, as you do in those settings: what company, what sector, what city each of us had come from. After the first drink, the subject drifted to other things. Rodrigo had strong opinions about almost everything and the habit of holding eye contact while listening, without the impatience of someone already thinking about what he’s going to say next.

After the second drink, I already knew how the night was going to end.

—What time are your commitments tomorrow? —he asked at some point.

—At nine —I answered.

It was past eleven.

—Then we have time —he said, with the same ease with which he’d ordered the drink before.

I liked that he didn’t say it as a question.

***

We went up in the elevator without touching. I had a room on the tenth floor; he was on the eighth. When the doors opened on eight, he looked at me with one eyebrow raised. I didn’t move. The doors closed again by themselves.

He shoved me against the wall as soon as we got to my room, before I’d even finished turning on the light. The first kiss was rough and exactly how I wanted it: no hesitation, his hands already in the right place from the first second. One at my hip, the other at the back of my neck, holding my head while he kissed me with that mix of calm and urgency you either have or you don’t.

When I tried to take off his shirt, he took my hands and lowered them slowly.

—Stay still —he said.

I stayed still.

I’m very aware of what I like. I’m a woman who makes decisions all day long, who handles budgets and teams and difficult meetings. But there’s something about letting go of that control with the right person that has no equivalent in any other experience. It isn’t passivity: it’s a conscious choice. And Rodrigo, at that moment, was clearly the right person.

He unbuttoned my dress calmly, unhurried, as if he knew I had no intention of going anywhere. When the dress fell to the floor, he stepped back half a pace and looked at me for a few seconds that felt much longer than they were.

—Turn around —he said.

I turned around. I heard him let out his breath slowly.

—I wasn’t imagining this —he murmured, more to himself than to me.

The hand he placed on my back was gentle at first: a stroke from my nape down to my waist. Then it moved lower, and the pressure increased, and I braced my forearms against the wall because I needed something to hold on to.

Rodrigo opened my bra and left my breasts bare with a slowness that made me clench my thighs. He didn’t say anything for a long moment, only touched one nipple with the tip of his finger, circled it, pinched it lightly, and drew out a gasp I couldn’t hide. Then he lowered his mouth, first on one, then the other, sucking hungrily, licking the hardened tip until he made my back arch. His hands held me by the waist while I moved against him, feeling the heat start to build between my legs.

—You like it like this, don’t you? —he murmured against my skin.

—Yes —I said, with a rougher voice than I expected.

—Say it properly.

—Yes, I like it like this. Harder.

He smiled faintly and took me to the bed, seating me on the edge before kneeling between my legs. He spread my thighs with both hands, not roughly but with no room for doubt, and kissed me over my underwear with an open mouth, wet, pressing exactly where I was already soaked. The heat rushed to my face all at once. I sank my fingers into his hair when he started licking me over the fabric, slowly at first, testing, and then with more insistence, until the wetness glued the fabric to my skin and I could no longer stay still.

—I want to see you —he said, and pulled my underwear down in one motion.

The cold air brushed my pussy and made me shiver. He stayed looking for a moment, with that obscene concentration of men who truly know how to appreciate what’s in front of them, and then opened me wider with his fingers, finding my clit with his mouth without beating around the bush. He held my hips so I wouldn’t move and licked me from top to bottom, slow at first, then deeper, pressing his tongue exactly where my body was about to come apart. I was breathing in short gasps, my hands clenched in the sheets, feeling everything pounding between my legs.

—Fuck —I murmured when I could no longer bear the tension without saying something.

—That’s it —he said. —Like that. Let yourself get soaked all over.

He took my ass in his hands and opened me better, sliding two fingers into me while he kept licking me, first slowly and then with a firmer rhythm that made me lose my balance. The sound was indecent, wet, shameless. I felt it in my stomach, all the way to the tips of my toes, and when he added a third finger and curled his hand inward, I hit the mattress and came with a long moan, clenching around his fingers while he kept going, without easing up, until the trembling left me empty and sensitive.

—Not yet —he said when I tried to sit up.

He took my wrists and laid them on the pillow. Then he unbuttoned his shirt and took off his pants with maddening patience, showing me his cock already hard, thick, heavy, pointing at me as if it had urgency too. I took it in one hand and stroked him slowly, feeling the firm skin, the pronounced vein, the wet head against my palm. He closed his eyes for a second and let out a low, rough groan that made me smile.

—You think you’re very brave —he said.

—And you talk too much.

He lifted an eyebrow, laughed under his breath, and pushed me back onto the bed. He tucked a pillow under my hips and opened me again with his hands before brushing the tip of his cock against my entrance, slowly, barely, as if he wanted to torture me. I lifted my pelvis to find him and he held me by the waist.

—No. Wait.

I waited just long enough. Then he sank into me in one thrust, entering all at once, filling me so deeply I had to dig my nails into his shoulders. I let out a dry moan, one of those that comes from deep down, and he stayed still for a second, breathing hard, letting me feel his full thickness before he started moving. When he did, it was slow at first, measured, and then firmer and deeper each time, making the mattress creak beneath us.

—Like that —I said, my voice already wrecked. —That’s it.

Rodrigo grabbed my hips and opened me better, sliding his cock in and out with precision, hitting exactly where I needed it. I wrapped my legs around his waist and held on as hard as I could, feeling him fill me and empty me at the same time, every thrust shaking my whole body. Sweat started running down my back. He kissed me again, this time with more tongue, more saliva, and bit my lip when he noticed I was getting close to the edge again.

—Tell me how you want it —he ordered.

—Faster.

He obeyed instantly. The change in rhythm was brutal: the bed hitting the wall, my breasts bouncing with every thrust, his cock going all the way in again and again while I clung to him and begged him to keep going, not to let up, to give me more. He fucked me with a contained hunger that no longer had anything contained about it, and every time he pulled out he left an unbearable emptiness he immediately filled again.

He turned me over without pulling out, settling me face down with one hand between my shoulder blades and the other holding my hip. The sensation of having him behind me made me shiver again. He lifted my pelvis slightly and entered once more with brutal depth, this time from behind, setting the pace with sharp strokes that made me clench my teeth and moan into the pillow. His fingers dug into the skin of my hips while he fucked me with a rhythm that grew dirtier, more desperate, and I heard his breathing become rougher, more broken, behind me.

—That’s how I want you —he said, his voice completely loaded with desire. —Wrecked.

The phrase hit me straight between the legs. I felt the orgasm rise again, bigger, more violent, and I slid two fingers into my cunt while he kept pounding into me from behind. I touched exactly where I was most sensitive, rubbing fast, without care, and as soon as the exact spot caught fire, I came with such a violent jolt that I almost folded over the bed. I screamed his name without thinking, my whole body convulsing around nothing and everything at once.

Rodrigo didn’t stop. He kept moving, clumsier for a second, wilder the next, until he tensed all at once, burying himself one last time to the hilt as he let out a deep groan. I felt him trembling behind me and, an instant later, the warmth of his cum filling me inside, spilling in slow waves while he stayed pressed against my body, breathing as if he’d just run miles.

We stayed like that for a while, our hands still gripping each other’s skin, getting our breath back little by little. The room became just a hotel room again, but with the smell of sweat and sex still hanging in the air.

***

Rodrigo asked me later if I preferred him to leave or if I wanted him to stay.

—Stay until seven —I said.

He stayed. We slept tangled together, with that unexpected comfort that sometimes appears with strangers when everything went well. The next morning we had breakfast quickly in the hotel restaurant. There was no awkwardness, no need to build any story. He was the same as the night before: direct, no theatrics, no need to give the matter more weight than it had.

We exchanged phone numbers with the same pragmatic honesty with which everything had begun.

—The next time you’re in Guadalajara —he said before leaving for his first session.

—I’ll text you —I said.

And I did, three months later, when work took me back to that city. It was just as good as the first time. Better, if anything, because we already knew what to expect from each other.

***

What I don’t tell almost anyone about my trips is that Rodrigo wasn’t the first time, nor the second, nor the tenth. There’s a version of me that lives in the cities where I land, and very few people know her. It isn’t a secret version in the sense of something I’m ashamed of: it’s simply part of who I am that doesn’t fit easily into everyday conversations.

I travel with a clear professional purpose. I arrive, I work, I do everything expected of me and sometimes more. But I also go out to dinner alone, sit in bars, strike up conversations with strangers who have something that interests me. Sometimes that ends in nothing. Sometimes it ends in a night I remember for weeks.

I like men who make decisions without needing to be asked. Not because I don’t know how to make them, but because in certain contexts I consciously choose to give up that control. It’s an active choice, not a lack. There’s something about giving yourself completely to someone who truly knows what he’s doing that has no equivalent in any other experience. It isn’t weakness. It’s trust, and trust isn’t given away for free.

I know my preferences with the same precision with which I know my job. I know what works for me, I know when someone has that something that makes things happen naturally, and I know when it isn’t worth wasting time. Rodrigo had it. Not everyone does, and that’s why when someone like that appears, I don’t waste the opportunity.

***

There’s a suitcase I always keep packed in the closet. It has clothes for four days, the toiletry bag ready, the black dress folded on top. When they tell me there’s a trip, I grab it, check that everything’s in order, and head to the airport with that particular mix of professionalism and anticipation that only I fully understand.

Every city is a possibility. Every hotel, a story that hasn’t happened yet.

I wouldn’t trade this life for anything.