I Defended My Client and Ended Up in His Cell

I’ve been practicing as a criminal defense attorney for twelve years, and until a year ago I had held to one iron rule: never mix work with anything personal. I’m writing this because I still haven’t been able to say it out loud, and I suspect I won’t be able to for a long time.

The case was passed to me by Hernán, a prosecutor I went to law school with. On some ordinary dawn, four cops had kicked down the door of a house on the outskirts and found four kilos of cocaine in the garage. The owner was named Nicolás, was thirty-three years old, and had no priors. He had agreed to store “a few packages” for an old acquaintance in exchange for money. The saddest, most common story in the book.

—They’re going to rip him apart if you don’t take him, Vale —Hernán told me on the phone—. And besides, it’ll put you on the map; the kid’s an obvious idiot.

I said yes without thinking. I left the office that same afternoon headed for Precinct Forty-Seven.

***

He came into the interrogation room escorted by two officers. He had a split lip, a fresh mark on his cheekbone, and a three-day beard. Skinny, tall, with the eyes of someone who hadn’t slept in two nights. He looked at me as if he couldn’t believe I was there for him.

—Are you my lawyer? —he asked.

—The prosecutor sent me. Leave us alone for five minutes —I told the police chief.

When we were alone, I sat down across from Nicolás and asked him for the whole truth. He gave it to me without embellishment: the friend, the debt, the job he had lost. While he spoke, his gaze dropped to my legs more than once, lingered on the hem of my skirt, climbed over my stockings, and finally fixed on the neckline of my blouse. Instead of feeling uncomfortable, I mentally noted that I liked that detail, and without realizing it I uncrossed and crossed my legs again to give him a second look.

You’re already in trouble, Valeria.

I promised I would speak to his girlfriend, Julieta, and that I would negotiate with the judge. On my way out, the police chief cornered me in the hallway with a smile that made my stomach turn. I said a few formalities and left without shaking his hand.

***

Three weeks passed before the second meeting. I went to the prison in a red summer dress and low heels. I put on more makeup than I usually do. Under the dress I wasn’t wearing a bra, and I chose a black lace thong I don’t use for work. My secretary, Camila, noticed without saying anything; she just raised an eyebrow when she saw me leave the office.

The prison director, Ricardo, was exactly the kind of man one expects to find in a position like that: in his fifties, gray hair, gym-built physique, and a way of looking that reeked of harassment. He kept me waiting twenty minutes. When he finally received me, he informed me that Nicolás had been in a fight and could not receive visitors.

—They made fun of him saying his girlfriend had been with me. Prison stuff —he said without taking his eyes off my cleavage.

—And is that true? —I asked as naturally as I could.

—I’m as professional as you are, counselor.

I had to threaten him with the judge to get him to let me in. He finally agreed, on the condition that it be in my client’s own cell, with no guards present. He offered me a panic button. I took it.

An officer escorted me to the wing while the inmates whistled, banged on the bars, and said filthy things. Two of them opened their uniforms and showed me their groins, grabbed their cocks and shook them slowly, tongues out. Another farther back yelled for me to suck his balls until he came on my face. I didn’t lower my eyes once, but I could feel my thighs tightening as I walked.

***

The cell smelled of damp, cheap tobacco, and caged male body. When the officers took Nicolás’s cellmates away and closed the gate behind me, for a moment I lost sight of why I was there.

—Hi, Nicolás.

—Counselor —he replied. He hugged me as if he hadn’t touched anyone in months, and I let him.

—They caught your friend. You’re going to serve the rest under house arrest. It’s the best I could get.

His eyes filled. He took my hands, kissed them slowly, and then kissed me, with an urgency that didn’t ask permission. He slid his tongue in deep, bit my lower lip, held my face in both hands as if afraid I might evaporate. I could have pulled away. I didn’t. I returned the kiss, dug my nails into the back of his neck, and felt perfectly how his cock was pressing against my hip, hard and hot through the thin prison pants.

—Wait —I said against his mouth—. Wait a little.

—I can’t —he replied. And he turned me against the bars.

I felt the cold metal against my cheek and his hands lifting my dress. He stole my breath little by little, kissing my nape, my ear, my shoulder. He hiked the fabric up to my waist, left my ass bare with the black thong covering barely anything, and pressed himself against me from behind. His cock bulged between my cheeks, rubbing slowly against the seam, as if warning what was coming. He slid one hand around to the front until he found me over my underwear, pressed with an open palm, and made me open my legs a little wider. I was already wet before he touched me, so much that I could feel the lace stuck to me, soaked, slippery.

—Look at you, counselor —he whispered—. You’re dripping through the fabric.

I didn’t answer. I took my own hand to where his was, shifted the thong aside, and put his fingers on bare flesh, over my clit. I showed him the rhythm I liked: two soft circles and firm pressure, two circles and pressure. He learned fast. Within seconds he was doing it better than I could myself, his mouth pressed to my ear, breathing hot against my neck.

***

He pulled my dress off my shoulders and freed my breasts—there was no bra that afternoon, a decision I now recognized as premeditated—and kneaded them hard against the bars. My nipples hardened under his rough palms and he pinched them, first softly, then harder, until he drew a gasp from me that I had to swallow. The fingers of his other hand went inside me without warning, two at once, to the knuckles, and I bit my lip not to scream. He started pumping them in and out, his thumb pressing my clit, his palm thudding against my mound with every thrust, while his other arm held me under the breasts so I wouldn’t peel away from the bars. In the back of the wing a guard walked by whistling. He didn’t look. Or he looked and kept going, I don’t know.

—Shut up —he told me softly—. Shut up, counselor, or everyone’s going to hear you.

He turned me to face him and took me to the bunk. He sat me on the edge of the iron cot, knelt between my legs on the cold cement floor, and dragged down my thong with his teeth, pulling it slowly over my thighs, my knees, my ankles until it was tangled in my heel. He spread my legs with both hands, buried his face between my thighs, and opened me with his tongue. He began by licking everything in one long sweep, from my ass to my clit, and stayed there. No one had ever gone down on me like that, with the concentrated hunger of someone who thinks it’s the last time he’ll ever do it. He sucked, slurped, made wet sounds that bounced off the cell walls. He slid two fingers into me and worked my clit in circles with his mouth, then switched and penetrated me with his tongue while his thumb pressed my clit. I tangled my fingers in his greasy hair and held him where it served me, flattening his face against my pussy until he could barely breathe.

—Don’t stop.

—I wasn’t going to stop.

He sucked my clit with his lips, tugging it gently, while he drove three fingers into me and curled them upward. That was what made me come, fast, silently, clamping my own hand over my mouth so I wouldn’t wake the whole wing. I came apart in a rush, my legs closing around his head, trembling from the inside, feeling the flow slipping out between his fingers and him licking it without disgust. When I came down from the first wave, I was already getting to my feet.

—Now you —I said.

I squatted in front of him and yanked down the gray uniform pants in one pull. He’d been hard for a while, thick, with a pronounced vein underneath and the head swollen and glossy with pre-cum. I took him in one hand—he didn’t fit entirely in my fist—and ran him slowly over my lips as if I were tasting him. I licked the tip first, made one turn with my tongue around the head, gathered the thick drop beading there. I went down the whole length with my tongue flat, sucked his balls one by one, took them into my mouth slowly and felt them tense against my palate. Then I came back up and took him all the way in, to the root, until the tip touched my throat and my eyes watered. Nicolás leaned his back against the wall and let his head fall back.

—Jesus, counselor. Holy fucking shit.

—Valeria —I corrected him, without taking him fully out of my mouth—. Say Valeria.

—Valeria… Valeria, suck me like that, don’t stop…

***

I grabbed the base in my fist and started to move, up and down, sealing my lips around him, helping with my hand in rhythm. I made noise on him, drooled all over him, took him out of my mouth only to spit a thick strand and take him back in again. With my other hand I stroked his balls, squeezed them gently, tugged them downward. I sucked him until I could feel him tightening, until he started pushing my head, wanting to come in my mouth, and then I stopped. I pulled his cock out with a wet pop and smiled up at him from below.

—Not yet —I told him.

I stood up, put one knee on the bunk, and opened myself with two fingers for him, showing him the wet, swollen, ready cunt. He said nothing. He moved behind me, grabbed his cock, dragged it twice through my slit, rubbed it against my clit until I clenched my teeth, and drove it in all at once, to the hilt, without warning.

—Slowly —I panted—. You’re rough.

—Sorry.

But I didn’t want slowly, and we both knew it. He gripped my hips, settled in behind me, and started fucking me at a pace that made the iron bed creak against the wall. He nearly pulled all the way out and rammed back in again, over and over, and with each thrust the cot banged the wall and my ass slapped against his thighs with a fleshy sound that filled the cell. I covered my mouth with my forearm. The red dress bunched at my waist, my heels still on, my hair stuck to my forehead with sweat, my breasts hanging and swaying with each stroke. If anyone had walked in at that moment, I would have lost my license and my husband in the same afternoon.

He spat on the seam of my ass and ran his thumb over the hole, pressing just a little, not going in. He spread my cheeks with both hands to watch himself go in and out, soaked, and let out a low growl.

—Look at how I’m fucking you, counselor —he told me—. Look at how this pussy is sucking my cock.

—Harder —I asked without thinking—. Fuck me harder.

He sped up. He bent me over the thin mattress, crushed my back with one hand between the shoulder blades, and drove into me as if he wanted to break me. I bit the rough cloth so I wouldn’t scream, feeling him shove all the way in, feeling his balls slap against my clit with every hit. A second orgasm hit me like that, face down, my cunt clamping around his cock, and he felt it because he let out a curse and had to stop for a second so he wouldn’t come.

—Turn me over —I asked, when I could speak.

He arranged me on my back on the thin mattress. He lifted one leg and set it over his shoulder, braced himself over me, and entered again slowly, all the way in one thrust, looking me in the eyes. From there he looked at me with a mix of gratitude and desperation I had never seen in a man. He kissed my breasts, sucked my nipples one by one, bit one nipple until I arched my back, licked my neck, put his fingers in my mouth so I would suck them while he fucked me. In my ear he said things I’m not going to repeat here: things about my husband, about how slutty I was, about how my cunt clenched around his cock every time he called me that. I answered with gasps, with muffled yeses, with my hips rising to meet him every time he pulled out.

—Pull out —I told him, when I felt him close—. Please.

He came out when he felt he couldn’t hold on anymore, yanked himself free, knelt over me astride my chest, and started stroking himself with his fist, fast, the tip resting between my breasts. I squeezed them with my hands, pressed them together around his cock so he could finish there, in the warm hollow between the two. He came over my breasts with a groan he had to bite back so it wouldn’t be heard in the corridor, thick hot ropes falling on my cleavage, on my neck, one all the way to my chin. He stayed there panting, his cock still hard in his hand, looking at me covered in his cum. I ran two fingers over my chest, filled them with semen, and brought them to my mouth without taking my eyes off him. Another dry groan escaped him.

I stayed like that for a second, looking at him, my heart hammering against my ribs.

***

I cleaned myself up as best I could with tissues I had in my purse. I straightened my dress, ran my fingers through my hair, put my stockings back on, and looked for the black thong lying next to the heel. Nicolás, still sitting on the edge of the bunk with his pants at his knees, looked at me as if he didn’t know how to thank me.

—Don’t ever tell this story —I told him, without a threat, just as a fact.

—Never —he answered.

I pressed the panic button to let them know the meeting was over. When the officer opened the gate, I was once again Doctor Montenegro, folder under my arm and a face that said little. I crossed the wing without looking at a single inmate. None of them dared whistle at me this time.

Forty-eight hours later I signed the agreement. Nicolás served the months he had left at home, with Julieta, who will never know anything about this. I went back to my office, to my meetings, to my husband who still brings me coffee in the mornings without suspecting a thing.

Hernán sent me another case last week. A woman who killed her boyfriend, he says, in self-defense. I told him I’d take it.

I still don’t know whether it’s a good idea.