I Got Off the Bus with a Stranger and Don’t Regret It
Every time I took the bus to visit my father, something happened. Not always, of course. But often enough for me to dress with more care than necessary, choose my dress more carefully than usual, and leave the house with that strange mixture of guilt and anticipation I never quite managed to explain to myself.
That Friday was no different.
Diego, my boyfriend at the time, kissed me on the forehead before I left and suspected nothing. He was good to me, maybe too good, and that sometimes made me feel more guilty than my own actions did. But the trip to where my father lived took almost six hours, and I had this habit with long journeys: they made me restless in a way that wasn’t exactly boredom. I’d get wet for no reason, my nipples would tighten against the fabric of my bra, and my eyes would drift to strangers’ hands.
I put on a black dress with thin straps, fitted, cut just above the knee. High boots to the calf, the long coat. Underneath, a tiny lace thong and a matching bra that pushed my tits up and left them almost spilling out of the neckline. I put on more makeup than was necessary for a bus trip. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I didn’t ask why I was doing it. I already knew the answer.
The terminal was the usual Friday-morning chaos: families with luggage, coffee vendors, people running toward the platforms. I moved through the crowd toward the ticket booth, and that was the first time I saw him.
He was in line in front of me, with his back to me. Tall, in that height that makes you lift your gaze. Broad shoulders, a firm neck. When he turned to put his ticket in his pocket, our eyes met for a second. He had a direct look, no nonsense, the kind of man who knows exactly what he’s looking at and doesn’t bother pretending otherwise. He let his eyes sweep over my neckline without a shred of shame, paused for a moment on my legs, and then came back up.
I smiled at him. Just because.
He smiled back, paid for his ticket, and left. But before he turned away, he looked at me again. It wasn’t a quick glance. It was something more deliberate, more calculated. As if he was already undressing me piece by piece in his head.
—Next —said the woman at the ticket booth.
I paid for mine and went into the waiting room with my pulse high and a tingling between my legs that had no business being there.
***
I found him three rows ahead, sitting with his legs stretched out because they didn’t fit well between the seats. I sat behind him. Every so often he’d turn his head and look at me. I’d cross my legs and look away, unable to stop smiling. Every time he turned, something low inside me tightened, like an invisible hand.
When they called us to board the bus, I went over to the kiosk to buy water. When I came back, he was already at the platform door. He saw me arrive, lowered his eyes slowly, and lifted them again. He said nothing. He didn’t need to.
I got on the bus and looked for my seat by the window. The aisle seat, to my completely predictable surprise, was his.
He settled in with that problem very tall men have in narrow seats. I took off my coat to put it overhead and felt him following me with his eyes, fixed on my neckline when I lifted my arms. I ignored him. Or tried to.
We didn’t talk during the first stretch. The bus pulled out, the road turned long and gray, and I ended up asleep against the window.
I don’t know how long I slept. When I woke up, my dress had ridden up quite a bit. Too much. Nearly my whole thigh was exposed, along with the edge of my black thong. I pulled it down at once, my face hot.
He was laughing silently, looking straight ahead.
—Relax —he said—. I didn’t see anything.
His voice was low and unhurried. The kind that makes you not quite know where to put your hands.
—I hope not —I replied, still settling myself.
—Although... you have very nice legs. I did notice that. And the lace too, to be honest.
My face burned. I couldn’t help laughing. I covered my mouth with my hand.
—What’s your name? —he asked.
—Why do you want to know?
—I like knowing the name of the people I share a long trip with. —He paused—. My name’s Marcos.
I looked at him straight on for the first time since we’d sat down. He had dark eyes, a strong jaw, and that calm smile of someone who doesn’t need to make any effort at anything.
—Valeria —I said.
—Valeria. —He repeated it slowly, as if storing it away—. Beautiful name.
Silence. But different from before. Heavier.
***
We started talking about unimportant things. The weather, the trip, the food they sell at roadside stops. He had that way of listening that invites you to keep talking, and I found myself telling him things I hadn’t planned to tell.
At some point, while I was talking, he slowly extended his left pinky and rested it on my thigh. Just the pinky. As if he’d done it by accident.
I said nothing.
He took it away, then put it back. Once, twice. I kept looking ahead, but my thong was getting wet at a ridiculous speed.
—Hey, no —I said at last. Not very convincingly.
—No what?
—You know.
He smiled.
—You’ve got legs that are distracting. Not my fault.
—Everything is somebody’s fault —I answered. But I still didn’t move my leg.
He kept at it for a while. The pinky first, then his whole palm resting on my knee. I looked out the window as if it were the most fascinating thing in the world. The heat of his hand went through the fabric of my dress and stayed there, fixed, deliberate. Then it moved up a little. His fingers spread, his palm stroking me slowly over the dress, toward the inner part of my thigh. I instinctively squeezed my legs together and trapped his hand between them.
He didn’t pull it away. He smiled without looking at me.
—Do you have a boyfriend? —he asked.
—No —I lied, without thinking too much about it.
—That seems strange to me.
—Well, it is what it is.
He slid his fingers a little higher. I didn’t stop him. I loosened my thighs without realizing it, and his hand went up another stretch, now almost brushing where it shouldn’t. His thumb drew slow circles on the inside of my thigh, each time closer to the lace. The bus had its lights low for the second leg of the journey, and the other passengers were dozing or staring at their phones. We were our own little bubble.
His finger brushed the edge of my thong. Just the edge. Air slipped out of me through my nose.
—You’re wet —he whispered without looking at me, his mouth barely moving.
I didn’t answer. I closed my eyes. He ran his finger over the fabric, pressing slowly against the bulge that was already throbbing down there. I turned my hips a little, just a little, looking for him. It was automatic. I realized what I was doing and bit my lip.
—Where are you going? —he asked, in that same calm voice, as if he were asking me the time.
—To see my father. He lives pretty far away.
—I get off in Arenas. —He paused while his finger kept insisting—. I could convince you to get off with me.
I looked at him.
—You’re very sure of yourself.
—It’s not confidence —he said—. It’s that I already know how this ends.
He slid one finger under the elastic of my thong, never taking his eyes off the road ahead. One finger. He stroked me without hurry, slipped between the lips that were already soaking, and found my clit without missing. I held my breath. I didn’t answer him. But I also didn’t say no.
***
He kept touching me for the rest of the ride to Arenas. Slowly, unhurried, as if he had all the time in the world. One finger first, then two, moving inside me with the same calm with which he spoke. I had my coat over my legs, covering us, and my nails dug into the palm of my other hand so I wouldn’t make a sound. My breathing felt like it was pressed against the bus ceiling. Every time a passenger shifted in their seat my heart stopped, and he kept going, unshaken, curving his fingers upward, searching for that spot inside me that made my eyes close.
—Stay still —he told me in my ear when I tightened my grip on his arm—. Not yet.
When he finally eased his hand away, I was on the verge of coming right there, with my face pressed to the glass. He brought both fingers to his mouth and sucked them slowly, never taking his eyes off the road ahead. Everything inside me clenched.
—Later —he said softly—. Easy.
At one point he brought his mouth to my ear and whispered something that made my whole body tense. That he was going to fuck me until I forgot the bus, the town, my father. That he was going to eat me out before he put it in. That he’d already seen how I breathed and he knew exactly what I liked. I turned my face and our lips almost brushed. He waited. So did I.
We kissed in the bus seat, with the other passengers asleep around us. It was a brief, exploratory kiss. The kind of kiss that’s really a question. I felt his tongue for a second, and it left me wanting more than before.
When the bus stopped in Arenas, it was completely dark. The town glowed with that orange light small places have. My head felt a little hazy, not from sleep but from everything else. My thong was a mess between my legs, my nipples hard against the fabric of my dress.
Marcos stood up and looked at me.
—You coming?
I thought about Diego. I thought about my father waiting. I thought about all the sensible reasons to stay on the bus.
Then I grabbed my bag and stood up.
There are moments when you decide without thinking too much about it. This was one of them.
***
We found a hotel two blocks from the stop. One of those places with a dark wooden reception desk and hallways that smelled of old-fashioned cleaning products. The woman at reception looked at us with that expression some older people have: total knowledge and not a grain of judgment.
She gave us a key and pointed to the elevator.
In the elevator we kissed for real for the first time. He took my waist with one hand, used the other to move my hair out of my face, and kissed me slowly. Without urgency. As if he had all the time in the world and had decided not to use it yet. I felt his hard cock against my hip through his pants and a moan slipped out into his mouth.
We reached the room. He shut the door with his foot.
He pressed me gently against the wall and kissed me again. Even slower, with more attention. My hands were resting on his chest and I could feel his heart under my palms. He slid one hand down my waist, grabbed my ass over the dress, and pulled me against him. I felt the hard bulge pressing right there. Another sound escaped me.
—Are you okay? —he asked.
—Yes.
—Sure?
—Yes. Fuck me already.
He laughed softly against my neck.
—No. Not yet.
He lowered the dress straps slowly, one after the other. When the dress fell to the floor, he stepped back and looked at me in silence for a few seconds. He just looked. I was there in a lace bra and thong, still wearing my boots, and he took all of me in with his dark eyes.
—Jesus —he said at last, in a very low voice. Not as an exclamation. As if thinking out loud.
He stepped closer, unclasped my bra in one motion, and let it fall to the floor. He took my tits in both hands, squeezed them slowly, pinched my nipples between thumb and forefinger until I arched against the wall. He lowered his head and sucked one, then the other, nibbling carefully, tugging with his teeth, tracing the tongue around them. I grabbed his head and buried my fingers in his hair.
He picked me up and carried me to the bed.
***
He laid me on my back and took off my boots one by one, unhurried. Then the thong, which slid down my legs and hung from one ankle before falling to the floor. He opened my legs with both hands, knelt between them, and stayed there looking at me for a second, with that unbearable calm of his.
—You’re soaked —he said.
—I know.
—The whole bus, like this.
—Shut up.
He laughed and lowered his head.
What Marcos did with his mouth was in no way clumsy or rushed. He started at my neck, moved down my collarbone, stopped wherever he felt like stopping. He sucked my nipples again, for a long while, with one hand between my legs moving slowly. My fingers were tangled in his shoulders, and I was trying to breathe normally, which was completely impossible.
When he got lower, I clutched the sheet with both hands. He ran his tongue all the way from bottom to top, long and flat, and made me lift my hips off the bed. Then he focused on my clit, sucking it slowly, drawing circles with the tip of his tongue, pausing every so often to look at me from down there. I could feel him taking all the time he wanted, learning what made my breathing change, what tightened me and what relaxed me. He put two fingers in me and curled them upward while he kept sucking me, and I grabbed his hair with both hands and pressed his face against me, without thinking.
—Like that —I begged him, very softly—. Like that, don’t stop.
At one point I had to bite my lip so I wouldn’t make any noise. I came against his mouth with a tremor that rose from my feet, squeezing his head between my thighs, and he didn’t pull away until I stopped shaking. When he lifted his face his mouth was shining and he had a satisfied smile that made me want to slap him and kiss him at the same time.
Then he stood up and took off his clothes, unhurried. I watched him from the bed, still breathing hard. He took off his shirt, his pants, his boxer briefs. When I saw his cock, my mouth watered. It was exactly what I had imagined on the bus, or something better. Long, thick, marked, with the head already shining.
I crawled to the edge of the bed on my knees.
—Come here —I told him.
He came closer. I took his cock with both hands, moved it a little to look at it, and licked it from the base to the tip, slowly. He let out a low sound from his throat. I took as much of him as I could into my mouth, unhurried, sucking him calmly at first, feeling his thighs tense. I grabbed his balls with one hand while I sucked him, squeezing gently, and sped up. He grabbed my hair, not to force me, just to have somewhere to hold on. I heard a barely audible “fuck.”
I let him slip out of my mouth and looked up at him from below.
—Do you have a condom? —I asked, lips shining.
—I do.
He rummaged in the pants on the floor, pulled one out, tore it open with his teeth. I put it on him, sliding it on slowly with both hands.
He gently pushed me back onto the bed. He opened my legs again, moved between them, and before entering me he looked me in the eyes. That too was deliberate. He took his cock in one hand, ran it slowly between my lips, up and down, soaking it, rubbing the head against my clit until I moaned. He entered slowly and paused for a moment, teeth clenched, letting me feel all of him. A long gasp slipped out of me. He was filling me more than I expected.
—Oh my God —I murmured.
—Stay still.
Then he started moving.
There are things the body processes before the mind gets there. He knew what he was doing, and he did it calmly at first, pulling almost all the way out and then sliding back in slowly, letting me feel every centimeter. Then with more force, driving his weight into me, pushing deep. He grabbed one of my legs, lifted it, and put it over his shoulder, and from that angle he fucked me even deeper. My mouth was open against the pillow and I dug my nails into his back.
—Tell me how you want it —he said in my ear, never stopping his thrusts.
—Like this. Harder. Don’t stop.
He fucked me harder, setting the pace with his hips, his balls slapping my ass each time. I bit his shoulder to keep from shouting. He read what I needed without me having to say it in words. When I came the first time, it was with clenched teeth and a shudder that started in my thighs and rose without warning, squeezing his cock inside me with every wave.
—Again —he said, calm, without pulling out.
He turned me over. He put me on all fours, grabbed my hips, and thrust into me from behind in one single push. I let my head drop against the sheet. He fucked me hard, pulling my hair with one hand, sinking the fingers of the other into my hip. Every thrust drew a moan out of me. The bed creaked, the headboard hit the wall, and I no longer remembered to keep my voice down.
—Come again —he said, panting now too—. Come on my cock.
He reached around from the front and found my clit with his fingers while he kept fucking me. I lasted thirty seconds. I came shuddering all over, my face against the pillow and my mouth open in a stifled cry. He kept going for a few seconds more, pressing me against his hip, and then he pulled out of me, ripped the condom off, flipped me over in one motion, and came over my tits with one hand wrapped around his cock, thick hot spurts falling onto my chest, my neck, my chin. He stayed there, kneeling between my legs, breathing hard, looking at me with his cock still in his hand.
—Fuck —he said softly.
—Fuck —I replied, and laughed.
And that was that.
***
Afterward we lay there without talking. He stared at the ceiling. I looked at his profile in the dim light, my skin still sticky and a wet towel draped over me. The room had that particular silence of roadside hotels at midnight.
—What time do you have to be at your father’s? —he asked.
—Tomorrow at noon.
He turned his head and looked at me.
—Then we have time.
That night we slept very little. Marcos had a stamina that seemed endless, and I had no intention of wasting it. He fucked me again in the armchair before sleeping, with my legs spread over his thighs and my back against his chest, as I moved over him myself while he squeezed my tits from behind. In the early morning he woke me with his head between my legs again, and when I was just about to come, he climbed on top of me and slammed into me at once, looking me in the eyes. At some point, when I had no strength left for anything else, I leaned against his chest and fell asleep listening to him breathe, his hand spread over my bare hip.
I woke up with the gray light of dawn slipping through the blinds. He was already awake, looking at the ceiling with his usual calm. His hand was between my legs again, still, as if he had never taken it out.
—Good morning —he said.
—Good morning.
He moved his fingers slowly. A sigh escaped me. I climbed on top of him without saying anything, guided myself with my hands on his hips, and took him again. I rode him slowly, my hands resting on his chest and my hair falling across my face, with that clean, unhurried morning rhythm. I came softly, biting my lip, looking him in the eyes. He came after, squeezing my hips with both hands and driving me down onto him.
There was no awkwardness in that. None of that next-morning discomfort I know well from other trips. Only a strange, clean calm.
***
We showered separately. I dressed in more discreet clothes that I pulled from my bag. He waited for me in the hallway and we went down together to the hotel’s small dining room, where a woman served us coffee and toast without asking us a single question.
We talked as if we had known each other for a long time. That was the strangest part of all, and also the nicest.
The ten o’clock bus passed by the village stop. I was still heading north. He was staying in Arenas, or so he said.
At the stop, while I waited for the bus, he looked at me the same way he had at the terminal ticket booth that morning. Direct. Without excuses or pretense.
—It was a pleasure, Valeria —he said.
—Likewise, Marcos.
He gave me a brief kiss on the cheek. Clean. No more drama than that.
When I got on the bus and sat by the window, I looked for him through the glass. He was no longer at the stop.
***
I arrived at my father’s three hours late. I told him the bus had had a mechanical problem on the road and we’d had to wait for it to be fixed. He believed me without asking me anything else.
That night, while we were having dinner, I thought about Marcos. Not exactly with guilt. With that strange, quiet gratitude that appears when something turns out well without you having planned it. I still had the marks of his fingers on my hips and a pleasant ache between my legs every time I sat down.
I never saw him again. I don’t know whether he kept thinking about that trip. I did. Every now and then, when I take a long bus ride and sit by the window and the journey becomes monotonous, I remember the pinky on my thigh, two fingers slipping under my thong with all the calm in the world, a deep voice that said “relax” with that ridiculous serenity, and a room with a floral bedspread in a town whose name I can hardly remember.
I never regretted getting off. Not that morning, and not any of the times I remembered it afterward.