I went back to him knowing he was going to destroy me again

My name is Renata and I’m twenty-seven years old. I’m going to tell something I haven’t told anyone, not my best friend, not my therapist, and much less my family. It’s one of those stories you keep buried deep in your chest because you know that if you say it out loud, it becomes completely real. And what happened with Emilio was far too real.

I met Emilio on a Saturday in March in a small bar downtown. I was getting out of a long relationship, almost three years with a guy who left marks you can’t see. I’m not talking about beatings, but something worse: that way of making you feel like you’re worth nothing, that no one else will ever love you, that you should be grateful someone even notices you. When I finally worked up the courage to leave, I had spent months not recognizing myself in the mirror.

Emilio was different. Or that’s what I wanted to believe.

He had an easy smile, big hands, and a way of looking at me that made me feel like I was the only thing that mattered in the room. We started talking that night and didn’t stop until four in the morning, sitting on the curb with our feet in the street because the bar had closed hours earlier. He asked for my number and took exactly one day to text me.

The problem was the distance. He lived almost four hundred kilometers away, in another city, with another pace, another life. At first I told myself that was perfect. That I needed something light, no pressure, no suffocating feeling of having someone on top of me all day. We texted in the mornings, talked on the phone at night, and on weekends we sent each other messages that started innocent and ended with ragged breathing, my hand between my legs, and the sheets in a mess. He made me masturbate over WhatsApp, describing in detail how he was going to fuck me when we finally saw each other, where he was going to put his tongue, how long he was going to be sucking my cunt before he fucked me.

The first time we saw each other after that bar was a month later. He came to my city on a Friday afternoon. We met at a coffee shop near my apartment, and when I saw him walk through the door in that leather jacket that was a little too big on him, I felt something I hadn’t felt in years: desire.

Not desire for sex, though that too. Desire to touch him, to smell him, to confirm he was real and not just a pretty voice on the other end of the phone.

—You look even prettier than in the photos —he told me, sitting down across from me.

—Liar.

—Maybe. But I’m not lying about this.

We didn’t finish the coffee. We walked to my apartment in silence, our shoulders brushing, and when I closed the door behind us, he took my waist with that mix of firmness and care only men who pay attention have.

—Are you sure? —he asked, his lips a centimeter from mine.

I didn’t answer with words. I kissed him. Slowly at first, as if testing the ground, as if making sure I wasn’t going to break if I let myself go. And then harder, deeper, with my hands on the back of his neck and his body pushing me against the hallway wall. I felt his hard cock against my stomach through his pants, thick, insistent, and I let out a moan into his mouth that I didn’t know was surprise or hunger.

We stripped each other on the way to the bedroom. His jacket fell in the entryway, my blouse ended up hanging from the doorknob. I undid his belt with trembling hands and he pulled my bra down without taking it all the way off, leaving my tits out, and knelt right there in the middle of the hallway to suck them. He bit my nipples slowly, barely using his teeth, and then harder, until he had me arching my back against the doorframe. By the time we got to the bed, all that was left was his boxer briefs outlining his erection and my panties soaked through, and the tension built up over thirty days of messages and calls and silences full of promises.

Emilio had a particular way of touching. He didn’t go straight to the point like other men. He moved with his fingers, with his mouth, with the tip of his nose. He kissed my neck for what felt like forever, moving down my collarbone, stopping at that hollow between the breasts where heat gathers. Every time I tried to rush things, every time I grabbed his hand to bring it between my legs, he stopped me.

—No rush —he murmured against my skin.

For you, maybe, I thought. I’ve been imagining this for a month.

When his mouth finally reached my stomach, I was already trembling. Not from cold, not from nerves. From pure anticipation. He took my panties off with his teeth, slowly, looking up at me with those dark eyes that seemed to be asking permission and giving orders at the same time. They were so wet they stuck to his skin as he dragged them down my thighs.

—Look at how soaked you are —he murmured, opening my legs with both hands—. Drenched.

—Shut up and eat me out.

He chuckled softly against my thigh and went down. He licked me slowly from bottom to top, with his tongue flat, gathering everything I had leaking out. Then he spread my pussy lips apart with his thumbs and stayed there, looking at me, breathing over me, until I grabbed his hair and pushed his face in. Then yes. Then he sucked my clit hungrily, sucking it like it was a ripe fruit, alternating quick laps with long sucks that made me lift my ass off the bed. He slid two fingers into me and curled them upward, searching for that spot, and when he found it I knew because I screamed.

—Don’t stop there, don’t stop there, don’t stop there —I kept repeating, clutching the sheets.

He didn’t stop. He kept licking and fingering me until I came in his mouth, my legs closing around his head and my cunt throbbing on his tongue. He didn’t pull away. He stayed there, licking me slowly while I came down, gathering up the cum like he hated to waste it.

When he lifted his face, his chin was shining and he had the grin of a satisfied bastard. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and settled between my legs, and I grabbed his cock before he could do anything else. I pulled down his boxer briefs and took out his dick, hard, thick, with the tip already wet. I took it into my mouth without breaking eye contact, sucked it all in at once, all the way to my throat, and he let out a rough groan that filled me with a power I hadn’t felt in years.

—Fuck, Renata…

I sucked his cock slowly, my tongue wrapped around it, teasing his balls with my free hand. I pulled him out, licked the tip, took him back in until I was gagging. He grabbed my hair but didn’t thrust. He let me set the pace, as if he knew I needed exactly that, to feel like I was the one in charge.

—Come here —he said at last, tugging my hair upward—. I want to fuck you.

He laid me on my back and positioned himself between my legs. He grabbed his cock and ran it along my pussy lips, up and down, wetting the tip, brushing my clit with the head until I lifted my hips looking for it.

—Put it in already.

He drove it into me in one thrust, all the way in, and I let out a sigh I’d kept buried for years. He filled me completely, all the way to a place no one had reached in a long time. He stayed still for a few seconds, his forehead pressed to mine, letting me feel all of him inside me.

Then he started to move. We moved together, awkward and perfect at the same time, like two people who have known each other all their lives and are discovering each other for the first time. He fucked me slowly and deeply, pulling almost all the way out before shoving back in, and every thrust ripped a moan out of me that I didn’t even try to hold back. I changed positions, got on top, felt him deeper, clung to his shoulders while he held my hips and we found a rhythm that was only ours. I rode his cock with my tits bouncing in front of his face, and he stretched his neck to suck my nipples without stopping his thrusts from below.

—Turn around —he asked, voice broken.

I got on all fours and he moved behind me. He shoved it into me again in one go and grabbed my hair, yanking it until my back arched. He fucked me hard, his hands digging into my hips, and every thrust made my tits jolt against the mattress. He slapped my ass once, then again, and I moaned yes, more, don’t stop. He reached under me and started rubbing my clit with two fingers while he kept fucking me, and I knew I wasn’t going to last much longer.

—Look at me —he asked when he felt I was close.

I turned my head to look at him over my shoulder. And in that moment, with his face behind mine, sweat shining on his forehead and that expression of being completely lost in me, I made the mistake I had sworn not to make.

I came again, my cunt squeezing his cock in spasms, and he held out for two, three more thrusts before pulling out and coming over my ass, with a long groan, marking my lower back with hot jets of semen.

I fell in love.

***

The following months were a roller coaster. We saw each other every three or four weeks, always with that built-up hunger that turned every encounter into an explosion. We fucked in cheap hotels, with the curtains not quite closed, in the back seat of his car with my panties hanging from one knee and his cock inside me while the headlights of other cars passed over the fogged-up windows, once in the bathroom of a restaurant because we couldn’t wait to get anywhere: he lifted my dress, tore off my thong, and fucked me against the sink, looking at my face in the mirror while I bit my hand not to scream.

But between visits, the distance did its thing. The messages became more spaced out. The calls got shorter. He had his job, I had mine, and there were entire days when I heard nothing from him and my head started spinning in those dark spirals I know too well.

He’s falling out of love with you.

You’re too intense.

He’s going to do the same thing the other one did.

I promised myself I’d stay calm. I promised myself I wouldn’t be that woman who sends twenty messages in a row and checks the last seen every five minutes. I promised it and kept it, at least on the outside. Inside, I was falling apart.

One night, after three days with no word from him, he sent me a long voice message. He said he missed me, that work had been exhausting, that he wanted to see me but couldn’t that weekend. His voice sounded tired, sincere. I wanted to believe him. I needed to believe him.

—Come you —I said before I could think—. Friday. I’ll be waiting.

Silence. Three dots appearing and disappearing.

—I’ll be there.

***

He arrived on Friday at eleven at night, his hair wet from the rain and a small backpack over his shoulder. He didn’t say a word. He held me in the doorway for a full minute, his face buried in my neck, breathing me in like I was oxygen.

—Sorry I disappeared —he whispered.

—You don’t have to apologize to me.

—Yes, I do.

That night wasn’t like the others. There was no urgency or wild hunger. It was something slower, denser, like we both knew something was changing and wanted to hold onto it before it slipped away.

He undressed me in the living room, with only the lamp in the corner lighting us. He kissed my eyelids, the tip of my nose, the corners of my lips. He slid the straps of my dress down while looking at me as if he were memorizing every inch. When the dress fell to the floor I was braless, and he stood still for a few seconds, staring at my tits as if for the first time, before bending down to kiss them slowly, one nipple and then the other, circling them with his tongue until they went hard.

I knelt in front of him and unbuttoned his pants. I took his cock out of his boxer briefs, already half hard, and put it in my mouth without taking my eyes off him. I sucked him slowly, savoring him, feeling him harden against my tongue. I held his balls with one hand and the base of his cock with the other, keeping a slow, deep rhythm while he stroked my hair with his eyes closed and his jaw tight.

—Come here —he said at last, pulling me up.

He laid me on the sofa and settled between my legs. He licked my cunt for a long while, unhurried, alternating tongue and fingers, giving me two orgasms in a row before he fucked me. When I finally felt him enter, it was different from the other times. Slower. Deeper. As if he wanted to leave himself there forever.

We fucked on the sofa, my legs around his waist and his mouth on mine, swallowing my moans. Then he took me to the floor, onto the rug, and put me face down with a pillow under my hips to fuck me from behind, leaning all his weight into me, biting my shoulder when a moan escaped him. Then to the bed, where he asked me to get on top again, to ride him slowly, looking at him.

Between one time and the next we talked lying on our backs, our legs tangled and our fingers linked, our skin still shining with sweat and his semen still dripping inside me. He told me things he had never told me before: that he had also had a difficult relationship, that he found it hard to trust, that sometimes he pulled away not because he didn’t want to be close but because he was afraid of staying.

—Afraid of what? —I asked.

—Of needing you too much.

I turned to look at him. His eyes were shining, not with tears, but with something else. Vulnerability. That thing men hide as if it were a shame.

I kissed him softly. I climbed on top of him. I felt him harden beneath me while I traced his chest with my lips, down his abdomen, taking him in my hand, feeling his breathing turn uneven. I pulled him out halfway and licked the tip, playing with it, until I had him hard again. I took him fully into my mouth and sucked him slowly, all the way down, with my hands braced on his thighs.

—Renata… —he said my name like it was a prayer.

I climbed back on top. I guided him inside me and started moving slowly, my hands resting on his chest, looking him in the eyes. He grabbed my hips but didn’t set the pace. He let me. He let me go at my own speed, up and down however I wanted, finding the exact angle that made me close my eyes and grit my teeth. I fucked myself on him, all the way in, feeling him reach a place that hurt and felt good at the same time.

I leaned forward until my tits brushed his face, and he stuck out his tongue to lick them while I kept moving. I took one of his hands and brought it to my clit. He understood and started rubbing it with his thumb, in circles, without stopping his own thrusts upward with his hips.

When I came it was like something broke inside me. Not just the physical pleasure, which was intense, a pleasure that started in my cunt and rose up my spine to the nape of my neck in waves. It was something emotional, a gate that had been closed for years and suddenly flew wide open. I felt him come too, felt his cock jerk inside me, felt him filling me hot and deep. I ended up crying on his chest, unable to explain why, while he stroked my hair and kept saying it was okay, that everything was okay, his semen still dripping between my thighs.

***

But not everything was okay.

The following week, back in routine and distance, the silences got longer. I felt that after that night we had crossed a line and now we had to decide what we were. He seemed to want to back away right when I needed to move forward.

We fought on the phone on a Tuesday at two in the morning. Not over anything specific. Over everything and nothing. The distance, the plans that never came together, the words he didn’t say and I needed to hear.

—I can’t give you what you need —he told me with that calm that drove me crazy—. Not now.

—And when?

Silence.

—I don’t know.

I hung up. I cried. I fell asleep wrapped around the pillow that still smelled like him. And the next morning I made the decision I had been putting off for weeks.

I sent him a long message. I told him I loved him but I couldn’t keep going like that, that the distance was eating me alive, that I needed to take care of my mental health before anything else. I told him it wasn’t a final goodbye, that I just needed to stop. Breathe. Rebuild myself.

He replied with four words: “I understand. Take care.”

And that was it. Four words to close something that had opened me wide.

***

It’s been six months since that message. I haven’t seen him again. We’ve exchanged a couple of random texts, birthdays, a silly meme, nothing important. But every night before I fall asleep, I close my eyes and I feel him. His mouth on my neck. His hands on my hips. His cock pounding me into the mattress. His voice saying my name like it was the only thing he knew how to say. I touch myself thinking about him more times than I’m willing to admit, with two fingers shoved deep inside me trying to imitate what he did to me, and I always come but it’s never the same.

Sometimes I wonder if I did the right thing. If protecting myself was more important than feeling. If the sensible choice was really the right one, or just the cowardly one.

I don’t have an answer. I only have this confession, these words I’m writing at three in the morning because I can’t sleep, because my body still remembers him even though my head has decided to forget.

And if I’m honest, completely honest, I know that if Emilio knocked on my door tomorrow, with wet hair and that disarming smile, I would fall again. I would open the door for him again. I would get on my knees in the hallway and suck his cock before he even closed the door. I would break myself all over again.

Because there are people you don’t get over. You survive them.