My Cousin Thought He Was the King of the Neighborhood Until That Night

I grew up in the worst corner of the neighborhood, in a house with peeling walls that my mother could barely afford to rent. I had no father, no money, and nothing to offer except the one thing life had given me in abundance: a confidence men pay dearly for and women recognize from a distance. At forty-five, when I walk through the square, there are still neighbors who lower their eyes and others who hold my gaze a second too long. That difference, that second, is my whole story.

My name is Mateo. I say it without shame because I never lied to anyone about who I was. I never promised marriage or a future. What I always offered was the same thing: a night when they could stop being the respectable lady from the corner and allow themselves, for a few hours, to be the slut they kept silenced inside.

***

My cousin Rodrigo was my exact opposite. He inherited his father’s workshop, bought himself an apartment overlooking the river, and drove a car that cost more than my entire house. When we were kids, we played together; as adults, we greeted each other with an overly firm handshake, the kind of greeting that was really a measurement. He had the money. I had the reputation. And in a neighborhood like ours, where boredom weighs more heavily than poverty, reputation almost always wins.

—Someday you’re going to settle down, cousin —he’d tell me with the smile of someone who believed he had everything figured out.

—Someday —I’d answer, knowing neither of us believed it.

What really separated us wasn’t money. It was Lucía.

***

Lucía arrived in the neighborhood in the middle of summer, recently separated, at her sister Norma’s house, two streets down from mine. She was a little over forty, but she wore those years like a weapon. She walked unhurriedly, head held high, with big tits moving beneath her dress and a round ass that turned heads all along the block. The first time I saw her cross the square with two grocery bags, I knew two things: I was going to fuck her, and Rodrigo wanted the same thing.

My cousin didn’t waste any time. He started showing up at Norma’s house with any excuse: a faucet to fix, a box to carry, an invitation to dinner somewhere. He brought her expensive flowers and took her for drives in his car so half the neighborhood could see. He did things the way men do when they’re used to buying whatever they want.

I did the opposite. I brought her nothing. I simply greeted her whenever we ran into each other, held her gaze that extra second, and looked away just when she expected me to press the issue. The first week, she barely noticed me. The second, she began looking for me with her eyes at the bakery. The third, she was the one who crossed the street to ask me something silly about the bus schedule.

—They say a lot of things about you —she said, pretending to look at the bus stop.

—Almost all of them are true —I replied. —That’s why they say them.

She laughed. Not the polite laugh you give a stranger, but a lower, huskier one—the kind that escapes a woman who has already imagined herself naked with you. That laugh was all I needed.

***

For weeks, nothing happened and everything happened. We crossed paths, talked about anything and everything, and every conversation ended a little closer than the last. I noticed her struggling. I knew Rodrigo courted her properly, with plans and promises, and that the sensible part of her wanted to choose him. But the part that made her bite her lip whenever she thought I wasn’t looking wanted something else. It wanted a cock to silence her.

One August afternoon, with the neighborhood melting in the heat, I found her sitting on a bench in the square, fanning herself with an envelope.

—Your cousin invited me to dinner on Saturday —she said without looking at me. —Somewhere elegant, downtown.

—You should go —I answered. —He cooks well when he wants to impress.

She turned her head, surprised that I wasn’t fighting for her.

—Doesn’t it bother you?

—It would bother me if you were his —I said. —But you aren’t yet.

She fell silent for a long while, fanning herself. When she stood to leave, she paused beside me just long enough for me to feel the warmth of her arm against mine.

—You’re shameless —she murmured.

—And you’re still here —I replied.

She didn’t go downtown that Saturday. At two in the morning that same night, someone knocked on my door.

***

Lucía stood on the threshold in a thin summer dress, her hair loose, barefoot on the tiles that were still warm from the day. She said nothing. She didn’t have to. For weeks, she had been saying everything through her silences.

—If I come in, I don’t want you telling anyone tomorrow —she said at last. —Not Rodrigo. No one.

—I never tell anything —I answered, stepping aside to let her pass. —It’s the one thing the widows and married women in this neighborhood know about me for certain.

She came in. I closed the door, and the noise from the street abruptly died away. In the dimness of my house with its peeling walls, she looked completely out of place and completely at home at the same time. She wasn’t wearing a bra beneath the dress; her hard nipples showed through the thin fabric, two dark points rising and falling with breaths that were already beginning to quicken.

I kissed her slowly, without the urgency she expected. I held her face in both hands and kissed her as if we had the whole night, because we did. I thrust my tongue deep into her mouth, and she sucked it as if she hadn’t tasted one in months, moaning softly against my lips. I felt her shoulders loosen, felt her release the breath she had been holding since the first time she crossed the square.

—I thought you’d be rougher —she whispered against my mouth.

—With the ones who come looking for a rough man, I am —I said. —You didn’t come looking for that.

I slipped the dress straps down with two fingers and let the fabric fall to the floor on its own. She stood naked in the hallway, wearing only her panties, her large tits bare, nipples stiff, a dark patch of wetness already soaking through the fabric between her legs. I looked her over without touching her until the silence became unbearable for her and she was the one who stepped forward, the one who tugged at my shirt, the one who decided she had waited long enough.

—Stop looking at me —she gasped. —Touch me already.

I shoved her against the hallway wall and grabbed one tit in my whole hand, squeezing it, pinching her nipple until she let out a short moan. I bit her neck, her collarbone, lowered my mouth to her other nipple, and sucked it hard, tugging with my teeth, while I slid my hand inside her panties. She was soaked. I pushed two fingers into her pussy at once, and she arched her back against the bricks, squeezing my wrist between her thighs.

—God, yes —she gasped. —Deeper.

I finger-fucked her pussy right there against the wall, pulling my fingers out glistening and pushing them back in while I searched for her clit with my thumb and rubbed it in slow circles. She dug her nails into the back of my neck and moved her hips against my hand, seeking more, no longer remembering the neighbors or the silence she had asked for. I tugged her panties down until I tore one side and left them on the floor.

I half-dragged her to the bedroom. I laid her on the sheets, yanked her legs apart, and took my time with every inch of her body. I licked the insides of her thighs, the crease of her groin, everything around her pussy without touching it, until she began lifting her hips, searching for my mouth. Only then did I lower myself and run my whole tongue over her from bottom to top, tasting her.

—Ahhh, you son of a bitch —she moaned, grabbing my hair. —Don’t make me wait.

I sucked her clit slowly, wrapping my lips around it, and pushed my tongue deep into her pussy. She was salty, hot, slippery. I ate her without hurry, alternating long licks with sucking that made her jerk on the bed. I slid my fingers in again while I licked her clit and felt her pussy tighten around them, felt her whole belly begin to tremble.

—I’m coming, I’m coming —she gasped. —Don’t stop, please don’t stop now.

I didn’t stop. I pressed my mouth hard against her pussy and sucked her clit eagerly while I drove my fingers in to the knuckle. She came with a muffled cry into the pillow, pushing my head against her pussy with both hands, squeezing my face between her thighs until she almost suffocated me. I kept licking her as she came, absorbing every shudder, until she ran out of breath and tugged my hair to make me come up.

—Now —she said, her voice broken. —Put it in. You owe me.

I tore off my clothes. When she saw my cock, she bit her lip and spread her legs as wide as she could, taking hold of it and guiding it to her pussy herself, rubbing the tip against her clit before guiding me inside. I drove into her in one thrust, all the way to the bottom, and she let out a long, guttural cry that had nothing to do with the respectable lady who crossed the square carrying grocery bags.

—Fuck, it’s so big —she gasped with her eyes closed. —Fuck me hard, Mateo. However you want.

I started fucking her like that, all the way in, with long, slow thrusts that made her whimper every time I reached the end. She dug her nails into my back, bit my shoulder, and asked for more through clenched teeth. I felt her pussy opening around my cock, felt her soaking her thighs, felt my shaft emerge glistening all the way to the base every time I pulled out.

I put her on her knees, ass raised and face against the pillow, and pushed my cock into her from behind again. From that angle I penetrated her more deeply, and she felt it; she began moving her ass against me, pushing herself onto my shaft, fucking me in turn. I grabbed her hanging tits and squeezed them as I drove my hips into her, faster and faster, until her buttocks bounced against my belly with a wet sound that filled the room.

—Like that, like that, don’t stop —she moaned into the pillow. —Give me all of it.

I gently pulled her hair, tilting her head back, and kept thrusting my cock all the way in. She bit the pillow so the neighbors wouldn’t hear her, but moans escaped between her teeth—guttural moans from a woman who had gone far too long without being fucked like that. When I finally turned her onto her back again, so I could make her mine completely while looking at her, she did it with her eyes open, staring at me as if she needed to make sure it was me and not the prudent man she should have chosen.

I lifted her legs over my shoulders, folding her nearly in half, and penetrated her like that, watching her face as she came for the second time. She clutched the sheets, her neck flushed red, and her pussy clenched around my cock in spasms that nearly made me come right there. I pulled out in time, climbed onto her chest, and came over her large tits, thick jets spilling between her nipples and down to her neck. She ran two fingers through the semen and put them in her mouth, looking at me, sucking them clean to the end.

We ended up tangled together, sweaty, with the fan turning uselessly against the heat. Her breathing was ragged, her hair stuck to her forehead, and she made no effort to hide her smile.

—Rodrigo would have taken me to a five-star hotel —she said, laughing softly.

—And you would have remembered the hotel —I replied. —Not him.

She gave me a weak slap on the chest, but she didn’t contradict me.

***

She left before dawn, as they all come and go: through the back door, shoes in hand, checking that no one was out in the street. I didn’t ask her to stay. I never do. That’s the other part of the deal the women in this neighborhood understand and appreciate.

Rodrigo never found out about that night. He kept courting Lucía for another month, with his flowers and dinners, and she played along just enough not to humiliate him. But something had changed, and he sensed it without understanding. One afternoon I ran into him in the square, frowning, and he said:

—I don’t understand her, cousin. I give her everything, and it’s as if she’s thinking about something else.

—Maybe you give her too much —I answered, lighting a cigarette. —Women don’t always like having everything handed to them. Sometimes they’d rather have it shoved into them without being asked.

He looked at me without understanding, the way he had looked at me all his life, and walked away shaking his head. I stayed on the bench for a while, watching evening fall over the shitty neighborhood where I was born and which I never wanted to leave behind.

***

Lucía knocked on my door twice more that summer. The second time she showed up in a short black dress with nothing on beneath it; she proved it by leaning against the kitchen table, hiking her skirt up to her waist, and offering me her ass before I said a word. I put it in her right there, standing, with her gripping the edge of the table, and filled her pussy with semen without pulling out. The third time she sucked my cock on her knees in the hallway the moment she crossed the threshold, took the whole thing into her mouth, looking up at me with those eyes she lowered in front of the neighbors in the square, and wouldn’t let me pull it from her mouth until she had swallowed every drop.

After that, her sister found her a job in another city, and she left, the way good things leave, without long goodbyes. The last night she came over, before she went, she stayed a little longer than usual, naked against my chest, tracing the imaginary cracks in my ceiling with one finger.

—Why you? —she asked. —When you could have a peaceful life, why do you choose this?

I thought about it for a moment. It was a question no one had ever asked me, and one I had never bothered to answer.

—Because at eleven at night, when your husband or rich boyfriend is already snoring, someone has to be awake —I said. —And it turns out that someone has always been me.

She laughed, that low laugh that escaped without permission, turned over in bed, and climbed on top of me. She impaled herself on my cock, slowly, all the way down, and rode me one last time without hurry, rolling her hips in circles, her tits bouncing in front of my face. When she came, she collapsed against my chest and kissed me one last time, her pussy still tight around my shaft. By morning, she was gone.

Years have passed. Rodrigo married a proper woman and has proper children, and every time we run into each other, he looks at me with a mixture of pity and something he can’t quite admit, something that looks a lot like envy. I’m still in the same house with the peeling walls, broke, with the same cigarette and the same certainty.

Because money buys hotels, flowers, and cars. But there’s a second—that second when a woman decides to hold your gaze instead of lowering it—that nothing can buy. And that second, in this neighborhood, was always mine.