My Daughter Convinced Me to Feel Desired Again

My name is Marina, I’m forty years old, and six months ago I signed the divorce decree I should have signed a decade ago. I put up with it all that time for my daughter, convinced that a broken home was worse than an unhappy one. It turned out I was wrong about almost everything, except one thing: raising her was the only thing I ever did right.

Before taking the step, I sat down to talk with Camila. I expected reproaches, tears, that daughter’s look of abandonment. Instead, she took my hands across the kitchen table and told me it was about time.

—Mom, you deserve to be happy —she said with a calm that didn’t belong to her eighteen years—. Don’t be afraid of being alone. It’s better to be alone than badly accompanied.

Those words gave me the push I needed. The divorce was clean: he was leaving the country, he left me the house, and since Camila was already grown there was nothing to discuss. What I didn’t expect was that this brand-new freedom would bring me so close to my daughter. We started talking about everything. Truly everything.

—Didn’t you ever try something riskier? —she asked me one night, barefoot on the sofa, with that casualness with which she talked about sex.

—In my day those things were frowned upon —I laughed, a little uncomfortable.

—Times changed, ma. You have to try everything. Whoever eats everything never goes hungry.

This girl is going to give me a heart attack, I thought, even as I laughed with her.

What came next was a question no mother wants to hear from her daughter, and yet one I ended up answering.

—And how long has it been since you, you know…? —she said, arching her brows mischievously.

—Camila, you don’t ask that of your mother.

—I told you things way worse. Your turn.

I gave in. I confessed I’d gone two years. Two exact years without anyone touching me. Her eyes widened as if I’d told her I’d traveled to the Moon.

—Two years! Mom, at that rate you’re going to become a virgin again. You need someone to do you the favor.

—I just got out of a marriage, I don’t want commitments.

—And who said anything about commitments? —she smiled—. I’ve got friends who would kill for you. Every time they came to the house they asked me about “your mom, the one who’s smoking hot.”

I was speechless. The mere idea of those boys looking at me like that left an uncomfortable heat in my chest. Camila went off to shower as if nothing had happened, and I went up to my room pretending to be offended, when what I was really feeling was something else.

That night, alone in my bed, I couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d said. About still being desirable. I slipped my hand between my legs almost without realizing it, and the orgasm came fast, urgent, as if my body had been waiting for that permission for two years.

***

The next day Camila went back on the attack during breakfast. And the day after that. And the day after that. I said no, she insisted with a lawyer’s patience.

—Do it once —she finally said—. If you don’t like it, I won’t insist anymore. I promise.

—Once —I gave in, with a sigh that was half surrender and half relief—. Just once.

She smiled like someone who had already won. She disappeared for twenty minutes and came back with a handful of clothes that definitely weren’t mine.

—I texted a friend, he’s on his way. I didn’t tell him anything, so the surprise will be complete. You dress sexy and let things happen on their own.

—Camila, this is really weird.

—Take your clothes off, ma, we don’t have all day.

I stripped in front of my own daughter with a shame that burned my cheeks. She handed me a tiny thong that was even smaller than I already was, a Lycra skirt that barely covered half my ass, and a cropped blouse under which everything could be guessed at.

—I look ridiculous —I protested in front of the mirror.

—You look like a woman who knows what she’s got —she corrected me—. Men love that. Relax.

The doorbell rang before I could change my mind. Camila went to open it, and by the voice I recognized Tomás, a boy who came by the house often. I hid in my room, my heart pounding. Then I heard her shout that she was heading to a friend’s place, that I should please offer her guest something to drink. And the door closed.

She didn’t even leave me the option of refusing.

***

I came out because I couldn’t leave him alone in the dining room. Tomás looked up from his phone and stared at me as if he’d seen something he hadn’t expected. He stood, kissed me on the cheek, and I rushed to the kitchen to get the water. The kitchen is connected to the dining room, so I felt his eyes fixed on my back, on what the skirt didn’t manage to cover.

I poured him a glass. We chatted for five minutes about anything at all, and he asked me for water again. When I turned around, he was standing a hair’s breadth away.

—I hope I’m not offending you —he said with a crooked smile—, but the divorce suits you incredibly well.

—I’m too old for you —I replied, and my voice came out weaker than I wanted.

—I like them like this. And I’ve liked you for a long time.

His hand found my waist and pulled me to him. The kiss came before I made the slightest resistance, deep, hungry, unlike anything I knew. He squeezed my ass, moved up to my breasts, and I felt his erection pressing against my belly. Something inside me broke, something I’d kept locked up for two years.

I slid my hand inside his pants and stroked him. I knelt without thinking, stripped him, and took him into my mouth with a desire I didn’t even recognize in myself. He tangled his fingers in my hair, setting the rhythm, while I felt him swell against my tongue.

He led me to the sofa, put me on all fours, and entered me slowly, centimeter by centimeter. I bit my lip. When he started moving hard, holding my hips, pleasure came over me in waves that left me breathless. Then he sat me on top of him, spread my legs and drove into me while we kissed. I dug my nails into his back, lost.

And then I opened my eyes.

Camila was in the hallway, watching me with a knowing smile. She didn’t say anything. She turned around and went to her room, like someone checking that a plan had worked. Seeing her didn’t stop me; it pushed me into an orgasm that almost made me lose my mind. Tomás came inside me, and the two of us were left exhausted, breathing like we’d run miles.

***

After showering, I went to talk to her. She was sprawled on the bed, pretending to read her phone.

—Well, well, Mom —she sang.

—Don’t start, Camila.

—How could I not? You looked like you were on another planet —she laughed—. I’m happy for you. You deserved it.

—I needed it —I admitted, sitting on the edge of her bed—. I hadn’t realized how much.

—I gave Tomás your number, by the way. And there are others dying to meet you.

—I’m not some random woman, Camila.

—That’s not the point. The point is to enjoy yourself. Everyone’s different, ma. You have to try.

I sighed. Part of me knew I should put a limit on that conversation. The other part, the one that had been asleep for two years, won.

—One more. And nobody finds out.

—Obviously —she said, and then grew serious for a second—. Ma, now that there’s more trust, can I bring my guys here too?

I laughed, because after what had happened that afternoon I had no moral high ground left to tell her no.

—Just let me know.

***

Two days later, freshly showered, I found on my bed the “clothes” my daughter had picked out for me: a miniskirt that barely existed, another thong, a bra reduced to two triangles over the nipples. I looked at myself in the mirror and almost didn’t recognize myself. I wasn’t the Marina who had endured an unhappy marriage. I was someone else, someone I was starting to like.

When Camila called me, I walked out of the room somewhat embarrassed. In the living room there wasn’t just the friend I expected: there were two boys. Bruno, shyer, and a certain Iván who looked me over from head to toe without even trying to hide it.

—Damn, your old lady is incredible —Iván blurted out, and I wanted to die.

—See? —my daughter answered, and smacked my ass so hard I jumped—. Just look at her.

Iván went off with Camila to her room. I took Bruno by the hand and led him to mine. He was quieter, but he never took his eyes off me. The moment I closed the door he kissed me, laid me back on the bed, and explored my body with his mouth until he made me tremble. When he entered me it was pure pleasure; and as he fucked me, his fingers started playing farther back, in territory I had never explored.

He did it with a patience I hadn’t expected. Slowly, without rushing, until what had seemed impossible became a new, intense sensation that tore from me an orgasm unlike any before it. At the far end of the house you could hear my daughter’s moans, and for some reason that, instead of making me uncomfortable, turned me on even more.

In the middle of it all, the door opened. Iván came in without asking, naked.

—Camila’s asking if you want to go with her —he told Bruno.

Bruno sighed, kissed me, and left promising to come back another day to finish what he’d started. Iván took his place before I could say anything. He had that confidence of men who know they’re wanted, and he used all of it. He made me ride him, laid me on my back, kissed me while he hammered into me, until orgasm caught up with both of us almost at the same time.

We collapsed on the bed, laughing like two accomplices.

—You’re so hot, Marina —he panted.

—You’re not half bad —I answered.

***

Later, the four of us ended up in the kitchen looking for water, them in their underwear, Camila and me barely covered, laughing at anything and everything. I had never shared anything like that with my daughter, that level of absurd, total trust. I can’t explain how, but that afternoon I stopped seeing her as the child I raised and started seeing her as a woman who, without meaning to, had brought me back to life.

We moved to the sofa. Iván in the middle, one hand on my thigh and the other on hers. What followed was a mix of laughter and caresses in which I lost count of boundaries. At some point Camila took my face and kissed me, and I, instead of pulling away, let myself be carried by the current that the whole house seemed to have become. It was a strange, dizzying moment, one of those a woman promises herself she’ll forget and never does.

When the boys finally left, the two of us were left alone, exhausted, looking at each other as if we’d only just met.

—You okay, ma? —Camila asked, suddenly serious.

—Better than ever —I said, and it was true.

The truth is that afternoon was only the beginning. My daughter had pulled me out of two years of confinement, and from then on nothing was ever the same again. I don’t regret it. Sometimes happiness arrives by paths one would never have chosen, pushed by the person you least expected. In my case, it was her.

There are confessions you don’t tell even your best friend. This is one of them. And yet, here it is, because keeping it cost me more than telling it.