Our game stopped being just messages that morning

Adrián and I had a game that had become a habit. Some nights, once each of us was already at home and the phone screen was the only thing lit up, we’d start writing to each other. Messages that got hotter word by word, until neither of us could sleep peacefully. It was our secret, a way of having each other close without actually being together.

The trouble with games is that there comes a point when playing from a distance just isn’t enough anymore.

—This is getting too small for us —he wrote to me one of those nights.

—I know —I replied, and I felt a shiver in my stomach just admitting it.

We worked in the same building, on different floors, and the idea came up almost like a joke: to see each other early, before anyone arrived, when the place was still silent and the hallway lights were still off. A dead hour, that time when the day hasn’t quite started yet and you can pretend nothing counts.

We agreed on Thursday morning. I barely slept at all.

***

I arrived earlier than planned. My throat was dry and my heart was pounding in places that weren’t my chest. He was already there, standing by the window, looking out at the empty street with his hands in his pockets. When he heard me come in, he turned slowly, and that smile of his, the one from the messages made flesh, undid me all at once.

—You came —he said, as if he’d had doubts.

—I came —I answered.

There wasn’t much more. He took me by the waist and sat me on top of him, facing away, and right away I felt his body against mine, that unmistakable pressure that made me close my eyes. One of his hands slid under my blouse and up to my breasts without hurry, like someone who had all the time in the world. The other went down and stroked me over my clothes, in that exact spot where I was already waiting for him.

He did it so well that I wanted more. I wanted his fingers without the barrier of fabric, I wanted to stop imagining and start feeling. I tried to open my coat to make things easier for him, but the sensation got the better of me. I stayed still, my hands halfway there, unable to do anything but enjoy it and swallow the sounds trying to get out.

Don’t make a noise. Not yet.

He turned me toward him. With a calm that contrasted with how wound up I was, he started opening what I was wearing until he left me exposed. The cool morning air raised goosebumps on my skin a second before his mouth found one of my nipples. I threw my head back. I didn’t want him to stop, I didn’t want it to ever end, and I told him so more with my body than with words.

His lips moved up my neck, wet, leaving a warm trail. His hand went down to my ass and squeezed it, gently at first, then with more intent, while he asked in my ear to tell him how much I wanted him. Instead of answering, I reached for his crotch over his pants and squeezed him too. I felt his breathing change.

—Let’s go to the back —he murmured—. Nobody can see us there.

***

At the back of the building there was a small room, with no windows facing the hallway, and at that hour it was ours. I followed him without letting go, tripping over my own need, trying to get his pants down as we walked.

His phone rang.

Both of us froze for a moment, looking at each other. It was one of those interruptions the real world throws in just when you think you’ve slipped away from it. He answered reluctantly, said two short sentences, promised to call back later. He hung up. And it was enough for him to look at me again for the moment to stay intact, as if the call had never happened.

—Where were we? —he asked.

—Right here —I said, and I finished pulling down his pants.

He sprang free, hard, pointing almost at me. I stood there for a second looking at him, with that mix of disbelief and desire I can’t quite describe. The only thing I wanted was to have him in my hands. He leaned in, kissed me, licked the corner of my lips before gently tugging my lower lip with his teeth and sliding his tongue into my mouth. I felt myself melting.

I started stroking him with my hand, slowly, trying to find his rhythm. But he took control and kept touching himself while he kissed me, and seeing him like that, so in command of his own pleasure, lit me up in a way I hadn’t expected. In my head there was only one idea, one single thought, beating like a drum: I wanted him inside me.

He knew it. And that was why he touched me everywhere except where I needed him most. His hands on my hips, on my waist, on my ass, never quite going farther. He was teasing me on purpose, and the worst part was that it worked. Every touch he denied me made me more impatient, wetter, more willing to do anything.

—You’re unfair —I told him, almost voiceless.

—I know —he answered, with that same smile.

I didn’t resist. I let myself go with the game, because deep down I liked it as much as he did. I watched him touch himself and felt something tighten inside me, a rope about to snap. I leaned in and started kissing his neck while my hand went looking for him again.

***

—I want your mouth —he said after a while, his voice rough.

I knelt down. It was the first time I had done anything like that, and he noticed. Instead of rushing me, he guided me, telling me in short words what to do, how, at what pace. One of his hands tangled in my hair, not to force, but to set the rhythm. And the way he held me told me more than any instruction: from the pressure of his fingers I knew exactly what he liked.

I took him all the way. I had never felt anything like it, that weight, that closeness, his breathing changing over me. I moved forward and back following the rhythm his hand set, and at times he came so deep that my breath caught. I didn’t care. What mattered was him, and the way he kept repeating my name through clenched teeth.

I lowered a little and kept going carefully, always mindful of his hands. Every time I got it right, his fingers tightened for a moment in my hair, and that small gesture became my compass. It was like deciphering a new language, one that belonged only to the two of us at that hour of the morning.

I felt him go rigid, speed up. He was close.

He adjusted me gently, lifted my face with one hand and held my gaze. That gesture, the way he looked down at me while I stayed below him, made me feel surrendered in a way I had never felt before, and recognizing that excited me even more. He finished like that, looking at me, and I let him do it without looking away.

Afterward we stayed quiet for a moment, both of us breathing hard, listening to the first elevator rising in the distance. The day was starting. Our dead hour was ending.

—I have to go back upstairs —I said.

—I know —he answered for the third time, and kissed me on the forehead as if what had just happened were the most natural thing in the world.

***

The rest of the day was useless. I sat at my desk pretending to read reports I didn’t understand, my mind somewhere else. Every time someone walked past me, I worried they’d be able to tell from my face what I had done first thing in the morning, in this same building, before any of them arrived.

The worst part was my body. I had been left halfway there, lit up and not released, and that feeling stayed with me hour after hour like a low current that wouldn’t go out. I imagined what hadn’t happened. I imagined the other half of the story, the one the clock had stolen from us.

I got home with one single thought.

As soon as I closed the door, I threw myself onto the bed without fully undressing. I started slowly, massaging my breasts, tugging gently at my nipples, bringing back with my fingers everything he had done to me that morning. Small sounds came out of my mouth, growing little by little at the same pace as my need.

I brought one hand down and touched myself first over my clothes, playing with myself the way he had played with me, leaving myself wanting on purpose because now I understood why he did it. With my other hand I stayed on my breasts. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I slid one finger in, then two, and picked up speed while I remembered him, his voice, the way he’d held my hair, that look from above.

I rubbed myself faster, found the exact spot, the one that had been left unfinished that morning. I didn’t stop. I didn’t want to stop. I came alone, with his name in my head and the certainty that that Thursday had been nothing more than the beginning.

That night my phone rang again. It was him.

—So? —he wrote—. Did I leave you wanting?

I smiled in the dark before answering. Our game had just really begun.