Our Game Stopped Being Just Messages That Morning

Adrián and I had a game that had become a habit. Some nights, when we were each already at home and the phone screen was the only thing lit, we would start texting. Messages that grew more heated word by word, until neither of us could sleep peacefully. It was our secret, a way of keeping each other close without actually being together.

The problem with games is that, at some point, playing them from a distance is no longer enough.

—This is starting to feel like it’s not enough —he wrote to me one of those nights.

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

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

We agreed on Thursday morning. I barely slept.

***

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 beside 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 though he had doubted I would.

—I came —I answered.

There wasn’t much more to say. He took me by the waist and sat me on top of him, facing away, and at once I felt his body against mine, that unmistakable pressure that made me close my eyes. One of his hands slid beneath my blouse and moved up to my breasts without hurry, like someone with all the time in the world. The other moved down and caressed me over my clothes, at 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 overwhelmed me. I stayed still, my hands halfway there, unable to do anything except enjoy myself and swallow the sounds fighting to get out.

Don’t make a sound. Not yet.

He turned me toward him. With a calmness that contrasted with how frantic I was, he opened what I was wearing until he left me exposed. The cool morning air raised gooseflesh 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 ever to end, and I told him so with my body more than with words.

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

I unbuttoned his pants with clumsy fingers made urgent by desire. He let me, but immediately took me by the wrists, gently pulled my hands apart, and lowered his clothes enough to leave him hard, throbbing, in front of me. The sight left my mouth dry. He was thick and hot, the tip wet, tensing against the air. I took him in my hand and stroked him slowly, feeling his weight, his smooth skin, the shudder that traveled up his abdomen when I squeezed him exactly where it drove him wildest.

—Like that —he murmured, his eyes fixed on me—. Don’t let go yet.

—I don’t plan on letting go of anything —I replied, and he let out a brief laugh, broken by desire.

He leaned in to kiss me again, but this time he didn’t leave it at my mouth. He bit my chin, moved down my throat, and continued to the center of my breasts, sucking, licking, using his tongue with a filthy patience that left me wetter and wetter. I threaded my fingers through his hair, guiding him a little, seeking the warmth of his tongue and the exact pressure of his lips on my hardened nipples.

—Let’s go to the back —he murmured—. No one 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 belonged to us. I followed him without letting go, stumbling over my own desire, trying to pull his pants down as we walked.

His phone rang.

We both 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 escaped it. He answered reluctantly, said two short sentences, and promised to call back later. He hung up. And all it took was one more look at me for the moment to continue exactly as before, as if the call had never happened.

—Where were we? —he asked.

—Here —I said, and finished pulling his pants down.

He sprang free, firm and almost pointing at me. I stared at him for a second, caught between disbelief and desire in a way I don’t know how to describe properly. All I wanted was to have him in my hands. He leaned over, kissed me, licked the corner of my lips, then gently tugged my lower lip with his teeth and slipped his tongue into my mouth. I felt myself melt.

I began stroking him with my hand, slowly, looking for his rhythm. But he took control and continued touching himself while he kissed me, and seeing him like that, so completely in charge of his own pleasure, aroused me in a way I hadn’t expected. There was only one thought in my head, just one, beating like a drum: I wanted him inside me.

He knew it. That was why he touched me everywhere except where I needed him most. His hands on my hips, my waist, my ass, never even a little farther. He was deliberately leaving me wanting, and the worst part was that it worked. Every touch he avoided made me more impatient, wetter, more willing to do anything.

—You’re unfair —I said, almost voiceless.

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

I didn’t object. I let myself be carried along by the game, because deep down I enjoyed it as much as he did. I watched him touch himself and felt something tighten inside me, a string on the verge of breaking. I leaned in and began kissing his neck while my hand went looking for him again.

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

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

I took him all the way in. I had never felt anything like it, that weight, that closeness, his breathing changing above me. I moved forward and back, following the rhythm his hand set, and sometimes he went so deep that my breath caught. I didn’t care. I cared about him, and the way he repeated my name under his breath.

I lowered myself a little and continued carefully, always attentive to his hands. Every time I got it right, his fingers tightened briefly in my hair, and that small gesture served as 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 grow rigid and speed up. He was close.

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

Afterward he lifted me onto my knees, made me turn around, and pushed me with exactly the right amount of patience until I was braced against the cold wall. He lifted my skirt, yanked my underwear down, and ran two fingers through my wetness, checking with a crooked smile just how soaked I was. He made no comment; none was necessary. He spread me open with his hand and brushed my entrance with the tip of his cock, slowly and teasingly, as if he wanted to make me beg a little longer.

—Say it —he asked in my ear—. Tell me you want it.

—I want you inside me now —I blurted, because there was no way I could hold out any longer.

Then he penetrated me in one stroke, hard, filling me to the hilt. I moaned against the wall, pressing my forehead to the cold glass beside me, feeling him open me, stretch me, feeling every inch of him find its place inside me. He stayed still for barely a second, letting me feel all of him, and then began moving with dry, deep, precise thrusts that made my legs tremble.

—That’s it —he said, his voice deep—. That’s right. You take me so well.

I clung to his neck, his shoulders, anything that could hold me up, because every thrust tore a new sound from me. He fucked me without hurry and without mercy, pulling his cock out and driving it back in with a brutal cadence that left my head spinning. The wet sound of our bodies, the slap of his pelvis against my ass, my breath reduced to fragments—it all blended together in that small room as if nothing else existed.

I wanted to look at him, but he took me by the waist and made me arch farther. One hand stayed between my thighs, rubbing my clitoris with firm, precise pressure while he kept driving into me. The double impact undid me. I felt a current rising through my belly, higher and higher, more and more desperately.

—Look at me —he ordered.

I obeyed, turning my head slightly. His forehead was damp, his jaw tense, his lips parted, and that hungry expression made me burn inside. He was taking me to the edge with obscene ease.

—That’s it, fuck —he murmured—. I love the way you open up for me.

I kept trembling around him, squeezing him with every involuntary contraction, and he answered with a deeper, rougher thrust, until I completely lost my balance. My orgasm seized me all at once, hard, like a shock that left my throat open and my legs without strength. I kept feeling him moving inside me while I came, and that pushed him to the edge too.

He pulled out just enough, turned me around again, and made me lean over the low table beside us. He held my hip with one hand and with the other settled himself between my legs again, rubbing his cock against my wet sex, sliding through all the moisture we had left behind. He entered me again, deeper if that was possible, and began fucking me in that position with a wilder, more disorderly rhythm, because now he was no longer holding back. The sound of his hard slaps against my skin mingled with my muffled moans against the wood.

—I was waiting for you —I gasped—. I wanted you like this since last night.

—And I wanted you too —he answered through clenched teeth.

He grabbed my hair, not to dominate me but to force me to lift my face slightly while he kept thrusting into me. The sensation was unbearable and wonderful: his cock sliding in and out without pause, his firm hand on my head, my body shaken from within by a second rise beginning to build. I thought of nothing but the heat, the weight, the way he filled me with brutal precision.

I felt him tense again. This time he didn’t hold back. He gripped my hip harder, buried his cock to the hilt, and finished with a low growl, coming inside me in hot pulses. He filled me completely, and the sensation of his orgasm spilling inside me made me shudder again, more slowly, more deeply, until I was left empty and satisfied at the same time.

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

—I have to go upstairs —I said.

—I know —he answered for the third time, and kissed my 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 couldn’t understand, my mind somewhere else. Every time someone passed beside me, I was afraid they would be able to see on my face what I had done first thing that morning, in this very building, before any of them arrived.

The worst part was my body. I had been left halfway there, still burning without release, and that sensation stayed with me hour after hour like a low current that wouldn’t fade. I imagined what hadn’t happened. I imagined the other half of the story, the half the clock had stolen from us.

I came home with one thought.

As soon as I closed the door, I threw myself onto the bed without completely undressing. I started slowly, massaging my breasts, gently tugging my nipples, reclaiming with my fingers everything he had done to me that morning. Small sounds escaped my mouth, growing at the same pace as my desire.

I lowered one hand and touched myself first over my clothes, playing with myself the way he had played with me, deliberately leaving me wanting because now I understood why he did it. My other hand remained on my breasts. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I let one finger in, then two, and sped up while thinking of him—his voice, the way he held my hair, that look from above.

I touched 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, his name in my head and the certainty that Thursday had been nothing more than the beginning.

That night my phone sounded again. It was him.

—Well? —he wrote—. Were you left wanting?

I smiled in the darkness before answering. Our game had only just truly begun.