That Night in February I Can’t Forget

It was exactly a year ago. February fourteenth of that winter that I still remember with a strange mix of confusion and that heat I’m not quite sure where to put. I’d been going out with Cristóbal for six months, and that night we decided to celebrate at home with a dinner I prepared with my mom.

He’d given me a silver necklace with a heart-shaped pendant, simple but lovely. I gave him a dress shirt and a brown leather wallet, because he always dressed very neatly for his office job. We were happy, in that sweet spot of dating where everything still seems to be in its place.

After dinner, my uncles left and my mom went to bed early. Cristóbal and I went out for a walk around the neighborhood, like we often did. It was one of those cool February nights when the cold doesn’t bother you, it just gives you a reason to press close to someone. I held him on the sidewalk in front of my house, my head resting on his chest, and he stroked my back with that slow, distracted way that always felt good to me. His hands slid down to my hips. He pulled me against him. I felt his heat and pressed closer, and we both knew the night still had plenty to offer.

***

That’s when we heard the noise.

A squeal of tires and the sharp bang of doors flying open, a few feet from us. Before I could understand what was happening, two men were already on top of Cristóbal, shoving him to the ground. I felt a huge hand cover my mouth before I could scream, and another seize my arm with a grip that left no room to resist. They dragged me toward a white van with the engine running. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two others lift Cristóbal and shove him in through the side door.

I was crying. Begging them to let me go, to tell me what they wanted, not to hurt me. No one answered. The door slammed shut and the van took off.

For what I couldn’t measure, the vehicle moved through streets I didn’t recognize. I kept crying silently, my back against the metal wall at the rear, staring at the men around me. They were young, all about my age. One of them met my gaze without any expression. Another took out his phone and put it away again without unlocking it. No one spoke.

Cristóbal was sitting farther up, slumped against a seat, eyes open and staring at the floor.

***

The van stopped somewhere dark. The only light was a distant streetlamp slipping through the back window and painting everything a pale orange.

—Take your clothes off —said a voice from the passenger seat. It was calm, almost polite, which made it more unsettling than if he had shouted. The man who’d spoken turned to look at me: dark-skinned, broad-shouldered, about twenty-four. —You can do this the hard way or you can cooperate. Your choice.

I looked at Cristóbal. He wasn’t looking at me.

There are six of them against me. The driver isn’t going to help me. Nobody knows where I am.

I started undressing.

***

The one who seemed to be in charge got out of the front seat and knelt in front of me. He let me finish without rushing me. When I was completely naked, he ran his hands down my sides calmly, without roughness, as if he had all the time in the world. He pinched my nipples between thumb and forefinger, very slowly, until they hardened and he drew a short moan out of me that I couldn’t hold back.

—Very pretty —he murmured. And then, closer to my ear: —I promise I’m not going to hurt you. You’re going to end up soaking my cock, you’ll see.

I lay back against my clothes. He unzipped his pants unhurriedly and pulled out a thick cock, half-hard, which finished hardening while he looked me over. He bent down and spread my legs with both hands, not violently, almost curiously. He ran his tongue over my cunt from bottom to top, once, long, pressing the tip against the clit at the end. I jolted all over and covered my face with my arm.

—Look at me —he said. I obeyed.

He went back to licking me, this time with more eagerness, sliding his tongue between my lips, up to my clit and trapping it between his lips to tug gently. I grabbed his hair without thinking. He laughed against my cunt and the hot breath made my thighs tremble. He slid two fingers inside and curled them, searching with the pad of his finger, and when he found it I knew he had because I let out a long gasp and my body arched on its own.

—You’re already soaking —he said under his breath, almost to himself. He pulled out his shining fingers and ran them over my lower lip. —Suck.

I sucked them. They were salty and they smelled like me. He watched me do it with a tiny smile and then settled between my legs and pressed the head of his cock to my entrance, not pushing in yet. He rubbed it up and down, over my clit, over my lips, until it was covered in my own wetness. When he finally pushed, he slid all the way in at once, to the hilt, and I opened my mouth without making a sound.

He was big and he moved with confidence, without rushing. He drove all the way in and came nearly all the way out, then sank back in slowly, watching my face each time the tip reached deep inside me. It wasn’t what I would have imagined if someone had told me this was going to happen beforehand. It was, strangely, methodical. He lifted one leg and put it over his shoulder and from that angle he started fucking me harder, his pubic bone hitting my clit with every thrust. I had my eyes closed again and tried to keep my mind somewhere else, but the body has its own logic, one it doesn’t consult before acting. A moan slipped out. Then another. Then I stopped counting.

—Just like that, just like that —he murmured, breathing hard—. Squeeze that pussy, come on.

When he came, he pulled out at the last second and dumped it outside, over my hips and my stomach, in three hot, thick spurts that reached my navel. He held his cock in his hand for a second, shaking the last drops onto my skin, then rolled to the side and stayed silent for a few seconds.

The others watched from the shadows in back. One of them was rubbing himself over his pants without bothering to hide it.

***

The next one said I was the first woman he’d ever been with. He said it with a honesty that disarmed me, almost embarrassed, with trembling hands and wide eyes. He was skinny, with a jaw clenched tight from nerves. He pulled his pants down to his knees awkwardly and stayed there, kneeling, with his cock up and not knowing what to do with it.

I took his hand and brought it to my breast. Then I grabbed his cock with the other hand and guided him myself to my cunt, still smeared with the previous man’s come. He went in all at once, by accident, and a sharp gasp escaped him. He gave three or four frantic thrusts and came inside, eyes squeezed shut, face buried in my neck. He finished quickly and then just stared at me afterward, not knowing what to do with his hands or his gaze. I gave him a short kiss on the cheek, I’m not even sure why. He blushed even more and pulled away.

Then the others came, one by one.

Not all of them were the same. One put me face down, lifted my hips and fucked me from behind, grabbing my hair, fucking me hard while my cheek pressed against my clothes and I felt my tits bounce against the cold floor of the van. That one asked me to say things, and I said them because by then I no longer gave a damn about opening my mouth. I told him to shove it all the way in, to fill me, that I was a whore. He ended up grunting, squeezing my ass with both hands, emptying himself inside with three hard jolts.

Another one made me suck him first. He grabbed my head and pushed himself in slowly, all the way to the back, and I had to breathe through my nose when the tip hit my throat. I sucked his cock completely, my tongue pressed underneath, looking up at him from below. When he got fully hard he laid me on my back and shoved in without saying a word, fucking me in silence, his eyes fixed on my tits moving with every thrust. He came on my face and I closed my eyes just in time. I felt the warm semen spill onto my eyelids, my nose, a little on my lips.

One kissed me on the mouth in a way I hadn’t expected, slow and with something like tenderness, and that was more unsettling than anything else that night. He fucked me slowly, stuck to my mouth the whole time, moving my hips with his hands. He licked my nipples one by one, barely biting them. When he was about to come he asked me where, and I told him inside. He came inside with a long groan, and held me against his chest for a few seconds as if we were somewhere else.

Another whispered in my ear while he did it, and what he said wasn’t obscene but almost kind, which was even harder to process when you’re trying to stay detached from what’s happening. He fucked me sitting down, with my legs spread over his, and he moved me with his hands on my waist, lifting me up and down on his cock while he whispered that I was beautiful, to relax, that he had me. He came inside, pushing me hard against his chest, his mouth on my neck.

By the time the last one came, I wasn’t trying to think about anything else anymore. I was simply present. My cunt was swollen and burning, three or four loads running down my thighs, my skin sticky with sweat and other men’s come. My body had made its own decisions a long time ago, and I had stopped fighting it. The last one fucked me fast, almost like it was just routine, and came outside, over my tits.

Cristóbal was still in the same seat. He still wouldn’t look at me.

I wondered whether he cared about any of it. I decided I’d ask myself later, when I could think clearly.

***

The one in charge came back when I thought it was over.

He made me turn onto my side and settled behind me, pressed against my back. He started at the nape of my neck, with his mouth, and went down very slowly: shoulders, spine, waist. He bit my shoulder without force, just enough to mark me, and slid his hand around to the front to grab one breast and squeeze it while he kept kissing my back. His lips reached my ass and he took his time there in a way I hadn’t expected. He spread my cheeks with both hands and used his tongue with painstaking care, exploring my whole ass, sucking, pressing the tip against my asshole and then moving down to my cunt, and the combination of that patience and that precision made me have to bite my lip to keep from making noise in front of everyone.

Then he went lower still. He drove his tongue into my cunt from behind, pushing in as far as it would go, and with two fingers he started rubbing my clit at the same time, in slow circles that gradually sped up.

No one had ever touched me like that before. What I felt was so new and so intense that I clutched the floor with both hands and let out a sound that surprised even me. It was the first orgasm of the night and it caught me off guard, a long spasm that made me close my legs over his face without meaning to. He didn’t stop. He kept sucking and touching while I shook, until the second one came almost as soon as the first had ended, shorter but sharper, and that was when I really heard myself moan loudly, shamelessly, and I didn’t care.

When he finally tried it from behind, he spat on my asshole first and rubbed the tip there, pushing in little by little. The pain came first, sharp and direct. I asked him to stop. He slowed down but didn’t stop, and kept working it into me millimeter by millimeter, very slowly, while he reached around and touched my clit again with two wet fingers. There were several minutes in which the burn and a sensation I couldn’t name coexisted without me being able to separate them completely. When he was all the way inside he stayed still, breathing in my ear, waiting for me to get used to it. Then he started moving, short and slow, and the fingers kept working my clit without stopping. At some point the burn became something else and I found myself pushing my hips back on my own. He let out a short laugh against my neck. He came inside my ass, holding me against him, and bit my shoulder when he did. When he finished and pulled out, I felt the hot come dripping out and I stayed still on the floor, looking at the van’s ceiling, not wanting to move yet.

By then, the others had already gotten out of the vehicle in silence. Only Cristóbal, the driver, and I were left.

***

Cristóbal slowly got up from his seat. He looked at me for a second, opened his mouth and closed it again without saying anything. Then he opened the side door and got out. I heard his footsteps on the asphalt for a few seconds. Then nothing.

The driver took a while to turn around. He was a man about fifty, with a face lined by wrinkles and a look that held no threat at all. He spoke in a very low voice.

—Do you let me? —he asked. That was all.

I don’t know why I said yes. Maybe because after everything that had happened, that calm request felt almost harmless. Maybe because my body was still lit up and my head still hadn’t found a way to shut it down.

He wasn’t like the younger men. He climbed down to the back of the van, took off his clothes unhurriedly, and lay down beside me. His body was tired but his cock was hard, thick, veins standing out. He ran a big, callused hand over my face, moving my hair aside, and kissed me on the mouth with a calm that didn’t fit anything that had happened before. He spoke to me in a low voice while he caressed me, not with dirty words but asking whether I was okay, whether I wanted him to stop, whether anything hurt. He was the only one who did.

I told him it didn’t hurt. He caressed my breasts with both hands, very slowly, and sucked my nipples one by one, taking his time with each one. Then he went down to lick my cunt, and there, with the tongue of a man who knew how to use it, I felt my body open again. He licked my clit slowly, with his whole mouth, and slid in one thick finger that curled upward without stopping sucking. I grabbed his head with both hands and started moving my hips against his face, without thinking. I came like that, against his mouth, in a long orgasm that made my toes curl and my eyes clamp shut hard.

Then he asked permission again, with his eyes, and I nodded. He settled on top, spread my legs and slid into me slowly, all the way, watching my face the whole time. He moved in me slowly, very deep, grinding me against the floor with the weight of his whole body. I wrapped my legs around his waist and squeezed. When I felt him harden more, when I knew he was about to come, I told him to pull out, that I wanted something else. He came out without arguing, gasping hard.

I knelt and made him come in my mouth. I took the base of his cock in one hand and stroked his balls with the other, and sucked the tip with my tongue while looking him in the eyes. He didn’t expect it, and it took him a moment to react. When he came, he did it with a long groan, and filled my mouth with warm, thick semen that I swallowed without pulling away. He shook the last drops onto my lips and I cleaned them off with my tongue.

He kept looking at me for a while, with an expression I couldn’t read, and then ran his hand over my cheek.

After that he helped me find my clothes among the folds in the van’s floor and waited in silence while I got dressed.

—Do you know how to get home from here? —he asked.

—Yes.

He opened the door and pointed me in the direction with a nod of his head.

***

I walked alone for about six or seven blocks. February’s cold slowly cleared my head. The streets were empty, with that particular stillness of winter dawn. When I got home, I slipped in quietly so I wouldn’t wake my mom and went straight to the shower. I stayed under the hot water for a long time, not thinking about anything specific, letting the steam fill the bathroom while the other men’s come ran between my legs along with the water.

I never called the police. I never spoke to Cristóbal after that night: he never called me either, and I never felt like explaining anything to someone who had preferred to stare at the floor through everything that happened. What we had ended there, in that seat at the back of a van, without needing to be said aloud.

***

Twelve months have passed. Sometimes I think about that night when I least expect it: at work, in the shower, just before falling asleep. I don’t think about the fear, which was there too and was real. I don’t think about the pain, which was also real. I think about the one in charge, with his calm voice and his hands that knew exactly what they were doing, about how he made me come twice with his mouth before he fucked me from behind. I think about the driver and how he was the only one who asked if I was okay, and about the taste of his come on my tongue.

I wonder what that says about me. I don’t have a clear answer, and long ago I stopped looking for one.

What I do know is that since that February night I understood something I didn’t know before: that the body and the head don’t always read the same book, and that sometimes that difference is the only thing left when everything else is erased.