The AC Technician Left My House Cool and Me Burning

I’ve lived alone for four years, and that Saturday in February I had finally set myself the task of getting the place in order. I had boxes piled up in the hallway, winter clothes I wasn’t going to wear anymore, and a stack of papers waiting for a decision I’d been putting off for months. I’d opened the windows first thing in the morning, but the air came in hot and heavy, as if summer had been packed into its lungs.

By noon, the air-conditioning unit had started making a strange noise. First a click, then an odd hum, and finally a silence that, in my fourth-floor apartment with no cross-breeze, felt like a sentence. In fifteen minutes the house had turned into an oven.

I showered for the second time that morning, barely dried off, and looked up the number for the repair service the building concierge had recommended. They told me they were fully booked, that the earliest they could send someone was Monday. I can’t stand the heat. I pushed in that voice you use when you have no other choice, and after a while the guy in charge finally gave in.

—I’ll send the guy over now —he said—. But open up fast, he’s in a hurry.

—I’ll be waiting —I replied.

I hung up and stood in the middle of the living room, wrapped in a short cotton robe, with nothing underneath and my hair still wet. I thought about changing. I didn’t. Let him put up with a little, I’m putting up with it too.

The doorbell rang sooner than I expected.

I looked through the peephole out of habit and felt my heart drop into my stomach. The man on the other side of the landing wasn’t the round-bellied, mustached guy one imagines. He was a man in his early thirties, tall, with his work overalls open halfway down his chest and a toolbox in his hand. He had just enough of an untidy beard and clear eyes that were already laughing before I even opened the door.

—Good afternoon. I’m here about the air.

—Come in, come in —I said, holding the collar of my robe with a hand that had suddenly started trembling.

He came in. He smelled like clean sweat, something metallic, the street. I pointed him toward the living room, where the indoor unit was, and as I explained what was wrong I noticed his eyes weren’t looking at my face. They were looking at the robe, the opening in the robe, the thigh I, without even realizing it, kept exposing whenever I moved.

—It’s making a weird noise and then it stopped. I don’t understand any of this stuff.

—Don’t worry —he replied, not even moving toward the unit yet—. I’ll fix everything. You just keep doing your thing.

He said it slowly, emphasizing every word. And I, who hadn’t been looked at like that in months, felt a different heat from the one in the house rise up my legs, a heat that made my cunt wet without permission before he’d even taken two steps.

—I’m going to finish getting ready in the bathroom. If you need anything, let me know.

He smiled. He didn’t answer.

***

I closed the bathroom door and stood there for a second with my back against the wood. My heart was racing ridiculously fast. He’s just the technician, woman, don’t be dramatic. But I already knew he wasn’t just the technician. I’d known it from the peephole. I slid my hand under the robe and touched myself lightly: I was soaking wet, my fingers came away shining, and I brought them to my mouth before I even realized what I was doing.

I hadn’t even turned on the tap. I heard footsteps in the hallway, not the living room, and before I could react the door was pushed open a crack.

—May I?

I didn’t answer. No need. He nudged the door with one finger and came in as if he’d known the place his whole life. He’d taken off the overalls. He was wearing a white T-shirt hanging loose over his pants, and that expression of someone who knows perfectly well I’m not going to say no.

—I thought you might need help.

—With what? —I asked, and my voice came out rough.

—With whatever.

I laughed. A nervous, teenage laugh. He stepped closer, and then again, and before I could count to three he had me pinned against the bathroom wall, both hands on my waist and his forehead resting against mine.

—If you want me to leave, say the word and I’ll go.

—I don’t want you to leave. I want you to fuck me.

I said it. I don’t know where that voice came from, but I said it, and his eyes lit up like I’d given him permission for everything. The knot of my robe came undone on its own. Or he undid it, I don’t know. I know that suddenly his mouth was on mine and mine on his, and his beard was scraping my chin and jaw and neck. I know his hands were rough, callused at the fingers, and when they touched my bare waist I felt that roughness run through me like current. One of those hands rose to my breast and pinched my nipple without warning, and the other went straight down, no detours, and slipped between my legs.

—Fuck —he murmured against my neck, moving two fingers inside me—, you’re dripping.

—I’ve been like this since I saw you through the peephole —I replied, biting my lip so I wouldn’t moan too loudly.

His fingers went in and out with a wet sound that bounced off the bathroom tiles. His thumb found my clit and started circling slowly, with the precision of someone who knows exactly what he’s doing. I let him have all of me: my back against the wall, my legs apart, my arms hanging at my sides. When I felt I was about to come from that alone, I pulled them out of me abruptly.

—No —I panted—. Not like that.

—However you want it.

The white T-shirt ended up on the bathroom floor, then the pants, and the snug briefs he was wearing underneath came off with a tug that made me giggle foolishly. His hard cock sprang free, stiff against his stomach, thick and with the tip already shiny. My mouth flooded with saliva. I knelt without thinking, right there on the cold tiles, and took him in both hands.

—Wait —he started to say.

I didn’t wait. I took him into my mouth as far as I could fit and started sucking him slowly, tasting him, my tongue wrapped around the tip and my cheeks hollowed. He let out a long curse and put a hand on the back of my neck, not pushing, just holding, letting me do it. I sucked him all the way. I pulled back. I licked his balls, one and then the other, and then took him back to my throat until my eyes filled with tears and I had to pull away for air.

—Stand up —he said, his voice broken—, or I’m going to come in your mouth right now and we won’t get to anything else.

He lifted me up in his arms, both my legs around his waist, and carried me like that down the hall to the bedroom.

—Here? —he asked, without letting go.

—Here.

He set me down on the rumpled bed. I looked up at him from below, breath coming in short gasps, and in four years I had never felt so ridiculously exposed and so ridiculously able to ask for more.

I expected him to pounce. He didn’t. He stood there for a second at the foot of the bed, looking me over, as if he wanted to memorize the whole picture before touching me: legs spread, swollen glossy cunt, tits rising and falling with every breath. Then he leaned down and started with my face. He kissed my eyebrows, my still-wet eyelids, my cheeks, the pulse in my neck. Down over my collarbone, my sternum, the center of my chest. Every kiss was slow. Every kiss asked if I still wanted it, and every kiss I answered yes.

I grabbed his shoulders and dug my nails into him without meaning to. He let out a low laugh against my skin and kept going. His lips found one nipple and then the other, unhurried, alternating like someone who knows he has the whole afternoon ahead of him. He sucked me, nipped me lightly, tugged with his teeth until he made my back arch. I had no patience for that. I had no patience for anything at that moment.

—Please —I said, and hearing myself surprised me.

—Not yet.

He went a little lower, to my navel. He ran his tongue over it. He paused. He moved up along the inside of my right thigh and then the inside of my left, not touching the center, keeping me right on the edge without ever letting me cross the line. I was sweating again, but it wasn’t the heat from the house anymore. It was a different kind, one that came from inside and wasn’t going to be turned off by any machine. He pressed his nose to my cunt, inhaled deeply, and blew warm air over my clit without actually touching it.

—Asshole —I told him, laughing and crying at the same time.

—Patience.

When he finally lowered his mouth, he did it all the way. He opened my lips with two fingers and licked me from bottom to top, slowly, one long stroke that made me clamp my thighs around his head. He pried them open again with his hands, held me by the hips, and stayed there, sucking my clit, pushing his tongue in, pulling it out, sucking again. My vision blurred. I pulled his hair. I yelled who knows what. When I was just about ready, he lifted his head, wiped his beard with the back of his hand, and positioned himself between my legs.

—Now —he said.

—Now.

He drove into me in one thrust, all the way to the hilt, and I screamed for real. He settled in slowly, pulling out and sliding back in, both forearms beside my head and his eyes locked on mine, unblinking. Every thrust lifted through my belly, every thrust made me clamp my cunt around his cock, every thrust tore a gasp from me that he swallowed with his mouth. I clung to his back and asked him, mouth shut and with my whole body, not to stop. He didn’t. He sped up. He fucked me hard, rhythmically, his hips slamming into mine with a wet sound that echoed around the room. We found a rhythm that was neither his nor mine, it was both of ours, one that built itself and accelerated as if it knew what we needed before we did.

—Come —he whispered in my ear—, come on my cock.

I closed my eyes and let go before my time. I came with my legs locked around his ass, biting his shoulder, shuddering from the feet up. He stayed inside me until I stopped trembling, his cock buried to the hilt and throbbing, not coming yet.

—Stay like that —he murmured in my ear—. I’m going to fix your unit, in case it decides to charge you for the whole morning.

I laughed against his shoulder. I watched him stand up naked, still hard and shining with what had come out of me, cross the hallway, grab the toolbox as if nothing had happened, and disappear toward the living room.

***

I lay there on the bed, eyes still closed, listening to the metallic noises on the other side of the wall. A wrench against a casing. A screwdriver. His sigh when something gave him more trouble than expected. Through the half-open window came the sounds of the neighborhood: a motorbike, two girls laughing on the sidewalk, a shutter rolling up out of sync. I was floating, with our come dripping from between my thighs onto the sheet.

A quarter of an hour passed. Maybe twenty minutes. Suddenly, the AC started humming again, first hoarse and then steadier, and a few seconds later a cool draft began to drift into the room.

—It’s done! —he shouted from the living room—. Feel the cool air? Don’t move, I’ll be right back.

I didn’t move. Well, yes, I did. I stretched one hand to the bedside table, opened the drawer, and took out the bottle of oil I always keep there. I put a few drops on my neck, more on my wrists, more on the insides of my thighs, and a few on my nipples, which immediately hardened. The cool air was starting to glide over my skin and I got goosebumps all at once, I don’t know whether from the oil or from waiting.

He appeared in the bedroom doorway. His hands were smeared with something dark and he had the grin of a kid who’d just passed a hard exam. And his cock was already starting to rise again on its own the moment he saw me like that.

—Wash up —I told him—, and come back.

He came back. Slower this time, like someone who had deliberately taken his time in the bathroom. He got into bed on my left side, grabbed my waist, and dragged me toward him until my back was pressed against his chest. I felt his breath on the back of my neck, his beard against my shoulder, and his hard cock wedged between my ass cheeks.

—Now it’s my turn to go slow —he murmured.

He did. He kissed my shoulder, my shoulder blade, the upper part of my back. He brought one hand around to squeeze my tits, one after the other, playing with my oiled nipples until a moan slipped out of me. His other hand went down and slipped in between my legs from behind, pried my lips apart, and rubbed my clit with two wet fingers, very slowly, very calmly, while he pressed his cock against my ass without putting it in, just rubbing it up and down.

—Turn over —he asked.

I turned over slowly and he kissed my chest, my stomach, my hips. I put my hands in his hair and showed him the way. He let himself be guided as if there was nothing else in the world he wanted to do. When his mouth reached my center I arched all at once and a moan I didn’t know I had escaped from me.

It wasn’t fast. It was meticulous. He spread my legs with his shoulders, settled comfortably between my thighs, and licked me like I was his favorite food: sucking my clit, slipping two fingers inside me, pulling them out, replacing them with his tongue, going back to his fingers, curling them upward to touch me deep inside where no one had ever touched me so well. Every time I felt I was about to come, he’d lift his head for a second, look at me with his chin shining, and go back in. He did it twice, three times, until I couldn’t take it anymore and told him wordlessly, tugging his hair, to finish it.

—Come on my face —he murmured, his mouth pressed to my cunt—, I want to feel it.

I finished. A long orgasm shook through me, different from the first, one that left my legs trembling well after he’d come up to stay beside me with a soaked face and an unbearable smile.

Me, still without catching my breath, I returned the favor. I got on top, straddling his hips, and ran my tongue over his neck, his chest, his stomach. I went down to where I knew he was waiting and stayed there. I took him at the base, took him into my mouth, and started sucking him again, this time unhurried, setting the pace myself. I licked the head, took him down my throat, pulled off, ran my tongue under him. He put one hand on the back of my neck and the other on my cheek, watching me work, his breathing getting shorter and shorter.

—I’m going to come —he warned me in time.

I didn’t move away. Quite the opposite: I tightened my lips, sped up, sucked harder, and he, without warning too, finished with one hand tangled in my hair and a name that wasn’t mine on his lips. My mouth filled with a hot, thick stream, with a salty taste I swallowed whole, and I still had enough left to suck the tip clean to the very last drop. I didn’t care that he said another name. In that house, that afternoon, names were useless.

***

We showered together. The water came out cool and we laughed under the spray for a while, like two kids who didn’t know each other. He soaped my back, my ass, between my legs, and I did the same for him, with no mischief, more like someone properly closing a chapter. I lent him a towel. He got dressed in the hallway while I combed my hair in front of the bathroom mirror and watched him out of the corner of my eye, still unable to quite believe everything that had just happened.

—I’ll sign the paper —I said when he was done.

—And I’ll leave you the warranty. In case it breaks down again.

He handed me the pen. I signed the delivery slip. He tucked it into the pocket of his overalls, pulled his shoulders back to straighten them, and when he was already at the door, he turned around.

—If it starts making noise again, call the workshop directly. And ask for Adrián.

—Adrián —I repeated, so I wouldn’t forget it.

He gave me one last kiss, a long, unhurried one, in the doorway, and on his way out he slipped his hand under my robe and squeezed my cunt one final time, like a signature. I closed the door. I stayed leaning against it for a while, my forehead against the wood, listening to the soft, steady hum of the air conditioner at the far end of the hallway. The house was cool at last. I wasn’t.

I went back to bed. I lay down on the rumpled sheet, still carrying his smell on my skin and with his come still dripping inside me, and I closed my eyes.

Months have passed. The AC still works. And every time I hear it start up in the late afternoon, I remember that Saturday in February and tell myself, in a low voice, that one of these days I’ll have to call the workshop and ask for Adrián again. Even if it isn’t making a sound.