The Couple We Picked Up on the Way Back

Marcelo and Damián had been on the road for six hours. They had closed the deal that morning: a plot on the outskirts of Villanueva del Cerro, enough to set up the distribution warehouse they needed in that area. One hundred and fifty kilometers to go, the sun already slanting low, and both of them with the quiet satisfaction of men who have done good business.

—Well done. Though I’ll be fucked if I’m not sick of the road already —Marcelo said from behind the wheel of the BMW X5. He was a man who commanded attention by size alone: six foot three, broad neck, dark hair graying at the temples, and a trimmed goatee he had kept since he was forty. At fifty-two he still had the torso of someone who hauled things by hand and liked doing it.

—We can stop and grab something to eat. I’ve been empty since breakfast —said Damián from the passenger seat. He was Marcelo’s opposite in almost everything: short, thin, angular face, and a receding hairline he wore without complaint.

—There’s a beach bar near the coast. They say the lobster’s not bad.

—Then that’s that.

They ate well. Lobster with white wine, dessert and coffee, and two twenty-year-old whiskies that more than justified the stop. They went for a walk by the water to let the food settle, lit a cigarette each, and that was when they heard them.

It was music from a portable speaker, the kind of reggaeton that pushes the lyrics right to the edge of what can be broadcast. They were sitting in the sand, beside their backpacks. She was red-haired, with freckles on her shoulders and a denim miniskirt over a pair of slim legs. She wore a white T-shirt with no bra, and in the backlight of the afternoon that showed perfectly: two outlined nipples, small and pointing forward. Eyebrow piercing, tattoos on her forearms. He looked younger than he was from a distance: hair tied up in a bun, big earrings, black-painted nails, Bermuda shorts and a sleeveless shirt. They had to be well into their twenties, at least.

When they saw them coming closer, the girl stood up and started dancing. It wasn’t for them, or at least she pretended it wasn’t. But it was for them. She turned her back, bent her knees, and began moving her hips with a steady rhythm that showed the edge of a red thong between the waist of the miniskirt and the curve of her ass.

—What a girl —murmured Damián—. And what an ass, the fucking bitch.

Marcelo was already walking over.

—How’s it going, kids? Got a lighter?

The boy handed them a lighter. When Marcelo gave it back, he noticed the tattoos on the boy’s forearms: crossed geometric lines with small flowers, the same style as hers. They looked like they’d been done by the same person.

—You had good rhythm there —he told the girl when she stopped moving.

—I like moving —she replied with a smile that was anything but innocent.

—Are you on holiday?

—We were working in the area, but the season’s over. We want to get to Peñagrande, which is eighty kilometers away. The problem is we can’t make the bus.

Marcelo looked at Damián. Damián nodded slightly, a nod that could have meant several different things, all of them in the same direction.

—Get in.

***

She got in front, in the passenger seat. He sat behind, next to Damián. The girl’s name was Luna. The boy was Mateo.

Within twenty minutes they had already smoked what Mateo called “something for the road,” which smelled good and hit even better. Marcelo drove with one hand, the other on the armrest. Luna had plugged her flash drive into the radio and turned the volume up. Reggaeton filled the cabin with a rhythmic insistence that got under your skin if you didn’t avoid it. And nobody was avoiding it.

The mood changed gradually, as it tends to when there’s a closed space, music, smoke, and people with nothing to lose that afternoon.

Luna was moving in her seat, a slight sway of the shoulders that kept slipping lower. Marcelo noticed without looking straight at her. He also noticed that she wasn’t looking fully forward. It was a kind of sideways, peripheral attention that pretended not to be attention.

In the back, Damián had said something in Mateo’s ear. Marcelo didn’t hear what. What he did hear was Mateo’s answer: a sound somewhere between yes and ah that didn’t need any more translation.

Marcelo glanced in the rearview mirror.

Damián’s hand was on Mateo’s thigh, right where the Bermudas ended, and his fingers were slowly climbing beneath the fabric. Mateo hadn’t pulled him away. On the contrary, he had his head slightly inclined toward him, eyes narrowed with the expression of someone who had already decided. A moment later Damián unbuttoned the boy’s shorts and slid his hand inside. Mateo spread his knees to make room and let out a short sigh when the other man’s fingers closed around his already hard cock.

—They’re getting on with it back there —Luna said without turning around, eyes fixed on the road and a smile that showed no surprise.

—My partner is very direct when he wants something —said Marcelo.

—I can see that. And you two are both wearing rings.

—Sharp eye.

—It’s not that hard to see. Do they know what you do when you go away on business?

Marcelo didn’t answer right away. In the rearview mirror, Damián was no longer sitting in his seat: he had leaned over Mateo’s lap, the boy’s shorts pulled down to his ankles, his hard cock fully out, pointing toward the roof, thin and clearly defined. Damián took it into his mouth without ceremony. Marcelo heard the wet click when his tongue circled the head and the moan that escaped Mateo through clenched teeth. The boy threw his head back against the headrest, grabbed Damián’s hair with one hand, and started guiding his nape with a slow rhythm, pushing his mouth down every time Damián came up.

—Did you work in hotel areas for a long time? —Marcelo asked, changing tack.

—A long season, yes. Why?

—Nothing. You can tell you’ve got experience with people.

She laughed. It wasn’t an uncomfortable laugh.

—I worked bars for almost two years. Every night was different. You know how that usually ends.

—I can imagine.

—And you? You look like the kind who doesn’t go without when you travel.

—I don’t usually complain about the trip, no.

—What would it cost me to get to Peñagrande?

—Depends what you’re willing to pay at the toll.

Luna turned for the first time to look him straight in the face. She had light eyes, with lashes darkened by mascara, and the expression of someone who keeps perfect count of everything. Without taking her eyes off him, she slid a hand to her thigh and hiked the miniskirt up to her hip, revealing the red thong pressed tight against her pussy. She slipped her fingers under the fabric, rubbed herself slowly, then pulled them out and passed them over her lips, glossy with wetness.

—That sounds like a negotiation.

—I’m a businessman. It’s what I do.

In the back, the noises had grown more intense. Damián was sucking in a steady rhythm, his throat wide open to the base, and Mateo had started fucking his mouth without concealment, with short hip thrusts that made Damián let out guttural sounds every time the cock hit the back of his throat. You could hear the saliva, you could hear the breathing, you could hear Mateo’s hand gripping the base of his own cock so he wouldn’t come yet.

—Hold on, for fuck’s sake —Damián growled, pulling his mouth back for a second, chin shining—. When you stop the car I’ll fuck you.

—Yeah, yeah, fuck, yeah… —Mateo answered, shoving his head downward again.

Luna laughed softly and kept touching herself without looking away from Marcelo.

***

They pulled over on a secondary road, behind some bushes, when the gasping from the back seat became too obvious to pretend they couldn’t hear it. Damián and Mateo got out. They lit a cigarette together. Their clothes were partly straightened, but their hair was messed up, their mouths swollen, and they had the eyes of people who have just been through something worth doing and know exactly how they’re going to continue.

Marcelo switched off the engine and climbed out slowly. Luna followed him.

He lit a cigarette for her. She accepted it. They looked at each other in silence for a few seconds, the kind of silence that has already said everything there is to say.

He kissed her without urgency, like someone who knows he has time. He pushed his tongue all the way into her mouth and she sucked it like she was already sucking something else. She put her hands on his chest and didn’t push him away. Marcelo grabbed her ass with both hands beneath the miniskirt and squeezed with open palms, sinking his fingers into the flesh. He found the thong string with his thumb and slid it aside, slipping his hand in until his middle finger ran through the slit of her pussy. She was wet, slick, and opened on its own when he pushed a little. He slid in the whole finger. Luna moaned into his mouth without breaking away.

—Out here —she said, looking around when she could breathe again.

—Do you mind?

—Not at all.

Behind them, Damián and Mateo were walking slowly among the brush, smoking, their heads close together. Damián had slipped his hand inside Mateo’s pants from behind and Mateo had a faraway look and a silly smile.

—Your girl’s about to go down —Damián told Marcelo as he passed.

—I’m already taking care of it.

***

Marcelo pulled his pants down and folded them over the hood. His cock was already hanging thick at half-mast, dark, veins standing out, the size you’d expect from a man six foot three. Luna looked him over slowly, from top to bottom, with a calculated expression that ended in one raised eyebrow.

—Fuck —she said—. That’s some tool you’re carrying.

—Take your clothes off —he said—. I want to see you first.

Luna slid off the hood where she had sat. She yanked off her T-shirt. No bra, as had already been clear from the beach bar. Her breasts were small, with dark nipples hardened by the evening air. Tattooed in the center of her chest was a bird in flight. She unfastened the side button of her miniskirt and let it fall to the ground. She was left only in the red thong. On her left groin, a tiny rabbit. She hooked her thumbs into the thong and pulled it down to her ankles, first one foot, then the other. Her pussy had been shaved leaving only a reddish strip above, and her lips were already swollen and glossy from everything she had built up since the car. On one ass cheek, as she turned to place the thong on the hood, a heart the size of a thumb.

Marcelo watched her without hurry, the way you watch something before deciding how to use it. He took his cock in his hand and jerked it slowly, letting her see him finish hardening.

—Good.

She knelt in the grass without being asked. She grabbed his cock with both hands, pulled it away from his belly, and dragged her tongue from his balls to the head in one slow, flat lick. Marcelo let the air out through his nose. Luna wrapped her lips around it and started taking it down, unhurried, centimeter by centimeter, until she gagged and had to pull back for a second. She tried again. This time she got farther. The third time she swallowed almost all of it and stayed there for a moment with her nose pressed to his pubic mound and tears in her eyes.

—Fuck, girl —Marcelo murmured.

She came up slowly, sucking, leaving a thread of saliva from the head to her lower lip. She spat on it and took it back in. She sucked it with a concentration that was more disturbing than any technical skill: looking at him, working the underside with her tongue, pulling back to lick his balls one by one, taking them fully into her mouth, then going back for the tip and sucking with sunken cheeks until his thighs tensed. At one point she looked up at him from below, eyes wide and mouth still full, and he felt that look was also a question he had no intention of answering out loud.

—Get up —he said when he no longer wanted to wait—. If you keep that up I’m going to come all over your face, and I don’t want to yet.

Luna wiped her chin with the back of her hand and stood.

He pressed her against the side of the BMW. He spread her legs with his knee, turned her around and bent her forward until she was bracing her palms on the roof and sticking her ass out. He ran a hand through her slit, opened her with his thumbs, and drove two fingers into her pussy to the knuckle. Luna closed her eyes and moaned loudly. He pulled them out, licked them, and slid them back in, this time putting his thumb in her asshole too and searching for the spot with the pad of his finger inside.

—Fuck, yes… —she gasped, pressing her forehead to the glass.

She reached through the half-open window to open the glove compartment. He took out a condom. He put it on himself, pulling the rubber down to the base, and got back behind her.

—You go first —she said.

—That’s what I’m doing.

He rubbed himself along the lips of her pussy a couple of times, wetting the head well in her juices, then squeezed and went in. Slowly the first time, so Luna’s body would take him properly. Even so she arched her back and let out a long gasp through clenched teeth when his cock passed halfway. Marcelo stayed still for a moment with his hips pressed to her ass, letting her get used to it. She laid her forehead against the tinted glass and exhaled slowly, a long sound that wasn’t surprise but confirmation. Then she looked back over her shoulder.

—You can go on.

And then he could.

He grabbed her hips with both hands and started fucking her with the method of men who have spent years doing something and no longer need to prove it: steady rhythm, calculated pauses, just the right pressure at just the right moment. He pulled his cock nearly all the way out and drove it back in with a thrust that made Luna give a short grunt each time. You could hear the slap of skin against skin, wet and dull, and the BMW’s shock absorbers trembling in time with it. Luna pressed her fingers to the roof of the car and didn’t say much, only the occasional short, precise sound that indicated exactly what was happening.

—Harder? —Marcelo asked.

—More.

He slid one hand around the front and hooked a breast, pinching the nipple between two fingers as he sped up. The other hand went to her nape and grabbed a fistful of hair, pulling back until she was forced to arch. In that position the thrusts went deeper and Luna started gasping out broken “yes, yes, yes” that snapped at the end of each shove. Marcelo pulled back for a moment, spun her around in one yank, sat her back down on the hood, and lifted her legs over his shoulder. He drove his cock back in with a single thrust and kept fucking her, now looking at her face. Luna brought her fingers to her pussy and started rubbing her clit with the circle of two fingers while he pumped into her, gritting her teeth, her brows drawn together.

—I’m gonna come —she said barely—. Fuck, I’m gonna come, don’t stop, there, there, there…

Marcelo kept the rhythm, a little faster, without changing the angle. Luna bent backward and let out a long cry, and he felt the walls of her pussy closing around his cock in waves, squeezing him, milking him.

—Good girl —murmured Marcelo, and kept going.

***

They didn’t hear him come up. The sound of the old tractor’s engine caught them in full swing, with Luna once again bent over and her hands braced on the BMW’s roof and Marcelo thrusting from behind with the same methodical concentration he applied to anything he cared about. The tractor stopped about twenty-five meters away. The driver —a man of about fifty, canvas cap, prominent belly, and a face weathered by years of sun—cut the engine and stayed seated, watching without getting down.

—Need anything? —he asked after a moment, with the voice of a man hoping the answer would be no.

Marcelo didn’t stop. He just glanced over without pulling out and without changing the rhythm of his hips.

—We’re fine. Just stopped for a moment.

The man climbed down from the tractor. He came over at a slow pace, hands in the pockets of his work overalls, looking at the BMW with a mix of respect and curiosity he made no attempt to hide.

—Good car to stop on a dirt road —he observed.

—It does everything —Marcelo replied, driving in again all the way to the hilt. Luna let out a grunt through her teeth.

The man stood a few meters away, eyes fixed on the scene: Luna’s white ass, her nipples outlined against the glass, Marcelo’s cock sliding in and out, gleaming between her thighs. Luna had stopped paying him any attention: her eyes were closed and her fingers were white from gripping the edge of the roof. Damián and Mateo, sitting on a stone about thirty meters away, smoked in silence and glanced over from time to time without standing up. Damián had his hand inside Mateo’s shorts and was working him lazily, like a man finishing something he had started long ago.

The tractor driver slipped a hand into the pocket of his overalls and stood still, feet planted in the dry earth, chin forward. The shape showing in his overalls at the fly wasn’t trying to hide either.

—The gentleman’s got some energy —he muttered almost to himself.

No one answered him.

Marcelo picked up the pace. He dug his fingers into Luna’s hips with both hands and drove into her with short, hard thrusts, letting the hood creak with the rocking. He felt the cramp at the base of his cock and the hot rise up the shaft.

—Out, out —Luna managed to say—. On my back.

When Marcelo finished, he did it outside, just as Luna had asked from the start. He pulled out at the last second, tore the condom off with a yank, and came in thick spurts over her freckled back, from her shoulder blades down to the cleft of her ass. Three, four, five thick, long bursts, dripping down her skin. Luna moaned with her cheek pressed to the glass and wriggled a little to receive them. She wiped her back and buttocks with the red thong she had picked up from the car floor, soaking it in semen, and tossed it onto the passenger seat through the open window. The man from the tractor was already walking away, wiping one hand on his overalls as he climbed back up into the seat.

—When you leave, don’t drive over the field. It was planted recently —he said without turning around.

—Don’t worry —Marcelo replied, and pulled his pants up.

***

TWO DAYS LATER

The premium vehicle cleaning service was in a well-organized industrial estate. It smelled of soap, citrus air freshener, and the specific product they use when they have to treat upholstery that goes beyond dust and crumbs.

The woman who came in didn’t have the kind of look people associate with waiting. She was around fifty, wearing a long cashmere coat, leather handbag, and sunglasses even though it was cloudy. Fresh from the hairdresser, with her dark hair neatly done and the right amount of jewelry.

—I’ve come to pick up my husband’s BMW X5. Marcelo Saavedra. He says he’s got a stomach cramp and asked me to come by.

The receptionist wrote down the name, searched the system, and went out to notify the manager. The manager took a moment to appear. He came in with the invoice in his hand and the expression of someone who had chosen his words carefully.

—That’ll be three hundred and twenty euros, madam.

The woman looked at him over her glasses.

—Isn’t that a bit excessive?

The manager cleared his throat.

—We had to treat the entire upholstery with specialized product. There were stains on the back seats, on the gear shift, and on part of the passenger roof lining. The smell required full ozone treatment. —He paused—. We haven’t opened the glove compartment; that’s at your discretion.

The lady said nothing. She took out her card and paid without further comment.

—We’ve left a bag with a garment we found on the vehicle floor.

She took the bag. She opened it in the parking lot, alone, beside the freshly cleaned BMW gleaming under the gray afternoon sun. Inside was a red thong, small, with lace along the edges and stains that left no room for interpretation.

She closed it. Put it in her handbag. Started the car.

For the entire drive home, she didn’t say a single word. Neither was it necessary.