The First Time I Gave Myself Completely to Tomás

I’m going to tell this the way I lived it, without dressing it up. That afternoon, in Tomás’s room, I felt something new run through my body at the exact moment he started to enter me. It wasn’t just pleasure. It was a mix of fear, desire, and a knot in my chest I didn’t know how to name. My whole body tensed and I clung to his back with both hands.

—Ah! —slipped out of me.

—Am I hurting you? —he asked, stopping, his voice breaking with nerves too.

—Keep going —I asked him. I didn’t want to think. I only wanted to keep going.

A little while earlier, while I let him undress me, I couldn’t bring myself to look at his erection. I knew that if I saw it, I’d be even more afraid than I already was, and then I wouldn’t part my legs. I didn’t even touch it. I let him take off my T-shirt, my bra, felt his hands and his kisses on my breasts. It wasn’t the first time he’d stroked them, but it was the first time they were completely bare for him, with no fabric between us, no excuse of a dark movie theater.

I let him push me slowly toward the bed and, trembling, I helped him lower my underwear. That same morning I’d taken care with myself, leaving just a shadow of hair, as if my body knew what was going to happen before my mind did.

Then I felt his fingers.

I was soaked, and I could feel it coming out of me, that warm wetness that made me embarrassed and, at the same time, gave me away. I settled my knees a little wider to offer myself more, letting him do whatever he wanted. I knew I was going to like it.

That’s his tongue.

I thought it with absurd clarity, as if I needed to confirm it to myself. I didn’t have to guess where his mouth was: the touch on my clit was so precise that it stole my breath. It was like a jolt. My body jerked on its own and the orgasm hit hard, without warning.

—Tomás… —I managed to say.

He didn’t answer. To do that, he would have had to stop licking me, and he didn’t. He kept going until I stopped trembling.

Then he sat up. Impatient, with his hands a little clumsy from desire, he positioned himself over me.

—Shall we go on? —he asked.

I wanted to cover myself, to run away and, at the same time, to give myself for the first time to the person I loved so much. I murmured in a voice I didn’t recognize as my own:

—Come on.

I watched him put on a condom with nervous fingers. He settled back over me, placed the head at my entrance, and began to push, very slowly. It was new for both of us. He could feel how my body yielded to his pressure; I could feel that hardness making its way inside me, slow, patient.

We both felt a stop.

We looked into each other’s eyes. He was asking permission without speaking. I hesitated, frightened, but in his gaze I found so much love that I nodded. The barrier gave way and a brief, sharp pain came with it, making me complain. And right away, mixed with that pain, came the pleasure: his body inside mine, the pleasure of giving myself whole to the person I wanted.

—Kiss me! —I asked him.

But what I felt between my legs was so much that I barely answered him with my mouth. Tomás, who had stopped when he heard me complain, slowly took up the movement of his hips again. We were both gasping. The sound of our breathing seemed like music; the sway of our bodies, a kind of dance we hadn’t rehearsed and were somehow doing anyway.

A few minutes later my body shook with pleasure again. Almost at the same time I felt him tense, vibrate, finish. I dug my nails into his back.

—It’s… it’s incredible —I stammered.

—I love you —he told me in my ear.

***

After a little while he came out of me carefully. I felt relief and, at the same time, a strange loneliness, as if I were missing something I had just only now gotten to know. I liked it much more than I had ever imagined. I was tired, drained, and with a new fear: the fear of having given myself completely. The doubt remained, the one I had always carried with me, the fear that love would end in betrayal. Then I heard his voice.

—I love you. Can I hug you?

I said yes, and happiness came rushing back all at once. Hugging, kisses, silly words said against the skin. I felt good, protected. After a while I told him I needed to wash up.

We got up and went together to the bathroom. Still with my cheeks burning, I washed myself while he watched me, leaning against the doorframe, as if I were the most fascinating thing in the world. Blushing, not daring to lift my head, I finally asked him what had been gnawing at me inside for a while: whether I had done it well, whether he had liked it.

I didn’t want to admit out loud that I almost always know when Tomás is enjoying my caresses and kisses, because his eyes cloud over and his breathing changes. That more than once I’d brought him to the finish with my hand, catching everything in a tissue. That more than once he’d let me be carried into pleasure with his fingers, in the car, in the dim light of a nightclub. This time, though, I was so surrendered to feeling, so caught up in my first real time, that none of that seemed important. I pressed my lips together and admitted it as if it were a flaw:

—It’s my first time.

Tomás crouched beside me and asked for a kiss. I covered my breasts with one arm while offering him my mouth. And then I heard him say:

—Sweetheart… it’s been my first time too. And well, I hope you liked it.

—Really? —it slipped out of me—. I thought… I thought you had experience.

—I’ve dated a girl or two, you know that. But you’re the first one I’ve ever really been serious with.

I let my arm fall, uncovered my breasts without thinking, and asked him for a hug. A long one, the kind that hurts a little because of the position and you still don’t want to let go. We stayed like that until my thighs burned from the discomfort of the bathroom.

***

We went back to his room. It was the first time I’d ever been in his house, and though he had described it to me a thousand times, I found it tidier than I’d expected. Books piled on a couple of shelves, two posters peeling away in a corner, a mirror on the wardrobe door. The only mess was us: our clothes tossed carelessly onto a chair.

I saw myself in the mirror. Naked. I covered myself and turned away to stop looking; I was still embarrassed by my own body. Tomás was sitting on the bed, watching me. A year older than me. In a few months he was starting university; I had one exam left to finish my course and get in too. Nineteen and twenty years old, with no plan beyond keeping on studying and stealing whatever afternoons we could from life.

I said I was going to get dressed. He asked me to wait.

—I’d like us to hug —he said.

—Naked?

—Please.

So we did, lying down on the bed again. I knew I was giving in to the possibility of renewing the caresses, of maybe doing it again. I felt a tingling between my legs and knew that, if it happened, I wasn’t going to say no. I wanted him. I wanted all of him.

He wanted it too, I could tell from his body. And at the same time he forced himself to go slowly, to be careful with me. We started with kisses. He brought his mouth close and mine went looking for it before I even decided. When we parted, he murmured:

—I like feeling your body against mine.

He liked my naked breasts pressed against his chest, he said it with his eyes. I laughed softly.

—Well, I like those little hairs you’ve got on your chest. They prick a bit, but I like them.

That rough brush against my skin turned me on. And I could feel him hardening again, that swelling pressing against my belly. In the next kiss he stroked my breasts. I moaned. My nipples went hard and, without speaking, I let myself fall back. Tomás ran his hand down my thighs and started stroking me again.

—I suppose you’re sensitive —he said—. If I’m hurting you, if you want us to stop…

—No! Keep going!

The caress on my clit lasted until it tore another orgasm out of me. I dug my nails into his arm, moaning. It wasn’t as intense as the one from making love a little earlier, but it was much more than any I’d managed in secret.

I was still trembling when he put on another condom, settled over me, and asked:

—Can I?

I had no doubts anymore. I wanted to feel him inside me again.

—Come on.

This time it was different. There was no barrier now, no fear, just a wetness that received him without resistance. My body remembered his. I let him in and pleasure overwhelmed me again.

—Do you love me? —I moaned.

—More than my own life —he answered, moving slowly, feeling how tight I was—. You’re everything to me.

After a few thrusts another orgasm came over me, and when he warned me he was close I could already feel the next one coming. I had it at the first shudder from him and I could still feel it when he finished. There are no words to describe that: the greatest pleasure mixed with the certainty of giving yourself to someone who loves you just as much.

—Ah… it’s… —the sentence wouldn’t come.

I didn’t notice when he came out of me. I didn’t notice that in less than a minute he was already holding me. I didn’t hear the first tender words, or fully feel his kisses on my forehead, on my shoulders. I was somewhere else, floating. Until, finally, coming back down from that cloud, I heard him say very softly, against my hair:

—I love you, sweetheart.

And I knew, without us needing to promise it, that I was never going to forget that afternoon.