The Last Showing at the Movie Theater That Changed Everything

I’ve always been liberal about everything related to sex. From the day I met Mariana, I couldn’t think about anything else, and at first it was pure physical desire, the kind of attraction that clouds your mind and keeps you from sleeping. Then everything else came: the way she laughed, her intelligence, the way she argued with me as if every conversation were a duel. She captivated me completely, but the desire never went away. It only learned to hide better.

Mariana has a body that stops conversations. She’s Latina, tall, warm-skinned, with long, straight dark hair that falls down her back like a curtain. Exotic features, a natural elegance that can’t be learned, and curves that her clothes never quite managed to conceal. When she enters a place, people look at her. She pretends not to notice, but she knows perfectly well.

Things in bed between us were always intense. I loved how eager she was, that need to do it often, without excuses or schedules. I also liked the idea of doing it in places where we shouldn’t: an empty bar, the car parked on a dark street, a corner of the beach in the early hours of the morning. That was my fantasy, not hers. Mariana had never done it outside the house. It embarrassed her so much it left her speechless, and at first I respected that boundary.

But boundaries, with time, become invitations.

I started slowly. I suggested that she change the way she dressed a little, because she always covered herself up so much, as if she wanted to hide what was impossible to hide. I bought her a couple of dresses. I asked her, almost as a joke, to go out without a bra sometime. At first, she wouldn’t even consider it. But little by little, without my insisting too much, she began to change. A tighter blouse here, a shorter skirt there, lingerie she chose while thinking about how I would react when I took it off. The shyness was still there, but underneath it was something new, something curious that was beginning to awaken.

***

The first time we truly crossed the line was one winter night, on our way home after having a drink. I was driving down an almost deserted avenue. At a red light, I turned toward her and, with a calmness I didn’t feel, asked her to take off her top and remain wearing only her seat belt while I drove.

—Are you crazy? —she said, but her fingers were already on the first button.

She did it. Mortified, looking at every passing car as if they were about to discover her, her heart racing. She was so nervous she was almost trembling. And at the same time, I had never seen her so aroused. By the time we parked in front of the house, she was no longer the same shy woman. She went up the stairs ahead of me, turned around at the door, and pushed me inside.

That night, she was the one who took control. She rode me, dug her nails into me, and whispered things in my ear I had never heard her say. It was one of those fucks that stay burned into your memory for a lifetime, the kind people talk about in silence years later. Something had come loose inside her, a floodgate that could no longer be closed.

From then on, the idea of playing in public was no longer mine alone.

***

Summer arrived, bringing with it a sticky heat that invited people to do crazy things. One night, while we were having dinner on the terrace, I came up with the idea I’d been turning over in my head for some time.

—Let’s go to the movies —I said—. The last showing.

She looked up from her plate and narrowed her eyes. She knew me too well.

—To the movies for what, exactly?

—To see a movie —I replied, with a smile that said the exact opposite.

She laughed, shook her head, and went to change. When she came downstairs, I knew she had accepted the game without needing to say so. She was wearing a short summer dress covered in flowers, with a generous neckline that left no room for doubt. High heels. Long earrings that brushed her neck whenever she turned her head. She looked good enough to eat, and she knew it.

We bought tickets for The Last Witness, one of those slow stories no one goes to see at the last showing on a Tuesday. At the ticket window, the guy serving us couldn’t help looking at her for a second too long. On the way to the theater, the few men we passed tried to hide their looks under the watchful eyes of their partners. Mariana walked with her chin held high, pretending not to notice anything, but I could feel the heat radiating from her body when I put my hand around her waist.

We bought something to drink and went in. The theater was almost empty. We chose the second-to-last row, more or less in the center, far from the handful of people who had sat in the middle section. In the last row, directly behind us and a little closer to the aisle, there was a middle-aged couple. Nothing else. The darkness and silence were almost complete.

The movie began. The first few minutes passed with a deceptive normality. Caresses on her hands, my fingers moving up her leg to the edge of her dress and then back down, in a slow back-and-forth that made her more and more tense. She stared at the screen without seeing it, breathing slowly, waiting.

***

Twenty minutes in, I deliberately let the water bottle fall to the floor.

—I dropped it —I whispered, and bent down to pick it up.

But instead of returning to my seat, I stayed on my knees in the narrow space in front of her. I raised my head and stared into her eyes in the half-light. It took her a second to understand what was happening. When she did, she turned every shade of red. She began shaking her head from side to side in a silent gesture: no, no, not here. Her eyes were huge, filled with panic and something else, that gleam I already knew.

I put a finger to my lips. Silence. She took a deep breath, once, then again, and stopped shaking her head. I understood the gesture for what it was: permission.

Very slowly, I slid my hand beneath her dress. I found the edge of her thong and began lowering it with deliberate slowness, inch by inch, pausing at her knees only to look into her eyes again. Her breathing was ragged, and her hands clung to the armrests as if they were the only things keeping her in this world.

I leaned forward. The skin between her thighs was hot, wet, trembling. I opened her legs just enough to get between them and began kissing her on the inside, first near her knee, then higher, approaching the center with cruel patience. She let out a thread of air through her mouth when my tongue brushed the most sensitive part of her pussy over the fabric that was still pulled to one side. I didn’t touch her all at once; I drove her crazy, giving her little licks, pressing with the tip of my tongue and pulling back, forcing her to arch in her seat.

I whispered against her skin things I wouldn’t repeat in the light of day, words that sounded different in the darkness of the theater, dirtier, more ours.

—Your pussy is soaking wet —I murmured—. You’re dying for me to eat it right here.

Her hand fell onto my head, rigid at first, then desperate. She wanted to push me away and push me farther in at the same time. I opened the fabric of her underwear with my fingers, pulling it completely aside, and then I really did lick her from top to bottom, slowly, tasting the salty sweetness of her arousal. The tip of my tongue slipped between the swollen lips of her pussy, traced her entrance, returned to her clitoris, then moved down again. She bit her lip so hard I thought she was going to draw blood.

When I finally gave her my full attention, I did it with devotion but without mercy. I sucked and licked, alternating my mouth with two fingers that slowly slipped inside, becoming soaked with her, working their way into her tight heat. Mariana moved in her seat as if she couldn’t hold herself up. Her legs trembled open, her dress pushed up to her waist, her thong twisted into a knot of fabric and embarrassment to one side. I watched her as I fingered her, searching for the exact spot that made her moan silently, and when I found it, her back arched abruptly.

—More —she gasped, almost voicelessly.

I gave her more. I gripped her hips so she couldn’t get away from me, buried my face between her thighs, and kept eating her hungrily, licking her open pussy, sucking her clitoris until she truly began to tremble. The wet sound of her arousal mingled with both our broken breathing and the distant murmur of the movie, which no one in that theater was watching anymore.

***

That was when I noticed the couple behind us.

They hadn’t missed a thing. They had leaned forward in their seats and were touching each other without attempting to hide it, their hands lost beneath each other’s clothes, their eyes fixed on us. When I met the man’s gaze, he didn’t look away. On the contrary, he gave me a slight approving gesture, a kind of conspiratorial greeting between strangers who share a secret. His wife smiled at me in the darkness.

Far from stopping me, it turned me on even more. I looked into Mariana’s eyes again, and I knew she had noticed too, because her body responded differently, more open, more surrendered, as if the presence of those foreign eyes had pushed her across the other side of her own shame. I drove two fingers into her pussy and kept licking her harder, hearing her breathing turn into a broken moan, half-contained between her teeth and the hand she brought to her mouth to keep quiet.

—They’re watching you —I whispered—. Look at them too if you want. Let them see you come while I fuck you with my tongue.

The sentence broke her. Her thighs opened a little farther, her body spasmed, and I felt her clamp down around my fingers with brutal force, hot, wet, disordered. I increased the intensity, thrusting my fingers in and out rhythmically, burying my mouth in her clitoris until the orgasm took hold of her completely. It wasn’t a small tremor; it was a shock that ran through her belly, thighs, and chest. Her toes tensed inside her shoes and her back bent backward. She came silently, biting her hand so she wouldn’t scream, and even so, a muffled moan escaped her, filthy and delicious, making me continue a little longer to wring every last scrap of pleasure from her.

When her pussy stopped contracting, I kept licking slowly, dragging my tongue over her wet lips, gathering what was left of her in my mouth. She was drenched. My chin shone with her juices. I pulled away, breathing heavily, and she grabbed my face with both hands, embarrassed and aroused at the same time.

—Don’t stop —she whispered, her voice trembling.

I pulled her thong back up with the same care I had used to take it off. I slowly straightened, sat beside her, and drew her toward me. She was trembling, with a weak smile on her lips and shining eyes in the darkness.

—I love you —I whispered in her ear, and I meant it.

She rested her head on my shoulder and didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. Behind us, the other couple had settled back into their seats, pretending to watch the screen as if nothing had happened.

We finished watching the movie like that, embracing, without knowing how the story ended or who the last witness was. It didn’t matter. Ours had been much better, and we would always remember it.

On the way home, in the car, Mariana broke the silence. She looked at me with an expression I had never seen on her before, a mixture of embarrassment, amazement, and desire, and said two words that haunted me for weeks.

—Again.