The Magi King Who Chose Me at the Three Kings Parade

I’m telling it now because enough time has passed, and I still find it hard to believe that I was the woman from that night. I’m thirty-four years old, I live alone in a small apartment near the center, and until that Twelfth Night eve, my life had been utterly calm. I work during the day, watch series at night, and spend time with the same group of friends as always. Nothing to confess. That’s why it still seems incredible to me that the most intense story of my life began at a parade, surrounded by children and candy flying through the air.

I had gone down into the street almost on autopilot, because a neighbor insisted that I accompany her. It was cold—four degrees, according to the pharmacy’s illuminated sign—and I wore my coat fastened up to my neck, my hands buried in the pockets. King Balthazar’s float was the last to appear, moving slowly amid music and golden lights. And then I saw him.

He wasn’t just some actor in a costume. He was an extremely tall man, well over six feet, with dark skin and shoulders that filled the entire robe. He handed out candy with a huge smile, but there was one second—just one—when he stopped looking at the children and looked at me. Directly. Without even trying to hide it. As if, among the hundreds of people packed together on the sidewalk, he had found me on purpose.

I looked away, nervous, and focused on the ground covered in trampled candy wrappers. When I looked up again, he was still watching me. Slowly, he raised one eyebrow, as if asking me a wordless question, and I felt my face flush despite the cold. And something else: I felt my panties getting wet right there on the sidewalk, with Christmas carols playing in the background.

This doesn’t happen to me, I thought. I’m not the kind of woman these things happen to.

Beside me, a mother lifted her daughter up so she could see the float better. The loudspeakers blared Christmas carols. Everything around me was childish, familiar, innocent, and yet that man was looking at me in a way that had nothing innocent about it—and the worst part was that I liked it.

The float moved on, and I lost him in the crowd. I told myself that was where it ended, that it was ridiculous, that a man like that wouldn’t notice me. I walked my neighbor to her building and, instead of going upstairs to my apartment, I took a detour through the square where the route ended and the floats were being dismantled. I don’t know what I was looking for. Yes, I do, but I was embarrassed to admit it: I wanted to see that man again, I wanted to know what his mouth looked like up close, I wanted to know what he had beneath that robe.

I found him helping take down some spotlights, already without his crown, his robe half open and a T-shirt underneath. When he recognized me, he smiled in a way that made my legs tremble.

“I thought you weren’t going to come,” he said in a soft African accent.

“I wasn’t going to,” I replied, and my voice came out firmer than I expected.

His name was Ousmane. He was from Côte d’Ivoire, had been in Spain for three years, and played a Magi King every Christmas to earn some extra money. During the day he worked in a warehouse, carrying boxes that weighed almost as much as he did, and at night he studied for some certificate or other. He told me about it without self-pity, almost with pride, and he seemed to me like the most whole, grounded man I had met in a long time. He told me while we walked aimlessly, glitter still clinging to his face, while I laughed like a teenager. There was something in the way he looked at me when he spoke, as if the only important thing in the world was whatever I was saying.

“My car’s nearby,” I said without thinking.

No more was needed.

***

My car was old and small, and he barely fit inside it. We climbed into the back seat like a couple of kids, laughing at the absurdity of the situation, in the deserted parking lot of a closed supermarket. Orange streetlights filtered through the fogged-up windows. I kissed him first. His lips were hot despite the cold, and his enormous hands surrounded my face as if I were something he had wanted to hold for a very long time.

“Slowly,” he murmured against my mouth. “We have all night.”

But neither of us wanted to go slowly. He undid my coat one button at a time, slowly and hurriedly all at once, looking into my eyes with each one. When his hand slipped beneath my sweater and moved up my side, I held my breath. His palms were rough and warm, and I was already so aroused that the first touch drew a moan from me that I didn’t even recognize as my own. He pinched one nipple between two fingers through my bra, and another moan escaped me, longer and dirtier. Then he smiled as if he had just discovered one of my secrets.

“You’re hard here,” he whispered, pinching my other nipple. “And I bet you’re wet down there.”

“Find out,” I replied, surprised by my own voice, hoarse and impatient.

He undid my jeans with one hand and slipped his fingers inside my panties. When he felt how soaked I was, he chuckled softly against my neck.

“Fuck, woman.”

His thick fingers spread the lips of my pussy and found my clitoris. He began making slow circles—very slow ones—watching my face the whole time. I tried to keep still, but my hips moved on their own against his hand. He slid in one finger, then two, and curled them inside me. The entire car smelled of sex, glitter, and the cheap cologne he was wearing.

“Take it out,” I begged, my voice trembling. “I want to see it.”

He pulled down the pants of his costume and took out an enormous, thick, dark cock, its glans already swollen and gleaming. I had never seen one like that up close. I grabbed it with both hands and couldn’t quite encircle it. I leaned down and took it into my mouth as best I could, sucking the tip first, tasting its salty flavor, swallowing around that cock that barely fit. He held the back of my head with one hand, not forcing me, letting me set the pace, but groaning every time my tongue passed over his frenulum.

“That’s it, fuck, that’s it,” he growled. “You suck it so well.”

I sucked him for a long while, until my jaw hurt, until he gently pulled me away.

“Stop or I’ll come in your mouth right now.”

“Come wherever you want.”

“Not yet.”

He pulled off my jeans and panties in one tug, dragging them down over my ankles. He sat me astride him in that tiny back seat, my head bent against the roof of the car. I took hold of his cock and began lowering myself onto it slowly, very slowly, because I was afraid it wouldn’t fit. I felt it opening me from the inside, inch by inch, and let out a long cry when I finally had it all the way in. I stayed still for a second, impaled and trembling, my forehead resting on his shoulder.

“Move,” he whispered in my ear. “Fuck me.”

I began moving on top of him, slowly at first, sliding up and down the length of his cock, feeling the glans strike deep inside me each time. He held my hips with those enormous hands and guided me, but I was the one setting the rhythm. The whole car rocked. The shock absorbers protested with every thrust. He pulled up my sweater and freed my breasts from my bra, then took one nipple into his mouth, sucking hard while I rode him. I clung to his back, his shoulders, anything I could reach.

“Harder,” I begged. “Fuck me harder.”

He grabbed my ass with both hands, digging his fingers into me, and began thrusting up into me from below. His cock slid in and out with a wet, obscene sound that filled the car. I moaned louder and louder, not caring if anyone walked through the parking lot.

“You’re so tight, slut,” he growled against my neck. “You’ve got such a delicious pussy.”

Hearing him talk like that, with that accent and that deep voice, took me to the edge in a minute. I felt everything rising from my thighs, a trembling I couldn’t stop. I dug my nails into his shoulders and came on his cock, squeezing it inside me with spasms that shook my entire body, moaning against his mouth.

“Keep going, keep going, don’t stop,” I begged, still trembling. “Come inside me.”

“Sure?” he panted, the veins in his neck standing out.

“Inside, please.”

He held my hips with one hand and moved me to his rhythm, watching my face the whole time as if he wanted to memorize every expression. I had never felt so watched. So desired. He gave three or four more brutal thrusts, each deeper than the last, and then he groaned something in his language, something long and husky. I felt his cock swell inside me and release hot spurts, deep inside, so many that I felt him filling me and something beginning to run down my thighs. He held me against his chest until I stopped trembling.

We stayed like that for a while, locked together in that ridiculous seat, listening to each other breathe. He was still inside me, half-hard, and every time he breathed I felt his semen leaking out. It should have been enough. A mad Twelfth Night fling, an anecdote to tell no one. But I didn’t want it to end.

“Do you have somewhere to sleep?” I asked.

He told me he shared a rented room with three countrymen on the other side of the city. One bed, a mattress on the floor, turns for the shower.

“Come home with me,” I said.

***

We climbed the stairs trying not to make any noise, laughing ourselves breathless, our coats badly fastened, and my panties stuffed into my bag because they were soaked with semen and arousal. As soon as I closed the door, I realized I didn’t simply want to sleep with him again. I wanted to take care of him. It’s a strange feeling to explain. I filled the bathtub with hot water, added some bath salts I had been saving for occasions that never came, and lit two candles. He watched me from the doorframe, not really understanding what I was doing.

“Get in,” I told him.

He got in. I removed the last traces of glitter from his face with a sponge, slowly, while he closed his eyes. I ran my hands over his neck, his shoulders, that enormous body that barely fit in my bathtub. And at some point, tenderness stopped being tenderness and became something else again. I ran the sponge over his chest, his stomach, and lower, until his cock grew hard again beneath the water. I took it in my hand and began moving it slowly, watching his face. He let his head fall back against the edge of the tub and spread his legs so I could do it better.

“Get in too,” he murmured.

I took off my sweater and bra, got into the water with him wearing only the jeans I was still half dressed in, and we lost ourselves all over again. I sat on top of him with my back to him, facing the wall, and impaled myself once more on his cock while water spilled over the sides of the tub. He grabbed my breasts from behind, pinched my nipples, and bit my neck. I moved up and down, splashing half the apartment, neither of us caring about anything.

“That’s it, you dirty girl, ride me like that,” he growled in my ear. “Squeeze that pussy.”

No one had ever talked to me like that, and no one had ever made me so horny. I squeezed his cock inside me with all my strength, and he let out a long moan, trembling.

“Come here.” He turned me around in the water and put me on all fours against the edge of the tub, my ass raised. He spread my cheeks with his hands and drove into me from behind in a single thrust.

I screamed. I couldn’t help it. I had never had him so deep. He began fucking me like that, gripping my hips, pulling almost all the way out and driving back in to the hilt, while water splashed out of the tub with every thrust. I rested my forehead against the cold tiles and let him fuck me, moaning every time he hit bottom, feeling my clitoris rub against the edge of the bathtub and another orgasm approaching.

“Come again,” he ordered, spanking my ass so hard the sound echoed through the bathroom. “Come with my cock inside you.”

I came, screaming his name for the first time, biting my arm so I wouldn’t wake the neighbors. He kept thrusting until he came too, inside me again, groaning something in his language against my back.

Afterward he carried me out, dripping wet, as if I weighed nothing, and took me to bed without drying me off. He dried me with his own body, the heat of his skin against mine. Outside, the street was frozen; inside my bedroom, the air was thick, hot, impossible.

I lost count of how many times. I know we didn’t sleep. He fucked me on my back, my legs resting on his shoulders, sinking all the way in while he looked into my eyes. He fucked me on my side, one of my legs in the air, biting my neck. He put me on all fours again, this time on the sheets, and pounded into me until the headboard struck the wall and I didn’t care what the neighbors thought. At some point he fell onto his back and asked me to suck him, and I sucked him slowly, playing with his balls with my other hand, swallowing every drop when he came in my mouth. There were slow moments when we barely moved, simply looking at each other from inches away, with him still inside me, feeling his cock pulse against my walls. He whispered to me in his language, words I didn’t understand but that aroused me all the same. When he switched back to Spanish, it was always to say filthy things to me, to call me his, to ask how many more times I was going to come for him. And I came again, and again, until I lost count of that too.

I know that at some point dawn turned gray beyond the blinds, and we were still talking between kisses, telling each other things you don’t tell a stranger. He told me about his mother, the sea in his country, what he missed. I told him about my loneliness on Sundays. Two naked strangers telling each other truths at six in the morning, with the sheets a wreck and all his semen still leaking inside me.

***

He left around seven. He dressed in silence so as not to break something fragile that we both felt between us. Before leaving, he brushed my hair away from my face and said something that still goes around and around in my head.

“You’re the kind of woman a man would want to have a child with,” he said, half joking and half serious. “Remember me.”

He left me his number written on a piece of paper. He kissed me on the forehead. And then he left.

I stayed in bed for a long time, staring at the ceiling, his smell still lingering in the sheets and my legs still spread because I couldn’t be bothered to close them. And for the first time in years I fantasized about something I had never truly wanted: I imagined that, with all the times he had come inside me that night, he had left a seed behind, that in nine months I would have something of his, proof that the magic had existed, even if only for a single dawn. I imagined it in every detail, and I admit that even now, with a touch of embarrassment, the fantasy pleased me. My hand slipped between my legs on its own while I thought about it, still swollen, still sticky with him, and I came one last time all by myself, biting my lips.

But I’m a practical woman. I know how to distinguish a night of fire from a real future. Ousmane was the kind of man who appeared like a miracle and disappeared the same way, and I wasn’t going to build a life on the smoke of a parade. Two days later I went to the clinic and made the sensible decision, the one I knew I had to make.

I never called him again. The paper with his number is still in a drawer, and sometimes I look at it. Not with regret, but with gratitude. That man gave me back something I thought I had lost: the certainty that I could still feel like that, that desire had not dried up inside me.

Every year, when Twelfth Night eve arrives and I watch the floats pass by with their cardboard Magi Kings, I smile to myself among the crowd. The children wait for their gifts. I already received mine one January night, from the hands of a Balthazar I will never forget.

Noa.