The Price That Kept Rising Room by Room

Marcelo was thirty-four years old and everything that is supposedly implied by that when you come from where he came from: an apartment in Palermo Chico with floor-to-ceiling windows, a black car kept in his own garage, and a schedule that never had any free gaps. Tall, broad-shouldered, and with that calm in his gaze that comes with the years, not with money. Though money helped. Money always helped.

His real vice was more discreet than luxury. He liked knowing how far a person’s ability to give in would go when the price was right. It wasn’t cruelty, he told himself. It was curiosity.

When he moved into the new apartment, he called a cleaning agency. He asked for someone different. Something to break the monotony of the same old Tuesdays.

Camila’s photo made him stop.

Colombian. Twenty-eight years old. Newly arrived in Buenos Aires. Dark eyes looking straight into the camera, straight black hair down to her shoulders, the kind of body no profile photo can fully describe. The agency described her as punctual, methodical, and discreet. He hired her that same afternoon, at twice the standard rate. “I need total order and absolute confidentiality,” he texted her. She replied in less than ten minutes: “All right, sir.”

All right, sir. Three words. That was already something.

***

Camila arrived at nine sharp on a cold Tuesday in July. Light-blue blouse buttoned all the way up, dark jeans, white sneakers. Bag with her supplies, hair pulled back in a high ponytail. The subway had left her with a slight sheen on her cheekbones and the quick stride of someone who knows time has value.

Marcelo greeted her at the door with coffee in hand and a gray suit without a tie. He gave her the tour: dark parquet in the living room, open stainless-steel kitchen, windows overlooking the park, black marble bathroom, bedroom with a king-size bed.

Camila listened, nodded, and asked specific questions about the products he used for the floors.

“Start whenever you want,” he said. “I’m working from the library.”

He didn’t go to the library.

He settled onto the living room sofa with the laptop on his legs and his eyes on her.

Camila cleaned methodically: first high surfaces, then low ones, end to end, missing nothing. Every time she bent to reach something, the denim tightened over that round, firm ass of hers, and he looked away for a second before allowing himself to look again.

When she got to the dining room shelves, she pulled over the two-step ladder from the storage closet. To reach the top shelf, she had to climb up and stretch. The blouse rose with her, revealing a strip of dark skin above the waistband of her jeans.

Marcelo closed the laptop.

***

At noon he appeared in the kitchen with an extra cup.

“You work fast,” he said, leaning on the doorframe. “That’s not usual.”

“Thank you, sir,” Camila replied without stopping scrubbing the countertop.

“How long have you been in Buenos Aires?”

“Four months. My parents are in Cali. I send them what I can every two weeks.”

He nodded, took a sip, and set the cup down on the countertop she had just cleaned. She picked it up without saying anything and put it in the sink.

He liked that. Efficiency without attitude.

“There’s one detail,” he said a little later, when she was putting the cloth away. “The upper shelves need a deep cleaning. So you don’t scratch the new parquet, it’s better to work without shoes while you’re in that area. If you take them off, I’ll give you fifty thousand pesos more at the end of the day.”

Camila looked at him for a moment. Fifty thousand pesos was almost what she made in a full shift.

“No problem,” she said, and took off her shoes.

Marcelo watched her climb the ladder. Her dark feet on the pale parquet. Toenails painted a deep burgundy.

First step, he thought.

***

The second condition came two hours later, when she was starting the main bathroom.

“The disinfectant vapor stains the fabric,” he said from the doorway. “If you want to protect the blouse, you can take it off. One hundred thousand pesos more.”

Camila stopped. Brush in hand, the marble tile half scrubbed.

“Sir, that wasn’t part of what we agreed on.”

“No. That’s why I’m offering more. Just efficiency, nothing else.”

A long pause.

“Two hundred,” she said.

He smiled, barely.

“Two hundred,” he confirmed.

Camila set the brush on the tub, unbuttoned her blouse with methodical movements, and folded it over the edge of the sink. Underneath she wore a simple black bra that barely contained two big, full breasts, her dark skin shining under the recessed bathroom lights. Her nipples showed through the fabric.

Marcelo did not come in. He stayed in the doorway, looked for a second, and left.

But he did not go far.

***

At four o’clock, Camila was scrubbing the kitchen floor on her knees. The bra, the jeans, bare feet. Every forward-and-backward motion was a sway that shook her breasts inside the bra, and he was no longer even pretending not to look.

He walked over slowly and sat on one of the island stools.

“The jeans limit you on the floor,” he said. “Not exactly efficient.”

Camila looked up. Rag still in her hand.

“I already know where this is going, sir,” she said.

“Where is it going?”

“Every time I accept something, something new comes up.”

Marcelo didn’t deny it. He looked straight at her.

“Three hundred thousand pesos,” he said. “For the rest of the day, just in your underwear.”

Camila dropped the rag into the bucket. She stood up slowly. Her hands were still at her sides.

“I’m not this,” she said, her voice steady even if lower.

“I’m not asking you to be anything. I’m paying you to finish the job.”

The silence lasted as long as it takes to decide something you know you’ll remember.

Camila unbuttoned her jeans.

What became visible was exactly what he had imagined since he saw her arrive that morning: wide hips, strong thighs, black cotton panties wedged between her ass cheeks, showing half of a standing Colombian ass, round, moving on its own. She knelt again and kept scrubbing. Her breasts, barely contained by the bra, swayed with each pass of the cloth, and Marcelo’s cock went hard inside his pants watching her.

Marcelo didn’t speak for twenty minutes. He just watched, his hand squeezing his dick over the fabric.

***

The bedroom was the last room.

Camila changed the sheets, dusted the headboard, cleaned the closet mirror from floor to ceiling. He came in when she was finishing arranging the pillows, with her back to the door, on all fours on the bed, that round ass aimed at the doorway.

“Last deal,” he said.

She did not turn right away.

“How much?” she asked.

“Five hundred thousand. And I get to touch you.”

Camila turned. Her eyes were not afraid. They had something more complicated than fear.

“I’m not one of those girls,” she said.

“I know.”

“So then?”

“Then it’s your decision.”

The ceiling fan turned slowly. The sound of the avenue came muted, sixteen floors below.

Camila lowered her gaze for a moment and raised it again.

“One million,” she said.

He didn’t wait any longer.

***

He came toward her slowly, without urgency. He ran his hands over her shoulders, following the edge of the bra. She didn’t move.

When he unclasped the back closure and the bra fell to the floor, Camila’s breasts were exposed, two dark fruits with the brown nipples already hardening, and she drew in a deep breath but didn’t step back. Marcelo took her breasts in his hands, the warm, heavy weight filling his palms. His thumbs found the nipples and worked them, squeezing, pulling until she let out a low moan, a short sound that escaped her without permission.

“Look at my mouth,” he said, and lowered himself to suck one nipple, take it all in, bite it just enough until she gripped his shoulders.

Camila closed her eyes. Her hands searched behind her for the edge of the bed so she wouldn’t lose her balance.

“Look,” he said softly.

He led her to the closet mirror and stood behind her. His light hands on her dark skin, tracing every curve. He lowered her panties slowly, without hurry, dragging them down her thighs until they fell to the marble floor and she had to kick them away. Camila’s pussy showed in the mirror, plump, lips already swollen, shining wet between the black, trimmed hair.

Camila looked at herself in the mirror. Lips pressed together, breathing shorter than usual.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked, without taking her eyes off the reflection.

“Because I could,” he said. “And because you wanted me to.”

She didn’t answer.

But her hips pushed back just a little against him, against the rock-hard bulge pressed in his pants.

Marcelo ran one hand over her stomach and lowered it slowly, finger by finger, until he slipped his open hand between her legs. His palm filled with the wetness of Camila’s cunt. He parted her lips with two fingers and found the swollen clit. He started moving it in slow circles, pressing just a little, watching her in the mirror while her eyes narrowed.

“Look at yourself,” he said in her ear. “Look how wet you are. Cleaning all day and look how you end up.”

“Shut up, sir,” she murmured, but she threw her head back over his shoulder and spread her legs wider.

He slid two fingers inside her. Her cunt took them tight, hot, sucking on his fingers as if it had a mouth of its own. Camila let out a longer moan, and he pulled the shining fingers out and put them in her mouth so she could taste herself.

“Suck,” he said.

And she sucked, obedient, eyes closed, while he took his other hand back between her legs and kept working her clit.

***

He led her to the bed with a gentle shove at the waist. Camila fell sitting first and then let herself go backward, black hair spilling over the white sheets she herself had put on an hour earlier.

Marcelo knelt at the foot of the bed and opened her legs with both hands, without asking. He grabbed her thighs and dragged her toward the edge. Camila’s cunt ended up at mouth level, open, wet, smelling like hot woman.

He ran his whole tongue from bottom to top, one long stroke, and Camila arched off the bed and screamed.

“Fuck, you bastard,” she gasped, in Colombian Spanish, without realizing it.

Marcelo smiled against her cunt and pushed his tongue inside her. He pulled it out and went back up to the clit. He sucked it, bit it just enough, circled it with the tip of his tongue. He drove two fingers inside her and moved them forward searching for that spot that swells, and when he found it Camila lifted her hips off the bed without being able to control herself.

“Not like that, sir, not like that, I can’t hold it,” she panted.

“Hold it,” he said, and kept going.

He sucked her clit with his whole mouth, tugging on it with his lips, while his fingers kept striking that spot inside. Camila grabbed his head with both hands, first to push him away, then to bury him harder against her. Her thighs began to tremble. A tremor that climbed from her belly to her breasts.

She came with a choked cry, squeezing his head between her thighs, her cunt leaking into his mouth. Marcelo didn’t move. He drank her all down, tongue still inside, until Camila began to fade and opened her legs again, exhausted.

He hadn’t even taken off his shirt.

***

He stood up beside the bed and began undressing while looking at her. Camila watched him, breathing hard, her breasts rising and falling, her cunt still open and throbbing.

When he pulled his pants down and his cock sprang free, hard, thick, with the head swollen and shining, Camila opened her eyes a little wider. She sat on the edge of the bed without being asked and took it in her hand.

“It’s big, sir,” she said, half smiling, half afraid.

And she took it into her mouth.

Marcelo had to brace one hand against the wall. Camila sucked him with both hands and her mouth, taking the tip first, then slowly moving down the shaft, leaving his cock shiny with saliva. She licked his balls one by one, took them into her mouth, went back up, and swallowed him to the throat until her eyes filled with tears.

“Like that, slut, like that,” he panted, grabbing her hair with both hands.

Camila let him do it. He shoved her head against his pelvis, fucking her mouth slowly at first and harder after, his cock coming in and out between those full lips until she started gagging and he eased up.

He pulled his cock out of her mouth with a wet sound and wiped the saliva from her chin with his thumb. Camila looked up at him, eyes shining.

“To the bed,” he said. “Face down.”

***

Camila turned obediently, that Colombian ass standing up over the sheets, arching her back to offer it to him. Marcelo climbed on behind her, grabbed her buttocks with both hands and spread them. Her cunt was all visible, wet, still open from the first orgasm.

He ran the tip of his cock along the slit, up and down, getting it nice and wet. Camila moved her hips against him, searching for him.

“Put it in me, sir, now,” she murmured into the pillow.

He shoved it in all at once, to the hilt, and Camila let out a long cry into the sheet. He grabbed her hips and started fucking her from behind, a steady rhythm, skin crashing against skin, that huge ass bouncing against his pelvis with each thrust.

“You’re so tight, slut,” he panted. “What a fucking delicious cunt.”

“Harder, sir, harder,” she answered, arching more.

Marcelo grabbed her hair with one hand and yanked her head back. With the other he dug his fingers into her hip and started fucking her harder, the bed creaking against the wall, Camila’s breasts swinging beneath her. He slid a thumb, dampened with both their saliva, into her ass, just the tip, and Camila came again, a long spasm that squeezed his cock inside her like a fist.

“Oh, daddy, oh, daddy,” she kept repeating, not realizing she’d changed sir for something else.

He didn’t let up. He flipped her over onto her back in one motion, grabbed both her legs and put them over his shoulders. He buried himself in her again while looking her in the eyes. Camila grabbed his face with both hands.

They moved for a long time. He sucked her breasts while he fucked her, bit her neck, found her mouth with his tongue. She dug her nails into his back, squeezed his waist with her thighs, asked him for things in whispers he didn’t always understand because they came out in Colombian Spanish.

When he felt her on the edge of coming again, he eased up just enough to make it last. He fucked her more slowly, almost pulling all the way out and thrusting back in, watching her fall apart beneath him. Camila came for the third time gripping his forearms, mouth open without sound, her cunt spilling down her thighs.

He held out as long as he could. When he couldn’t anymore, he pulled out, straddled her chest, and stroked himself twice against Camila’s parted lips before emptying all his load into her mouth and onto her breasts. She took what she could, swallowed the first of it, then smeared the rest across her nipples with two fingers without taking her eyes off him.

When they were done, he collapsed beside her on the bed. They lay there on the clean sheets she had put on less than an hour earlier, now wrinkled, damp, with dark stains between both their legs. The ceiling fan. The silence of the apartment. The heavy breathing of the two of them slowly returning to normal.

***

“Are you coming back next Tuesday?” he asked after a long while.

Camila was on her side, with her back to him. She took her time answering.

“Depends how much extra you keep paying,” she said. There was something in her voice that might have been humor, or something harder to name.

He looked at the ceiling without answering.

“Whatever you want,” he said at last.

Camila sat on the edge of the bed and started looking for her clothes on the floor. She found the bra first, then the blouse, then the jeans. She dressed with the same calm with which she had arrived that morning, as if the process were as mechanical and normal as scrubbing a countertop, even though semen was still running down the inside of her thigh under her jeans.

When she was ready, he handed her the envelope from the nightstand. She took it and put it in her bag without counting it.

“Wednesday works better for me,” she said from the door.

And she left.

Marcelo listened to the elevator close behind her. Then the silence of the apartment, which now smelled like her, like cleaning products, and like something warmer that didn’t have an easy name.

Wednesday, he thought. Fine.