What Happened in the Hallway Before We Went Into the Bedroom

The night ended the way nights always end with two small children. We left them asleep in our bed because the little one asked to stay with us and the older one didn’t want to be left out. We ended up sprawled on the sofa, each with a phone in hand, not talking, the TV on some program neither of us was watching. He was wearing pajama pants and a T-shirt from some marathon he never ran. I still had damp hair from the shower and a two-piece pajama set I like because it doesn’t itch. It had been a long day: park in the afternoon, a rushed dinner, bath duty split between four hands, two bedtime stories, and one mandatory song. There are nights when you end up so wrecked that all you have left is the silence of the living room and the glow of the background lights.

It’s late already. I’m not sleepy, but I don’t feel like watching any more stupid videos. I get up, put the glass in the kitchen, turn off the light, and head back toward the hallway. I stop in front of the bedroom door. I close my eyes. I take a deep breath. It’s a gesture I often make without realizing it, as if I need to get ready to cross over to the other side, to the narrow bed, to the little arms that move while they sleep. The hallway is almost dark, with only a nightlight casting a warm yellow glow against the wall. I hear my husband’s footsteps behind me, barefoot, coming up very slowly.

He wraps his arms around me from behind without saying a word. He kisses my neck just below the ear and, instinctively, I lift my arms over my head and clasp my fingers behind his nape. He takes advantage. He keeps kissing me, lower and lower, behind the ear, in the hollow of my neck, on the shoulder the pajama strap has left bare. I stroke his hair with my fingertips, slowly, almost without thinking. The kisses change. They stop being soft. There’s something impatient in the way he nibbles at my skin.

His hands slide up from my waist to my breasts. I’m wearing a thin T-shirt, no bra, and it doesn’t even take a second for him to notice that my nipples are already hard. He cups them with both hands, taking them in fully. I have large breasts, thick nipples, and he knows it better than anyone. He’s not gentle about it: kneads, lets go, squeezes again. When he pinches one nipple with his thumb and forefinger, over the fabric, the air catches in my throat and I have to rest my forehead against the wood of the closed door.

I’m not going to hold out much longer like this.

I start to feel his erection against my ass. I move my hips back slowly, looking for him, and he responds by pressing closer. He lifts my T-shirt up to my armpits. Now his hands are directly on my skin. He runs his fingertips over my areolas in slow circles, and my nipples ache from how hard they are. My panties are already wet. It wasn’t gradual. It all happened at once: the kiss, the hand, the press of his hips against mine, the feeling that any sound would shatter everything.

I slide my right hand inside the pajama pants, but I still don’t dare slip it under my panties. I rub over the fabric, barely pressing. He notices instantly. With one hand he keeps squeezing a breast, but with the other he pulls my pajama pants down to mid-thigh. No lower, so I can’t move, so I stay like that, my legs half bound by the fabric. He grabs my panties in the center, from behind, and pulls upward, wedging the elastic between my cheeks, squeezing my ass and my cunt with the same damp cloth.

I keep touching myself over the top. I’m shaved, smooth, and the wet fabric clings to everything. My clit is throbbing like it has its own pulse. He kneads one breast with a hand and digs the fingers of the other into my cheek, hard enough to leave a mark. My forehead is pressed to the wood, my left arm bent under my head, my eyes closed. I can’t make a sound. The children are asleep less than three meters away, on the other side of that door.

I stop rubbing for a second and bring two fingers to the entrance of my cunt, over the fabric. My panties are soaked, I’m not exaggerating. I hook the elastic aside a little with my pinky and pass my fingers over my bare skin, from bottom to top, gathering all that moisture to go back to the clit. When I touch it with my slippery fingers, a moan slips out of me and I have to smother it by pressing my mouth against my own forearm. It’s one of those unbearably good things. And he doesn’t let me stop.

I feel him shift a little away from my back. His hands go down and he pulls my panties down, too, until they’re in the same place as my pants, at mid-thigh. For an instant I feel the cold air on my wet skin and almost complain. Then I hear him get down on his knees behind me. He grabs my hips, forces my legs apart as far as the fallen fabric will allow, and tips me forward so I can stick my ass out even more.

He opens my cheeks with one hand. With the other he parts the lips of my cunt, just a little, as if he were studying it closely. I can’t see him, but I feel it in every inch of exposed skin. Then he slides in a finger. All the way, in one go, because I’m so wet he meets no resistance. He pulls it out slowly, brushes my clit with the pad on the way down, returns to the entrance. This time it’s two. I spread my legs as wide as I can, bite my forearm, and squeeze my eyes shut.

He moves them inside me slowly at first, curving them upward as if searching for something specific. With the other hand he grabs one cheek and bites the other, carefully, leaving no mark, just to remind me he’s there. The rhythm builds. When his fingers go in and out faster, I bring my hand back to my clit. I need to rub. I need to rub without stopping. But I still don’t want to come.

I run my fingers along the entrance of my cunt, around his, to steal more lubrication. He notices. He pauses for a second. He catches my wrist firmly, without violence, and slides my two fingers in with his, inside me. Four fingers at once. We move them slowly, pressing my walls from the inside, barely parting them. It’s the first time we’ve done anything like that and I feel embarrassed and turned on in exactly the same measure.

When we pull our hands out, I go back to my clit out of pure instinct. He, on the other hand, doesn’t put his fingers back in. He spreads my cheeks with both hands and runs his tongue over my asshole, slowly, from bottom to top. I jerk. We don’t do this often, and never in this position, with my head pressed to a door and the children breathing on the other side. I let him. Right now I’d let him do anything. He slips two fingers back into my cunt while he keeps licking my ass, and I have to clamp my teeth down on the pajama sleeve to keep from making a sound.

I don’t know how long it lasts. A minute, two, three. When I’m just about to come undone, he moves. He ducks his head under my crotch and settles almost flat on the hallway floor, his mouth right beneath my cunt. I feel his hot breath before I feel his tongue. Flat, long, one single sweep that takes everything in one pass, from the entrance to the clit. He stays there. He starts working that exact spot, without moving away even a millimeter.

I grab his head with one hand and push him toward me, not caring about anything anymore. He sucks on my clit, gently at first, then with more pressure. He speeds up. I rock my hips against his mouth, lose any sense of time, of the hallway, of danger. I squeeze my nipples with my free hand until it hurts. My legs start to tremble. I feel the orgasm coming like a wave rising from my toes, a wave that won’t let me keep myself upright. I lift my head for just a second, open my mouth against my own arm, and let out a muffled moan as I come.

I come hard, in waves, biting the fabric of my T-shirt so not a single sound escapes. He doesn’t pull away until I stop moving. When he finally stands up, my legs are weak, my forehead is sweaty, and my heart feels like it’s outside my chest. He turns me around slowly, both hands on my hips, and kisses me on the mouth. I taste like myself. I taste a lot like myself, and I don’t mind one bit.

I smile at him with my lips still parted and whisper that tomorrow it’s his turn. He answers, also in a whisper, that there’s no need to wait that long. Just then we hear one of the children move on the other side of the door, a short sleepy whimper and then silence. We both go still, holding our breath, looking at each other in the dim hallway like two teenagers who almost got themselves in trouble. I smile against his shoulder. Tomorrow, I tell him without a voice. Tomorrow, no excuses.