What Happened the Second Night at the Boss’s House

I got off the coach in Retiro with a suitcase tied up with string and eyes too wide for a city like that. I’d come from Villa Dolores, over in Córdoba, where everybody knows each other and the river is the only entertainment. I was twenty-two, had enough money for three days in a boardinghouse, and only one certainty: I wasn’t going back to the village empty-handed. I wanted to save up a few pesos, send some home to my folks, prove I could make it on my own.

I’d been warned about Buenos Aires. “Be careful, people there are different,” my mother had told me on the platform. I nodded without fully understanding. You know danger exists, but at that age you still think it happens to other people.

By the third day I’d landed a live-in job in a house in Núñez, one of those places with a garden, a pool, and an expensive silence I’d never heard in my life. The owner himself opened the door for me.

—So you’re the new girl —he said, sizing me up shamelessly—. Come in, come in.

Don Ricardo was around fifty-eight. Bald, broad-shouldered, with the calm belly of a man who’d eaten well all his life and a deep voice that seemed to fill a room before he even entered it. He wasn’t handsome. He was something worse: confident. The kind of man who looks at you and makes you feel like he already knows something about you that you don’t even know yourself.

—You look like a good girl —he told me that first afternoon, while showing me the back room—. You’ll be fine here.

I looked down and thanked him very much. Live-in, one man alone, a girl from the interior. Don’t be nasty-minded, I scolded myself. But something in the way he kept looking at me a second too long had already put my body on alert.

***

The first day was a trial run and I got through it well. I cleaned the whole house, left the floors shining, and at night I cooked him an asado with chimichurri like my grandmother made. I watched him eat in silence, nodding slowly, until he set his cutlery down crossed on the plate.

—It’s been years since I ate something like this —he said, and pinned me with those gray eyes—. You’ve got hands on you, girl.

It was nothing. A throwaway line. But heat rushed to my face, and I didn’t know how to explain it, so I went to wash the dishes before he could notice. That night I slept alone, dreamed of the river in my town, and woke up not remembering why my heart was racing and my panties were damp and stuck to my cunt.

The second day everything shifted.

I was kneeling, scrubbing the kitchen floor, wearing an old pair of shorts that rode up every time I stretched, leaving half my ass out. I didn’t hear him come in. The first thing I felt was his hand resting on my back, broad and warm, as if by accident.

—Let me help you —he murmured.

But he didn’t bend down to help. His hand slid slowly down, tracing the curve of my back to the edge of my shorts, and from there kept going, without asking permission, until he cupped one whole cheek in his palm. I froze, the rag dripping through my fingers, my heart pounding in my ears. I had to say something. I had to stand up, tell him no, get out. I thought it. And did nothing.

—You’re beautiful —he said softly, his warm breath against my nape—. Ever since you walked in, I haven’t been thinking about anything else. About fucking you, girl. If you’ll forgive the word.

I felt his fingers slip under the fabric, push my panties aside and slide between my lips, already wet without my realizing it. A sigh escaped me that gave me away more than any word when his thick, rough finger traced my slit from bottom to top and stopped at my clit to circle it slowly.

—Look at that —he murmured into my ear—. So wet. And you say you’re not thinking about anything.

It wasn’t fear I felt. It was something else, something I’d never dared name, and he recognized it at once, as if he could read me better than I could read myself. His finger sank into me slowly, all the way, and I clenched my teeth so I wouldn’t moan. It came out wet, shining, and he brought it to his mouth without taking his eyes off me.

—You taste good —he said, sucking his whole finger—. I knew it.

He helped me rise with a gentleness that didn’t fit those big hands. He turned me slowly and looked into my eyes before kissing me. It wasn’t a rushed kiss. It was slow, demanding, the kiss of a man who knows what he wants and has all the patience in the world to get it. His tongue opened my mouth without asking permission, found mine, and sucked on it as if warning me what he was going to do to me downstairs. I braced against the counter because my legs wouldn’t hold me, and he took advantage of it to wedge his knee between my thighs and make me ride the hard bulge straining his trousers.

—Feel that? —he said, biting my lip—. That’s what you do to me, girl. I’ve had a hard-on for you since yesterday.

—Do you want me to stop? —he asked after a moment, pulling back just a little.

That was my way out. The door left open. And I heard the answer come out of my own mouth in a thin voice:

—No.

***

He lifted my shirt with a calm that left me undone, looking me in the face the whole time, not at my body. As if what mattered was what was happening to me. My cheap bra flew to the floor and he paused for a second to stare at my tits before bending down. He kissed my neck, my collarbone, went down to my breasts and took them one at a time into his mouth, sucking my nipples slowly, pulling them with his lips, biting just enough to make them hard as pebbles. His tongue circled my areola and then swallowed my nipple whole, and I was the one pushing against his mouth, begging for more, grabbing his bald head so he wouldn’t pull away.

—Easy, girl —he said with a mouthful of tit—. We’ve got all night. I’m going to eat you whole.

He pulled my shorts and panties down together, kneeling in front of me, and I was left with my ass on the cold kitchen counter, naked, legs spread for him. He kissed my belly button, the hip bone, the crease of my thigh, deliberately avoiding the place I needed him most. I grabbed his bald head, not knowing what to do with my hands, shaking in a way that had nothing to do with the cold.

—Ask me —he murmured against my groin—. Tell me what you want.

—There —I asked him, red with shame—. There, Don Ricardo, please.

—There where, girl? Say it.

—In the cunt —I whispered, almost voiceless—. Eat me out. Please eat me out.

He gave a low laugh and did what I wanted. He parted my lips with two fingers and buried his whole tongue in me, from bottom to top, licking slowly like I was an ice cream. A cry escaped me and I slapped a hand over my mouth. He sucked my clit, pulling it with his lips, slid his tongue inside me, bit my inner lips. He knew. He knew exactly where to put his mouth and how long to leave it there. In the village, the boys would fumble awkwardly in the dark of a borrowed car and shove their hard tongues at me. This was something else. This was a man eating my pussy as if it were the only thing in the world that mattered to him, with those two thick fingers coming in and out of me, soaked through, while his tongue worked my clit without rest.

—I’m going to… —I managed, grabbing his head—. Don Ricardo, I’m going to…

—Come in my mouth, girl —he growled, never stopping sucking me—. Go on.

And I came. I came in his mouth, trembling all over, shaking against the counter, one hand covering my own mouth so I wouldn’t wake anybody in a whole neighborhood where there wasn’t anyone to wake. He kept sucking slowly through the last spasm, swallowing everything, cleaning me with his tongue until I couldn’t take any more and had to pull his head away because it was shooting through me.

When I couldn’t stand anymore, when my knees were shaking and I’d bitten my lip hard enough to hurt, he took me by the hand to his room. A huge bed, fresh sheets, a low lamp that left half of everything in shadow. He took off his shirt, then his trousers, and when he pulled down his underwear, I lost my breath. His cock sprang out, hard, thick, red at the tip, with a thick vein running all along it. I had never seen one like that in my life. What I’d seen in the darkness of cars in the village looked nothing like it.

—Come here —he said, sitting on the edge, with that same confidence as always—. Slowly. Suck me a little first.

I knelt between his spread legs, trembling. I took his cock in both hands —it didn’t fit in one— and felt it pulse, hot. I stuck out my tongue, shy, and licked the tip with fear. He drew in a deep breath, grabbed my hair with one hand, and guided me.

—That’s it, girl. Open wide. Take in as much as you can.

I opened my mouth and took his thick head between my lips. My jaw stretched all the way. I went down slowly, pushing until the head hit the back of my throat and made my eyes water. I pulled back, took air, went down again. Saliva ran down my chin. He set the rhythm with his hand in my hair, not hurting me, teaching me.

—Use your tongue —he whispered—. Move it underneath, girl. Like that. Uh, you do it so well. Anyone would think this isn’t your first time.

I sucked him until I felt him swell even more between my lips, until he pulled my hair back and slipped his cock out of my mouth with a wet sound.

—Stop, stop, I’m going to come and I’m not there yet. Come here.

He threw me onto my back on the bed and spread my legs with his knees. It was my first real time. He spat into his hand, slicked his cock with the saliva, and set it at the entrance of my cunt, still wet from him. He pushed in slowly. The head opened my lips and there was a moment of tension, of pain that made me clench my teeth and dig my nails into his shoulders. He stayed still, waiting for me, stroking my hair until my body let go on its own and I let him in. I felt him opening me from the inside, millimeter by millimeter, until his balls touched my ass and I understood he was all the way in.

—All the way inside you, girl —he panted into my ear—. Look at me. Look at me fucking you.

Then it was all slow movement, deep, his forehead pressed to mine, his cock sliding almost all the way out and sinking back in to the hilt, my ragged breathing filling the room. The pain kept turning into something else, into a burn that wanted more, into an emptiness that filled and emptied in time with his hips.

—Look at me —he begged—. I want to see your face while I fuck you.

And I looked at him, and let him look at me, and for the first time in my life I understood what people meant when they talked about losing your head. He grabbed one of my legs and draped it over his shoulder, and from that angle his cock reached a place deep inside me I didn’t know I had. He started fucking me harder, the bed creaking, his balls slapping against my ass with a wet sound that made me feel even more ashamed than the moan escaping me with each thrust.

—Say it —he panted—. Tell me how you’ve got it.

—Inside —I moaned—. It’s all the way inside, Don Ricardo. All yours.

—Fuck me, girl. You’re a divine cunt. Tight, small, hot. Made for my cock.

He turned me face down, lifted my ass by my hips, and pushed it in from behind again, and then it was no longer slow. Then it was a proper fucking, the kind that makes the bed crack and made me cry out into the pillow. He grabbed a fistful of my hair, arched me, and drove into me to the hilt with a rhythm that shot every blow up into my stomach. His other hand found my clit from underneath and started pressing it with two fingers, in circles, without stopping fucking me.

—Come again, go on. Come with my cock inside you. I want to feel it.

I dug my nails into the sheets and came a second time, clenching around his dick inside me, biting the pillow so I wouldn’t scream at the neighbors. My cunt contracted around him in waves, sucking him in, and he held on a few more seconds until I heard him grunt and felt him swell completely inside me.

—Inside, girl, do you want me to come inside?

—Yes —I told him without thinking, bitten by something older than me—. Inside. Come inside me.

He drove his fingers into my hip and sank all the way in. I felt his cock throbbing inside me and then the hot, long gush filling me, and another, and another. He stayed there, pressed against my ass, panting against my back, until the last drop stayed inside me. He came soon after, holding me tight, saying my name into my ear while he slowly collapsed on top of me.

We stayed like that, glued together, sweaty, breathing hard in that bed that smelled like him. When he finally pulled out, I felt a warm line run down my thigh and didn’t bother wiping it away. I didn’t say anything. There was no need. I already knew that back room was where I’d leave my suitcase.

***

From that night on, my life had two shifts. By day I was the maid: sweeping, cooking, hanging the laundry out in the garden sun. By night, he’d appear in the kitchen doorway with a half smile.

—Come here, girl —he’d say—. I missed you all day.

And I’d go. Eager, without him having to ask twice. He taught me things they never even named in the village. He taught me to suck him off while looking him in the eye, to ride him slowly and let him turn me around and fuck me from behind against the counter while I cooked. He taught me to let him lick my ass without shame, to come with two fingers inside me and his thumb on my clit, to ask him for a load on my face when the mood took him. The whole house became ours: the shower at dawn, with him behind me and his cock sliding against my soapy ass; the living-room sofa with the TV on and nobody watching it, me face down with my skirt hiked up and him on top of me; a hot afternoon in the pool, water up to our necks and the whole moon for us alone, my legs wrapped around his waist and his cock sliding in and out under the water.

—Open your eyes —he’d say in those moments—. Don’t miss anything. Watch me fuck you.

I, who had arrived determined to save up a few pesos and go back home, no longer thought about leaving. I had become someone else. Someone who waited for night with a wet cunt since siesta time, who knew she was desired, who had discovered that pleasure was also a way of taking charge. I learned to play with his cock in my hand until I had it hard exactly where I wanted, to make him wait, to sit on top and move slowly until he begged me to let him finish. When he whispered “you’re mine,” with his cock buried all the way inside, I answered “and you’re mine,” and neither of us was lying.

***

A few weeks passed and I started feeling it in my body. My breasts swollen, sensitive to the touch of my shirt. A tiredness that floored me after noon. And, above all, the absence. My period, never late, late.

I bought a test at the corner pharmacy with my heart in my throat and locked myself in the back bathroom to wait. Two lines. Clear as day. Pregnant. By the boss. By the man who had stripped me of my innocence and turned me into his nightly habit, the one who filled my cunt with his load without protecting himself because the two of us preferred it that way.

A fear seized me unlike anything I’d ever felt. I imagined myself on the street, with my belly and my suitcase, hearing him say, “Go back to your village, girl, I’m not taking responsibility for anything.” I imagined my parents asking what had happened. I cried all afternoon sprawled on the back bed, until I couldn’t take it anymore and decided to tell him that very night.

I found him in the living room, in shorts and a T-shirt, a beer in his hand. I stood in front of him, palms sweating, my voice reduced to a thread.

—Don Ricardo… I have to tell you something. I’m… I’m pregnant.

My voice broke on the last word. I looked down at the floor. I waited for the shout, the insult, the sentence.

He stayed silent for a long second. And then suddenly he laughed. A full-bellied laugh that echoed through the whole house. He stood up, set the beer down on the table, and took my face in both hands.

—Well, look at that —he said, eyes shining—. Look what we made.

—Aren’t you… aren’t you angry? —I asked, not understanding.

—Angry? —He kissed my forehead, both cheeks, my mouth—. This house has been dead for years, girl. Years. And then you come along and set the whole thing on fire. —He rested his hand on my still-flat belly with a care I’d never seen in him—. There’s something of mine in there. Something of ours. How could I be angry?

I stared at him, stunned, not knowing whether to cry with relief or shame. He wiped away a tear with his thumb.

—I don’t know how long you’ll last as a maid —he said, half serious, half joking—. I’m going to have to find you someone to cook, because you’re going to be busy being something else in this house. The mother of my son, for starters. That’s forever, that is.

He held me tight, and I let him, hidden in that broad chest that had already become a habit. Outside, rain was beginning to fall on the garden, and through the window you could see the still pool, the water where so many nights we had been the only ones awake in the neighborhood.

—You changed my life, you know? —I told him softly, my voice still broken—. I came to save up a few pesos and look at this.

—Look —he repeated, and kissed my hair—. The one who changed everything here was you.

That night there was no hurry. There were slow hands, words whispered in my ear, a new tenderness the fear of the afternoon had brought out into the open. He undressed me slowly, laid me on my back, spread my legs, and entered me looking into my eyes, never stopping to stroke my flat belly where his child was already growing. He moved deep, slow, long, without any rush to finish, whispering “my God, you’re the mother of my son” against my mouth until we both came holding each other, him inside me one last time that night, me coming slowly, without screams, trembling beneath him. And as I fell asleep against his shoulder, with semen still warm and leaking from between my thighs and rain tapping on the glass, I understood that the scared girl who had gotten off the coach in Retiro no longer existed. In her place there was someone else: a woman who had come to serve and had stayed to stay. Forever.