What Hernán Found When He Went Up Those Stairs

Carolina had arrived in the city with a small suitcase and the idea of staying a week. Her friend Lorena had invited her to spend a few days away from the village, away from routine, away from Hernán and the house she knew by heart. They had been married for three years and, though she would never have said it out loud, she felt that something between them had gone out without either of them noticing.

The week became two. And in the second, Adriano appeared.

He was the upstairs neighbor, a tall man with big hands and a way of looking that didn’t ask permission. The first time they crossed paths on the stairs, he greeted her with a slow smile and her mouth went dry. He wasn’t handsome in the conventional sense. He was something else: a presence that took up space and made the air feel thicker.

—So you’re the friend from the village —he said, leaning on the banister—. Lorena talks about you a lot.

—I hope good things —she answered, and hated herself a little for the flirtatious tone that came out without her meaning it.

That night, Carolina didn’t sleep well. She tossed and turned in the guest room bed and found herself listening to the footsteps from upstairs. Without meaning to think about it, she slipped a hand under her panties, and was surprised to find her cunt soaked just from imagining that man’s deep voice. She came biting the pillow, and the orgasm left her more awake than asleep.

***

The third night, Lorena went out to dinner with a client and Carolina stayed home alone. At ten, the doorbell rang. It was Adriano, with a bottle of wine and an excuse so transparent neither of them bothered pretending to believe it.

—I saw the light on —he said—. I thought maybe you didn’t like being alone.

Carolina stepped aside and let him in. She knew exactly what she was doing, and that was precisely what scared her.

They drank slowly on the sofa, sitting closer than necessary. He spoke little and watched her a lot. When he brushed a strand of hair off her face, his fingers grazed her neck and Carolina felt the touch run all the way down her back. There was no more conversation after that.

Adriano kissed her as if he had all the time in the world, without haste, barely biting her lower lip until she ran out of air. He unbuttoned her blouse one button at a time, pausing at every centimeter of skin that became exposed. He took off her bra without removing it completely, leaving her tits bare, and bent down to suck on them hungrily, tugging at her nipples with his teeth until Carolina let out a rough moan she couldn’t have said where it came from. Carolina, who for months had been used to automatic, predictable affection, felt her whole body go on alert.

—Open up —he murmured, kneeling between her legs—. I want to see you.

He ripped her skirt off in one pull, moved her panties aside with two fingers, and stared at her cunt for a long second before burying his tongue in it. Carolina threw her head back and gripped Adriano’s hair with both hands. He licked her slowly, from bottom to top, sucking her clit with his lips as if he had all the time in the world, slipping two thick fingers deep inside her. She started moving her hips against his mouth, shameless now, and when she felt his tongue find the exact rhythm, she came with a muffled cry, squeezing his head between her thighs.

—Turn around —he murmured against her ear, lifting her from the sofa.

She obeyed without thinking, still trembling. Adriano’s hands ran over her back, her waist, her hips, and Carolina arched her body, looking for more. She heard him unbuckle his belt, pull down his trousers, and when she felt his cock resting between her ass cheeks another moan escaped her. It was thick, hard, hot. Adriano slowly slid it between her cunt lips, soaking her, rubbing it against her clit until she pushed her ass back, asking for it.

—Fuck me —Carolina murmured, and didn’t recognize her own voice.

—Like this? —he asked, and drove it in with one thrust all the way to the hilt.

Carolina clung to the back of the sofa and let out a sound she didn’t recognize as her own. Adriano held her by the hips with both hands and started fucking her with long, deep thrusts, not speeding up yet, watching every expression on her face in the reflection of the dark window. He gave her a sharp slap on the ass that made her whole body shudder and her cunt clamp around his cock.

—Look at you —said Adriano, still not speeding up—. You’d needed this for a long time. So wet, and you’re not even ashamed.

She didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. Her body answered for her, moving against his, chasing an intensity she had forgotten existed. He pulled her off the sofa, laid her on her back on the rug, and lifted her legs onto his shoulders. He shoved his cock back in to the hilt and this time really started fucking her hard, his pelvis knocking against her clit with every thrust. Carolina squeezed her tits with her hands, tugging at her nipples, while he looked down at her with a calm that was almost obscene.

—Tell me nobody’s fucked you like this in a long time —he said, gasping, without stopping.

—Nobody —she moaned—. Nobody, fuck, keep going, like that, don’t stop…

When she reached the end, she did it with her forehead pressed to the cold leather of the sofa he had dragged her back to, on all fours, with her fingers white from gripping so hard and Adriano’s cock emptying hotly inside her. She felt the spurts of semen filling her, and something inside her chest loosened too, as if she had been tied up from the inside for years.

Afterward they lay stretched out on the living room floor, staring at the ceiling, with the semen still dripping down her thighs. Carolina waited for guilt. She waited to think about Hernán, the village church, the promises. But the only thing she felt was a strange calm, as if she had finally stopped holding her breath for the first time in years.

***

What started as one night became a habit. Adriano came up after dinner, or Carolina invented some excuse about needing air and ended up in the apartment upstairs. Lorena suspected it, but stayed quiet with a smile that held something like complicity and something like something else Carolina preferred not to name.

Every night was different. One time he pressed her against the hallway wall and fucked her standing up, with her heels on and her skirt hiked to her waist. Another he made her kneel in the kitchen and stuffed his cock down her throat until Carolina choked and mascara tears ran down her cheeks. She learned to suck him off while looking him in the eye, to swallow his load without turning her face away, to ask him in filthy words for what she wanted. Adriano taught her to enjoy her ass too, with his fingers first, then his tongue, until one dawn, soaked in oil and sweat, she begged him to put it in there. She came screaming into the pillow with his cock deep in her ass and two of his fingers rubbing her clit.

The problem was the calls.

Hernán phoned every night, punctually, with that tenderness of his that now weighed on Carolina like a stone. And often he caught her at exactly the worst possible moment.

One of those nights, the phone vibrated on Adriano’s table while she was on top of him, riding him slowly, with his cock buried to the hilt in her cunt. Carolina froze when she saw the name on the screen.

—Answer it —Adriano said, with a half-smile, never letting go of her hips—. I want to hear you lie while I shove it all the way in.

She shook her head, but she was already taking the phone with a trembling hand.

—Hello, love?

Her voice came out higher than usual.

—Carolina, are you okay? You sound strange.

Adriano chose that instant to push upward, slow and deep, driving himself all the way in. Carolina clenched her teeth and bit the back of her free hand to keep from moaning. He cupped one breast with his other hand and pinched her nipple, smiling.

—I’m… helping Lorena with some things around the house —she improvised—. I’m tired, that’s all.

—Tired? You’ve been there two weeks. When are you coming back?

—Soon —she murmured, and the last syllable broke when Adriano gripped her harder and started fucking her from below, thrusting in short strokes that made her ass slam against his thighs.

—I miss you —Hernán said, oblivious to everything.

—Me too —Carolina answered, feeling one of Adriano’s fingers brush her wet little hole with her own fluids, and hung up just in time to let out the moan she had been holding back.

Adriano laughed softly against her neck and shoved his finger into her ass while he kept pumping into her cunt.

—You’re terrible —he said—. You’re lying to him with my cock inside you. And you haven’t even come yet.

—You’re worse —she shot back, and kissed him again, moving her hips faster.

He laid her face down without pulling out, spread her ass cheeks with both hands and shoved it back in from above, holding her by the nape against the mattress. He fucked her like that, brutally, until Carolina came twice in a row screaming into the sheet. He held out until the end and pulled out just in time to empty himself over her ass, long ropes of hot semen sliding down her back and cheeks. The thrill of having lied to her husband while she had another man inside her lit up something dark in her that she had never allowed herself before. She wasn’t proud of it, but she couldn’t stop either.

***

The excuses grew more and more clumsy. “Lorena has a fever.” “I lost my return ticket.” “There’s a money problem.” Hernán listened to them all and in each one he noticed something new in his wife’s voice, a tone that didn’t belong to her. A man can put up with many things, but not the feeling that he’s being spoken to from somewhere else.

One night, after hanging up, Hernán sat in the kitchen back in the village, staring at the wall. Then he packed his bag.

He arrived in the city at dusk the next day, unannounced. Lorena opened the door and the color drained from her face in an instant.

—Hernán! What… what a surprise. Carolina is… resting. Come in, I’ll make you a coffee.

But he had already heard the sound coming from upstairs. It wasn’t the television. It was unmistakable: rhythmic thuds of a bed against the wall, and his wife’s voice moaning words she had never said to him.

—Where is she? —he asked, in a voice that allowed no detours.

—Hernán, wait —Lorena said, but he was already taking the stairs two at a time.

He followed the noise to a half-open door and pushed it open. What he found when he went up those stairs would stay with him for the rest of his life: Carolina, his wife, on all fours on the bed, back arched, tits swinging with each thrust, and another man behind her, holding her by the hair while he fucked her from behind. He saw her face reflected in the wardrobe mirror, mouth open, eyes half-lidded with pleasure, an expression he had never seen in her in three years of marriage. He heard her moan “harder, harder” just before she realized.

—Carolina —he said, and his voice broke in the middle.

She turned her head and pleasure froze into horror. Adriano withdrew slowly, and Carolina felt his cock sliding out of her cunt as she looked at her husband in the doorway. She covered herself as best she could with the sheet, stammering.

—Hernán… it’s not what it looks like…

—It’s exactly what it looks like —he replied.

Adriano didn’t move from the bed. He looked at her, then at him, and had the decency to stay silent. Hernán didn’t shout. There were no blows, no threats. He just stood in the doorway for an eternal moment, looking at the woman he thought he knew with another man’s semen dripping down her thighs, and then he turned and went back down the stairs.

Carolina followed him half-dressed, barefoot, catching him on the landing.

—Wait. Please, wait.

Hernán stopped, but didn’t turn around.

—How long? —he asked.

—Hernán…

—How long, Carolina?

She didn’t answer, and the silence was answer enough.

***

That night Carolina didn’t sleep. She sat on the apartment building stairs, hugging her knees, waiting to feel the collapse she was supposed to feel. Her marriage had just fallen apart. Hernán had gone to the hotel on the corner without saying another word, and in the morning he would take the first bus back to the village.

And yet what kept her awake was not sorrow. It was the question she had been avoiding for weeks: did she really want to go back?

Lorena sat down beside her with two cups of tea and a half-smoked cigarette.

—You’re going to let him go —she said. It wasn’t a question.

—I don’t know.

—Yes, you do. You knew it the first night.

Carolina stared at the smoke rising in spirals toward the landing light. She thought of Hernán, of his tired tenderness, of the quiet, predictable life waiting for her two hundred kilometers away. And then she thought about what she had discovered about herself in that city: a woman who desired, who dared, who moaned without shame, who asked for cock by first and last name, who did not want to go back to being put out.

—I’m a horrible person —she murmured.

—You’re a person who’s finally being honest —Lorena replied—. That’s not the same thing.

***

In the morning, Hernán came by the building before leaving. He rang the bell with his suitcase at his side, and Carolina went downstairs to open up. They looked at each other in silence in the entryway, two strangers who had shared a life.

—I came to give you the chance to come with me —he said, without resentment, only with enormous exhaustion—. If you tell me you’re coming back, we’ll never speak of this again.

It was an escape. A way of pretending nothing had happened, of going back to the familiar house and letting time erase the image of that half-open door. Carolina opened her mouth to accept, because it was the right thing, because it was what was expected of her.

But she couldn’t say it.

—I can’t, Hernán —she said instead, her voice steady for the first time in a long while—. It wouldn’t be fair to either of us. I’ve spent years pretending I was fine, and I wasn’t. You deserve someone who loves you completely. And I need to figure out who I am away from the village.

Hernán nodded slowly. Something broke across his face and reassembled itself into a sad dignity.

—I hope it’s worth it —he said.

—Me too —she answered.

She watched him walk away down the street, back straight, the suitcase bumping against his leg with every step, until he turned the corner and disappeared. Carolina stayed in the entryway for a long time, waiting for regret.

It didn’t come.

When she went back upstairs, Adriano was waiting on the landing, leaning on the banister with the same slow smile as the first time, and nothing on under his half-open robe. She walked past him, but before going into the apartment she turned, came up to him, and bit his lower lip with the same calm he had kissed her with on the first night. She slipped her hand under his robe, grabbed his already-hard cock, and squeezed it slowly, looking him in the eye. Inside, she knew that story wasn’t over. It was just beginning. And for the first time in years, Carolina wasn’t afraid of what came next.