What I imagine when my husband goes away on business

I’m going to confess something I haven’t told anyone, not even the friend I share almost everything with. I’m writing it because I need to get it out of me, where it’s been turning for months like an animal in a cage. I’m married to a good man. Andrés is attentive, hardworking, the kind of man who remembers anniversaries and brings flowers for no reason. We live in a beautiful house, in a quiet neighborhood with tree-lined streets. I lack nothing. And yet, every time he closes the door to leave on a trip, my mind crosses the street and goes into another bed.

Andrés travels often for work. This week he has one of the long ones, almost ten days. When he leaves, the first few nights leave me restless, my body awake and the house too silent. I resort to my usual routine: I lock myself in the bedroom, reach for the vibrator in the bottom drawer, and let my mind wander free. And my mind always ends up in the same place.

It goes to the neighbor across the street.

His name is Diego, and he moved into the house that backs right onto our backyard a little over a year ago. He’s tall, broad-shouldered, with the back of someone who trains seriously. The first time I saw him carrying boxes in the driveway, I looked at him through the kitchen window longer than was decent. There are men who take up space in a way you can’t ignore, and he’s one of them. I think that in bed, he must be the kind who decides. The kind who commands.

What comes next didn’t happen. Or not entirely. It’s the fantasy I piece together every time I’m left alone, and I tell it as if it were real because, in my head, it is.

***

In my story, Diego and I have been seeing each other in secret for months. Always when Andrés is traveling, never before. One afternoon, a few hours before my husband takes off, my phone rings. It’s him. In that low, calm voice that won’t take no for an answer, he tells me what’s going to happen that night.

—Tonight I want to get you pregnant —he says, like he’s commenting on the weather.

I try to explain the obvious. That Andrés would kill me if he found out, that a child would change everything, that it’s insane. He doesn’t listen to my objections. He doesn’t even argue with them. He only explains, calmly, how he wants me to receive him that night, what I need to have ready, how I should be waiting for him. And I, who consider myself a strong-willed woman, one who doesn’t let anyone walk all over her at work, hang up trembling and obey with my head.

I spend the rest of the day at the office in an impossible state. I can’t focus on anything. Every time my phone vibrates on the desk I start, expecting another message from him, another clue about what he plans to do to me. At lunch he writes me a single line, a suggestion about where he wants to find me when he gets here. I have to close the chat and take a deep breath so my coworkers won’t notice my flushed face.

That night I make dinner early. I set the table, open a bottle of red wine, and leave two glasses ready on the marble countertop. I go upstairs to take my clothes off, because that’s how he wants it, even though cooking with nothing on is a terrible idea when you’re so turned on your hands won’t cooperate. I go back downstairs and finish the last details with goosebumps from the draft coming in from the garden.

He arrives a little late. When I open the door and see him there, filling the frame with his body, my mouth goes dry. He looks me over slowly, from top to bottom, as if inspecting something that belongs to him. He says nothing. He doesn’t need to.

We sit on the terrace while the sun finishes dropping behind the rooftops. He pours me wine and tells me the rest of his plans in a level of detail that makes me squeeze my thighs together. I’ve always liked feeling the air on my bare skin, sunbathing with nothing on in the yard on hot days. I suspect he’s seen me more than once from his window, and the idea, far from embarrassing me, turns me on.

When it cools down, we move to the two-seat porch sofa. I settle onto his lap. I’m already wet; I’ve been wet all day. I wonder how he knew today was exactly the day, since I don’t even keep track of my cycles with that kind of precision. I’m a disaster with those things. He, on the other hand, seems to have everything measured.

—You’re gorgeous —he tells me, as his hands move up and down my sides.

He strokes my breasts before closing his fingers over my nipples and squeezing them to that exact point where pain becomes something else.

—I want to see them get even bigger —he murmurs against my neck.

My breath catches. I feel the center of my body as a hollow space pulling the rest of me toward him, desperate to be filled. I can’t take it anymore and lower my hand to touch myself, but he catches it in midair and holds it against my own thigh.

—Tonight you don’t get anything I don’t give you —he says.

I let out a sound halfway between a complaint and a laugh. He knows he’s the one who gives, and I’m the one who receives. I don’t think of myself as submissive in real life, I swear. But when this man wants something, I give it to him right away, and that surrender heats me in a way I didn’t know existed. People throw those words around, dominant and submissive, so lightly. Tonight I understand what they mean: he decided to get me pregnant, and I’m going to let him do it.

After a little more playing, after biting one of my nipples and smiling at me like a satisfied cat, he stands up.

—Upstairs.

***

We go up the stairs together to the master bedroom. The same one I share with Andrés. Guilt should stop me there, at the threshold, but that night guilt stays outside. The lights are off; only the glow from the streetlamp comes through the window, tracing a pale stripe across the bed.

—Lie down —he tells me.

I know he’s going to take me without any tenderness, and I’m ready for it. I rest my head on my crossed arms and look at him, waiting. I watch him unbutton his shirt slowly, deliberately, fold it, and leave it on the chair. That’s not like him; usually the clothes hit the floor and he’s on top of me in a rush. Tonight he takes his time just to make me wait.

—How cruel you are —I tell him.

He smiles. He takes the rest off and stands naked in front of me, outlined against the window light. I spread my legs, shift a little, tease him. He climbs onto the bed and, with a firm hand on my hip, turns me face down. A sharp slap on my ass.

—Stay still.

He starts rubbing my back, from my shoulders to the nape of my neck, which he leans down to kiss. Then he runs his tongue down my spine, vertebra by vertebra, until he reaches the small of my back. It feels like hours, but only a few minutes have passed when he asks me to turn over. I do.

—I can’t wait to watch your stomach grow and know there’s something of mine inside you —he says, resting his palm over my belly, right where he imagines the swell.

—I want to fuck you like this, with a heavy belly, drink from your breasts and watch you writhe knowing it was me —he adds, and every word is a jolt that goes straight down to my core.

He sits back against the headboard and gestures for me to climb on top. I do. I slide over him and sink down slowly until I’m completely full, seated between his legs, not a millimeter of air between us. Leaning toward me, he runs his hands over my body again, catches my nipples—so hard they hurt—and stretches and twists them while I bite my lip not to scream.

When he grows tired of that position, he straightens me up on my knees and slips out of me. He passes his arms under me, opening me fully, giving him complete access to touch me however he wants. His fingers move slowly, pinching, pulling to the edge of pain. Then they find the exact spot where I’m most sensitive and he works it there, knowing perfectly well what he does to me. I gasp, spread my knees wider, offer him everything.

I sink into an almost animal need to have something fill me. He slips in one finger, then two, and my body closes around them by instinct, but he pulls them out just as I start to lose myself, leaving me emptier than before.

—I want you inside me —I tell him, not recognizing my own voice.

He repeats it, louder, pressing now with his palm against the bone, and I fold forward, on the verge of coming just from that. I feel him very close, brushing against me, still not entering.

—Please —I moan.

—Tell me what you want —he answers, stopping, though the pressure of his hand is still there. I writhe, searching for more.

—I want you to fuck me. Please.

He smiles, motionless, and I know he wants to hear it all, every last word.

—Please, fuck me and finish inside me. I want your child. I want you to take me again when I’m pregnant, with a huge belly. And I want you to do it over and over again.

Then, at last, he answers. He leans in, grabs my waist, and opens me wider, lining himself up with a precision that takes my breath away. The head of his cock brushes me first, wet and hard, marking my entrance until I tremble. Then he pushes in, slowly at first, and the head forces its way forward with delicious pressure, opening me little by little until there’s nothing left but heat, flesh, and the brutal certainty that he’s filling me. I whimper, arch my back, and he doesn’t stop: he keeps going with a heavy, firm thrust, sinking all the way in at once, as if my cunt had been made to swallow him whole.

He stays still for a second, breathing hard, letting me feel him throbbing inside me. I tighten around him without meaning to, desperate to hold him there, to have him deeper. He lets out a low groan and starts moving, first withdrawing just barely, just enough to leave me with that unbearable feeling of emptiness, then driving into me again hard, battering my body from the inside with every pull out and every thrust back in. The wet sound of our bodies fills the room, mixed with my ragged breathing and the sounds he wrings from me with every push.

—That’s it, you little bitch —he murmurs, close to my ear—. Open wider.

And I do. I offer him my whole body, my soaked cunt, my breasts, my mouth, everything. I feel him stretching me, taking me without softness, making me bounce on the bed with every jolt. His hand slips between us and finds my clit, swollen and sensitive, and rubs it with that exact pressure that makes me see sparks behind my eyes. I moan louder, I writhe, and he makes me stay still just long enough to shove deeper, harder.

—I want to hear you come —he says—. I want to know you’re feeling it in your belly.

I come fast, almost without warning, and the orgasm breaks through me in a hot wave that leaves me trembling from my fingertips to my throat. But he doesn’t let up. He keeps fucking me while the pleasure unravels in spasms, while I force myself to hold on so I don’t collapse. He slips two fingers into where his cock had been, then drives back in at once, giving me no respite, hitting the same spot again and again until I lose control all over again.

—Finish inside me —I beg him, breathless—. I want to feel it.

They always said a woman can’t feel the exact moment a man finishes inside her, that it’s impossible, that it’s only suggestion. I, that night, swear I felt it. He explodes with a choked groan, his whole body going rigid, his cock buried to the hilt as he empties into me in hot, thick pulses that fill me and shake me at the same time. The semen throbs inside me with every contraction, and that sensation sets me off again, a violent shudder that bends me in two and leaves me moaning for air.

I wrap my legs around his waist, squeezing him, holding him in place. He stays on top of me, still inside me, while I speak softly in his ear so he won’t cool off.

—I think this time it worked —I whisper—. And if not, we’ll do it again until it does. Up for it?

His only answer was to move inside me again, slowly at first and then not so slowly, with his cock sliding once more between my wet walls, until we finished again. And again. I lost count of how many times.

***

That’s where the fantasy almost always breaks, and I return to my empty bed, alone, my heart pounding against my chest and my breathing ragged. Andrés is still away. The house across the street has its lights off. Diego, the real one, probably doesn’t even know my name.

And then I get scared by how vivid the other part of the story becomes, the one I invent afterward. I imagine the months passing, my body changing, the impossible truth impossible to hide. I imagine Andrés looking at me and understanding all at once, the house falling apart, me crossing the street with a suitcase to begin another life at the door next door. A disaster. And even so, there’s a part of me that wants it with a clarity that embarrasses me.

I don’t know what that says about me. I don’t know if one day I’ll have the courage to ring that bell and find out whether reality is anything like what I imagine in the dark. For now I keep the fantasy, which is mine and no one else’s, and this confession that, now that I’ve let it out, leaves me as exposed as that night that never happened.