What My Co-Worker Never Told Me at the Office

The first time I really spoke with Marcos was one October afternoon, after everyone else had already left. We’d spent two years sharing the same corridor, the same machine coffee, and the same company emails, but we had never exchanged more than twenty words in a row. That day he kept his eyes fixed on the screen long after the last co-worker had closed the door.

I was gathering my things unhurriedly when he looked up.

—Aren’t you in a rush this afternoon? —he asked.

—Not today —I said.

And that’s how it all began.

I don’t know how long we stayed that afternoon in the empty meeting room, with the chairs still left in a mess after the last meeting and the plastic cups from three o’clock coffee on the table. Marcos spoke little but precisely. He weighed his words before using them, which, in an office full of people who talk for the sake of talking, was a considerable relief.

He told me he was from Las Palmas. That he had lived many years in the south, that he had married there and that his wife had died of a fast cancer, the kind that doesn’t leave time for anything. He said it without drama, like someone recounting something that already has a name and a place within his personal story.

—And what brought you here? —I asked him.

—A transfer. And the desire to start somewhere else.

I understood that perfectly.

My story had the same background even if the details were different: a marriage that broke apart with a lot of noise and very little dignity, a daughter already grown and living her own life, and then a slow rebuilding that no one sees from the outside. When I climbed out of that hole, I promised myself that no one would ever put limits on me again. Not on my schedule, not on my plans, not on what I do with my body when I close the door.

That afternoon I didn’t tell him any of that. I just listened.

***

Over the following months we kept running into each other more often. First at work, then in the neighborhood bars, then on those Sunday afternoons that begin out of boredom and end up being the best plans of the year.

Marcos was reserved but not closed off. There was an important difference between the two things. He didn’t talk about his business out of politeness, not out of fear. And when someone moves discreetly, they tend to recognize that same discretion in others.

One night, in a small bar near my place, after two beers and a conversation that had already shifted into more personal territory, he asked me something no one had asked me in years.

—What do you like most about sex? —he said.

He didn’t say it crudely. He said it like someone asking about a favorite song. With genuine curiosity, no trick attached.

I stayed quiet for a moment.

—Why are you asking?

—Because we’ve been talking about everything for months and we’ve never talked about that. And it seems to me it’s an important part of people.

He was right. And I had long ago learned not to dodge the questions that make me uncomfortable out of pure instinct.

I told him the truth: that I liked being fucked slowly and also fucked hard, depending on the day. That I liked sucking a cock while looking the man who owned it in the eyes. That I had discovered late that I loved having my cunt eaten for a long time, until I lost track of time, and that I also liked eating a woman’s cunt myself. That after the divorce I’d decided to try everything I hadn’t tried before, and that I didn’t regret a thing.

Marcos listened without moving, with the glass between his fingers and that half smile that appeared whenever something genuinely interested him.

—And you? —I threw the question back at him when I finished.

And then it was his turn to speak.

***

Marcos had a story I hadn’t expected. When he was young, before he got married, he had fucked men. Quite a few. He didn’t present it as an anguished confession but as a fact within his story, part of who he was. Later, with his wife, they had entered the swinging scene. Clubs, encounters with other couples, threesomes with both men and women. Always by mutual agreement, always with honesty.

—It was our way of keeping curiosity alive —he said—. Not need. Curiosity.

That phrase stuck with me.

I realized I was in front of someone who understood exactly what I understood: that sex is a conversation, not a conquest. That fantasies are not shame but information about oneself. That you can have a completely orderly life on the surface and a free interior without there being any contradiction in that.

That night nothing else happened beyond that conversation. But when I got home, I got into bed with my hand between my legs thinking about him, and I came twice in a row imagining his mouth on my cunt. I knew then that something had changed between us.

***

What we had wasn’t immediate. It took us another month to go from words to deeds. And when it happened, it was at his place, on a rainy Wednesday, with a half-finished bottle of wine in the kitchen and the TV on in the living room as background noise.

There was no elaborate seduction. At some point in the night, we simply looked at each other differently from all the previous times.

—Do you want to stay? —he asked.

—Yes —I said.

That simple. That clear.

He kissed me standing up in the kitchen, pressing me against the edge of the counter. It was not a polite kiss. He shoved his tongue all the way in and one hand went straight to my ass, squeezing over my skirt. I felt his cock hard against my hip before I even touched him, and as soon as I slid my hand down and grabbed him over his trousers, a short growl escaped into my mouth.

—Let’s go to the bedroom —I whispered.

—No —he said—. Here first.

He lifted my skirt to my waist, turned me to face the counter, and yanked my panties down in one motion. I felt his mouth on my nape, his hands parting my legs, and then two fingers driving into my already soaked cunt. He ripped a gasp from me I hadn’t expected. He fucked me with his fingers slowly and then fast, measuring my reactions, touching my clit with his thumb while biting my shoulder over my blouse.

—You’re dripping —he said softly, against my ear.

—Shut up and keep going —I shot back.

He laughed without letting go of me. And he kept going until my legs started trembling and I had to grip the countertop with both hands so I wouldn’t fall. I came there, standing up, with his fingers inside me and his mouth on my neck, biting down on a noise I didn’t want to let out yet.

When I could breathe again, he turned me around and knelt me down. I opened his trousers, pulled them down to his knees and took his cock out of his boxer briefs. It was thick, with the tip already wet and a vein running visibly underneath. I held it by the base and ran my tongue from his balls to the glans, very slowly, looking up at him from below.

—Fuck —he said, bracing a hand against the cabinet.

I took him all the way into my mouth, as much as I could, until the tip hit the back of my throat and my eyes watered. I sucked his cock calmly at first, savoring it, and then faster, with my hand following what my mouth couldn’t cover. Marcos grabbed my hair, not to force me but to steady himself, and started whispering things.

—Like that, keep going like that, you suck it so well, fuck...

I felt his body tense and pulled my mouth away before he came.

—Not yet —I told him.

He lifted me off the floor, took me to the bedroom half dragging, half kissing, and threw me onto the bed. He ripped off the rest of my clothes with more urgency than care and stood looking at me for a second, kneeling between my legs, his hard cock pressed to his stomach.

Then he lowered his head and ate my pussy until I lost count. He licked me all over, top to bottom, and then focused on my clit, sucking it and working his tongue in circles while sliding two fingers into me and curling them inside. I came again, gripping his hair with both hands, and he still kept going for a while longer, taking advantage of my trembling to bring me to the edge once more before coming up.

When he got on top, he looked me in the eyes and waited. He didn’t ask, didn’t speak. He just waited.

—Fuck me already —I told him.

He slid it in slowly at first, measuring, letting me feel every centimeter. I was so wet he went all the way in at once and I could feel my cunt opening around his cock. He stayed still for a second, breathing into my neck, and then he started moving. First slow, with long thrusts that made my back arch. Then, when I told him more, harder, he leaned on his arms and started fucking me for real, with hard strokes that made me moan every time.

We changed positions several times that night. He rode me, then I rode him, bouncing on top of him with my hands on his chest while he watched my breasts move and pinched my nipples. Then he put me on all fours and fucked me from behind, holding my hips, fucking me so deeply I could feel him pounding inside me with each thrust. He spat on my cunt to lubricate it more, though it wasn’t necessary, and then ran his wet thumb over my asshole, not inserting it, just testing.

—Do you like that? —he asked.

—Yes —I said, pressing my face into the pillow.

He came inside me in that position, with a rough groan, holding my hip so hard that the next day I found the marks of his fingers on my skin. I felt the hot spurts shooting against the back of my cunt and that made me come again, almost without wanting to, squeezing him with my inner walls while he kept moving slowly, emptying himself completely.

We stayed up late. We talked more, in between and afterward. About past experiences, about things we’d like to try, about the limits each of us had clear. That conversation in the dark, with our voices low and his semen still trickling between my thighs, was part of the same pleasure.

—I don’t want a relationship —I told him before falling asleep—. Not now.

—Me neither —he replied—. But this seems too good to ignore.

And that was what we decided: not to ignore it.

***

Over the following months we built something that has no exact name in conventional vocabulary. We weren’t a couple. We weren’t just friends, although that was the official description. We were two people who trusted each other completely, who shared a kind of honesty that’s hard to find, and who, when they wanted to, fucked like it was the last time.

At work we stayed just as professional. If anyone noticed, they didn’t say so.

But outside the office, things were different.

One of the first experiences we had together was at a swingers’ club Marcos had already been to before. I had never been to one. I had had encounters with other people, always in private settings. This was different, and it gave me a strange mix of nerves and curiosity that I never quite knew how to separate.

We arrived on a Saturday close to midnight. The place was discreet from the outside, larger inside than I expected. Quiet music, low lighting, people of all kinds seated on sofas or standing at the bar. There was none of the marketplace atmosphere one imagines. It was more adult, calmer.

Marcos knew me well enough to know I needed time to observe before participating. He stayed by my side without pressuring me, introducing everything calmly and with a certain humor.

—That couple over there has been coming for two years —he told me, discreetly pointing toward the bar—. They’re both engineers.

—How do you know?

—Because they told me last time I came.

That made me laugh. And laughing relaxed me.

That night we ended up in one of the private rooms with a couple we had met during the evening. His name was Andrés and he was calm, broad-shouldered, with the look of someone who is in no hurry. Laura was the kind of person who communicates with her eyes before she does with words. When we got into the room, there was no awkwardness or discomfort.

We started with the four of us standing in the middle of the room, undressing each other with crossed kisses. Laura kissed me before the men, with a soft, curious tongue that had nothing to envy in any other I had ever tried. Her hands found my breasts beneath my dress while Andrés pulled it down off my shoulders. Marcos, behind her, already had her skirt hitched up and her panties around her ankles.

We lay down on the large bed of four. I ended up on my back with Laura between my legs, eating my cunt with a slowness that made me grip the sheets. Her tongue was nimble and she knew how to use it. She sucked, licked, stopped just before climax and started again lower down. Meanwhile, I watched Marcos kneeling at the edge, his hands on Laura’s ass, fucking her slowly from behind, looking me in the eyes every time she ripped a moan out of me.

Andrés came to my side and offered me his cock, neither asking nor imposing. I turned my head and took it into my mouth. It was shorter than Marcos’s but very thick, and filled my mouth in a different way. I sucked him well, with both hands, while Laura stayed between my legs and Marcos kept fucking her. The four of us connected in a chain of mouths and cocks that moved like a single thing.

We changed positions several times. At one point I ended up riding Andrés while Laura sat on his face so he could eat her, and Marcos got behind me to fuck my ass for the first time, very slowly, with lots of lubricant, while I had Andrés inside my cunt. I had never felt two cocks at once and for a moment I didn’t know if I would be able to handle it. Marcos whispered from behind me, stroked my back, gave me time. When he finally went all the way in, he stayed still and Andrés did too, letting me breathe and get used to it.

—Tell me when —said Marcos.

—Now —I answered.

They started moving alternately, one coming out while the other went in, and I stopped thinking completely. Laura, on Andrés’s face, came first, with her hands gripping my hair. I came after that, screaming without caring about anything, feeling full in both ways at once. Marcos came in my ass with short, deep thrusts, and Andrés almost immediately inside my cunt, pushing up from below with trembling thighs.

We lay there all four afterward, covered in sweat and semen, laughing softly at nothing in particular.

What I remember most about that night isn’t the detail of what happened but the feeling of being completely present without thinking whether I should be there or not.

***

Over time, Marcos and I told each other everything.

His years in the swinging scene with his wife, the encounters they’d had together, the things they had learned from that experience. And also what had come before, the relationships he’d had with men when he was young, told with the same naturalness with which he told me anything else about his life. He told me how he sucked cocks at twenty, how he liked being taken in the ass on a Sunday morning, how he’d learned to tell a good fuck from a mediocre one by the way the other person looked at you while fucking you.

He told me because, he said, I was the first person with whom he felt he wouldn’t have to justify it. I liked that. And it also made me understand why the same thing happened to me with him.

I told him my own stories. The nights with other women, the first time I ate a pussy and discovered I loved the taste, some brief encounters I remember fondly, a friendship that for a while was also something else and ended with the two of us coming face down on the living room rug. The difference between desire and affection, and how sometimes you confuse the two at the worst possible moment.

We tried being a couple once. We decided one afternoon, almost spontaneously, convinced that what we had was already enough to take that step. We lasted three weeks. Not for lack of affection but because something changed in the dynamic. Like when you adjust a photograph too much and lose exactly what made it interesting.

We talked about it without drama, as we talked about everything.

—This works better like this —he said.

—Yes —I said.

And we carried on.

***

My daughter already has her own life. She lives far away, studies what she chose for herself, calls on Sunday mornings. I’ve told her some things about my life, not all of them. She knows I’m well. That’s what matters.

Marcos is still in the same office. This week he sent me a message saying he’d met someone on one of his trips and wanted to tell me about it in person. I already imagine there’ll be wine, a long conversation, and, if luck is on my side, his cock in my mouth again before he goes home.

I’m not jealous. That’s also part of what I learned over these years: that desire is not a finite resource that runs out if it’s shared. That wanting the other person to be well, truly well, is not a threat to anyone.

I’ve lived like this for years and I wouldn’t change a thing.

There are people who think these stories need an ending with regret or a moral lesson. I only have this: deciding who you want to be in your private life, with whom and how to fuck, is the best thing you can do for yourself. And sometimes the person who understands you best is the one who’s been sitting across the corridor from you for years.