What My Wife’s Cousin Confessed to Me About Prison

A few months ago, I got back in touch with Lucía, a cousin of my wife Daniela’s whom we’d gone years without speaking to. She showed up one afternoon unannounced, with a bottle of wine and that half-crooked smile she’d always had. We sat on the terrace, my wife wasn’t home, and between one glass and the next she started confessing things.

—There’s something I’ve been keeping to myself for years —she told me at one point—. I don’t know why I’m telling you, but I can’t hold it in anymore.

I told her I was listening. She poured me another glass and started at the beginning.

It turned out that years earlier, before I came on the scene, Daniela had had an affair with a guy called Mateo, the brother of a school friend. Mateo ended up in prison over some shady business, wouldn’t go into details, and wound up in the psychiatric wing of a prison in the south. They watched him twenty-four hours a day, because at first they thought he might hurt himself, although later it came to nothing and he became just another inmate.

Lucía had known one of the guards on the wing before, a guy named Andrés whom she’d had a discreet thing with in her single days. Andrés remembered her and called her one Tuesday afternoon. The message was strange: Mateo had asked to see Daniela and, while they were at it, Lucía and he could pick up where they left off.

—I didn’t know whether to tell your wife —she confessed—. But I called her and, to my surprise, she didn’t even hesitate. We set the visit for the following Sunday.

Daniela has never told me this. Let me make that clear from the outset: what follows is Lucía’s version, word for word, with the strange honesty that only wine and the exhaustion of too many years carrying a secret can give.

***

—We got to the prison midmorning —Lucía told me—. There was a huge line of women, all with plastic bags, all with the face of people who’ve been doing the same thing for years. We queued without talking much. Your wife was quieter than ever. She wore a loose dress, Lycra underneath, and hardly any makeup. I asked her if she was sure. She looked at me and said yes, that she needed to put an end to it once and for all.

—The search was humiliating. They run their hands all over you, make you open your mouth, talk to you as if you were livestock. We came out of there with our legs shaking. Andrés was waiting for us after the second checkpoint. He’d registered us as visitors to a common yard, so technically we were going to see other prisoners. He had less than two hours to smuggle us into the restricted wing and get us out before noon count.

—We walked fast, close to the wall. Andrés went ahead, greeting everyone like it was nothing. On the way he told Daniela she’d only have an hour with Mateo. Your wife nodded without saying a word. I think she was already somewhere else mentally. I’ve known her since we were twelve and I’d never seen her like that, with that look of someone heading somewhere they don’t want to come back from.

—We reached a narrower block, with two cells right next to each other. Andrés opened the first one and Daniela went in. Mateo got up from the cot. They looked at each other as if nobody else in the world mattered, and in that second I understood why your wife had come back to that place even though she had everything in life.

—Andrés closed that door and opened the one next to it. It was an almost identical cell, but smaller, with a narrow bed and a chair facing a glass panel that looked into Mateo’s room. A one-way mirror, the kind you can only see through from one side. And a microphone that could be switched on and off with a toggle on the wall.

***

Lucía lowered her voice when she got to this part. I poured myself more wine and let her continue.

—When I turned around, they were already kissing. Daniela had her hands on Mateo’s neck and he was pulling her against him as if he’d spent years waiting for that minute. Andrés came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist. He kissed my neck without saying anything. I played along. I’m not going to lie, I knew perfectly well why he was there.

—He slid his hands under my blouse, hiked it up to my shoulders. He squeezed my breasts with that firmness I remembered from when we were younger. He yanked down my Lycra and panties in one pull and made me lean against the glass. From there I could see everything. Daniela was already bare-chested. Her tits were out and Mateo was devouring them as if he’d been fantasizing about them for months. He bit her nipples slowly, eyes closed, and she held his head with both hands.

—Andrés knelt behind me and started going down on me right there, against the glass. It wasn’t a gentle brush or a soft touch: he pried my legs apart with his hands, shoved his face between my thighs, and licked me as if he wanted to tear the moans out of me at once. I couldn’t stop watching. I could see Mateo taking your wife’s underwear off, see her bracing herself against the wall and opening her legs a little wider than necessary. Andrés asked me if I wanted to hear them. I told him yes. He flipped on the microphone.

—The first thing I heard was Daniela’s breathing, fast, broken. Then Mateo’s voice telling her something in her ear that I couldn’t make out, but it made her laugh very softly. That laugh. It was the same laugh that had given me goosebumps when we were fourteen, when we discovered together, in her bedroom, that there was something beyond schoolbooks.

—Andrés took me to the bed and sat me on the edge. He wanted me to suck him off. And I wanted to do it, I won’t pretend otherwise. While I had his cock in my mouth, I didn’t take my eyes off the glass. Daniela was on all fours on Mateo’s bed, and he had her by the hips. The sound was brutal. Every time he slammed into her, you could hear the dull thud in the microphone, the wet friction of skin on skin, the two of them panting. And she was moaning with her face pressed into the sheets, her ass lifted high, offering herself without shame.

—Andrés got tired of the position, turned me onto my back and slid between my legs. I asked him to wait a second, just so I could look. Daniela had white knuckles from gripping the blanket. She told Mateo not to stop, that she was about to come. He held her tighter and started pounding her as if nothing else in the world mattered. I felt Andrés’s tongue lapping at my clit, insistent, and the pressure of his fingers opening me while he fucked me with his mouth. Your wife came like that, her face buried in the pillow so she wouldn’t scream. Her whole body tightened, her back arched, and it was like watching her break in silence. I came almost at the same time, with Andrés still between my legs and swallowing my gasps. It was impossible not to catch it.

***

By then Lucía wasn’t looking at me anymore. She was staring at the wall, as if she were back in that cell and not on my terrace.

—After that, Andrés made me ride him. He sat in the chair, facing the glass, and I sat on top of him with my back to it so I could keep watching. Daniela was on her knees in front of Mateo, giving him head. She did it as if her life depended on it. She took him all the way in, to the base, and then rose slowly, looking him in the eyes. He held her head with both hands and told her things that weren’t very clear through the microphone. And what left me speechless: your wife lifted her gaze and smiled at him. She was loving it. It wasn’t submission. It was complicity. It was a happy, shameless surrender, and that was what shook me the most.

—Andrés told me in my ear he was going to come. I sped up, I don’t know if for him or for everything I was seeing. And then we heard Mateo say the same to Daniela. She didn’t look away. She took it all over her, in her mouth, on her cheeks, on her tongue, and kept her mouth open to swallow what fell. I came a second time in that chair, barely able to breathe, and Andrés finished inside me with a muffled groan against my neck. I felt the heat of his load, the spasms, how he held my waist to empty himself completely while I kept staring at the mirror like an idiot.

—We stayed still for a minute. I hugged him without really knowing why. When I looked back at the glass, Daniela had sat on the edge of the bed and Mateo had lain back. Then she went over to him, settled beside him, and they started kissing. Slowly. No rush. With tongue, with saliva, with hands buried in hair and fingers squeezing asses. Like two people who actually know each other.

—Andrés dragged me back to the bed. He lay on top of me, kissed my tits, shoved his fingers into me. I felt like there was no room left inside me and still I wanted more. He bent me over, made me on all fours on the mattress, shoved his cock into me from behind and held my hips to mark every thrust. Then we heard Mateo’s voice through the microphone, asking your wife to get on all fours again. He told her what he wanted to do to her, something I don’t want to repeat out loud right now. But she laughed, that laugh again, and answered him with a line I still remember: “You know that with you I’m a three-service girl.”

—Andrés and I looked at each other. We both stood in front of the glass, him with his fingers still inside me, me holding onto what was already hard again with one hand. We watched Mateo run his tongue over places I would never have imagined your wife would accept. He licked her pussy patiently, parting her lips with two fingers, sucking her clit while she clung to the pillow. And she writhed, stroked her clit with two fingers, bit her lip, asked for more. There was sweat on her chest, on her stomach, in the hair stuck to her forehead. Everything was wet, slippery, animal.

—Andrés pressed me against the glass again and fucked me standing up. My face was almost against the mirror. I could see Daniela in profile on the bed, with Mateo fucking her from behind and working her from the front with his fingers, both at once. Every thrust made her ass jerk against his thighs and the bed creak. He held her by the hips and opened her wider, driving his cock in to the hilt while she touched herself desperately. It was an image that’s hard to explain. It wasn’t violent. It was orderly, almost choreographed, as if they’d already done it a thousand times before that afternoon.

—Daniela came first. I knew because her whole body went rigid for several seconds and then went limp like a doll. Mateo held out a little longer, pounding her fast, his chest pressed to her back and one hand on her neck, until he finished too with a dull growl. I came a third time. Andrés held me against the glass, exhausted, and told me in my ear that he’d never seen anything like it. I told him neither had I.

***

—“Time,” Andrés said into the microphone. Mateo gave a thumbs-up without looking. Your wife went into the tiny cell shower, rinsed off as best she could, got dressed. Before leaving, she went up to Mateo, cupped his face in both hands and gave him a long, slow kiss, like someone sealing something shut. I cleaned myself off with the paper towels in my room and got dressed too, trying to make my hands stop shaking.

—We left the way we’d come in, pressed against the wall. Andrés took us to a common yard and there we had to wait another half hour, mixed in with the legitimate visitors, before we could go through the last doors. I think it’s the longest stretch of time I’ve ever spent in my life. I was afraid someone would look us in the face and realize everything.

—In the car, on the way home, we joked about the “madness” we’d done. Daniela laughed, said never again, said it had been a goodbye. I played along. I didn’t tell her I’d seen and heard most of her encounter. I never told her. Never told anyone. Until today.

***

Lucía looked at me for the first time in a long while. Her eyes were shining, but there was no guilt on her face. There was relief, the relief of someone finally setting down a stone they’ve carried too long.

—And then, you know —she added, almost as if it were an aside—. Mateo was moved to another unit a few months later. He was granted conjugal visits. Your wife went back. And she went back several times. I didn’t see that part, but I can picture it perfectly.

I finished my glass in one swallow. I didn’t know what to say. Lucía squeezed my hand, stood up, picked up her bag, and kissed me very close to the mouth before leaving.

I don’t know what I’m going to do with what I know. For now, I haven’t told Daniela anything. But there are nights when I watch her sleep and I wonder if she still thinks about that Sunday, that glass, that man on the other side.