Desire

For months I’d imagined that scene in her office, but I never thought it would be her who made the first move, with the lock clicked shut and her perfume filling everything.

Since I was fifteen, I’d kept quiet about how badly I wanted to kiss her. Now, sitting across from me with that same smile, I wasn’t going to let the chance slip away again.

When I got into her car that Friday, I knew we were no longer going to talk about my future. There was something else between us, and we’d both spent weeks pretending there wasn’t.

I felt a hand on my hip and a mouth in my ear: “You smell incredible.” When I turned around, it was her—the girl my friend had come to flirt with.

I had adored her in silence since childhood. The night before she left, she asked me to help her undress, and my hands trembled as they finally brushed her skin.

We three met on the last Thursday in December, under the pretext of seeing the year out. None of us said aloud what we were really going to do.

I never told her I liked women, or that she kept me up at night. But that midnight, alone by the pool, I was the one who dared to say what I felt.

All it took was for her to tilt her head toward the back door for me to set my glass on the bar and follow her without thinking twice.

Eight years into my career, no patient had ever looked at me like that. That afternoon she put her feet up on my sofa, held my gaze, and everything I thought was solid began to tremble.

I arrived single and bored, planning to leave early. Then the lambada started, and firm hands took my waist from behind.

She had been with her boyfriend for five years and had never doubted. Until that black-eyed woman stared at her on the platform and something broke inside.

I heard her closing her suitcases on the other side of the wall and knew she would leave with the dawn. Barefoot and trembling, I crossed the hallway to the ajar door of her room.

She showed up twenty minutes late on purpose so we wouldn’t have time to go to the theater. Only then did I realize she’d already decided how the night would end.

I followed her on social media to get revenge on my ex, but ended up wanting her instead. Months later I saw her in the crowd and knew I wouldn't let her go.

My hands were ice-cold in the boarding lounge, but it wasn’t the weather: in a few hours I’d see her again, and I didn’t know whether I’d run to her or hide.

She booked a routine wax before vacation. What she didn’t expect was the way that woman would look at her when the private room door closed.

She carried a pistol hidden in her stocking and an impossible mission: get close to the most dangerous woman in the room without desire betraying her too soon.

She led the retreat with the devotion of someone who never breaks a rule. I just wanted a private massage, far from the prayers and the watching eyes.

When I offered her the job, she smiled and told me it was her turn to ask questions. The first was whether I’d take her to bed after dinner.

I was only serving drinks. She was looking at me from the other side of the bar as if she already knew, before I did, how that night would end.