Desire

When I opened the backpack he handed me in the lobby of that run-down hotel, I understood the meeting was nothing like I’d imagined. And it was already too late to turn back.

When I got the final dare of the night, I knew I could say no. What no one expected was for me to say yes with that smile on my lips.

She went back to confession every week for the same reason, always leaving out the most important part: that the man on the other side of the grille was the owner of all her sins.

The moment I cast off I knew that afternoon wouldn’t end with a simple sail: she was already looking at me differently, with that half-smile promising much more.

For months, I’ve repeated the same scene in my head on the ride home. Today, when the seat beside me was taken, I almost stopped breathing.

I rode out on my bike without underwear, my phone buzzing with messages I should never have opened. The road was empty, but I felt watched by everyone.

I got home, tossed my heels into the air, and let my imagination do what I’d never dare do at the office.

There’s a bathroom no one uses at the back of the garage. I’ve spent days imagining you there, against the mirror, while I whisper everything I want to do to you.

The store was closed, and she had the whole morning free. The driver noticed before she did, and the smile in the mirror made her think things she shouldn’t.

We shared a hallway, an elevator and a coffeemaker, but never a real word. Only what each of us imagined when the other turned away.

I slipped barefoot to the chapel at midnight to ask forgiveness for my dreams. I never imagined something waited coiled in the shadows, ready to teach me what my body had kept silent.

I tripped over a root, and before I could get up, she was already on top of me. Her cold skin brushed mine, and I knew that night I wouldn’t leave the forest unchanged.

She wasn’t looking for love or company. She wanted to be watched, desired, imagined naked beneath her dress. That night she chose to be pure fire.

Convinced a creature had stolen his fortune, Damián tied her to his table leg. What he didn’t expect was for her to offer to settle the debt with her body.

All it took was a certain tone of voice, and my son dropped the controller, my wife stripped naked. It took me two weeks to understand what to do with power like that.

He opened the door without looking through the peephole and recognized that smile from a thousand screens. His neighbor was her. And she had just asked him for the most innocent of favors.

She came to the clearing seeking silence and found torches, naked bodies, and dozens of deer masks waiting for her as if they had always known she would return that night.

It was three in the morning, the house was silent, and I had the phone pressed to my chest, waiting for that bodiless voice to tell me, at last, everything I’d been imagining for weeks.

No one believed the beast existed. So he returned to the mountains to find her, even if it meant losing himself forever in the snow and her claws.

I gave him two kisses in front of his mother and, without anyone noticing, decided to play along until neither of us expected to go that far that morning.