The Afternoon I Learned to Desire Myself
Mariela locked the street door and, for a moment, stood listening. The whole apartment was silent. Her roommate wouldn’t be back until Monday, the upstairs neighbor had gone away on a trip, and even the traffic on the avenue seemed to have died down. The whole afternoon was hers, and for once she had no one to answer to.
For weeks she’d been living with a strange tension in her body. It wasn’t exactly anxiety, or tiredness. It was something more like hunger, but located in a place she’d been ignoring for far too long. Between work, the bills, and hurried dinners eaten standing up in the kitchen, she had forgotten that her pussy wanted things too.
That afternoon she decided to listen to it.
She lowered the blinds until the room was wrapped in a golden half-light. The light slipped in through thin lines and fell over the unmade bed, over the pile of clothes she still hadn’t put away. She took off her shoes, then her stockings, and felt the cool wooden floor under the soles of her feet. A shiver ran up her legs and settled right between her thighs, there where she was already starting to feel sticky.
No rush. Not today. No rush.
Unbidden, she remembered the first time she discovered what her own body could give her. She was nineteen and still living in her parents’ house. One summer night, turning over in bed unable to sleep, she had settled onto her stomach and felt the pressure of the pillow against her clit. At first it was almost an accident, a tiny movement of her hips. Then it was a question. Then it became something she couldn’t stop: she rubbed her pussy against the fabric until she soaked it, biting the pillowcase as she came for the first time.
That night she had to bite the sheet to keep from screaming. She remembered the surprise more than the pleasure: the feeling of having discovered a secret that had been there all along, waiting for her between her legs. For years, that was the most intimate way she knew to find herself: her hand shoved under her panties, two fingers buried in her pussy while her thumb pressed her clit, and always in the dark, always in silence.
Now, though, there were no thin walls and no parents sleeping on the other side. She had the whole house to herself and no one who could hear her moan.
She lay back on the bed and stayed there for a while, still dressed, with her blouse half unbuttoned. She ran her hands over her own stomach, slowly, as if the hands belonged to someone else. She moved up to her tits, feeling the fabric of the bra under her fingers, and then back down to the hem of her skirt. She caressed herself over her clothes, pressing the mound with her palm, and felt the heat already rising through the fabric. She was in no hurry. That was the rule for the day.
She unbuttoned her blouse one button at a time. Each one that gave way loosened something inside her, as if she were taking the whole week off her shoulders. When she opened it fully, the cool air touched her skin and her nipples hardened before she even got to touch them. She pinched one through the lace, rolled it between her thumb and forefinger, and a low gasp slipped out of her. She freed the other nipple, tugging the cup down, and licked her index finger before rubbing it in circles until it was hard as a little pebble.
***
She stood up to take off her skirt and, as she passed the wardrobe mirror, she stopped. She didn’t usually look at herself like this, calmly, without searching for flaws. She studied herself in the dim light: the soft curves of her hips, the black lace lingerie she had bought months ago and almost never wore, the way the light drew shadows over her belly and down to the wet triangle of her panties.
For once, she didn’t think about what she would change about her body. She thought about what that body was capable of feeling.
She stepped closer to the mirror and touched herself over the lace. The fabric was warm and already had a dark little patch in the center, where her pussy was beginning to leak. She pressed only lightly with her palm, let out a short sigh, and slid her middle finger through the fabric, searching for the bulge of her clit. She liked watching herself do it: seeing her own face change, her lips part, her breathing growing deeper, the way her hand seemed to move on its own between her legs. She pulled her panties aside and slipped two fingers into her pussy in front of the mirror, slowly, watching herself go in and out, feeling her fingers come out glossy with slick.
She went back to the bed and grabbed the pillow, the same one she slept with. She smiled at the coincidence, at the gesture that brought her suddenly back to nineteen. She folded it in half and tucked it between her legs, still wearing her underwear.
She lay face down, just like that first time, and let the weight of her hips fall. The first contact made her close her eyes and bite her lip: her clit pressed against the pillow’s hard fabric, her pussy open above it, the full weight of her body cooperating. She began to move slowly, in small circles, grinding her sex against the pillowcase. The pressure grew with every sway. The lace of her panties soaked through and slipped between her lips, brushing exactly where she needed it, and every push forward sent a jolt up her spine.
This time she didn’t have to bite anything. She let out a low, rough moan that filled the empty room and hung in the air. Hearing herself turned her on even more. Alone, she had never let herself make noise. There was always a wall, a schedule, someone. That afternoon there was no one, and she gave herself permission to say it out loud: —Just like that, slut, just like that —she murmured into the sheet, insanely turned on by hearing herself.
She picked up the pace, riding the pillow hard, grinding her pussy back and forth, and then immediately slowed down again. Over the years, she had learned how to play with her own desire. To edge toward the brink and pull back, to stretch the moment until wanting became almost unbearable. Every time she felt she was too close, that her clit was starting to pulse with the warning of a coming orgasm, she stopped, took a deep breath, and started again from farther back.
***
When she could no longer stand the wait, she rolled over onto her back again. She finally took off her panties, breath coming in ragged little bursts, and let them drop beside the bed in a soaked, crumpled ball. She spread her legs wide and looked for a second at her open sex: swollen lips, her clit out from under its hood, slick shining all the way to her ass. She opened the drawer of the bedside table. Inside she kept the few things she’d dared buy: a small suction toy that vibrated against the skin and a smooth dildo she almost never dared use when she had time.
She chose the suction toy first. She turned it on to the gentlest setting and set it lightly, still far from the center, on the inner side of her thigh, letting the vibration travel through the whole area before moving it toward her pussy. It was a delicious torture. She moved her wrist in slow circles, drawing closer and farther from her clit, reading the reactions of her own body like someone reading another person. When she finally placed the nozzle right over her swollen clit, her whole body jerked and her hips lifted off the bed on their own.
With her free hand she caressed her tits, pinched her nipples hard enough to make them ache a little, traced the curve of her neck, and put two fingers in her mouth to suck them. Then she brought those fingers, wet with saliva, down to her pussy and shoved them deep inside, feeling the inner walls squeeze them, feeling the slick run over her hand and down the crack of her ass to stain the sheet. She wanted to feel it all at once, not just one point but her whole skin waking up. The sheet was bunched in her fingers and her legs were open without shame, owner of every inch of that bed.
She turned the intensity up one level. Pleasure stopped being a promise and became a constant current climbing from her pussy to her chest. She arched her back, pressed her feet into the mattress, and finger-fucked herself while the suction toy devoured her clit. Her breathing broke into short gasps and she heard herself again, that rough, obscene sound that no longer embarrassed her at all. —I’m going to come —she said out loud, to no one, just to hear it—. I’m going to come all over.
A little more. Just a little more.
But she forced herself to stop again. She switched off the toy and stayed still, trembling, with her pussy throbbing out in the open and her heart pounding in her ears. She wanted it to last. She wanted to know every step before getting to the top. It had been years since she’d given herself an afternoon like this, without a clock, without guilt, without the feeling that she was stealing time from something else.
She ran her fingertips over her wet skin, feeling slippery and hot, barely brushed her swollen clit, and brought them to her mouth to suck her own slick. It tasted like her, like that afternoon, like permission. She understood why her body had been asking for attention for weeks. It wasn’t just physical desire. It was a way of inhabiting herself again, of remembering that this pussy was hers before it was anyone else’s.
***
When she started again, she didn’t want to hold back anymore. She turned the suction toy back on, this time at a firm setting, and with her other hand grabbed the smooth dildo. She ran it over her mouth first, sucking it like it was a real cock, leaving it thoroughly wet with saliva. Then she brought it down to her pussy and rubbed it from top to bottom, between her swollen lips, wetting it with her own slick. She pushed in slowly, without forcing anything, and her body opened for it with a ease that surprised her, swallowing every inch with a long moan until she felt the tip deep inside.
The two sensations together overwhelmed her. The steady vibration of the suction toy crushing her clit from the outside, the thick cock pressing against her walls from the inside, and her whole body answering at once. She started fucking herself with the toy, pulling it almost all the way out and shoving it back in one thrust, setting her own rhythm, deciding for herself when faster and when deeper. Her pussy made a wet, obscene sound every time she drove it in. She hooked her legs over her shoulders so it could go even deeper, and she heard herself moan like a bitch in heat.
—Deeper, deeper, like that, fuck me hard —she said to herself, and shame had been gone for a long time, burned away by pleasure. She pulled the dildo out for a second, put it in her mouth to taste the flavor of her own pussy on the tip, and then sank it back in to the hilt.
Pleasure began to gather into a single point, dense, impossible to contain. She felt it climb her legs, tighten her stomach, steal her breath, make her pussy clench in spasms around the toy. This time she didn’t stop. This time she let herself fall forward with her eyes closed and her mouth open, riding the plastic cock with her hips out of control.
The orgasm hit her in waves. She screamed —really screamed, loud, leaving nothing muffled— a long, dirty cry that bounced off the walls of the empty room and felt like the most honest thing she had done in a long time. Her legs shook, her pussy squeezed the dildo so hard it almost spit it out, her fingers clenched in the sheet. She felt a warm gush run down her thighs to her ass, soaking the sheet beneath her. For a few seconds there was nothing else but that huge pulse between her legs shaking her from the inside out, wave after wave, and the suction toy stayed clamped to her clit stretching her orgasm until she couldn’t take it anymore and slapped it away with a half-laugh, half-gasp.
Then came the calm. That soft, warm calm that only arrives when the body finally empties itself of tension. She switched off the toy, let it fall onto the bed beside the dildo still shining with slick, and lay there on her back with her legs open, breathing deeply, a loose smile she couldn’t control on her face. She ran her hand over her swollen, dripping pussy and felt the small residual throb under her fingers.
The golden light was still slipping in through the blinds in thin lines. Outside, someone started a car, a dog barked, the city kept turning as if nothing had happened. Inside, Mariela felt new, fucked by her own hand, for the first time in a long while the owner of every inch of her skin.
Right there, she promised herself she wasn’t going to wait weeks for the next time. That she was going to learn to listen to herself before her body had to scream at her. That pleasure wasn’t a prize earned at the end of the list of obligations, but something as much hers as breathing.
She stayed still a little longer, enjoying the light weight of her own body on the soaked sheets. Then she got up slowly, opened the blind just a crack, and let the last sun of the afternoon touch her still-warm skin, her nipples still hard, her thighs sticky. She smiled again.
Next time, no rush either.