The Desire That Only Appears When I Turn Off the Light

Eleven at night.

Alone at home again. The living room falls silent when the last light in the hallway goes out, and then everything seems bigger and emptier than it should. I live in a small apartment, but at this hour it feels like a huge place no one inhabits.

I can feel the cold seeping in through the poorly sealed windows. It’s a thin cold, one that slips in under the balcony door and crawls across the wooden floor until it finds my bare feet. I wrap a blanket around my shoulders and stay still, listening to the hum of the fridge and the distant murmur of a car passing on the avenue.

A sound cuts through the stillness. The phone screen lights up on the table and bathes it in blue light. I pick it up before I even think, as if I’d been waiting for that moment all afternoon. It’s a message from you.

I’ve known you for months and, without even realizing it, you’ve been settling into a very specific place in my head. It didn’t happen all at once. It was word by word, night after night, one message after another until one day I caught myself smiling at my phone like an idiot in the middle of work.

You live far away. So far that between your city and mine there’s an entire country, different time zones, and a whole lot of kilometers that no message can ever fully erase. We talk every day. We tell each other what we ate, what made us laugh, what pissed us off. And every now and then, we tell each other other things. Things that later leave me awake with my hand between my thighs.

I read what you wrote me and bite my lip without noticing. You tell me, in that blunt way of yours, that you’re hard thinking about me, that you’re stroking yourself slowly, that you’re imagining my mouth around your cock. My cunt tightens as I read it, with a dull throb that forces me to squeeze my legs together.

—Mateo… —I say quietly, as if you could hear me.

I answer something calm, something sure, something that won’t give away how much that simple line of yours has stirred me up inside. I lie to you and say I’m tired, when in reality my nipples are already hard against the fabric. We chat a little longer. The way you write has a rhythm I know blind, a way of placing the pauses that makes me imagine your voice, even though I’ve only heard it in a handful of voice notes I keep and replay more than I’d admit, almost always with my fingers in my cunt.

After a while, you say goodnight with a “Good night, beautiful,” and a heart at the end. I smile with a tenderness that softens me all the way through. I set the phone face down and get up from the sofa.

I turn off the lights one by one. The living room, the kitchen, the hallway lamp. Each switch darkens the apartment a little more until only the darkness is left and me, walking by memory toward the bedroom.

I change without turning on the light. I put on the old flannel I sleep in, the one that’s too big on me and reaches halfway down my thigh, soft from so many washes. I don’t put on panties. I never do when I know I’m going to end up like this. I get into bed and pull the covers up to my chest. The sheets are cold at first; it takes them a while to warm to my body.

I lie there staring at the ceiling.

I’m not going to be able to sleep. Not again.

I know it from the very first minute. I close my eyes and there you are. Not your exact face, because distance steals some details from me, but the idea of you. The sensation of what it would be like to have you in front of me, in this very bed, in this very silence. To feel your skin against mine. To brush my tongue against yours and finally find out what you taste like. To feel your hard cock pushing against my belly, leaving a hot, wet trail against my skin.

I roll onto my side and hug the pillow. It isn’t enough. I turn onto my back again and breathe deeply, as if air could put out what’s beginning to light up between my legs.

It doesn’t.

***

My mind starts taking on a life of its own and I stop fighting it. I imagine you’re here, sitting on the edge of the bed, looking at me in the half-light with that calm of yours that disarms me so much. I imagine you reaching out and stroking my cheek with the back of your fingers, slowly, as if you had all the time in the world to do worse things to me.

Desire appears without asking permission.

My hand moves on its own. It rises to my face and repeats the path I imagine yours would take. I stroke my lips thinking it’s yours brushing them, that you lean down and kiss me slowly, unhurriedly, leaving me wanting more before giving me anything. I slide two fingers into my mouth, suck them deep, imagine it’s your cock pushing against my tongue, that you shove it down my throat and hold me there a second too long so I learn to take you whole.

Kiss my neck. I know you’d know exactly where.

My fingers, wet with my own saliva, slide down the edge of my jaw and along the side of my neck, right at that spot where the skin turns thinner. Goose bumps rise all over me. I imagine your mouth there, your warm breath against my ear, your teeth marking my skin, and my pulse picks up in a way no message ever manages to do. The first flow slips out, warm, between my thighs.

The hand keeps going down. It reaches the first button on the flannel and undoes it. Then the second. Then the rest, one by one, until the fabric opens fully and the room’s cold air licks my nipples. They harden instantly, small and tight, aching with want. I close my eyes tighter, imagining it’s you opening the fabric, that you rip the flannel off me in one tug and discover my body with the dark stare of someone who’s been waiting a long time to eat me.

I reach my breasts and cover them with my palm. I think it’s your hands holding them, squeezing them, gripping them hard as if they’d belonged to you forever. I pinch one nipple between thumb and forefinger and tug a little, just like you asked me to let you do one night, in an audio I still have saved. A low moan escapes my lips. The sound of my own voice in the silence surprises me and makes me even hotter. I lick two fingers and run them around the nipple, in circles, leaving it shiny and cold when the air touches it. Then the other one. Goose bumps spread over my skin all the way to my navel.

—Mateo… —I whisper again, and this time it isn’t a name, it’s a plea.

One hand stays on my breast, tugging, squeezing, playing with the nipple until it burns. The other begins its descent. It slides down the center of my stomach, slowly, drawing a line that makes me hold my breath. I imagine it’s your mouth following that path, that you kiss my belly and pause at my hip to bite it lightly, with a tenderness that is almost a promise of something rougher. I imagine you keep going down, settle between my legs, open my thighs with your big hands, and stare at my cunt up close before touching me.

When my fingers reach the mound of hair, I’m already soaked. I notice it at the first touch and my breath catches. My fingers come away sticky as soon as I rest them there. It took so little. Just thinking about you.

I slide my hand between the lips of my cunt and open myself slowly, with two fingers, exposing myself to the air. My clit is swollen, throbbing. I brush it with the pad of my middle finger and the whole body of me jolts. I work it in slow circles, pressing every so often, feeling it get harder, more sensitive, until I can barely stand the direct contact.

I can almost feel your naked body over mine, your weight sinking the mattress, your heat covering me from head to toe. I can almost feel your tongue replacing my fingers, your mouth closing over my clit, sucking it hard, torturing me with a slow rhythm that knows exactly what I need. I imagine you fucking me with your tongue, your fingers sinking into me while you suck me, holding my thighs apart so I can’t escape.

I bring my wet fingers to my mouth and suck them. I like the taste. I think about letting you taste me, about putting my fingers in your mouth after pulling them out of me, about watching you suck them with the same calm you bring to everything.

My other hand goes back to my breast and squeezes hard, shamelessly. I imagine you kissing me again, deep, dirtying my mouth with the taste of my own cunt, while you settle between my legs and run the tip of your cock along my slit, up and down, soaking it before you push in.

I lower my hand again. I slide a finger in slowly, all the way to the base, feeling my cunt close around it and suck me inward. I imagine it’s you entering me, measuring every inch, paying attention to every shift in my face to know when to keep going. I curl my finger upward and search for that spot inside me that swells when I’m like this, and when I find it I let out a longer, sharper moan that breaks the silence of the room.

I imagine your whispers against my ear, that deep voice that melts me:

—My precious girl… You have no idea how much I dreamed of this. Of burying my cock all the way inside you. Of opening you up for me completely.

Another finger. Two now, to the knuckles, pushing in a firm rhythm while my thumb works my clit. I hear the wet sound of my fingers going in and out, the slosh my cunt makes from being so wet, and that sound fills me with more shame and more pleasure at the same time. The rhythm quickens on its own, without my deciding it, as if my body were responding to a voice that isn’t really there. My moans become more frequent, more needy, more like a slut’s. In my head I ask you for more, harder, deeper, and in my head you give it to me.

—I want to get all the way down into the deepest part of you —I imagine you saying, with your forehead pressed to mine and your cock driving me into the mattress—. Where no one’s ever been. Where no one will ever go. I’m going to split you in two, princess.

Your invented words set me on fire. I let in a third finger and open myself completely, pressing against my own hand, fucking myself with a fury I don’t recognize. With the other hand I let go of my breast and bring it down to help; I take my wet fingers to my ass and brush them there, at the tight ring, imagining that you want to put a finger there too while you fuck me, that you want to fill me up completely, that you won’t be satisfied with just one hole. I press the fingertip in just a little and feel my whole body tense. I lick my lip, bite it, arch.

My rhythm is already frantic, out of control, deaf to anything that isn’t the spiral growing at the center of my body. The three fingers go in and out of my cunt with an obscene sound that bounces off the walls. My thumb never leaves my clit. I feel the orgasm drawing near, still far away but already inevitable, like a wave you can see coming from shore and know is going to break.

Too much desire. Too much longing stored up for weeks. Too much passion with nowhere to go except inward, against my own fingers.

—You’re mine —I imagine you repeating against my ear, never stopping fucking me—. Only mine. This cunt is mine. No one else is ever going to have the privilege of getting inside you. Only me, my princess. Come for me. Come on my cock.

Your imagined words and your invented thrusts are too much for my real body. I arch my back against the mattress, lift my hips against my own hand, my feet dig into the sheets. My fingers don’t stop. The wave finally breaks and splits me in two. My cunt clenches around my fingers in waves, squeezing me with a force that almost hurts, and I feel the warm gush run down my hand, my wrist, soaking my thigh and the sheet beneath me. I come hard, shaken, my mouth open in a moan that catches in my throat, your name coming out broken between my teeth, until the last shiver, until the last spasm that leaves my thighs trembling.

I lie still, with my fingers still inside me, my breathing ragged and my heart pounding against my ribs as if it wants to break free. I pull them out slowly and look at my hand in the dim light, glossy, stringing. I bring it to my mouth and clean myself with my tongue, sucking one finger after another, imagining it’s your cum I’m swallowing.

***

Little by little, the room becomes just the room again.

The ceiling in the half-light. The hum of the fridge. The cold I barely feel anymore because my body is burning. The wet patch under my hip. I stare into nothing with what I imagine is a desire-filled expression, convincing myself for a second that it’s your eyes I have in front of me, that you’re there, looking at me with that half-smile after what we just did, your mouth still shiny with me.

But you’re not there. You never are. And the distance, which desire had managed to erase for a few minutes, comes back whole, heavy, taking up the empty side of the bed.

I fasten the flannel over my still-sweaty skin. I turn over and take the pillow, hug it tightly, pull it against my chest until I convince myself it’s your back I’m holding, that my arm rests on your waist and my face is hidden in your neck.

I can still feel my heart pounding and my cunt throbbing below. I close my eyes.

—Good night, my love —I whisper to you in a thread of a voice, a mix of exhaustion, tenderness, and a small sadness that always comes afterward.

The phone glows for a moment on the nightstand, as if it knows. I don’t pick it up. Tomorrow we’ll write to each other again, we’ll tell each other about the day again, we’ll brush against those subjects that leave me like this, my cunt wet in the middle of work. And tomorrow night, alone again, I’ll do the same thing: close my eyes, invent you whole, and let you in, even if only in here, even if only with my fingers.

Someday it’s going to be real. Someday it’s going to be you splitting me in two.

I promise myself that without really believing it, and I let myself drift into sleep with your name turning over and over in my head, to keep fucking you every night, but only in my wildest dreams.