The Stranger from the Procession Drove Me Wild

That trip hadn’t been planned at all. It was the kind of getaway you allow yourself when you need to breathe differently: a city you know by heart, streets that welcome you without questions, and a few days with no obligation other than letting yourself drift. Habit, tradition, or simply the pleasure of getting lost among the crowds—it all worked, as long as I was there again.

Holy Week gave the city a different dimension. The air changed density. The streets lost their usual rhythm and replaced it with something more solemn and, at the same time, more visceral. The noise wasn’t like any other celebration’s: it had weight, memory, a held-back emotion that burst out at the most unexpected moments.

The afternoon had gone by with an odd softness for that time of year. Sun without suffocating heat, a breeze that smelled of salt and incense mixed together, and a temperature that made you feel in no hurry. My group of friends and I wandered without a destination, letting ourselves be led by the noise and curiosity.

***

We stopped in front of a tavern that seemed to resist the passing of time. It was tucked beneath an arcade, barely announced by a tiled sign, and inside it was the opposite of what the street promised: walls covered with photographs and old pennants, a worn wooden bar, and a smell of local wine and fried food that was almost comforting. They called it “El Portalón,” and its reputation in the neighborhood was more than deserved.

The bartender that afternoon—a older man in a green apron with a generous mustache—served everyone with that mix of humor and efficiency you only learn with age. We ordered what he pointed to, which is always the best decision in places like that.

—A plate of croquettes for the four of them! —he shouted, never losing his smile.

The atmosphere was comfortable, noisy in the right way. Crossed conversations, laughter for no apparent reason, the occasional spontaneous toast. Our minds, already somewhat loosened by the wine and the distance from everyday life, had forgotten for a while everything waiting for us at home.

***

That was when the sound arrived.

First I felt it before I heard it: a vibration in my chest, low and rhythmic, slipping into the bar’s murmur before anyone knew what it was.

Then came the bell’s clanging. Clear, insistent, enough to silence an entire room.

We all moved closer to the windows. An impossible trono filled the street, advancing slowly with that solemnity that makes time seem suspended. The cloud of incense wrapped everything in its haze, and among the bearers holding that monumental structure, one of them caught my attention in a way I couldn’t explain at the time.

He was tall. Broad-shouldered. With that specific, unadorned beauty of someone who doesn’t need to try to command attention. Hard features, tanned skin, a face set with effort and concentration. He wasn’t looking at anyone in particular.

Until he looked at me.

Just a second. Maybe two. Enough for something to shift inside me with a precision I hadn’t expected. I felt my cunt tighten on its own, a hot tug between my legs that made me cross them without even noticing, as if the sheer weight of his gaze had reached under my skirt from the other side of the glass and slipped a hand inside me.

The trono kept moving down the street. The bell faded into the distance. The bar returned to its usual noise.

But I was no longer the same woman who had walked in.

I slipped out before my friends noticed. I needed air, even though the street air smelled the same as inside: of incense and fried food and a night just beginning.

I stood on the pavement, looking in the direction the trono had vanished, not quite sure what I expected to find.

—Are you looking for something? —a voice asked to my left.

It was him.

The height I remembered, but closer. A scent reached me before his words did: something woody, warm, something I didn’t recognize right away but that stayed stamped into me from that instant on.

There was a second of silence. One of those silences that can hold too much.

His hand brushed my waist almost absentmindedly—or maybe not absentmindedly, but not deliberately either—and the touch was enough for something that had been held back all afternoon to finally find a crack to spill through. My panties were already getting wet just from having him near me.

—What’s your name? —he asked, close to my ear.

—Valentina —I replied.

Five minutes. Maybe less. A few exchanged looks, skin brushing skin, his deep voice mingling with the murmur of the procession moving away. Nothing else happened.

And yet, when he straightened up again and disappeared back into the crowd while I stood alone in the corner trying to remember how to breathe, I knew that had been too much not to follow.

***

The night moved on with that inertia cities have when they’re celebrating. We walked more streets, saw more tronos, shared more wine. The memory of that man was still there, but blurred by time and fatigue, like a musical note fading without vanishing completely.

When someone suggested ending the night at “La Fragua,” I didn’t object. It was a place I knew from other visits: loud music, decent tapas, and a mix of people ranging from confraternity members just finished with the procession to people simply looking to end the night with some atmosphere.

It was packed. The line at the door was one of those that makes you wonder whether it’s worth it, but someone inside was already holding a place for us, so we moved forward.

“Corazón partío” was playing when I crossed the room toward the bathrooms. I had heard it a thousand times, but that night it carried a different weight: it took me back to the alley, to the hand that had circled my waist without quite circling it, to the name he’d asked me as if he already knew I’d tell him.

I stopped near the bar. Ordered something. Left the glass untouched.

I was waiting, even if I didn’t quite know for what.

And then I saw him.

***

He was at the door. Without the tunic, without the solemn weight from before. Dark trousers, a light shirt with the collar slightly open. He had arrived with a group: friends, couples, the kind of company that speaks of a life that is orderly and unbroken.

Beside him, a woman. Attractive, self-assured, with her hand on his arm in the natural way of someone who has been claiming that space for a long time.

I watched them from a distance with that mix of resignation and fascination you get when you know something isn’t yours and yet it hasn’t stopped interesting you.

I told myself what I always tell myself in those cases: that some things only exist in the space of a moment. That what had happened in that corner was exactly that: an instant with no continuation and no explanation.

And I believed it for exactly two minutes.

Because then he lifted his eyes.

Not searching urgently, not with that nervous scanning of someone who knows they’re doing something they shouldn’t. He did it calmly, with the patient ease of someone who knows exactly where he’s going to look before he looks. And when his eyes found mine, there was no smile. No gesture anyone else could read.

Only that silent recognition. That shared certainty that doesn’t need words.

Maybe I’d been wrong to think that had no sequel.

***

Twenty minutes later I decided to leave. It wasn’t late, but exhaustion and something harder to name weighed on my shoulders. I said goodbye to the ones who were left, promising a text when I got in, pushed the door open, and the street air met me colder than I remembered.

I walked two blocks without direction, my shoes echoing on the cobblestones and the bar noise fading behind me.

I knew he was coming before I heard him.

There are presences the body recognizes before the mind does. A shift in the air, something that changes the temperature of the night without you being able to point to exactly what.

I didn’t turn around. It wasn’t necessary.

His hand found my wrist gently, without roughness, but with a firmness that left no doubt about what he was proposing. He gestured with a slight tilt of his head toward a narrow side street opening to the right: tight, almost unlit, with whitewashed walls glowing faintly under the one streetlamp that still worked.

I went in.

***

There was no conversation. There was no need.

As soon as the alley swallowed us, he shoved me against the wall and his mouth fell on mine without preamble. It wasn’t a kiss: it was a bite, an invasion of tongue and teeth, biting my lip until I bit back with the same fury. He tasted of wine and something more acidic, of a long night, and I sucked all of it from him with a hunger that even surprised me.

—I knew you’d come out —he murmured against my neck, while his hand was already sliding up the inside of my thigh, searching beneath the skirt—. I’ve been thinking about this all fucking night.

—Shut up and touch me —I shot back, and bit his ear.

His fingers found the fabric of my panties and he didn’t waste time. He yanked them aside, and when two of his fingers pried my cunt open all at once, wet and hot as it had been for hours, a moan escaped me that I had to smother against his shoulder.

—Fuck, you’re soaked —he said, a dark smile in his voice—. Is all this for me?

—All of this has been yours since you looked at me from the trono.

His fingers began moving inside me, curling, seeking that exact spot, while his thumb pressed against my clit with a precision that made my knees buckle. One of my hands was buried in his hair and the other was searching for his cock over his trousers: I could feel it hard, thick, pushing against the fabric as if it wanted to break through.

I pulled down the zipper. Slipped my hand into his boxer briefs and grabbed him, and the groan he let out against my neck raised gooseflesh all over me. He was big, hot, the tip already wet from being held back for so long. I ran my thumb over the head, spread it down the length of the shaft, and started stroking him with the same insistence with which he was fingering me.

—Suck me —I asked him. I needed to have him in my mouth before I had him inside me. I needed to know what he tasted like.

He didn’t need telling twice. He pressed my shoulders down and I knelt on the cobblestones without thinking, my back against the whitewashed wall. I pulled him out completely. He was even thicker up close, a vein marked underneath, the head gleaming under the weak light of the streetlamp.

I ran my tongue from base to tip, slowly, looking up at him from below. I saw his jaw tighten. I saw his hand clench against the wall, looking for something to hold onto.

—Take it all —he muttered—. Don’t make me wait any longer.

I took him into my mouth in one go, as far as I could, until I felt him hit the back of my throat and tears blurred my vision. I started sucking him with hunger, taking him hard, letting saliva dribble down my chin and soak his balls. He grabbed my hair, twisted my ponytail into a makeshift fist, and started setting the rhythm, fucking my mouth slowly at first and then with deeper, harder thrusts, without care, while I looked up at him with tearful eyes and my cunt dripping between my legs.

—That’s it, fuck, just like that, don’t stop —he panted—. You do it so well, you suck cock so well, slut.

The word, in his mouth and at that moment, turned me on even more. I pulled off just to lick his balls, to run my flat tongue underneath them, and then I took him back into my mouth until I could feel that if he kept going he was going to come in my mouth.

He felt it too. He yanked me up by the hair, brought me to my feet, and spun me against the wall with one movement.

—I’m going to fuck you until you don’t even remember your own name.

The cold whitewash wall against my cheek. His hands on my hips, firm, decisive. He lifted my skirt to my waist, ripped my panties off completely this time—I heard the seam tear—and forced my legs apart with his knee. The muffled sound of the city, two streets away, completely irrelevant.

When he entered me, I let out a sharp breath, teeth clenched to keep from screaming. He drove all the way in with one thrust, to the hilt, and I felt myself stretching around him, filling suddenly after so many hours waiting for this without knowing it. The muscles of my cunt closed around him and he let out a rough “fuck” against my nape that made me push my ass back, asking for more.

—Shut up —he whispered in my ear, while he covered my mouth with one hand—. They’ll hear us.

It wasn’t softness we were after. It was exactly this: the scrape of the wall against my skin, the weight of his body, both of our broken breathing mixed with the silence of the street. He started fucking me hard, with long, deep thrusts that slammed my pussy against the wall, each push wrenching a wet, obscene sound from me that bounced around the narrow walls.

Every movement was the answer to something neither of us had said out loud. Every muffled gasp against the palm of his hand, every press of his fingers against my ribs, was the continuation of that first look we had shared hours before in front of the trono.

And then, without being able to stop myself, I thought of her. Of the woman in the bar. Of her hand on his arm. Of the certainty with which she claimed her place at his side. I thought that she was probably waiting for him at the door of the place, never suspecting that her uncle or husband or whatever he was was splitting my cunt against a whitewashed wall two blocks away.

The thought didn’t stop me. It made me cling tighter. I bit the palm of the hand that was covering my mouth.

—Harder —I begged when he moved it away for a second—. Fuck me harder, don’t be a bastard.

He let out a dark, breathless laugh and obeyed. He grabbed my hair, pulled back to lift my head, and started driving into me with a new violence, his thighs slapping against my ass with a skin-on-skin sound that flooded my ears like music. With his other hand he reached around to the front, found my slick clit, and started rubbing it with two fingers at the same brutal rhythm he was fucking me from behind.

—Come —he ordered in my ear, his voice wrecked—. Come on my cock, I want to feel it.

What was happening in that alley belonged to no logical order of things. It was the exact space where the night and desire and the chords of that song still ringing in my head converged into something nameless, and something that didn’t need a name.

Each thrust became deeper, more demanding. I pushed back, seeking more, not caring about the cold or the wall or anything that wasn’t that cock inside me and those fingers on top. It rose through me like a wave: first the trembling in my thighs, then the heat gathering under his hand, and then the explosion, my cunt clenching in spasms around his cock while I bit my own arm not to scream.

—That’s it, fuck, that’s it —he panted into my ear—, so tight, so fucking tight.

He didn’t stop. He gave me no break. He kept fucking me for what felt like endless minutes, riding out my orgasm, stretching it, until his rhythm broke and I felt his cock swell even more inside me.

—Out —I begged in a whisper, barely able to speak.

He pulled out at the last second. I felt the hot surge explode across the small of my back, over my ass, while he let out a rough, contained groan that hung in the alley air as if it wanted to stay there too. He came in pulses, long and heavy, marking my skin with his cum while he kept pressing against me, cock throbbing between my thighs.

We stayed like that for a few seconds, both of us gasping, his forehead against the back of my neck and his hand still planted on my hip as if he were afraid I’d disappear.

***

When we were done, the silence of the street returned all at once.

We pulled ourselves together without speaking. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped my back with a strange tenderness after what had just happened. He straightened his shirt, tucked his still-half-soft cock back into his trousers. I fixed my skirt, left the torn panties on the ground, squeezed my thighs together and felt that I was still dripping inside. There was no elaborate goodbye, no phone number, no promise of anything.

Only his gaze, one last time, before he turned the corner toward the main street. He ran a hand through his hair, composed himself, and became again the man that woman was waiting for at the bar door.

And I stayed leaning against the whitewashed wall, my heart still racing, my cunt throbbing between my legs, and the absolute certainty that I would never again hear the tinkle of a bell without thinking of him.

We had been wild, careless, unfaithful. And precisely for that reason, neither of us would ever forget it.