The Woman Who Seduced Me Beneath the Moonlight

I still can’t get Selene out of my head. Her memory haunts me, and every morning I’m sure that desire will finally win out and I’ll go running back to find her.

It all began a year ago, at the end of October, when I returned to the town where I grew up. From the bus window I watched those vast, muted fields turn into a small, cold city. The alleys where I used to slip away with my first lovers probably no longer existed, and maybe they had even torn down the house where I lived as a child. I tried not to get nostalgic: I was going to the university to give a lecture, that was the plan, and I would try to reconnect with some lost friend, online or by going from bar to bar. If I found any of my old girlfriends still single, I might consider staying a few more days, holed up in the hotel and chewing over my memories.

When I got off the bus and was about to take a taxi to my lodging, an old vagrant came running up to me. He was missing two teeth, his gray hair was wild and matted, and his skin was covered by what looked like years’ worth of grime.

“Watch out for the cornuto’s woman!” he shouted. Then I recognized his voice.

“Rosendo Aguirre!” I said, forcing cheer where there was really pity. “Do you remember me? I’m Esteban.”

Rosendo had barely been thirty when I left; now, despite how old he looked, he must have been around forty. When I knew him, he was an out-of-work guitarist, funny as hell, who wandered from square to square singing coplas, charming the unsuspecting and swindling tourists. We students felt a mix of camaraderie and envy toward him. It was sad to see how he had ended up.

“Watch out for the cornuto’s woman, the goat-footed one! Watch out for the damned witches, because they know damn well what you’re looking for!”

Oh, my town, I thought. How many stories had I heard as a child about adulterous women who got their husbands drunk, flew out the window as balls of fire, and went off to hunt hot-blooded men? I left him some coins in a little pouch hanging from his neck and got into the taxi.

Before going to the university I showered, trying to wash off the signs of travel. In front of the mirror, it seemed to me that the first gray hairs in my beard gave me a certain authority, and authority never hurts for a lecture. Once in the stone hall, rough and reverberant, I spoke about my subject to a crowd of about twenty people who were more or less interested. One hand up, then another: a boy asked something about my research, an older professor took her time thanking me.

And then, at last, the third hand. It was a girl in the front row, about twenty-five. Her skin was pearly and freckled. Large glasses perched on a narrow nose that ended in a charming little button; behind the lenses, slanted, sleepy eyes. She spoke in absolute calm, from narrow pink lips. Chestnut hair fell over her collarbones and curved an inch above the start of her breasts. She was wearing a short burgundy blouse with a lace collar, and the neckline revealed the tight line between two full breasts that contrasted with her short, delicate back.

She asked me three questions in a row, short and sharp, the kind that make you feel your work has a purpose. I answered with the interest of someone who has just found a colleague. I fixed my gaze on her eyes, largely because any lapse would have led me to look at her neckline. She smiled and held my stare, challenging me.

When the moderator dismissed the audience, the girl came over to the table and kept asking questions, raising problems, swaying a folder in her arms that, incidentally, covered her chest. They told me the room had to be cleared. I thanked her for her interest in a farewell tone, but she brushed it off and walked with me to the university exit. The cold air and blue tones announced six in the evening. The first streetlamps were coming on: night in my town is unlike any other I know.

“Oh, and you probably have more important things to do,” she said.

“This research is my life,” I replied with assurance. “I have nothing more important.”

“What a respectable and sad exchange,” she laughed. Then, a little embarrassed, she added, “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

I thought it was a good joke and, after a moment of confusion, I laughed too.

“I mean, you’re not wasting my time,” I clarified.

“And would it bother you if I wasted a little of it?” she smiled. “I think you liked my questions, so we’ll have something to talk about. If you want.”

“What’s your name?” I asked, trying to buy time. The truth was, a woman that beautiful intimidated me.

“Selene,” she said. And when I smiled right away, she asked, “Is my name funny to you?”

“No, no… it’s just a name the ancients used for the moon.”

“Yes,” she nodded, and winked at me. “You’re not the first one who’s tried to hit on me with that.”

I must have gone very red, because she burst out laughing.

“Relax, man, I’m kidding. Or not. The night is young and the moon is gorgeous.”

Nothing else needed saying. We started walking, talking animatedly, and went into a narrow, cozy bar. When they brought us two little glasses of mezcal, I confessed:

“I used to live in this town, back when it was still a town. I used to come to this bar when I was young.”

“You are young,” Selene said, as if I’d said something stupid. I was glad she had started using the informal you with me.

At some point, when I got up to pay, she grabbed my arm in a flash and kissed me. It was a long, deep kiss that lasted until they asked us to clear the way.

As we stepped outside, the black sky of eight o’clock dropped over us. The moon shone fiercely and reflected off Selene’s pearly skin: on her cheeks, on her shoulders, on the compact line of her cleavage. A crowd of students passed between us and I lost sight of her for a moment. When we found each other again, she ran toward me in quick little steps and took my hand.

“If you let go of me, I might disappear,” she said, laughing.

“Fridays here are just like I remembered,” I told her, squeezing her hand tenderly. “Full of life.”

“Fridays are good: two-for-one on almost everything, and my roommates aren’t home,” she winked again.

Have you ever felt tenderness suddenly turn into arousal, that mix of unexpected joy and a little guilt at soiling with desire something so delicate? From there, everything went downhill.

***

Selene told me she lived with two friends, all of them master’s students, in a little house on the outskirts, more out in the country than in the city. We took a shuttle that dropped us in the middle of nowhere. We walked about five minutes along the road until she stopped.

“Have you already changed your mind?”

I told her no, of course not, but I looked around: nothing. Hills in the distance, a slope below, and the bed of what had once been a river. To be honest, it was unsettling. I had never been there and at that hour there was surely no way back by transport.

“Why do you live so far away? Isn’t it dangerous?” I asked.

“Oh, city people. This is close,” she said, and I felt foolish for asking. “Besides, living off by yourself has its advantages.”

She kissed me, and I forgot all my reservations. She wrapped her arms around my waist, pressing her breasts against me, and kissed me until I was hard. Then she reached into my pants, felt the shape of my cock, and began stroking it up and down through the fabric.

“I like the size, but I’m sure it can grow more,” she said. “Can you think of how?”

She looked both ways down the road, checking that no car was coming. Then she took her hands to her back, unclasped her bra beneath her blouse, and walked over to the remains of a low wall with a faded political poster. She rested her right leg on some bricks, spread her legs, and said to me:

“Come here. Lend me your mouth.”

She pulled me to her and guided my hand under her skirt. At the first touch I realized she wasn’t wearing underwear. Had she never worn any, or had she taken it off without my noticing? Two lights appeared on the road, coming closer, and I wanted to pull my hand away, afraid they’d see us.

“No,” Selene said, putting it back where it was.

When the headlights of the first car swept through the darkness, I saw her breasts for the first time in all their beauty. They weighed warmly in my hands. With my thumb I massaged one nipple in circles while kissing and licking the other; with my free hand I kept stroking her between the legs. Cars passed every two minutes or so: they slowed as they understood what they were seeing and then sped up again. When I heard them coming, Selene moaned. When they drove away, she looked into my eyes, as if trying to read what I was thinking.

“Did you change your mind?” she asked again.

“Not at all. You’re incredible. I didn’t remember the girls from here being so daring.”

“You haven’t even opened me up properly yet,” she teased, taking my cock over my pants. “How about it? Do you want me right here?”

“Yes,” I begged her.

“What a savage. No, no: my house is two minutes away. You’re going to have to wait.”

***

The house was a green two-story block. A spiral staircase climbed up the outside like a vine to the upper floor.

“The people who rent it live downstairs,” Selene explained.

She went in, announced her arrival, and nobody answered. She celebrated by blowing me a kiss with the palm of her hand. “The house is ours,” she said. The furniture was heavy wood; in the living room, a couple of books rested on the sofa and a pizza box covered the coffee table. In its own way, it seemed like a cozy life.

In the living room she took off her blouse, held her breasts in her hands, and asked me:

“What adjectives do you like for my breasts?”

“Huge. Perfect. Pink-nippled.”

“Lovely dialogue,” she laughed, and knelt in front of me to open my pants.

She took out my cock, spread the moisture all over the head, and looked me in the eyes.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?”

I tried to come up with something witty, but she shut me up by licking me from bottom to top. Then she took it into her mouth only halfway and pulled it back out, repeating the gesture several times.

“You’re a bit too big for more,” she said, catching her breath. “All the way down isn’t my thing.”

“Whatever you want,” I told her.

Then she put my cock between her breasts and started jerking me off with them. It was something I had never felt before. She made them bounce around me and, every so often, pressed them completely closed and moved them up and down. When she got tired, she slapped the head of my cock against her nipples, never taking her eyes off me.

After a while she told me to lie back. She straddled me and rubbed herself against me with her sex. She lay down on my chest, kissed me, sat up again, and took my cock, aiming it toward her.

“Tell me to put it in,” she asked.

“Please, le—” she didn’t wait for me to finish and lowered herself onto me in one single motion.

It hurt us both, at first, like that, so fast, but we were too turned on to stop. She braced one hand on my chest while I watched her nipples draw circles in opposite directions. Several times I wanted to sit up and bite them gently, but she wouldn’t let me.

“I’m tired,” she said after a while, standing up. “Let’s go to my room, we’re going to make a mess here. And you go on top upstairs, hmm?”

***

Selene’s room was dark. She lit six lavender candles, a deep purple, by feel. She asked if I liked the scent and I told her yes.

“Now it’ll remind you of me,” she said. And she was right.

I was already without pants when she lay back, still wearing only her skirt. I could barely make her out by a shaft of moonlight that slipped through the window and fell on the tip of her nose and the curve of her breasts. A digital clock with very red numbers read two in the morning.

I positioned myself over her, ready to keep going.

“Wait, before that I need to ask you something. Would it bother you to know I’m married?”

“Married? Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“Don’t you want me anymore?” she made a sad, childish face.

What was going on? Why would a married woman live with two college friends? While I was thinking that, Selene braided her legs behind my back and pushed herself against me. I couldn’t resist and I penetrated her.

I braced my hands on either side of her head and moved my hips, trying to get in deeper. I watched her breasts bounce with the rhythm of my thrusts or looked for her gaze, but she had her eyes closed, focused.

We stayed like that for a long while. I was surprised not to get tired and looked at the clock: it was still two. It must have been broken. Then something moved behind my back; it sounded like the clink of a buckle. I turned around and recognized a figure, almost a shadow. When Selene noticed I was about to slip out of her to see what it was, she pulled me back against her body.

“Relax. Look at me,” she said, holding my chin firmly. “It’s my husband. He just wants to watch us.”

I felt I should stop. I didn’t like where this was going. But Selene was beautiful. The moon hit her breasts full on and my thrusts pulled them out of the light and lit them again. Her breathing grew heavy, almost a whistle, and she started moaning. I felt good about satisfying her and tried to ignore everything else.

“Oh, Esteban. You really are young… you feel so young inside me,” she said. The dialogue was bizarre, but for some reason it turned me on.

From then on I made my thrusts slower, deeper, rubbing myself a little so she could feel the friction on her clit.

“You fuck so good. You should be young forever, forever, forever. Would you like that?” she repeated, and I didn’t understand why she was saying things like that.

The husband came closer and put his hand on my shoulder. A shiver ran down my back. I could hear him jerking off behind me, and somehow I felt he was asking me to keep going, to fuck her harder. And I, not really knowing why, quickened the pace and bent down to kiss her breasts.

“Come on, finish me. Finish inside me. Or no, better on my breasts. I know you liked them. Pull out and finish on my breasts. Would you like that?”

Selene repeated “would you like that?” several more times, as if she were trying to convince me. I was like someone in a trance, unable to answer, and she seemed to get even hotter with each repetition.

At last she had an orgasm, and in that instant I ran. I knocked over the pizza box by accident, opened the door without closing it, and stumbled down the spiral staircase. What was happening to me? Why had I been so frightened? Thinking calmly about it, Selene was the most beautiful woman I had ever known. Wasn’t it worth it?

As I got away I looked back, afraid someone might be following me. Something about the house seemed wrong. I broke into a diagonal run, wanting to see the side of it, to disprove what my eyes were telling me. At a certain distance I looked again and my heart sank into my stomach: all that was left of the house was the façade and the square of the foundations. The walls had collapsed years ago. The spiral staircase I had gone up and down was still standing, but it led nowhere.

I ran for hours on the way back, fleeing through the brush and along the road, praying with all my soul that a taxi would pass. Not a single car went by. I got to the hotel at five in the morning, sweating cold and swearing I would never return to that place again.

***

I tried to forget, but I could no longer go back to the city. Thinking about Selene ties me to this town. I looked for any job I could find: two, three at a time. The important thing is not to think. The money, for some reason, barely goes far anymore. In this year the gray hairs have completely taken over my beard. My back hurts almost all the time, and at night I feel my teeth chattering.

I haven’t seen Selene again. But yesterday my blood ran cold when I heard some students singing:

I met the witch,

she was flying through the air.

“Who are you?” she said to me;

“I’m a huapango singer.”

The witch grabs me,

takes me to the little hill,

turns me into a flowerpot

and a little squash…