My First Time with My Wife’s Mother

Quarantine had locked all of us into smaller versions of ourselves. I’d been married to Lucía for four years, and we lived in an apartment three blocks from her family. Her mother, Beatriz, was fifty-four, a widow, and lived alone in the old house where her two sons, engineers who worked outside the city, showed up only on weekends. Beatriz drank too. A lot. That was the open secret the family didn’t want to name.

Lucía is a physical therapist. When quarantine began, the hospitals started calling her in on rotating shifts, and sometimes she traveled with her brothers to nearby towns to set up emergency clinics. She disappeared for three or four days at a time. I stayed in the apartment counting the hours until she came back.

The first call came on a Tuesday afternoon. Lucía’s voice sounded thin.

—She’s not answering her phone. Please, go see what’s going on.

I walked the three blocks under a sun that no longer seemed real. Beatriz opened the door with a compilation of cumbias blasting behind her. She had a glass in her hand, ice clinking, and a smile that was just a little too wide.

—Mateo! What a surprise, come in, come in.

She hugged me with both arms and I felt the heat of vodka against my neck. The house smelled of cigarettes and lemon.

—Lucía’s worried —I told her—. You weren’t answering.

—Oh, my phone. I leave it anywhere. Help yourself to something to drink.

I fixed myself a short glass of vodka and tonic. We sat at the kitchen table and she talked and talked: about her dead husband, about how silent the house had become, about the sons who only came by to leave groceries. She refilled my glass twice without asking.

I called Lucía from the hallway, lowering my voice.

—She’s fine, just a little drunk.

—Can you stay tonight? If you leave her alone, tomorrow she’ll go out into the street asking a neighbor for alcohol. Please.

I agreed to stay. By midnight Beatriz could barely walk. I helped her to the bedroom, took off her shoes, and pulled the sheet up to her chest. She stayed there, hair undone, mouth slightly open, breathing deeply. I stood in the doorway longer than I should have. I told myself it was courtesy, that I was making sure she didn’t choke. The truth was that for the first time I was looking at my mother-in-law like a man looks at a woman, and I was getting hard right there, my pants tight against me, imagining what those big tits would be like under her blouse. I closed the door and went to sleep in the room that had belonged to the eldest son, my swollen cock thumping against the elastic of my boxer briefs.

I woke at six. The house was still dark and I went to the kitchen to make coffee. On my way back I passed her door and saw it was ajar, open just a quarter of the way.

Beatriz was in bed. The sheet had slipped down to her waist. She’d pulled her nightgown open to her navel and had one breast out, the dark nipple standing up like a stone. Her eyes were closed and her hand was between her legs, two fingers sunk into her cunt, moving in a slow, almost tired rhythm, pulling them out wet and gleaming and pushing them back in. A low gasp escaped her each time she drove them up to the knuckles. With her other hand she pinched her nipple, tugging at it, twisting it. She wasn’t faking it. She didn’t know I was there. I held my breath, took a step back, and locked myself in the kitchen, my cock pinned hard against the pajama pants and my hands shaking.

It was the first time in my life I had seen another woman doing that without permission, and what unhinged me wasn’t the sight. It was that I didn’t look away when I should have. And that I went into the bathroom and jerked off right there, gripping my cock with my hand and coming in two minutes against the tiled wall, biting my lip so I wouldn’t moan, thinking about those fingers going in and out of her.

When she came out an hour later, she’d washed her face and put on a robe. She drank her coffee staring at the tablecloth.

—Sorry about last night. I made you lose your evening.

—I didn’t lose anything.

I left before her sons arrived.

***

A week later, the request came formally: the family wanted me to spend the nights at Beatriz’s place every time Lucía and the brothers traveled. They paid in gratitude and homemade empanadas. I agreed before I thought about why I was agreeing.

The first night alone with her, I promised myself it would be different. I wasn’t going to drink. I was going to put her to bed at eleven. I was going to sleep in the other room and not even pass by her door the next morning.

I got there at seven. She’d already started.

—Just one glass —she promised me—. Let’s talk. It’s been so long since I’ve talked to anyone.

We talked. About her husband, dead five years earlier of a heart attack in front of the kitchen sink. About her sons, who loved her but treated her like a project. About how the silence in the house started at five in the afternoon and didn’t end until she fell asleep. At some point she started crying, with that exhausted lack of drama that hurts more than sobbing.

—You’re beautiful, Beatriz —I told her, and it was true—. You’re still young. Any man would be happy to be with you.

—Any man who doesn’t exist —she laughed without real amusement.

I filled her glass again. I filled mine. The kitchen’s yellow light made her skin look warmer, closer. She mentioned, almost casually, that she missed having someone in bed. Not for company. For other things.

—And what do you do when you’re horny? —I asked, and the question came out before I could stop it.

—Nothing. I touch myself. I put up with it.

I thought about that morning. About her hand, her fingers going into her cunt, about the breast out. And I made the decision that changes everything in stories like this: I spoke.

—The other morning I saw you —I said—. The door was open. I saw you sticking your fingers in.

She turned red from her neck to her forehead. Then she laughed.

—I don’t believe you. How embarrassing, please.

—You have nothing to be embarrassed about. I got hard watching you. I had to go to the bathroom and jerk off thinking about you.

She lifted her face from the glass. Her eyes had gone dark.

—Don’t say that.

—It’s the truth.

She didn’t answer. She poured herself more. She noticed I was looking at her tits under her blouse and didn’t cover them.

***

We ended up in her bedroom watching a movie on the tablet, because the living room TV had stopped working months before. She crawled under the sheet. I sat first on the edge of the bed and then in the chair against the wall when she asked me to move because I was blocking the screen. The movie was something she’d chosen, a thriller she wasn’t really watching.

—Can I tell you something? —I ventured after a while.

—Say it.

—I’m turned on, Beatriz. I’m getting hard just from being here.

She kept her eyes on the screen.

—You’re married to my daughter.

—I know.

—And I’m your mother-in-law. This is insane.

—I know.

Silence. The tablet kept playing. Then, very softly:

—If you touch yourself in that chair, I’ll touch myself here. Without touching each other. Just that.

I nodded. I lowered my pants zipper and took out my cock, already hard, throbbing in my hand. She slid her hand under the sheet. I heard the rustle of fabric as she pulled her panties halfway down her thigh. The yellow light from the hallway came in through the open door and turned the room amber. I started jerking myself slowly, from the base to the glans, squeezing hard so she could see the tip swelling. She pulled the sheet down to her hips so I could see her too. She’d opened the robe. Her tits were bare, two big mature-woman breasts with dark hard nipples, and her hand was between her legs, moving in circles over her clit.

—Show me more —I said, my voice rough—. Open up.

She hesitated for a second and then spread her knees. She opened her pussy lips with two fingers and showed me everything, the bright pink inside, the swollen clit, the tight hole that contracted when I looked at it.

—Like that? —she murmured.

—Like that. Stick your fingers in like that morning.

She pushed her middle finger all the way in, then two, and started fucking herself, watching me as I jerked my cock faster and faster. The bed creaked slightly with the movement of her hips. A low moan escaped her.

—You’ve got such a big one, Mateo. I didn’t think it was that big.

—It’s for you, Beatriz. All for you.

I watched the motion of her fingers going in and out, the way her pussy lips opened, the way her chest rose faster each minute, the way she pinched one nipple with her other hand. She looked at me from the bed, half shame, half hunger. It was the longest five minutes of my life.

When she drew in a sharp breath and arched her back and her whole body trembled, I crossed the two steps between us and knelt on the floor beside the bed. She opened her eyes, still panting.

—We agreed we wouldn’t touch —she murmured, but she didn’t stop my hand.

—Just feet —I said, and lowered my head.

I lifted the sheet at the foot of the bed and took her foot in my hand. I kissed her arch, her ankle, the soft hollow behind her heel. She made a sound I’d never heard from her before, a low, almost embarrassed whimper. I moved up her leg with my mouth, slowly, one centimeter at a time, giving her time to stop me. She didn’t stop me. When I reached her thigh, she put her hand on my head and her fingers closed in my hair.

—If you keep going, there’s no turning back —she said.

—There’s no turning back now, Beatriz.

I pressed my mouth to her soaked cunt and ran my tongue all over it, from bottom to top, tasting everything in her. She tasted like a mature woman, salty, dense, real. Her back arched off the bed and she swallowed a cry against the back of her hand. I opened her lips with my fingers and drove my tongue inside, then sucked on her clit with my lips, tugging gently. She pressed my head against her crotch and rocked her hips against my mouth.

—Oh, Mateo, oh, like that, don’t stop, you son of a bitch, like that.

I slipped two fingers into her cunt while I sucked her clit, curling them to reach that inner spot, and felt everything in her clench. I licked her asshole too, just a little, and she moaned louder and clamped her thighs around my face. I ate her cunt until she started trembling for real, her heels dug into the mattress.

—Stop, stop —she gasped—. I’m going to come before you’re inside me. Come here. Come here now.

I had a condom in the drawer of the nightstand. I never knew how long it had been there. I never knew who she’d bought it for. I put it on without taking my eyes off her face. She’d taken the robe off completely and was naked for me, legs open and arms thrown back, offering herself all at once. I climbed onto the bed and set the tip of my cock at her cunt, looked her in the eyes, and she looked back, and I entered her slowly, millimeter by millimeter, watching her, watching the woman whose existence I had ignored for four years.

—Oh, God —she whispered when I was all the way inside her—. How you fill me.

—You’re soaked, Beatriz. You’re hot inside.

—Fuck me. Fuck me slowly. It’s been ages since anyone fucked me.

She didn’t kiss me. That was her rule, and the only one she kept. She put her hands on my chest, on my shoulders, on the back of my neck, and I started moving inside her, going all the way in and coming almost all the way out, feeling how her cunt opened around my cock each time I drove in. I grabbed one of her tits and sucked her nipple, biting it just a little, and she let out a long moan and dug her nails into my back.

—Harder —she begged—. Harder, Mateo, don’t be afraid of me.

I started fucking her harder, with the wet sound of skin against skin, her tits bouncing with each thrust. I lifted one of her legs over my shoulder to drive deeper and she bit her fist so she wouldn’t scream. I could feel her squeezing me inside, clenching around my cock like she didn’t want to let me out.

—Turn over —I told her in her ear—. I want to see your ass.

She turned over without protesting, got on all fours on her elbows, and showed me her white wide ass and her swollen cunt dripping between her thighs. I grabbed her hips with both hands and thrust in at once, hard, and she gave a muffled cry into the pillow. I started fucking her like that, hitting her hard, watching her ass tremble each time I slammed into her. I ran my thumb over her asshole, just barely wetting it with her own moisture, and she shivered all over.

—Oh, oh, don’t stop, don’t stop please.

—Come for me, Beatriz. Come for your son-in-law. Soak my cock.

—Shut up, you son of a bitch, shut up before I come.

She pressed one hand to her clit while I kept fucking her from behind, and at some point she closed her eyes and said her own name in a whisper, as if reminding herself who she was.

When she came, she didn’t make a sound. She held her breath and her whole body went taut, then suddenly gave way, and I felt her squeezing me from the inside in spasms, wave after wave, and I let go with her, emptying myself into the condom with my face buried in her hair, growling against her neck with each spurt.

Afterward I stayed beside her, still inside, listening to her breathing. The tablet had gone black. The house was quiet in a way I hadn’t noticed before.

—Go to the other room —she told me—. We’ll talk tomorrow.

I went.

***

I didn’t sleep. I lay in the son’s bed staring at the ceiling, counting in my head every way this could ruin my life. By dawn I had decided to confess everything to Lucía. By breakfast I had decided never to do it.

Beatriz came into the kitchen wearing the same robe.

—Good morning.

—Good morning.

She poured herself coffee with hands that didn’t tremble.

—If this ever happens again —she said, without looking at me—, it’s not because I’m looking for it. And it’s not love. And we tell no one. And if you ever stop respecting me in front of my daughter, I’ll kill you. Are we clear?

—Clear.

—And buy condoms. I am not going to be buying condoms at fifty-four like a girl.

—I’ll buy them.

She took her coffee. I took mine. The sun came in behind the curtain and changed both our faces.

It happened seven more times that month, every time Lucía traveled. We never kissed. We never talked about it during the day. When her sons or my wife were in the house, we acted like mother-in-law and son-in-law who barely tolerated each other, and the performance was so convincing that sometimes, when Lucía left for a shift, I had to remind myself that Beatriz and I had any other kind of relationship at all. That the woman serving my wife her plate was the same woman who, days earlier, had gotten on all fours so I could fuck her from behind until her thighs were soaked.

It was, in the most literal sense, my first time. My first time with a woman who didn’t expect to be loved. My first time understanding that desire can survive on its own, without a future, without a name, without permission. My first time learning what kind of man I really was, and discovering that I was someone I didn’t quite recognize.

Quarantine ended at some point. The brothers came around more often. Lucía’s shifts got sorted out. Beatriz stopped drinking so much, or stopped letting herself be seen drinking. We see each other on Sundays at family lunch and she serves me my plate without looking at me twice.

But on the nights when Lucía is on call and I stay awake in our bed listening to the empty city, I know that three blocks away, in a house with only one yellow light burning in the kitchen, there is another person who is also awake and also remembering.