First Time

She had been with her boyfriend for five years and had never doubted. Until that black-eyed woman stared at her on the platform and something broke inside.

I heard her closing her suitcases on the other side of the wall and knew she would leave with the dawn. Barefoot and trembling, I crossed the hallway to the ajar door of her room.

My hands were ice-cold in the boarding lounge, but it wasn’t the weather: in a few hours I’d see her again, and I didn’t know whether I’d run to her or hide.

We’d hated each other at the office for years, but that night, with my fourth margarita in hand, her thumb brushed my bare thigh and everything changed.

Bruno had broken my heart again, but the one waiting for me at that house on the edge of town wasn’t him — it was his mother, in a dress that left nothing to the imagination.

Six years of pretending nothing was happening whenever they brushed against each other. That night, with the city asleep, neither wanted to keep pretending.

I was twenty-two and had never seen another woman naked until that afternoon in the shower, when she took off her underwear as if I weren’t watching.

I went looking for advice from the only woman I trusted, never imagining that afternoon at the country house would teach me everything my body didn’t yet know it could feel.

Renata was spreading tanning lotion over my breasts when she asked me whether I’d ever had a lover. I blushed like a little girl. I said no.

I thought I would guide her through her first experience, but she took control and taught me just how far my body could go.

Mara covered her friend’s eyes and asked for silence. What she did next with her tongue crossed the line forever.

When she came out to the garage dressed like that, I knew I’d lose the bet. What I couldn’t imagine was how far that summer would go with her and her mother.

We’d spent months fantasizing about taking the plunge. That night, in the living room of strangers, my wife looked at me before we crossed the point of no return.

After twenty-four years of marriage, Marina whispered that she only wanted to watch. Three hours later, I was watching another man drive her out of her mind.

We went down to the sauna without swimsuits and I understood that my wife and her cousin had already talked it all over: that mountain weekend was not going to be what we’d been told.

She gave me one condition: if she didn’t like him, nothing would happen. What I didn’t expect was that by the end of the night, she would leave me alone with the other woman.

I agreed for his sake, not knowing that crossing that door would change my idea of pleasure. That night I stopped being only his.

She was naked on her boyfriend’s lap, still flushed, when she said it with a half-smile: “Since we’ve started… we could keep going.” No one expected that from her.

They’d come looking for action and the club was dead. Until a shy couple showed up, not knowing what they’d walked into.

She only wanted to understand her body before getting married. She never imagined that therapy group would lead her to betray everything she believed about herself.