The First Time I Dared to Let Him In

I was always the kind of person who went unnoticed. In school hallways, at family gatherings, on public transport. I’d worn glasses since I was eight and never learned to use them as anything more than an obstacle between me and the world. My hair was long and straight, always worn loose because I didn’t know how to style it, and my way of speaking was so soft people asked me to repeat myself in almost every conversation.

Valeria, my mother called me, with that mix of tenderness and worry parents use when they look at children who never quite fit in. Twenty-two years old, single, a final-year graphic design student, with no romantic history worth mentioning. Not for lack of desire, but for too much fear.

That Tuesday in October I went to the market to do the week’s shopping. I had the list on paper because my phone was always running out of battery, and I carried a canvas bag my grandmother had given me that was far too big for me. I was choosing oranges, one by one, pressing them carefully as my mother had taught me, when the bag slipped from my hand.

The oranges rolled in every direction. Five, six, seven oranges moving across the market floor as if they had a life of their own. I bent down to gather them, my face burning, mumbling apologies to no one in particular, when a large hand appeared in front of me with three oranges.

I froze.

It was a hand with prominent veins, one of those hands that seem to know exactly what they’re doing. I looked up slowly. Dark trousers, a gray T-shirt, a square jaw with a bit of stubble, and a smile that wasn’t pitying but genuinely amused.

—You dropped these —he said.

His voice was deep. Not threatening, just calm, the voice of someone who speaks slowly because he has nowhere else to be.

—Thanks —I managed—. Sorry, I’m a disaster.

—Doesn’t look that way —he replied, and there was something in his tone that wasn’t cheap flirtation. It was an observation.

He handed me the oranges. I put them in the bag without looking at him, convinced that was that, that he would go his way and I would go mine, as always happened. But when I stood up, he was still there.

—Do you live around here? —he asked.

—Three blocks away —I said, pointing without thinking to the right.

—Me too. I’m heading that way if you want me to walk with you.

Say no, Valeria. Say no and keep going with your list.

—Okay —I said.

***

His name was Rodrigo. He was twenty-five, worked in interior design, and had lived in the same neighborhood for a year. He told me everything while we walked, unhurried, with that ease people have when they don’t need silence to feel comfortable.

I talked little, as always, but he didn’t seem to mind. He asked specific questions: what I was studying, whether I liked it, what kind of music I listened to. Not the generic questions of someone filling time, but those of someone who wanted to know.

When we got to the entrance of my building, he said it had been a pleasure and said goodbye without asking for my number. That surprised me more than anything else.

The next day I saw him at the corner bakery. The day after, at the stationery store where I bought my markers. A week later, we started meeting for coffee without either of us exactly suggesting it: we just ran into each other and stayed.

It took me weeks to understand that I liked him. I wasn’t used to that feeling, that state of constant alert I got when my phone vibrated with his name on the screen. It took me more weeks to admit it, and even more to tell him. He beat me to it.

We were in a café on a Wednesday afternoon when he said it, bluntly and without drama:

—I like you, Valeria. I’ve liked you since the orange day. Is it something like that for you, or am I reading it wrong?

I stared at my cup.

—You’re not reading it wrong —I said at last.

***

What followed was strange and beautiful at the same time. We went out, texted until late, talked about work and projects and movies. We kissed for the first time in the doorway of my building on a Thursday night, a short kiss neither of us had planned, and when he pulled away I kept my eyes closed a second longer than necessary.

Rodrigo was patient. He didn’t push. He never made a move that put me in an uncomfortable position, and that patience, far from calming me, made me think about him constantly. I thought about his mouth, his hands, what it would be like for those hands to touch me where no one had ever touched me. I touched myself in the shower imagining him and came with my face buried in my arm so I wouldn’t make a sound.

The problem was me.

I was twenty-two and I had never been with anyone. No dick inside me, no mouth between my legs, not even fingers that weren’t my own. I hadn’t mentioned it because the opportunity hadn’t come up, but I carried it around like something I ought to confess before it was too late. I imagined him reacting badly, going quiet with that specific discomfort that appears when something doesn’t fit what you expected.

My parents went away on a Friday. My father had a conference in another city, and my mother went with him. Two weeks away. That night I texted Rodrigo.

—Do you want to come over to watch something? I’m alone and I don’t feel like being alone.

He arrived in half an hour with a bag of popcorn and a calm expression that disarmed me before I even opened my mouth.

***

We put something on the television but neither of us paid attention. We were sitting on the sofa with a distance between us that shrank on its own, as if gravity worked differently that night. In one scene of the movie, a completely irrelevant scene, he turned to look at me.

—Are you okay? —he asked.

—I need to tell you something —I said.

I said it all at once, without organizing it: that I had never been with anyone, that it wasn’t for any special reason, that it had simply happened that way, and that I didn’t want him to find out later and feel deceived. I said it while looking at the remote control in my hands.

There was a silence.

—Are you telling me you don’t want to keep going, or that you’re nervous? —he asked.

—That I’m nervous. I don’t want to stop. I want you to fuck me, Rodrigo. I’ve wanted it for weeks.

I said it and my voice was shaking, but I said it. He smiled slowly, without mockery.

—We can handle that —he said, and he said it with a simplicity that loosened every muscle in my body.

He came closer slowly. He took the remote from my hands and put it on the table. Then he looked at me, waiting, and I was the one who leaned toward him.

The kiss was different from the others. Slower, surer, with his tongue entering my mouth unhurriedly, finding mine and tangling with it until I forgot to breathe. His hands on my face, in my hair, moving with that calm he had for everything. I liked the way he smelled, close and real, with nothing artificial about it.

When we pulled apart to breathe, my hands were on his chest and my heart was pounding too high. I also felt something hard against my thigh. His cock, trapped under his trousers, was already starting to show. I glanced down for a second before I could stop myself, and he noticed.

—You can touch me —he said, voice low—. If you want.

I put my hand over it, through the fabric, and felt the dense, hot bulge growing underneath. My mouth went dry. I squeezed a little and he let out a breath through his teeth.

—Shall we keep going? —he asked.

—Yes —I said.

***

He helped me take off my T-shirt with the same naturalness he did everything, without theatrical gestures, without hurry. When I was left in my bra I looked at him, searching his expression for something: distance, disappointment, anything that would confirm all my fears. I found none of that.

What I saw was attention. Really seeing me, at my tits rising and falling beneath the bra, at the nipple that was showing through the fabric because I was hard without realizing it.

—Stop —I said.

He froze at once.

—I’m thinking too much —I admitted.

—I know —he said—. You don’t have to shut your head off. Just let it stay in the background for a moment. I’m here.

I’m here. Two words that sounded different from anything anyone had ever said to me.

I unclasped my bra myself. It fell to the floor between us and my tits were bare for the first time in front of a man. I saw his gaze follow them, without hiding it but without insolence either, and something in that direct attention made me want him to keep looking. I stretched out my arm and pulled him toward me.

His mouth went straight to one nipple. He licked it first, circling it very slowly with his tongue, and then sucked it whole, pressing it between his lips until I felt a pull sliding down my belly and stabbing between my legs. With his other hand he squeezed my other breast, kneading it, pinching my nipple between thumb and forefinger. I grabbed the back of his neck without realizing it, pushing him against me, moaning softly into his hair.

His lips moved over my neck, my collarbone, slowly down my chest. His hands were firm on my back and my sides, memorizing every curve without rushing. I felt the heat rising in layers, as if each thing he did ignited something I hadn’t known was there.

When he slipped his hand between my legs, over my underwear, I gasped. The panties were soaked through. I could feel them sticking to me, and so could he, because he pressed two fingers exactly where my swollen clit was starting to bulge and moved slowly, up and down, feeling the fabric cling to his fingertips. He looked at me.

—You’re soaking —he said, and it wasn’t a question. He licked his lower lip without realizing it.

—Yes —I said, barely recognizing my own voice.

He slid his hand inside my underwear and found exactly where he wanted to go. His fingers parted my pussy lips, slick with wetness, and he ran two fingertips over my clit with a pressure that made me arch all over. He started slowly, paying attention to how I responded, adjusting, repeating what worked. Then he went lower, found the entrance, and pushed one finger all the way in.

—Fuck —I whispered. I didn’t recognize myself saying it.

—Does it hurt? —he asked.

—No. Don’t stop.

He moved the finger inside, curving it, searching, and when he found a spot deep inside that made me close my eyes and bite my lip, he stayed there. He added a second finger. He opened me slowly, letting me get used to it, and then moved both at once while his thumb kept circling my clit.

His fingers were soaked almost immediately and that seemed to satisfy him in a way that was not boastful but genuine. I had my eyes closed and my breathing broken and my hips moving on their own against his hand without my consciously deciding to, fucking his fingers with a shame that had gone somewhere very far away from my head.

At some point I stopped thinking. I don’t know exactly when.

—Do you want more? —he asked, his mouth close to my ear.

—Yes —I said—. I want everything. I want your cock, Rodrigo. I want it now.

I had never said the word out loud. It came out on its own and I liked the way it sounded in my mouth.

***

We went to the bedroom. The light coming through the blinds was enough to see by without being too much, that in-between point that made me feel less exposed and more present at the same time.

I lay down on the bed while he undressed. He took off his T-shirt, then his trousers, and when he pulled down his boxer briefs his cock sprang free, hard, thick, with the head shining and the main vein swollen underneath. It was bigger than I had imagined. I felt a jolt between my legs just looking at it. I also felt a little fear, honest, physical, that all of that was going to fit inside me.

I licked my lips without realizing it, and he saw it.

—Come here —I said.

He came to the edge of the bed and I sat up. I grabbed his cock with my hand, clumsy, feeling the weight and thickness, and kissed the tip. It was hot. It tasted like skin and something salty. I opened it with my lips and took it into my mouth, slowly, as much as I could, and he let out a slow breath above my head.

—Fuck, Valeria —he said, and those two words shot my pulse up to my throat.

I sucked as best I could, guided by instinct, moving my hand at the base at the same time. He brushed my hair away from my face with both hands and let me do it without pushing, watching me, jaw tense. When I pulled off to breathe, my mouth was full of saliva and my chin was wet and I wasn’t embarrassed at all. I took him back in, deeper this time, and sucked the tip with my tongue circling it as I pulled away.

—Stop —he said after a while, voice hoarse—. If you keep going I’m going to come, and I don’t want to come like this yet.

I lay back down. He knelt in front of me before getting on the bed and slowly pulled my underwear down. Then he spread my legs with both hands, leaned in, and used his mouth.

I wasn’t expecting that.

No one had told me it could feel like that. His tongue moved from bottom to top in one sweep, licking my whole pussy in a single pass, and when it reached my clit it stayed there, circling slowly, sucking it between his lips, touching it with the tip of his tongue in a rhythm that made my hips lift off the bed. He slid his fingers in again while he sucked, two of them, and curled them looking for that spot he already knew where it was. With his mouth and his fingers at the same time, he built a storm between my legs that I didn’t know how to handle.

I clutched the sheets with both hands. I moaned without intending to, louder than I ever had in my life, not thinking about whether anyone could hear me even though there was no one else in the house. He kept going. I closed my thighs around his face without meaning to and he pried them open again, holding me by the insides of my thighs, and kept licking me until I started shaking uncontrollably. I came in his mouth, my legs closing around his head again, moaning his name.

When I stopped trembling enough to speak, I told him to get on top.

He put on the condom I had taken out of the drawer before he arrived, one that had been there for months waiting for an occasion that never quite came. He looked at me while he rolled it down his cock, and in that look there was something that wasn’t urgency but something closer to certainty.

He positioned himself over me. He opened my legs with one knee and grabbed his cock with his hand, guiding it. The tip slid across my pussy, up and down, getting wet with what was already wet, and then he set it at my entrance and pushed.

It was uncomfortable at first, that kind of discomfort no one describes well and that exists somewhere between mild pain and the sensation of learning the grammar of something new. I felt enormous pressure, a burning. I held my breath. Rodrigo didn’t rush it. He stopped with half of him inside, his forehead against mine.

—Breathe —he said—. Slowly.

I breathed. He waited. He moved only a little, a few centimeters in and out, very slowly, letting my body open for him. When he felt me loosen, he went a little deeper. And a little more. Until I felt all of him, all the way to the bottom, hard and hot, filling me in a way I had never imagined.

—You’re inside —I said, with a stupid smile.

—I’m inside —he confirmed, and he laughed softly against my neck.

And then it stopped being uncomfortable.

He began to move, slow long withdrawals and entries, letting me feel every centimeter of his cock dragging against the walls of my cunt. What came after was something I don’t have words for exactly because I have nothing to compare it to. I felt his weight, his heat, the rhythm we found together. I heard my own breathing speed up and I wasn’t embarrassed. I also heard the wet sound our bodies made as they collided, the splashing of all that wetness, and instead of making me self-conscious, that noise made me hotter. My hands were on his back and my legs were trembling and at some point I realized I was no longer thinking about anything except that room, that bed, that exact moment.

—Harder —I said, surprising myself—. You can go harder.

He did. He drove deeper, faster, his arms braced on either side of my head. Short moans slipped out of me with each thrust, pulled from deep inside me without my being able to control them.

He took my hips when he changed the angle, lifting my pelvis a little with both hands, and something inside me responded in a way I hadn’t anticipated. His cock hit me in a different place, farther forward, and each thrust sent a lash of sensation through my belly. I pushed my hips toward him. He noticed and repeated the motion. And again.

—Like that, fuck, like that —I told him, unfiltered, not recognizing myself.

He flipped me over with a decisive movement. I ended up face down, knees tucked under me and my face pressed into the pillow, my ass lifted toward him. I felt his hands spreading my cheeks, then his cock again at the entrance, and again inside, all the way in with one thrust this time because I was already open for him. I moaned into the pillow. He started fucking me like that, gripping my hips with both hands, pulling me back as he thrust, each stroke hitting me deeper inside.

—You’re gorgeous like this —he said, breath ragged—. Soaked. All mine.

He slid one hand underneath and found my clit again while he kept fucking me from behind. His fingers circling there, his cock going in and out, all at once. I felt another orgasm coming over the first, different, deeper, rising from somewhere I didn’t know.

When I came I did it by clenching around his cock with spasms I couldn’t control, screaming into the pillow, which I hadn’t planned but later thought was exactly how it should have been. He made me turn over again because he wanted to see my face. He penetrated me again, this time on top, and kept thrusting in that broken rhythm, holding one breast, jaw clenched.

Rodrigo took just a little longer. I saw his face right before, the tension, his eyes closing. He drove in all the way and stayed there, trembling over me, groaning low as he came inside the condom. I felt the pulsing of his cock against my walls, every throbbing squeeze, and I liked knowing he was coming because of me, inside me, with my name between his teeth.

He stayed still over me for a few seconds before rolling to one side, and we both lay there staring at the ceiling, breathing hard.

—Are you okay? —he asked for the third time that night.

I laughed. I don’t know exactly why, but I laughed.

—Yes —I said—. I’m very okay.

***

He stayed the night. We didn’t plan it; it just happened. In the middle of the night I woke with his mouth on the nape of my neck and his cock hard again against my ass, and we fucked slowly on our sides, half asleep, until I came a third time with my hand pressed over my mouth so I wouldn’t scream. The next morning I woke before he did and lay staring at the ceiling for several minutes, taking inventory of how I felt.

There was none of what I had been told I would feel. No loss, no sadness, no strange weight. What there was felt more like lightness, as if I had been carrying something for years without realizing it and had set it down on the floor the night before. My cunt was sore in a pleasant way and the sheets smelled like him.

Rodrigo opened his eyes when I already had coffee made.

—Good morning —he said, voice rough with sleep.

—Good morning —I replied.

There was a comfortable silence, the kind that doesn’t need to be filled. I stood there with the mug in my hands looking out the window, and for the first time in a long while I didn’t think about what could go wrong.

—Shall we meet tomorrow? —he asked.

—Yes —I said—. We’ll meet tomorrow.

I thought about what had already happened and everything that might come after, and I felt no fear. Only curiosity. And a desire for more.