The First Time I Saw Mariana with Another Man
That trip to Tinajas Lake was Mariana’s idea, not mine. We’d been together for fourteen years and had two daughters who were sleeping at her mother’s house that week, so when the work email announcing the annual retreat came in, we didn’t think twice. I’m an industrial engineer at a plant on the outskirts of the city, and at the end of every year management organizes a three-day outing to some place with a pool and an open bar. This time it was a bungalow complex three hours away by road, with a direct view of the water.
Mariana is thirty-one, one meter seventy, cinnamon skin, and honey-colored eyes that still throw me off balance when she turns them on me. I’m about to turn thirty-five. We started dating in college and never separated. After so many years we’d fallen into a comfortable rhythm, enough, no emergencies. Friday nights, once the girls were asleep, she’d put on a short nightgown and I’d turn off the TV without saying a word. It worked. But sometimes, while watching her dry her hair after a shower, I wondered if that rhythm was all we were ever going to have.
We left on Friday at seven in the morning in a bus with forty-two people. I ended up sitting next to Damián, a colleague from logistics with whom I’d never exchanged more than three sentences. His wife, Camila, was traveling behind us with Mariana, and by the time we reached the complex the two of them were talking as if they’d known each other forever. Damián patted me on the shoulder when we got off.
“Esteban, tonight there’s a barbecue at management’s bungalow. But Saturday afternoon, Camila and I know a place. If your wife feels like it, come with us. It’s… different. You go through it in stages.”
“Different how?” I asked.
“Different in a good way. Trust me.”
I didn’t fully understand him, but I nodded. Mariana, two steps behind, let out one of those laughs of hers that commits to nothing and kept walking with Camila toward reception.
Our bungalow had six bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, and a small pool in the back patio. That night’s barbecue was long, with too much wine and bar games that pulled people out of office mode. At two in the morning Mariana and I shut ourselves in the bedroom with the fan on full blast, and for the first time in many months we did it with hunger, not habit. I tore her dress off over the bed and buried my face between her legs before she finished settling herself. Her cunt was already wet, swollen from the wine and the heat, and I licked it slowly, with my tongue flat, moving up along the lips to the clit, sucking on it with my lips tight until she started pushing my head with both hands. I slid in two fingers and curved them, searching for that spot inside that always made her arch. She came biting her wrist to keep from crying out, with the walls so thin we could hear the neighbor in the next bungalow coughing. Then I climbed on top of her, pried her legs apart with my knees, and drove my cock all the way in with one thrust. A short moan escaped her, muffled against my shoulder. I fucked her in silence, looking into her eyes, with that slow cadence of when you want to last, feeling how her cunt tightened every time I held back. I came inside her with my mouth against her neck and stayed on top of her for a long while, both of us soaked, the fan turning above our backs.
***
Saturday we spent at the lake. We had fish for lunch on the shore, rented a kayak, burned our shoulders. In the afternoon, while I was drying my hair with a towel, Damián knocked on the bungalow door.
“Feel like it?”
Mariana came out of the bathroom in a short black dress she’d brought “just in case.” She looked at me without asking, waiting for my answer. I looked at her.
“Let’s go,” she said before I could open my mouth.
There were three other couples plus Damián and Camila. A large taxi took us down a side road, between eucalyptus trees, to a low house with no sign. A single yellow light over the door. Damián spoke to a man in uniform and they let us in. Inside, the first thing I thought was that it looked like an expensive restaurant: wooden floor, dim lamps, soft music, round tables dressed in white tablecloths. Ours was reserved and had a bottle of vodka with freshly squeezed orange juice, and a platter with shrimp, tenderloin, pork, and a couple of cuts I didn’t recognize. We ate, toasted. Conversation drifted over nothing in particular for a while, until a waiter came up to Damián and said something in his ear.
“Next room,” he announced.
The next room had a table with tequila, salt, lime, and a thick tomato juice. We drank a shot in one gulp, then the lime, then the juice. The heat slid down from my forehead to the base of my back in three seconds. There was a small dance floor with purple and red lights, and two couples were dancing pressed together, too pressed together, hands in places no office would approve of. One of the men had his hand under his wife’s skirt, moving her slowly, and she let him, eyes closed, leaning on his shoulder. Mariana pulled me to the center and we danced something slow. I felt her thigh between mine, her breath tasting of lime on my neck, and her hand went down to squeeze my cock over my pants. It had been hard since I’d seen the other couple.
“What do you think comes in the next room?” she asked me in my ear.
“I have no idea.”
“I think you do have an idea. And you’re not telling me no.”
It was true. I wasn’t telling her no. I squeezed her ass with both hands under the dress and discovered she wasn’t wearing a thong.
“I forgot to put it on,” she whispered. “On purpose.”
***
Damián appeared with his drink in hand and led us down a hallway at the back of the place. It was long, carpeted, with low violet, red, and green lights alternating. On each side there were five doorways covered with heavy curtains. A waiter different from the previous one explained the basic rules: we could enter any room, watch, leave whenever we wanted, and nothing happened without the people inside consenting to it. Camila squeezed Mariana’s hand and we went in.
The first curtain hid four women on a round bed. Two of them were kissing side by side with their breasts pressed against each other, their hard nipples brushing, while another was licking the fourth on the inner thighs, moving slowly upward until she buried her tongue between the lips of a shaved, shining cunt. Mariana dug her nails into my forearm without realizing it. The second curtain opened onto a single couple, she straddling him in a leather armchair, riding him slowly, with his cock sliding in and out of her in full view, wet, while he sucked one of her breasts with his hand spread across the back of her neck. The third showed a group of five moving slowly, almost choreographed: two women sharing a cock with their tongues, one man with his face buried in another woman’s cunt, the fifth on her knees masturbating as she watched. In the fourth room there was a tall, long-haired man receiving oral sex from three women at once: one was sucking his cock to the hilt while the other two licked his balls from both sides, taking turns to put the tip in their mouths. My wife stayed at the entrance longer than necessary just to look. I put my hand on her waist and felt her breathing change.
“Did you like that one?” Camila asked when we came out.
Mariana laughed.
“I don’t know if I liked it. I can’t stop thinking about it.”
We went through all ten rooms. When we got back to the start of the hallway, Damián raised his eyebrows.
“Which one?”
Mariana answered before I could.
“The fourth.”
Camila took her hand, took mine with the other, and led us back to that same curtain. When we went in, the man and the three women welcomed us as if they’d been expecting us. Damián and Camila stayed outside. The curtain fell softly behind us.
***
The man’s name was Iván, as we learned later. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with a very short beard and a calm smile that didn’t seem fake. The three women were between twenty-five and their early thirties, all with different bodies: one with big heavy breasts, another small and slender with very short hair, and the tallest with wide hips and a round ass outlined beneath a tiny red dress. The short-haired one came up to me and placed an open hand on my chest, waiting. I nodded. Mariana, three steps away, let Iván slip the dress straps off her shoulders with two fingers.
They stripped her before they stripped me. It wasn’t rough, it wasn’t slow, it was exactly at the pace my wife allowed with her breathing. When the black dress fell to the floor, she was completely naked, no thong, with breasts that stood proud from so many years of yoga and brown nipples already stiff. Iván ran his knuckles over her stomach and down to brush her cunt with the back of his hand. Mariana opened her legs just a little, an involuntary movement. They sat her in a wave-shaped armchair, an absurd piece they called the Kama Sutra, and while the big-breasted woman kissed her neck and grabbed her breasts from behind, squeezing them, Iván knelt before her and spread her legs all the way. He ran his whole tongue over her cunt, from below up to the clit, and then back down. Mariana threw her head back and let out a moan I’d never heard in fourteen years. I watched it all from the carpet, seated against a wall, the short-haired woman kissing me below the ear while unfastening my belt and the tallest giving me cold water from a low glass before kneeling between my legs.
The first thing I thought was that I was going to stand up and drag Mariana out of there. The second, that I couldn’t. The third, that I didn’t want to.
The tallest pulled my cock out of my pants and gripped it with both hands before taking it all the way into her mouth. I felt her throat opening around the tip, her tongue wrapping around me, saliva dripping down her chin to fall onto my balls. The short-haired woman pressed against my ear and whispered what she was seeing in front of her, like an obscene narration.
“Look at how she’s sucking it too. Look at how she opens her mouth. Your wife knows how to suck cock, have you seen her like this before?”
Mariana had her eyes closed and her mouth open around Iván’s cock, which he held with one hand at the back of her neck without thrusting, letting her take it at her own pace. He pulled it out and ran it over her cheek, her lips, her tongue, and she chased after it like she was missing it. The big-breasted woman had slid her hand down to her cunt and was circling her clit at the same rhythm Mariana was sucking. Every time she opened her mouth, Iván slid his hand up her belly. The short-haired woman let go of my neck and went over there, leaned across the chair and kissed her breasts, sucking one nipple until Mariana moaned with his cock inside her mouth. My wife’s hands came up, almost in slow motion, and tangled in that woman’s hair, pulling her against her breast. That was what finally broke me: not that they were touching her, but that she chose to touch back.
“Look at her,” the tallest whispered in my ear, without taking the cock fully out of her mouth. “She’s asking you for permission without opening her eyes.”
I obeyed. I looked at her. Mariana opened her eyes for a second, found mine, and smiled just slightly from the left corner of her mouth, that half-smile she gives me when she asks me to trust her. With Iván’s cock still brushing her lips.
I nodded.
From there I stopped measuring time. Iván stood up and my wife took him into her mouth, both hands at the base, her eyes closed again. She swallowed his cock whole, pulled it out covered in saliva, licked his balls one by one, took it again. The big-breasted woman climbed onto the chair and pressed Mariana’s mouth against her cunt, sitting on Mariana’s face. My wife, without hesitation, opened her mouth and started sucking that woman’s clit while Iván kept fucking her mouth from the other side. I’d never in fourteen years seen her eat another woman’s cunt. It had never crossed my mind that she could do it like that, hungry, burying her tongue inside and pulling it out shining.
The short-haired woman did the same to me on my side. She gently forced me to lie back on the carpet, straddled my face and planted her cunt in my mouth. I sucked her clit until she twisted and squeezed my head with her thighs. The tallest woman opened a packet, took out a condom, and put it on me with her mouth, a trick I’d never seen before and can’t imagine learning: she bent down, took the tip of my cock between her lips with the condom between her teeth, and lowered her mouth to the base while unrolling it with her tongue. She straightened up, licked her lips, settled on top. She sat down on me slowly, letting me feel how she opened around me, how her cunt swallowed me whole. She started moving in circles, her hands braced on my chest, while the short-haired woman rocked on top of my face.
When the tallest moved aside to change positions, I caught a side glance of Iván laying Mariana on her side on the armchair and entering her from behind, slowly, one hand on her hip. I saw his cock going all the way into my wife’s cunt, his hand parting her ass cheeks to see better. Mariana moaned with her mouth open, a long complaint that blended with his name. One of the women lay down in front of my wife, face to face, and kissed her mouth through the whole first stretch, sliding her tongue into Mariana’s while Iván took her from behind. Mariana responded to every kiss. She wasn’t a spectator. She was there, complete, taken from both sides and keeping her mouth open.
They changed her position. They put her on all fours on the armchair. Iván stood behind her and started fucking her again, now hard, fingers digging into her hips, thrusting in ways that made her breasts shake against the leather. The big-breasted woman lay on her back beneath Mariana with her legs open and pushed Mariana’s head down toward her cunt. My wife let herself be lowered and went back to eating her out while getting fucked from behind. I could see her face from where I was, red, shiny with saliva, eyes half-closed, never stopping licking. Every time Iván thrust hard, she let out a muffled moan against the other woman’s cunt.
***
What happened after that I remember in fragments. The short-haired woman taking out a small bottle of lubricant. Iván pausing, looking Mariana in the eye, asking her something with his gaze. Mariana barely nodding, once. I saw him coat his cock with oil, I saw him slide two shiny fingers up her ass first, opening her slowly, one, then two, while the short-haired woman stroked her hair and spoke close to her ear. Then I saw the tip go in. What came after we’d never done, she and I. She had never allowed it in fourteen years. And she accepted it that night, biting her lip, with the short-haired woman running an open palm through her hair and whispering things I couldn’t make out. Iván pushed all the way in slowly, millimeter by millimeter, until his hips were pressed against her ass. Mariana let out a long vowel, no consonants, and lowered her head. He started fucking her in the ass with short thrusts at first, then longer ones, while the big-breasted woman slid two fingers into her cunt from below, filling that side too.
I felt many things at once. Anger first. Then a kind of new, foreign hunger. The tallest was still riding me, and suddenly she stood up, turned around, knelt backward and lowered herself again, now facing me beside my wife. She fucked me like that, watching what they were doing to Mariana, with the short-haired woman now between my legs sucking my balls and milking my cock at the base every time the other woman rose and fell. The tallest held my face with both hands.
“It’s okay,” she told me. “She’s with you. Look at her well, because tomorrow you’re going to want to remember every detail.”
She was right.
Mariana came with Iván’s cock in her ass and the other woman’s fingers inside her cunt, screaming something that wasn’t a word. I felt her tremble from three meters away. I came a minute later, with the tallest clamping so hard around me with her cunt that my vision blurred. Iván pulled out, removed the filled condom, and tossed it into a metal bin. Mariana stayed face down on the chair, breathing in short bursts, her back shiny with sweat, a white thread running down the inside of her right thigh.
When it was all over — and it ended almost in silence, not like in the movies — Mariana sat up from the chair with her legs still trembling and walked barefoot to where I was. She straddled my thighs, pressed her forehead to mine, and stayed like that for a long while, breathing. I felt her wet cunt resting on my abdomen. Iván and the three women withdrew to the back of the room without saying a word, poured themselves water from a jug, and left that corner of the room to us alone.
“Are you okay?” I asked her.
“I’m here,” she said. “I didn’t go anywhere.”
***
We went back to the bungalow in silence, hands intertwined in the taxi’s back seat. Damián didn’t ask anything, Camila either. That night we slept wrapped around each other without touching any further, exhausted.
On Sunday at breakfast Mariana poured me coffee like any other Sunday, and I returned the gesture by adding sugar in the exact amount as always. Something had shifted and we both knew it, but neither of us was brave enough yet to put words to it.
The words came two weeks later, on an ordinary night, after putting the girls to bed. We were washing the dishes and she, without looking at me, said:
“I don’t want to go back to that place.”
I felt a knot in my throat. I waited.
“But I want you and me to talk more about what goes through our heads. That Saturday I didn’t become someone else. All that happened was that I stopped pretending I didn’t feel things.”
I dried her hands with the dish towel. I kissed her forehead. That night I didn’t turn off the TV in silence. We talked until three in the morning, sitting on the living room floor, about everything we’d gone fourteen years without telling each other. And when we went upstairs to the bedroom, I stripped her slowly against the door, knelt down and ate her cunt standing up until she came holding on to my hair, and then I fucked her in our bed on all fours, biting her shoulder, whispering in her ear everything I had seen that Saturday and everything I wanted to do to her from then on. She answered me with the same raw words, words that for fourteen years had never come out of her mouth in that room.
Two years have passed since that trip to Tinajas Lake. We never went back to the club, just as she promised. But our Friday nights stopped resembling the old ones. Mariana tells me things she used to keep to herself. I ask her things I used to be afraid to ask. Sometimes, when we’re alone and the silence starts to resemble the old one, one of us mentions, without too much detail, a violet light and a heavy curtain at the end of a carpeted hallway. The other smiles. And for a moment, the fourteen years rearrange themselves.