The Mature Traveler Who Taught Me in Kyoto

The bathroom fan hummed in the darkness of the hotel room. Outside, through the glass fogged by the heating, Kyoto glowed under a fine rain that turned every streetlamp into a blurred halo. From the street came the noise of umbrellas, the splashing of footsteps on wet asphalt, and every so often the tinkling bell of a bicycle someone was pedaling unhurriedly through the downpour.

I was lying on the bed in a yukata borrowed from the hotel, staring at the ceiling. On the bedside table lay a brochure for tourist activities I hadn’t read. The television was playing a variety show at the lowest volume, images of contestants laughing at the camera without my understanding a single word they said.

My mind was somewhere else.

Specifically, it was in the room next to mine, separated by a wall only a few centimeters thick and by all the distance I had imposed on myself without anyone asking me to.

Emi. That was her name. Mid-forties, black hair cut just above her shoulders, dark eyes that narrowed when she smiled. Fair skin, almost translucent, not a single visible wrinkle despite her age. I had met her on the flight from Madrid, neighboring seat, nine hours of conversation that had never once gone dead. Designer. Spanish father, Japanese mother. She knew the city as if she’d lived in it all her life.

We had decided to travel together for convenience. Two strangers with the same itinerary, the same week off, and an affinity neither of us could explain at the time. We booked rooms in the same hotel, adjoining, and from the very first day she became the best guide I could have had.

The problem was me.

For years I had been building a version of myself that bore no resemblance to what I thought. Outwardly: tidy, proper, respectful to the point of absurdity. Inwardly: an accumulation of desires I didn’t know how to handle or whom to let out with. At thirty-two, I could count on one hand the times I had truly been with someone. Not for lack of interest, but for excess of fear. Fear of rejection, fear of not being enough, fear of that awkward moment when both of you know what you want but neither of you makes the first move.

With Emi everything was different and, at the same time, the fear was still the same.

She was nothing like the women who appeared in the videos I wore my cock out to in the privacy of my home, with their mechanical scenes and their rehearsed moans. Emi was real. She drank green tea in the mornings before I’d even finished waking up. She argued with taxi drivers when they tried to overcharge her. She laughed at her own jokes before finishing them. And when she walked down the hotel corridors, her yukata hugged her hips in a way that forced me to grit my teeth so I wouldn’t stare at her ass for too long.

That night, while the television program continued its silent course, someone knocked on my door.

***

I opened it expecting to find the hotel staff with the towel I’d requested. It was Emi.

She was wearing the hotel yukata, just like me, and in her hands she held a half-opened paper map, the kind they hand out at temples with routes marked by hand. Her wet hair fell over one ear. She must have just come out of the shower. The fabric clung to her in a couple of places, and I could tell she wasn’t wearing anything underneath: the dark shadow of a nipple showing through the thin cotton, and her chest rising and falling slowly at my eye level.

“I want to get organized for tomorrow,” she said. “Can I come in?”

The room only had one chair, in front of the small desk. She ignored it and sat straight on the bed, on the edge, legs crossed and the map spread over the duvet. The yukata opened a few centimeters over her thigh, and she did nothing to close it. I leaned against the window frame and tried to pay attention to what she was saying about temple hours.

I couldn’t.

I watched her talk. The way she pointed at spots on the map with her index finger. The way she frowned when she found something that didn’t fit the route. The calm rhythm of her voice, unhurried. And every time she leaned over the map, the neckline of the yukata opened another finger’s width and let me see the white curve of a breast that was starting to make my cock strain against the fabric of my own yukata.

At one point she stopped talking.

“Hey.” She looked straight into my eyes. “Are you okay? You’ve been out of it all day.”

“I’m fine,” I lied.

“Doesn’t look like it.”

I didn’t know what to answer. I shrugged with that clumsiness that comes over me when someone catches me at fault. She folded the map slowly, set it on the bedside table, and lay back on the bed, arms at her sides and eyes on the ceiling. The yukata shifted a little more as she lay down, and one lapel slid open enough to leave one breast almost bare, the dark nipple peeking out from the edge of the fabric.

“Don’t you like my company?” she asked softly. It wasn’t a rebuke. It was a real question.

“On the contrary,” I said. “It’s just that I don’t really know how to be with you.”

There was silence. Then she turned her head toward where I was still standing by the window.

“Come here,” she said.

***

I went to the bed and lay down beside her, leaving space between us. The duvet smelled of hotel soap. The rain kept tapping against the glass. The TV kept murmuring.

For a while neither of us said anything.

Then she reached out and found my hand on the duvet. Her fingers wrapped around mine with a softness I hadn’t expected. It wasn’t a gesture of urgency or explicit invitation. It was simply one hand seeking another, and the other hand allowing itself to be found.

I didn’t know touch could do that. I didn’t know the simple contact of another person could ignite something that had been asleep for so long.

I lay still. Aware of every millimeter of her fingers over mine. Aware of her breathing, which had changed slightly. Aware that I should say something, do something, move somehow, but not exactly knowing what.

It was her who moved.

Without warning, without preamble, she turned toward me and placed a hand on my chest. She brought her face to mine slowly, giving me more than enough time to pull away if that was what I wanted. I didn’t pull away.

Her lips touched mine.

A soft kiss, unhurried. Nothing about what I had imagined a kiss with her would be resembled this, and this was better than anything I’d imagined. I opened my mouth a little. I felt her tongue brush mine. The taste was clean, slightly sweet, and it gave me a feeling in my chest I had no name for.

I put a hand on her cheek without thinking. Her skin was exactly as soft as I’d suspected it would be. She made a tiny sound, almost imperceptible, against my lips. Her hand slid from my chest to my stomach, and from there to the bulge the yukata could no longer hide. She squeezed my cock over the fabric, and I felt her sigh escape inside my mouth.

“You’re rock hard,” she murmured. “And I’ve only kissed you.”

I didn’t know what to answer. She gave a low laugh and kissed me again, this time deeper, biting my lower lip while continuing to squeeze me over the yukata. I felt the wetness at the tip soaking through the cotton.

Then she pulled back and lay down on her back again.

Both of us stared at the ceiling for a few seconds that felt much longer.

“There,” she said softly, with a smile I could hear without needing to look at it.

***

That night it didn’t go any further. Emi went back to her room shortly after, map under her arm and the same calm with which she had arrived. Before closing the door, she turned and looked at me for a moment.

“Tomorrow after the temple we come back here,” she said. “And I’m going to fuck you slowly. Think about that while we walk.”

And she left.

I stayed on the bed without moving for a long while. My whole body was still feeling the aftereffect of those minutes. A kiss, a hand over the fabric, and my cock was throbbing against the yukata like I was twenty and didn’t know what to do with it. I took it out. The tip gleamed wet, with a thread of pre-cum hanging from it. I wrapped my hand around it and stroked slowly, thinking about the nipple I’d seen peeking out, about how she had squeezed me, about the word “fuck” coming out of her mouth like it meant nothing. I came in less than a minute, covering myself with my open hand so I wouldn’t stain the sheet, and my load dripped hot and thick between my fingers while I tried not to moan too loudly into the pillow.

What would she think of me if she knew that was almost all I’d ever had?

I didn’t turn on any video that night. No need. I had the memory of her taste, the feel of her cheek, the little sound she’d made against my mouth, and tomorrow’s promise turning over in my head. I fell asleep with that, and slept better than I had in weeks.

***

Fushimi Shrine was everything the photos promised: thousands of orange torii lined up in a row, a corridor that seemed to go on forever, silence inside and tourist noise around the edges. We walked together without talking much. Every so often she pointed out something, an architectural detail, an inscription, the movement of a cat between the wooden posts.

The morning light lit her face in a way I couldn’t ignore.

At noon we ate at a small stand near the shrine. Hot ramen, both of us standing, chopsticks in hand and a little clumsiness on my part. She corrected my chopstick grip without mocking me, patiently. Her fingers on mine again, though for a different reason.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” I asked without looking at her, my eyes on the bowl.

“Not for two years,” she replied bluntly. “And you?”

“No.”

“Good.” She blew on her spoon without looking at me. “Because this afternoon I want you all to myself.”

We didn’t say anything else about it. No need.

***

Back at the hotel, in midafternoon, the corridor smelled of wood and the damp from recent rain. Emi didn’t go to her room. She came straight into mine when I opened the door, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and I closed it behind both of us without asking anything.

She stood by the window. Outside, the sky had brightened a little and the city’s rooftops still shone wet. I stayed a meter away from her, not exactly knowing what to do with my hands.

“Relax,” she said.

“I’m trying.”

She smiled. She moved in slowly and started at my neck. A soft kiss on the side, just below my ear. I felt the touch of her lips like someone had run a current down my spine. My hands found her hips almost without my deciding it, and I felt the heat of her body through the thin fabric of the yukata.

This time there was no rush, but there was intention.

Her fingers untied the belt of my yukata with deliberate slowness, like someone unwrapping something they knew was going to last. The fabric fell open and I stood naked in front of her, my cock already hard and pointing at my navel. She didn’t look at it right away. She looked at my face first, smiling, and only then lowered her eyes slowly, savoring the route.

“Wow,” she said. “You really were keeping things in reserve.”

She loosened her own belt. The yukata opened without falling completely and left me a strip of fair skin from her neck to her stomach, her small, firm breasts with their dark, already hard nipples, and a tuft of black hair between her thighs that hadn’t been fully trimmed. I just stared like an idiot, my cock leaking on its own with nobody touching it.

“Come here,” she said, and pulled me toward the bed.

***

She laid me on my back and straddled my thighs without yet lowering herself onto my cock. She ran her hands over my chest, slowly down to my navel, and stopped there. She took my dick in both hands, one above and one below, and looked at it as if calculating something.

“Look at you,” she murmured. “All swollen for me.”

She started stroking me slowly, squeezing my shaft at the base with one hand while the other thumbed the tip, spreading the wetness I already had over the whole glans. Every turn of her wrist tore a sigh from me that I tried to swallow and couldn’t. I had never done this with anyone who knew what they were doing. The four clumsy fucks in my history had not prepared me for a woman looking at my cock like she was thinking about how to eat it.

And that was exactly what she did.

She slid down my body, let herself fall between my legs, and licked me from base to tip in a slow, long movement, tongue flat and hot. A moan escaped me so loud that she laughed with my cock in her mouth.

“Shhh,” she said, lifting her face for a second. “The walls are paper-thin.”

“Sorry,” I managed to say.

“Don’t apologize. But hold out.”

She went back down. This time she took me all the way to the middle of her mouth, sealed her lips, and began to move up and down with a slow, almost cruel rhythm. She watched me while she did it, her black eyes fixed on mine, and every time she touched the bell with the tip I had to press my hands into the sheet so I wouldn’t come in her mouth in the first minute. A thread of saliva hung from the corner of her lips and ran down the hand she was using to hold my base.

“Emi,” I panted, “if you keep going like this I’m going to come.”

She pulled my cock out of her mouth slowly, with a wet kiss on the tip.

“Not yet,” she said. “I want you to put it in me first.”

She straddled me again, shifted her yukata to one side, and grabbed my cock with one hand to guide it. She rubbed the tip against her pussy, up and down, wetting me with what she already had, and I felt the heat of her open flesh against my glans and almost came from that alone. When she finally lowered herself, she swallowed me whole in a single slow motion, and both of us moaned at once.

“Fuck,” she murmured, eyes closed. “I’d almost forgotten this.”

She started moving on top of me slowly, bracing herself with both hands on my chest. She rose almost to the tip and sank back down to the base, and I felt how her pussy clenched around me on every descent as if she didn’t want to let me go. I found her breasts with my hands, squeezed them without really knowing how hard was right, and she arched her back and asked for more.

“Harder,” she said. “You’re not going to break me.”

I pinched her nipples with my thumb and forefinger as she asked, and she moaned louder, squeezing my cock from within with a contraction that made stars flash in my eyes. She sped up. Now she was moving in circles, rubbing her clit against my pubis on every descent, and I could feel how she was getting slicker and slicker around me.

“Stop,” she said at one point, and I stopped moving at once with my cock buried all the way inside her.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m very okay.” She looked me in the eyes, hair tousled and face flushed. “I just want to look at you for a second.”

She stayed there, still on top of me, with my cock driven inside and her pussy throbbing around it, not letting me move. I could feel every beat of her against my dick. I didn’t know what to say to that. I think I went red. She gave a low laugh, a genuine sound, nothing false about it, and started moving again.

“Put me face down,” she asked after a while. “I want you to fuck me from behind.”

I eased her off me carefully, and she got onto all fours at the edge of the bed, arching her back to lift her ass. I had never seen a body like that from this angle. The mass of black hair between her thighs, her pussy lips swollen and glossy from how wet she was, the other opening, smaller and darker, a little higher up. I stood there a few seconds just staring without moving.

“Put it in,” she whispered over her shoulder. “Now.”

I positioned myself behind her and rested the tip at the entrance to her pussy. She pushed her ass back and swallowed me whole in one single motion. The moan that escaped her came muffled against the pillow, but I heard it perfectly. I started moving, first slowly, gripping her hips, and she began pushing back against me in the same rhythm. Skin slapped against skin with a wet sound every time I drove in to the hilt.

“Harder,” she asked again. “Fuck me harder.”

I dug my fingers into her hips and started pounding her with all my strength. Every thrust shook her entire body. Her breasts bounced below her, her ass slammed into my groin, and I could feel how she was getting tighter, hotter, with every stroke. She took one hand to her pussy while I kept fucking her and started rubbing her clit with two fingers.

“I’m going to come,” she moaned. “Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop...”

I sped up. She stopped moving and went rigid for a second, mouth open against the pillow, and suddenly her pussy clenched around my cock with a force that almost made me lose control right there. She came, moaning my name through clenched teeth, squeezing me inside with spasms that shook her from top to bottom, and I had to pull out sharply so I wouldn’t come with her.

“Come here,” she panted, turning around and sitting on the edge of the bed. “Finish in my mouth.”

She grabbed my cock slick with her juices, took it into her mouth all the way to the back, and began moving back and forth while stroking it with her hand. It lasted three seconds. I grabbed her head without squeezing, let out a groan that rose from my gut, and came in her mouth in several hot spurts, one after another, unable to control the spasms in my hips. She didn’t pull away. She swallowed everything with her eyes closed, sucking the tip until the last drop, and when she pulled my cock out of her mouth there was still a white thread hanging from her lower lip, which she wiped with her thumb and put into her mouth without taking her eyes off mine.

“Delicious,” she said.

We stayed still, side by side, listening to the rain that had started up again outside. The room was dim. Neither of us felt like moving. My cock was still throbbing against my thigh, wet with saliva and her, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this emptied out.

After a while, Emi spoke.

“You’re not like the ones I’ve been running into lately.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, though I was afraid of the answer.

“I mean you care what happens to the other person.” She paused. “That’s rarer than it should be.”

“I was only thinking about myself too,” I admitted. “For the record.”

She laughed again. This time louder.

“I know,” she said. “Still.”

She looked at me a moment longer, ran her tongue over her lower lip, and added:

“Rest a bit. In half an hour I’ll suck you off again.”

***

There were four days left in the trip.

We never slept in separate rooms again. We never talked about what it was or what it meant. There was only the city outside and the room inside, and the times when one or the other decided we’d seen enough temples for the day and we went back to the hotel to fuck until the afternoon got away from us.

She taught me things that weren’t in any travel guide: how to eat her pussy slowly until she came against my face, how to let her ride me in reverse so I could watch her ass while she moved on top of me, how to fuck her from behind with one finger in the other hole while she rubbed herself, how to come on her tits and watch her spread it with her fingers without ever stopping smiling at me. I gave her something I didn’t know how to identify until the return flight, when she asked me what had been the best part of the trip and I answered her name without thinking.

Emi went quiet for a moment. Then she laid her head on my shoulder and closed her eyes.

She didn’t say another word for the rest of the flight.

No need.