The Night I Lost My Virginity

I was twenty years old and knew nothing. Not because I was ignorant—I was studying biology at university and had read all kinds of things—but because I had always kept sex in the category of “things for later.” My friends talked about their adventures with that mixture of pride and embarrassment that characterizes whispered confessions, and I listened with curiosity but without any sense of urgency. I didn’t feel as though I was missing anything. Until Rodrigo came along.

I met him in my second year, in the human anatomy module. He was a thin boy with fine-rimmed glasses and the habit of looking at his hands when he spoke to someone. He didn’t have any close friends in the department; he spent breaks reading or reviewing his notes, and when the professor formed the work groups for the semester project, everyone else already had a partner. He and I were paired together. The assignment was a detailed model of the reproductive system, which under other circumstances would have been just another project. With Rodrigo, it turned into something else.

At first we worked at the university, in the labs after class. He didn’t talk much, but when he opened his mouth, he knew what he was talking about. He had an almost clinical precision when naming things that I found difficult to pronounce without lowering my voice. The first time he said “ovaries” in front of the model, without the slightest discomfort, I looked at him as if he were a different species from mine.

The project required more time than we had expected. My mother suggested that Rodrigo stay at our house for a few days so we could make progress without wasting our afternoons commuting. We prepared the guest room for him, and I told him he could use the kitchen as if it were his own.

The first few days were uneventful. We worked in the afternoons, ate at the dining-room table without talking much, and at night each of us retreated to our own room. But I began to notice things. The way that, when he was focused on the model, he would look up and glance at me for a second before returning to what he was doing. The warmth of his hand near mine when he pointed out some detail. The fact that he always made sure I had water or coffee before serving himself. I didn’t think any of it was intentional. He was just Rodrigo, with his social awkwardness and his comfortable silences.

***

My parents left Thursday morning. It was a trip they had been planning for months. They left me money for the week and a list of emergency numbers stuck to the refrigerator, as if I were twelve.

That afternoon, Rodrigo and I finished the model. We placed it on the dining-room desk and looked at each other with that particular satisfaction that only comes from work turning out well. We had dinner late, opened a bottle of wine I found in the cupboard, and talked more than we had during all the previous days combined. He told me he was an only child, that his father traveled a lot for work, and that he had learned to be alone without it weighing on him too much. I told him I was afraid of leaving university without knowing what I wanted to do with my life.

“Everyone leaves without knowing,” he said. “The difference is who admits it.”

I went to bed with that thought circling through my head.

***

A noise woke me. Something between a low moan and the creak of a bed. It was two in the morning, according to my phone. The guest room was at the end of the hall, past the bathroom, and the door was ajar.

He probably moved in his sleep.

I got up to go to the bathroom, and as I passed his half-open door, I saw the light from his phone illuminating the ceiling. Without meaning to, I looked.

Rodrigo was lying on his back with his eyes closed and his earbuds in. His hand was inside his boxers, moving slowly, with the concentration of someone who didn’t expect to be interrupted. Beside him on the pillow was my blue camisole, which I had left in the bathroom that morning.

I stood frozen in the hallway, my hand still on the doorframe.

I don’t know how long I stayed there. Long enough to feel a heat in my abdomen that I had never recognized in that way before. Long enough to notice every detail: the rhythm of his breathing, the angle of his neck, the way his chest rose and fell beneath the T-shirt he had pushed halfway up, the tension in his stomach, what he held in his hand moving patiently, with a brutal frankness that left my mouth dry. He was big. Bigger than I had imagined in the abstract. The image passed through me with such physical force that I squeezed my thighs without realizing it, feeling a damp tingling between my legs, and the heat intensified until my face burned.

Rodrigo had lowered his boxers just enough to free his cock, and he was gripping it with a closed hand, sliding up and down in a slow, methodical motion, as if he knew himself by heart. The head peeked out dark and glossy, heavy and hard. Each stroke drew a muffled sound from him that vibrated in his throat. And my blue camisole, knotted beside his hip, was there like a stupid, direct provocation. I realized that my breathing was ragged, my fingers digging into the wood of the frame, and a hot, unfamiliar throb was pulsing in my pussy, so intense that it frightened and fascinated me at the same time.

When I began to back away, my foot touched the floor and it creaked.

Rodrigo opened his eyes.

We looked at each other. He sat up abruptly, took out his earbuds, and for several seconds neither of us spoke.

“Sara,” he said in a very low voice.

“I was going to the bathroom,” I replied.

More silence.

“Your camisole...” he began.

“I saw it.”

I don’t know why I didn’t leave. Maybe because he didn’t move either. Maybe because the embarrassment belonged to both of us, which made it easier to bear. We looked at each other for another moment, and then I turned around and went into my room. It took me a long time to fall asleep, with the image of his hand closing around his cock pulsing behind my eyes.

***

The next day we spoke as little as possible. We had breakfast without looking each other in the eye too much, checked the model one last time, and he said he had to study for another exam. I said I did too. I spent the afternoon reading without retaining a thing.

At ten that night, I sat on the edge of my bed and stared at the door.

What am I doing?

I was still thinking about what I had seen. Not with shame, but with a curiosity that unsettled me because it had no name. What I had felt in that hallway had not been fear. I got up.

His door was closed this time. I knocked with my knuckles.

“Yes?” he said.

“It’s me.”

It took him a moment to answer. Then I heard his footsteps, and the door opened. He was wearing a gray T-shirt, his hair tousled. He looked at me as if he didn’t know whether I was going to apologize or disappear.

“Can I come in?” I asked.

He nodded and moved aside.

I sat in the desk chair. He remained standing beside the bed. The room smelled of his cologne, something clean and neutral that I had begun to associate with our afternoons working together.

“I shouldn’t have stood there watching yesterday,” I said.

“I shouldn’t have had your camisole.”

“No.”

A pause.

“Why did you have it?” I asked.

Rodrigo lowered his head. That gesture of his, looking at his hands.

“Because I like you. Since the beginning of the project. I don’t know how to explain it any better.”

I said nothing. Neither did he.

Then I stood up, walked over to him, and kissed him.

***

I had never kissed anyone that way before. With intention. Feeling it from my shoulders down to my knees. His hands took a second to react, as if he couldn’t quite believe it, and when they circled my waist, it was with a gentleness I hadn’t expected from someone I had seen in that state the night before. I felt his warm fingers on my lower back, squeezing me carefully, and the pressure of his mouth against mine left me trembling, his tongue exploring slowly, tasting, finding my breath mingled with his. He kissed me as if he were hungry and patient at the same time, and that turned me on even more.

We sat on the bed. He asked me in a low voice if I was sure. I told him yes. I also told him it was my first time. Nothing changed in his expression. He simply nodded and kissed me again, more slowly.

He took off my shirt carefully, as if he were afraid of breaking something. When he looked at me, there was no anxious urgency or awkwardness. He simply looked at me as if he had all the time in the world, and that made me more nervous than anything else he could have done. He lowered his mouth to my neck, licked my skin just below my ear, and I felt a shiver run through me. His hands moved up my ribs and touched my breasts over my bra, feeling their shape, learning the weight of my flesh with a reverence that took nothing away from the animal in him. When he unclasped it, the air brushed my nipples and a short moan escaped me, embarrassed and delicious.

“That’s it,” he murmured, almost against my skin. His voice came out hoarse. “That’s good.”

He lifted his head to look at me as if asking me without words, and I nodded. Then he licked one nipple, then the other, with the tip of his tongue, first gently and then more insistently, making me arch my back. I felt my pussy grow wet at once, a pulsing heat filling me with impatience. I slid my hand into his hair and tugged a little, not knowing whether that was how it was done, and he let out a low, satisfied sound before moving slowly down my abdomen, leaving a trail of wet kisses to the waistband of my pants.

He stopped there, his mouth a couple of inches from my skin, and looked at me again.

“Can I?” he asked, nodding downward.

All I did was spread my legs a little farther and nod. He pulled down my pants and underwear with agonizing slowness, never taking his eyes off me. The air in the room struck me full force between the thighs, making my stomach flip. Rodrigo placed his hands on my knees to open me slowly, and when he saw my sex already soaked, completely exposed, he stayed still for a second, swallowing as if the sight had undone him.

“Fuck, Sara,” he said, and that was enough to make me tremble.

He kissed the insides of my thighs first, his mouth open and hot, approaching the center with cruel patience. Then he buried his tongue in my pussy all at once, licking from bottom to top with firm pressure that tore a loud moan from me. He gripped my hips to hold me in place as he kept eating me, parting my lips with his fingers and pushing his tongue deeper, circling it over my clitoris until I began moving against his face, lost in a filthy, mounting wave of pleasure. Every time he sucked, every time he changed his rhythm, he made me tremble harder. I felt myself opening, felt the wetness running down between my thighs, felt desire fill me completely with an urgency that had never had a name.

“Rodrigo,” I said, almost voicelessly. “I want your cock inside me.”

He raised his head. His mouth was glistening and his breathing was uneven.

“Are you sure?” he repeated.

“Rodrigo. Yes.”

He pulled off his shirt and lowered his pants with a haste that contrasted with everything before. His cock came free, heavy and thick, its skin tight and hot, jutting out against his stomach in a firm curve that left my mouth open. I moved a little closer, fascinated, and he let out a brief, incredulous laugh before kissing me again and sliding between my legs. He settled onto the bed, opened me wider with his hands, and rubbed the tip against my entrance, wetting the head with my fluids before pressing forward slowly.

When he penetrated me, he did it with a care I hadn’t expected. There was a brief, sharp pain that made me clutch his shoulders, and he stopped, asked if I was all right, and waited until I told him yes. Then the pain dissolved into something completely different. Something incomparable to anything I had ever known. I felt him advancing inside me, filling me inch by inch, stretching me, opening me with a hot, solid pressure that made me expel my breath all at once. Rodrigo was breathing heavily, controlling himself, buried halfway and then all the way, holding still for a moment to let me adjust. When he finally began to move, he did it slowly, withdrawing his cock just enough to thrust it back in with a wet slide that made an obscene, delicious sound.

I moaned without shame. For the first time, I understood why the walls are thin in apartments.

The pace was slow at first, and then it wasn’t. I clung to him, digging my nails into his back without meaning to, and he responded by speeding up until I stopped thinking about anything but that moment. He opened me with every thrust, the base of his cock striking my pussy with an insistence that turned me on more and more. He leaned over me to kiss me, took hold of my waist, changed the angle, and penetrated me more deeply, rubbing an inner spot that made me see stars. I wrapped my legs around him, pressed my heels against his ass, and took him with an almost desperate urgency, hearing him grunt against my mouth when I moved to meet him better. Sweat dampened our skin. The sheets bunched beneath us. He spoke into my ear in a broken voice, telling me I was wet, that I was so fucking tight, that I felt incredible, and I had no reason to keep quiet about the fact that he was driving me crazy.

“That’s it, Sara. That’s it, fuck.”

“More,” I begged, feeling pleasure accumulate in my lower belly with every thrust. “Don’t stop.”

He took me right to the edge with his hand between my thighs, rubbing my clitoris while he kept thrusting inside me, and then the orgasm crashed over me like a brutal electric charge. My back and hips arched, my legs trembled in an absurd and beautiful way, and my whole pussy contracted around him in tight waves, almost painful in their intensity. I shouted his name without thinking. Rodrigo gave a hoarse growl, buried himself to the hilt, and came inside me with a heavy shudder, his cock pulsing as he spilled his cum inside me. I felt it pour out hot and abundant, filling me from within while he gritted his teeth against my neck and stayed there for a moment, trembling, until his body softened on top of mine.

We stayed still for a while, tangled together and silent. I could feel his semen slowly leaking inside me, mixed with the wetness between my legs, and the sensation made me smile against his shoulder without understanding why it felt so intimate and so dirty at the same time.

***

We stayed awake for a while afterward, speaking softly with the tangled sheets between us. He told me he had never been with someone he truly cared about. I told him I didn’t know whether that included me yet.

“Yes,” he said without hesitation.

I didn’t sleep in my room that night. In the morning, when my parents called to ask how we were doing, I told them the project had turned out really well.

***

I didn’t tell anyone what had happened that week. Not right away. The things that matter usually need time to find their words.

Rodrigo and I submitted the model and got the best grade in the group. The professor held it up as an example in class. No one knew that we had built it in three days and spent the rest of the time discovering that theoretical knowledge and practical experience are two very different things.

We became a couple a few months later. Without grand declarations, without the drama I had always imagined would accompany that kind of moment. One day, we were simply together, and neither of us needed to say it aloud to know.

The blue camisole remained mine. But after that night, every time I wore it, I thought of him.