I Always Liked Men, Until That Night

I’m one of those people who think they already know everything about themselves. At twenty-six, I was clear that I liked men, that I preferred going out rarely but choosing well, and that my biggest flaw was refusing to change my mind once I’d made it up. My friend Lucía used to say I was stubborn. I preferred the term “consistent.” We both knew it was exactly the same thing.

That Saturday Lucía talked me into going out downtown. It was one of those last-minute plans that either end up being the best night of your life or make you swear never again. We were at the bar of a club, ordering our second drink, when I saw her walk off toward the back of the room and go up to a girl leaning against the wall, alone, a glass in her hands and that air of someone who doesn’t need company to have a good time.

I watched her from where I was. Dark brown hair falling straight to her waist, eyes that from a distance seemed light, a well-shaped mouth. She was wearing a simple black dress, but her figure made the fabric look as if it had been chosen on purpose for every curve. She was one of those women who don’t have to do anything special for you to notice them. They’re simply there, and that’s enough.

Lucía said something in the girl’s ear, the two of them looked over at me and smiled. I stared at my drink. They came over together and Lucía did the introductions with that energy of hers, like someone who always has more information than she shares. The girl’s name was Valentina. She kissed me twice on the cheek, brushing more than was strictly necessary, though I chalked it up to her simply being that expressive. We chatted for a while about nothing in particular and then she went back to her friends. The night went on. That was it.

Or so I thought. Four days later, Lucía called me to grab a coffee. We met at a café near her office. I arrived on time and found her sitting at a table in the back, and beside her, with a cup in her hands and that same calm expression I already remembered, was Valentina.

I walked over, greeted Lucía, and when I turned to greet Valentina, she was already standing behind me. She startled me. The two kisses she gave me brushed the corners of my lips. I filed it away as an accident, nothing more. We sat down. Ordered. Chatted about various things, and all that time Valentina never stopped looking at me. Not in an uncomfortable, staring way, but with that calm attention of someone who is really listening, who is fully present. She smiled every time I spoke. Nodded. She had a habit of biting her lower lip slightly when she was thinking, and that afternoon she was thinking quite a lot.

When Lucía announced that she already had plans that night and couldn’t stay, Valentina waited exactly two seconds and asked me if I felt like going out. No beating around the bush, with that same calm of hers. I surprised myself by saying yes before I’d even thought about it.

***

We met at ten at a bar we both knew. I arrived on time and waited a few minutes for her. She walked in wearing a tight burgundy dress and a neckline that made no apologies. She came over, greeted me, and almost without stopping took my hand and suggested we go somewhere else she knew. We left.

In the car, during the drive, I noticed her lowering her gaze to my legs several times. I hadn’t dressed carelessly that night either: short skirt, a blouse tied at the neck that left my back bare, heels. I told myself I simply liked to be well put together on Saturdays. It was a perfectly reasonable explanation.

The nightclub she took me to had an entrance with stairs. When I started climbing them, I heard her voice behind me, very low:

—God, what legs you have. I’m imagining things I shouldn’t.

I turned around. She was looking at me with no attempt to hide it, with that lopsided smile of hers, her eyes fixed on the hem of my skirt. What was strange wasn’t that she said it. What was strange was that I liked hearing it, and that something in me wanted her to say it again, dirtier, more direct.

Inside we danced for a long while. She pressed herself against me with a naturalness that made it hard to tell whether we were friends having fun or something entirely different. I felt her hips against mine, the pressure of her tits against my back when she stood behind me, her hands sliding down from my waist to brush my ass over my skirt before gliding back up. At some point a couple of guys came over to ask us to dance. Valentina got rid of them with a politeness that left no room for argument.

—Tonight’s just for us —she said afterward, her lips close to my ear—. And tonight you’re just for me. I’m going to eat you up whole.

My mind tried to raise an objection. It couldn’t find the arguments. My body, on the other hand, had a very clear opinion: thighs clenched tight, panties wet, nipples hard against the fabric of my blouse.

***

After one in the morning, she suggested going somewhere else. I nodded without asking where. In the car the silence was different from the one on the way there, denser, charged with something neither of us was naming. When we stopped at a red light, she rested her palm on my knee and slowly slid it up the inside of my thigh until it stopped just two fingers away from my pussy.

—You’re nervous —she said. It wasn’t a question.

—A little —I admitted.

—And you’re wet. I can tell from here.

I couldn’t answer her. It was true. When the light changed and she drove off, she slowly withdrew her hand, dragging her fingertips over my skin, and returned to the wheel. The heat she’d left on my thigh took a long time to fade.

Her apartment was spacious and tidy, with music already playing when we arrived, as if she’d left everything set up in advance. She offered me something to drink and I accepted, because I needed something to do with my hands. We sat on the sofa. We talked about unimportant things for a while, the background music filling the silences that would otherwise have been too eloquent.

Then Valentina stood up and held out her hand.

—Dance with me.

It was an absurd invitation at two in the morning in an apartment. I accepted anyway. She took my hand and spun me around, and I stumbled because I wasn’t expecting it, and we both laughed. And in the middle of that laughter, without warning, she kissed me.

It wasn’t a tentative kiss or a question. It was a kiss that already had the answer. Her tongue slid into my mouth without asking permission, warm and wet, seeking mine and tangling with it. She sucked on my lower lip, nipped it gently, then slipped back inside. I stood there with my arms hanging at my sides, not knowing where to put them, processing what was happening in real time, until instinctively I grabbed the back of her neck and pulled her closer. When we pulled apart, she looked at me for a second, her breathing already uneven.

—Good? —she asked.

—Yes —I said. And it was completely true.

—Good. Because I’m going to fuck you until you don’t remember your name.

***

She wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me toward her. Her hands traced my bare back with deliberate slowness, climbing gradually until they found the knot of my blouse and undid it calmly, as if she had all the time in the world. The fabric slid down and I was left with my tits out, no bra, because the cut of the blouse didn’t allow one. She looked at me. Heat rushed to my face.

—Don’t blush —she said—. They’re beautiful. Look at how hard your nipples already are.

She lowered her head and sucked one into her mouth, taking it in completely, tugging on it with her lips before scraping it with her teeth. With her other hand she pinched the other nipple, rolling it between her thumb and forefinger until a moan escaped me that I couldn’t control. She switched breasts. Repeated it. She was working my nipples like she knew by heart how much I could take before coming from just that alone, and I was scared to find out that yes, I could.

I unfastened her dress with fingers that were no longer entirely mine. It fell at her feet in a whisper. Underneath she was only wearing tiny black lace panties. Her tits were bigger than mine, round, with dark, erect nipples, and above the panties a trim patch of hair showed through. I looked at her and understood why it had taken me four days to stop thinking about her.

She knelt slowly in front of me. She undid the button on my skirt and lowered it while trailing her mouth down my legs, inch by inch, taking her time with every stretch. When it reached the floor she looked up and held my gaze for a few seconds, with that same calm half-smile I already recognized.

—Look at how wet your panties are —she murmured, running a finger over the dark patch of dampness on the fabric—. You’re soaked. Is all of this for me?

I didn’t answer. There was no need. She hooked her teeth into my panties and slowly pulled them down, biting the skin of my pubis along the way, until she let them drop to the floor and I nudged them aside with my foot. She parted my pussy lips with two fingers, exposing me completely to her face, and blew softly. My knees trembled.

Then she licked. One long, flat lick, bottom to top, dragging her tongue along my slit until ending by pressing the tip against my clit. I braced myself against the wall behind me so I wouldn’t fall. I opened my legs wider, instinctively. She didn’t need to be told anything, didn’t need to be guided. She was a woman; she knew exactly where to go and how. Her tongue went in and out of me, rose to draw precise circles over my clit, dipped back down to fuck the entrance of my pussy, then rose again. She slid a finger inside. Then another. She curled them upward while still sucking me, looking for the exact spot inside, and when she found it I jerked sharply against her face.

—There, fuck, there —was all I managed to say.

She sucked me harder, trapping my clit between her lips and flicking her tongue over it nonstop, fucking me with her fingers in the same rhythm. The tension kept building from the center of my body outward, growing with every movement, until I came with my fingers clutching her shoulders so I wouldn’t collapse, shaking as I came in her mouth, spasms racking me from hips to throat. I screamed. I didn’t recognize myself screaming like that.

She kept licking after the orgasm, slower, gentler, unhurried, sucking up every drop that leaked out of me. I had to push her head away because I couldn’t take any more.

—Now me —I said.

I was surprised to hear myself say it with that certainty. But it was what I wanted, without any ambiguity. I wanted her pussy in my mouth. I wanted to taste her, to know what another woman tasted like, to slide my fingers into her and feel her clench around them.

I laid her out on the sofa. The nerves from before had disappeared completely, replaced by something clearer and more urgent. I kissed her neck, bit her collarbone, went down to her tits and took one nipple fully into my mouth, sucking hard, nibbling it, tugging at it until she panted and grabbed my hair. I learned from her reactions what she liked and what she liked more. I moved to the other breast and did the same, slower, dragging my tongue over the whole areola before trapping the nipple between my teeth. When she arched her back, I knew I was going in the right direction.

I kept going down. The skin of her stomach under my mouth, the curve of her hip. When I reached her groin and ran my tongue along the crease of her thigh, her body snapped taut upward. I yanked her panties off her legs. She spread her thighs without me having to ask, offering me a swollen pussy, glistening with wetness, with her clit already peeking out between her lips.

I took a second to look at it. Then I went for it. The first lick was clumsy, too eager, but when I heard her let out her breath in one sharp rush I knew she liked it. I started slowly, learning the rhythm from the way she moved, from the sounds she made, from how her thighs trembled as they crushed my head. Her taste was intense, salty and sweet at once, and the more I licked her, the more I wanted. I sucked her clit whole, worked it with the tip of my tongue in small, quick flicks, went down to slide my tongue inside her pussy, fucked her with it as deep as I could.

I slid in two fingers. She was so wet they slipped in without resistance. I searched inside, curling them the way she had done with me, while I kept my tongue on her clit, keeping her on the edge for a while, not letting her get there quite yet. I took her away from the brink, then brought her back. I slid in a third finger. It became hard for her to breathe.

—Don’t stop, don’t stop, fuck, don’t stop —she panted, pressing my head against her with both hands.

I didn’t stop. I sucked harder, fucking her with three fingers all the way in, and when I felt her inner walls begin to clamp around me I knew she was there. She came with her whole body rigid, stifling a cry against the back of her hand, and her pussy clamped so tightly around my fingers I could barely move them. A warm gush wet my chin and neck. She came hard and long, trembling, until she let out all her breath at once and went still, her thighs still closed around my face.

She looked down at me, her eyes still a little closed and her mouth parted.

—Was this your first time with a woman?

—Yes —I said, wiping my chin with the back of my hand.

—It didn’t look like it. You just made me come like nobody has in months.

—I guess I knew more about myself than I thought.

***

We spent the rest of the night in her bedroom. She fucked me with her fingers face-down against the mattress, one hand gripping my neck and the other buried to the knuckles in my pussy, until I came a second time biting the pillow. Then she made me ride her, her face pressed to my pussy and mine brushing hers, the two of us licking at the same time in a position I had only ever seen in videos and that turned out to be exactly as good as it looked. We came almost at the same time, our legs tangled and our hands clutching each other’s thighs.

I don’t have an exact count of everything that happened after that, nor do I need one. I lost track of how many times I came. I only remember that at some point, when dawn was already breaking and I was staring at the ceiling with my breathing calm, my pussy throbbing and my body exhausted in the best possible way, I thought that the version of myself who believed she had everything so clearly defined and so clear-cut had been replaced by another one, a little more complicated and considerably more honest.

The consistent version, I would have told Lucía. Only this time consistent with something different.

Lucía asked me a few days later how things had gone with Valentina.

I told her it went well.

She smiled in that way of hers, like someone who already knew it from the first night at the club, when she introduced us and walked away smiling to herself. Maybe she did know. Maybe she knew better than I did.