My Office Coworker Invited Me to Her Apartment

I’m thirty-four years old, I live alone in an apartment in north Quito, and as long as I can remember I’ve lived between two certainties that seem to contradict each other. I like men. I love the way they smell after the gym, the way they hold my hips, that rough, slightly clumsy way they shove their cock when they’ve stopped thinking about anything. But also, long before I knew what to call it, another fantasy kept circling around me. A woman. Not just any woman. One in particular I’ve had drawn inside me for years.

I imagine her tall, around five foot seven, broad shoulders, firm hips, straight teeth. Professional, independent, sure of the way she walks into a room. Not some lost girl looking to experiment. A woman who knows what she wants and who, if I tell her yes, won’t let go of my hand until the end, until she has me spread open with my legs apart and coming in her mouth.

For years I thought that woman didn’t exist outside my head. Until Mariana joined the company.

Mariana came into the marketing department on a Monday in February, with no grand introduction. Thirty-seven years old, honey-colored eyes, a calm way of running her finger around the rim of her cup while she listened. We barely talked at first. We said hello, exchanged a couple of comments about the coffee on the eleventh floor, and went back to our screens. But we were a good team. Efficient, no egos, none of the usual awkwardness of the first few weeks.

I watched her more than she knew.

***

The Friday that changed everything didn’t seem special at first. We’d just wrapped up a project we’d been dragging for two months, and the boss suggested we go get a drink in La Floresta, that area full of small bars where, on Thursdays and Fridays, it fills up with people looking to unwind. Seven or eight of us went. We ordered beers, had some snacks, talked about anything except work. Mariana sat across from me, and every time she laughed she tipped her head back a little and left her neck exposed.

By ten, the goodbyes had already started. One guy had to get home before his wife got mad. Another had left the dog alone too long. The couple from the design department left together. By eleven there were three of us. By eleven-thirty, two.

—Do you have to hurry back? —Mariana asked me, fiddling with the bottle label.

—I don’t have anyone to go back to —I said, and laughed because it sounded sadder than I meant it to.

—Neither do I. Want to come to my apartment? I’ve got an open bottle of wine and two clean glasses.

She said it without lifting her eyes. As if my answer didn’t matter and at the same time mattered a lot. I nodded before I even thought about it.

***

The taxi took fifteen minutes. We talked the whole way, babbling, laughing about our coworkers, imitating the boss, telling each other things we’d never told anyone at the office. Her hand rested on the seat between us. Mine did too. They didn’t touch. But they were so close the air between our little fingers had a temperature of its own.

Mariana’s apartment was small and clean. A living room with a gray sofa, a kitchenette, plants in the window. We left our bags by the door and she turned on a low light, one of those yellow ones that make everything feel kinder. She poured the wine, put on music. Old reggaeton, from when we were teenagers and danced pressed up against our friends in bad clubs. But that night there were no friends.

—Do you actually know how to dance? —she asked, stopping in front of me.

—Yeah, I do —I answered.

—Let’s see.

We started loose, laughing. But after the second song we weren’t laughing so much anymore. We danced close, closer and closer, until she put a hand on my waist and I didn’t take it away. She was a couple of inches taller than me. I had to tilt my face up a little to look at her.

—You don’t do this with coworkers —I said softly.

—I know.

—Then why?

—Then nothing. Keep dancing.

But we weren’t dancing anymore. We were measuring each other. Her perfume reached me in waves every time she moved. Something citrusy, with a woody base. I was breathing harder than normal and she noticed.

—I’ll propose something —she said—. We dance, but we take off our clothes as we go.

—Like at a bachelorette party?

—No. No jokes.

I nodded. I took off my blouse first, slowly, letting it fall onto the sofa. She pulled hers over her head in one short, efficient motion. We were both in bras. She looked me up and down and I felt the blood drop to my stomach and, lower, to my cunt, which was already starting to get wet before anyone had even touched it.

The song kept going. Then came the pants. I unbuttoned mine without taking my eyes off her and pushed them to the floor. Mariana did the same. And suddenly the two of us were in our underwear in her living room, barefoot, and the only one brave enough to move was her.

She walked behind me, pressed her body against my back, took my hips with both hands, and started moving to the rhythm of the song. I felt her chest against my shoulders, her breath on my nape, her fingers digging into my hips. She closed her eyes. Her cunt, barely covered by the thin fabric of her thong, pressed insistently against my ass, leaving no doubt at all.

—Do you like that? —she asked near my ear.

—Yes.

She brought her hands to my breasts, over the bra. Squeezed, slowly. I moaned without meaning to. A woman had never touched me like that. The ones I’d imagined in my fantasies had never had fingers that firm, that exact. Mariana knew where to press and where to ease off. She slid one hand under the fabric and pinched my nipple between two fingers, just hard enough. I arched against her and felt her let out a short, satisfied laugh against my neck. Her other hand moved down my belly and slipped under the elastic of my thong. One finger, then two, worked their way into the soaked folds.

—You’re dripping —she said softly, her mouth against my ear.

I couldn’t answer. I only spread my legs a little more, looking for her. Mariana started rubbing my clit in slow circles, without hurry, while still squeezing my breast with the other hand. Every time she hit the right curve, I jerked involuntarily and she laughed into my neck. She had me. And she knew it.

***

I turned around without breaking contact. We ended up face to face, our breasts touching through the fabric. She held my face with both hands and kissed me. It wasn’t a tentative kiss. It was the kiss of someone who’d been thinking about doing it for weeks. She pushed her tongue deep into my mouth, tangled it with mine, bit my lower lip and pulled a little. I answered with the same hunger, pressing against her, feeling her nipples harden against mine.

I slid my hands down her back until I found her bra clasp. I opened it on the first try, as if I’d practiced it. It fell to the floor. Her breasts were exactly as I’d imagined: firm, with dark, hard nipples. I bent down and kissed one. Then the other. I sucked with my whole mouth open, feeling the nipple swell against my tongue. Mariana grabbed my hair, not hard, just guiding me, taking me where she wanted.

—More time on this one —she told me.

I did as she said. I sucked slowly, barely nipped, heard her breathing change. I ran my tongue under her breast, up the side, went back to the nipple and caught it carefully between my teeth. I felt her press my head against her. I slid one hand down to her thong and found it just as soaked as mine. I slipped two fingers in from the side and dragged them between the lips of her cunt. She was so wet it swallowed them whole with a slick, wet sound. Mariana let out a rough moan, very different from the one she’d wrung out of me.

—To the sofa —she said, her voice thick—. The sofa now.

When I lifted my face, she took my hand and led me to the sofa.

—Lie down.

I did. She knelt between my legs. She pulled off my thong without asking, sliding it down my thighs. I felt the cold air and, a second later, the heat of her mouth directly on my open cunt.

I wasn’t ready for what I felt. A man does it differently. A man wants to finish fast or wants to prove something. Mariana didn’t want to prove anything. She worked her tongue with a patience that completely disarmed me. She started by licking from below, with her tongue flat, the full length of my cunt, gathering up the juices I kept leaking. Then she focused on my clit, circling it, never quite touching it, until I started pushing her face with my hips, desperate. Only then did she take it fully into her mouth, trapping it between her lips and tugging lightly.

She slipped in a finger. Then two. She curved them upward, searching for that spot that, until that night, only a few men had ever found by accident. She found it on the second try. She started moving them with a steady rhythm while still sucking my clit, and I clenched my fists on the sofa, biting my lip, trying not to scream.

—Look at me —she said, lifting her eyes without stopping.

I looked at her. Seeing her face between my legs, those honey-colored eyes fixed on mine, her chin shining with my juices, her tongue peeking out between licks, took me right to the edge in less than a minute. I felt everything inside me tightening around her fingers.

—Wait —I gasped—. Wait, not yet.

She stopped. Drew her fingers out slowly, ran them over her mouth without taking her eyes off me, and sat down on the sofa beside me, smiling.

—Why?

—Because I want to do that to you first.

***

We switched places. She lay back on the sofa, open, her hands behind her head. I knelt the way she had a moment earlier. I pulled off her thong slowly, without the confidence she’d had. My heart was pounding so hard I was surprised it couldn’t be heard.

I touched her first with my fingers. She was wet, very wet. Her swollen cunt lips were glossy, parted like they were waiting. I stroked her clit with my thumb, gently at first, and she threw her head back.

—Like that.

I leaned in. She smelled different from what I’d expected. Cleaner, more like skin. I took a breath and kissed her. First barely. Then with more confidence. My tongue had to learn a new movement, a new angle, and I learned fast because she kept telling me, through her breathing, what to do. I licked her from bottom to top, slow and long, gathering her taste. I spread her lips with two fingers and ran the tip of my tongue inside, where she was hottest and slickest. She let out a guttural fucking sound I never would have imagined from her in the office.

—The clit, suck my clit —she begged—. Not so hard. Like that.

I did as she said. I caught it with my lips and sucked in rhythm, the way she had taught me a moment before. I slid in a finger, afraid of hurting her, but she drove her heel into my back and asked for another. I put in two. I curved them upward like she had done with me, searching for that rougher, hotter spot. I found it by the short moan she let out. I started moving them there, never stopping sucking her clit.

One of her hands came down into my hair. She didn’t push. She only guided me. Her other hand went to one breast, pinching the nipple between two fingers.

—Don’t stop —she said after a while—. Don’t stop, don’t stop.

I didn’t stop. I sped up. The tongue, the fingers, everything. I felt her whole body tense, her back arch, her cunt clamping around my fingers in spasms, the air leaving her in one long exhale as a warm, thick stream bathed my chin. When she was done, she stayed there breathing fast, one hand still in my hair, the other gripping the back of the sofa.

I climbed up. I lay on top of her, skin against skin, my mouth still full of her taste. She kissed me slowly, tasting herself on my lips, and licked my wet chin as if she wanted to clean me and dirty me at the same time.

—You came with me —I told her.

—I know.

—I didn’t expect that.

—I did.

***

After a while she took me to the bedroom. The bed was unmade, with wrinkled white sheets. We lay on our sides facing each other. Mariana threw one leg over mine and we tangled our legs until our cunts were pressed together, one against the other, hot and slick. We started moving slowly, finding a rhythm, both of us looking for the same thing. I’d never scissored in my life. I thought it was something from movies. But there we were, faces very close, eyes closed, breathing into each other’s mouths.

Every time I moved, my clit dragged against hers and a jolt shot up my spine. I could feel her wet lips opening against mine, the mix of our juices running down the inside of my thigh. She grabbed my ass and pulled, adjusting me against her pubis so the rubbing would be more direct.

—Faster —she asked.

—Faster —I repeated, not knowing why.

We went faster. The friction between us, the sweat, the wet sound of bodies colliding, the heat gathering right where we touched. Mariana reached out and put two fingers in my mouth. I sucked them without thinking. Then she brought that same hand down and spread my ass with her thumb, resting it there, a gentle pressure that made my eyes fly open. She didn’t push it in. She left it there, threatening, while she kept grinding against me. It was enough.

When I came, it was unlike anything I’d felt before. It wasn’t a short explosion. It was a long wave that rose, stayed high, and slowly fell. I screamed against her mouth, and she swallowed the sound with a kiss. She came almost at the same time, gripping my thigh so hard I had her finger marks the next day, shaking all over, her cunt convulsing against mine.

We stayed still, holding each other, still pressed together, still breathing hard. She kissed my forehead.

—What now? —I asked after a long silence.

—Now we sleep —she said—. Tomorrow we’ll see.

***

I slept. I slept deeply, without dreaming, wrapped around a woman who twelve hours earlier had been nothing more than my office coworker. When I woke up, it was already light outside. Mariana was sitting on the bed in a T-shirt, holding two cups of coffee.

—Did you sleep well?

—Too well.

—Do you regret it?

I thought about the answer. I thought about it seriously, because I owed her that. I didn’t regret it. What I did feel was a strange mix of calm and fear. Calm because I had finally done something I’d been imagining for years. Fear because I could no longer go back to fantasy knowing reality existed and was better.

—No —I said.

—Neither do I.

I took the coffee. I looked at her over the rim of the cup. And I understood that on Monday we were going to have to learn, all over again, how to be only office coworkers. Or maybe not. Maybe we weren’t going to learn. Maybe we were going to pretend in front of everyone else and, on Fridays, go back to her apartment to fuck ourselves hoarse.

That last possibility made me smile into the cup, and she saw it, and smiled back.

—We’re going to do a terrible job of hiding it —she said.

—I know.

—I don’t care.

—Me neither.