My Tenant Taught Me I Could Still Desire a Woman

Rosario. That was my name now that I lived alone. Before, I had been Aurelio’s wife, Marcos’s mother, the neighbor from the third floor with the balcony full of flowerpots. But Aurelio died ten years ago of a heart attack that gave no warning, and Marcos moved to Berlin two years ago, and the apartment was left with its rooms shut up and that silence that settles into places where there used to be noise and now there isn’t.

At sixty-three, you learn that there are things that don’t go away even if you want them to. Desire is one of them. It doesn’t arrive with the same urgency it had when you were thirty, it doesn’t pounce on you at any moment without warning, but it’s there. One Tuesday morning, when you least expect it, it settles between your legs and doesn’t go away until you do something about it. I did it alone. With my fingers inside my pussy, with the patience that comes with age and the imagination that made up for everything else. I spread my lips with two fingers, searched for my clitoris with my heart, and made myself come in silence, biting my lower lip. Then I carried on with my day. It was enough. Or so I told myself.

My body was no longer the body I’d had at thirty: my tits sagged a little more, my belly was softer, my thighs heavier with the passing of time. But my nipples still grew hard at the slightest touch, the heat still gathered in the same place as always, and I still came with the same intensity as always, squeezing my thighs around my own hand, soaking my fingers. That doesn’t change. Or if it does, it takes much longer than they tell you.

Daniela arrived in August to occupy Marcos’s room.

Twenty-seven years old, an interior-design student, a large wheeled suitcase, and a box of books that wouldn’t fit on any of the room’s shelves. She had dark, curly hair that she wore in buns that always seemed on the verge of coming undone. She wore long T-shirts, canvas sneakers, and a crooked smile that appeared and disappeared as though she didn’t want anyone to look at it for too long. When I saw her in the lobby with her suitcase and box, I thought she would regret choosing an apartment with an older woman. I was wrong.

During the first few days, we moved around the apartment with the careful courtesy of two strangers who still didn’t know how to occupy the same space. She came home late and I got up early. I made the coffee before she appeared. She left the kitchen cleaner than she had found it. Without talking about it, we found a rhythm.

Our dinners together began on a Tuesday without either of us suggesting it. I was heating soup when she came out of her room looking as if she hadn’t eaten all day. It was more natural to tell her to set another place than for each of us to carry on with our own business. From then on, we had dinner together on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She told me about her projects, her friends, an ex-girlfriend who still texted her at three in the morning. I listened, and sometimes I said something that made her laugh for real, not out of courtesy.

I didn’t realize what was happening until it was already happening completely.

***

It was a late-August afternoon. The heat had seeped into the walls of the apartment and wouldn’t leave even with the fan running at full speed. Daniela had gone to the gym. I had spent the whole morning with that familiar weight between my legs that I knew very well what it meant.

I had spent the day thinking about her without meaning to. About the way she moved barefoot around the kitchen, the way she bent over the sink with her ass outlined beneath the thin fabric of her shorts, the way a curly lock fell across her face when she laughed, the line of her young thighs when she came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel. I had been accumulating those images for weeks without knowing what to do with them. That afternoon I decided to do something, even if it was alone.

I lay down on the bed. I let my robe fall to the floor and remained naked on the sheets, with the fan turning above my head. I slowly ran my palm over my belly, moving downward without hurry. Before touching my pussy, I already knew I would be wet; I always was when I thought about her. I spread my legs and ran two fingers over my lips. I was soaked, sticky juices running down toward my ass. I closed my eyes and imagined her hands instead of mine, her long fingers moving where mine were, her young tongue slipping between my folds.

I began calmly, letting the pleasure build from the start. I pinched one nipple with my left hand, pulling it until it grew hard and drew a moan from me. My right hand went down to my pussy. Two fingers inside, all the way in, and my palm pressing against my clitoris in rhythm. I felt them sliding through how wet I was, and pulled them out to bring them to my mouth. I sucked my own juices off them and put them back inside, this time three. I curled them upward, searching for that soft spot that made me writhe.

“God,” I whispered to no one. “Daniela, fuck.”

I sped up. I lifted my hips, fucking myself with my own hand, pushing my clitoris against my palm with an ever-faster rhythm. I ran my tongue over my lips thinking of hers, of what it would be like to have her on top of me sucking my tits, her young pussy pressed against mine. The orgasm came quickly and directly, a powerful contraction that shook me from the inside out. I felt my pussy squeeze my fingers rhythmically, releasing a wave of juices that ran down my perineum to my buttocks. I lay still for quite a while, breathing unevenly, my fingers still inside and my belly rising and falling.

That was when I heard the apartment door open.

***

Daniela shouldn’t have come back so soon. I heard her footsteps in the hall, the sound of her bedroom door closing slowly. I hurriedly put on my robe, my wet panties still against my thighs, and went to the bathroom. When I came out, she was in the kitchen with a glass of water in her hand.

“You’re back early,” I said.

“The air conditioning wasn’t working. It was unbearable.” She looked at me for a moment, then lowered her eyes to my neck. “Are you all right? Your cheeks are flushed.”

“The heat,” I replied.

She nodded. But her gaze took a second longer than necessary to leave.

That night we didn’t have dinner together. I stayed with a book I didn’t read. She wore her headphones until late. When I turned out the light, I could still hear the soft murmur from her room, the sound of someone awake who didn’t want to fall asleep. At one point I thought I heard a muffled moan, brief and contained against a pillow. I put my hand over my pussy through my nightgown and got wet again instantly.

Three days passed. Two dinners together, a movie on the sofa that neither of us finished watching. The heat continued. I kept thinking about her more than I should have, and I masturbated twice more that week, alone in my room, with three fingers all the way in and her image in my head, coming while I bit the pillow so she wouldn’t hear me. The third night I lay there afterward without the sleep that should have come, staring at the ceiling, with the fan turning and the apartment’s silence around me.

At midnight I got up for water.

The hall light was on. Daniela’s bedroom door was ajar. I stopped. Through the crack I could see the light from her desk lamp. I heard her breathing.

I didn’t think. I knocked softly with my knuckles.

“Daniela?”

A silence. Then:

“Come in, Rosario.”

***

I went in. She was sitting on the edge of the bed in a long T-shirt that covered her thighs, her hair loose around her shoulders. Her nipples stood hard beneath the thin fabric. She wasn’t wearing a bra. She looked at me without surprise, as if she had been waiting for me to knock on her door for some time.

“I couldn’t sleep,” I said.

“Neither could I.”

We looked at each other. One of those pauses with a weight and density of its own.

“I’ve been wanting to tell you something for days,” she said at last.

“Tell me.”

“Monday afternoon, when I came back from the gym…” She paused. She smiled, this time without trying to hide it. “I heard you from the hall. I heard you moaning. I heard you say my name. I didn’t mean to stay, but I ended up pressed against the door listening to you come. Then I went to my room and put my hand in my panties thinking about you.”

My ears burned. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

“You don’t have to be embarrassed,” she said. She stood and came toward me slowly. She was taller than I remembered, or perhaps it was the distance between us that had shrunk. “It was the hottest thing I’ve ever heard. And it made me think of you in a way I hadn’t allowed myself to think until then. I’ve spent three nights masturbating, thinking about what it would be like to eat your pussy.”

She put her hand on my cheek. Cool, soft, unhurried.

“Can I?” she asked.

I leaned into her hand instead of answering.

***

The kiss was slow. Without urgency, as if we both knew there was no reason to hurry. Her lips were softer than I had imagined, and she kissed with complete attention, as if she wanted to know exactly what my mouth was like before going any further. She slipped her tongue in slowly and played with mine, calmly, sucking on it a little. My hands found her waist. Hers moved down my back and squeezed my ass through my robe, pulling me against her belly.

“It’s been many years since anyone touched me,” I said against her neck.

“You don’t have to wait anymore,” she replied. “I’m going to fuck you until you lose count.”

She took off my robe slowly and let it fall to the floor. I stood naked in front of her, my heart in my throat and my pussy already soaked. She looked at me with a calm that unsettled me, without the urgency that sometimes turns desire into something mechanical. She ran her eyes over my body openly, and there wasn’t a trace of disappointment in her gaze. She passed her hands over my shoulders, my arms, my tits. She took them in her palms and weighed them, caressing my nipples with her thumbs. When she brushed them, I felt them harden all at once, like little stones against her fingers.

“Beautiful,” she said. “You have beautiful tits, Rosario.”

She didn’t say it to reassure me. She said it as you say something you truly believe. She lowered her head and took one nipple into her mouth. She sucked it slowly, circling it with her tongue, then nibbled it with her teeth until she drew a moan from me. She moved to the other and treated it the same way. I felt the pull travel straight down to my pussy, as if there were a taut thread between my nipples and my clitoris.

I pushed her back onto the bed and lifted her T-shirt until I pulled it over her head. She wore nothing underneath. Her body was young and warm, firm in a way mine no longer was but that I could touch without tiring. Small, round tits, with pink nipples already hard. A flat belly with a dark bush between her legs. I kissed her neck, her collarbone, the curve of her breasts, sucking each nipple until I heard her sigh. She tangled her fingers in my hair and pushed gently.

“Down,” she whispered. “Eat me. I’ve been imagining your mouth there for days.”

I went down. I kissed her belly, her hip, the bone of her pelvis. I ran my tongue over the crease of her groin and she answered by arching her ass. I slowly parted her thighs and took a moment to look at her. Her pussy was open and glistening, her inner lips pink between the dark hair, her swollen clitoris asking for attention. She was so wet that a thread of juices ran down to her ass. I took my time. I ran one finger along her entire slit, very slowly, gathering her wetness, and brought it to my mouth. She tasted of salt and young woman.

“Rosario, please,” she gasped. “Don’t torture me.”

When I put my tongue on her, she let out a sound she had been holding back for a long time. I felt it in the way she arched, in the way her thighs sought my head without quite squeezing it. I licked her entire slit from bottom to top, my tongue held flat, and stopped at her clitoris to suck it with my lips. It was hard as a little pearl. I worked it slowly, circling it with the tip of my tongue, then slipped two fingers inside her and curled them upward, searching for the front wall. I gradually increased the rhythm while I kept sucking.

“Like that,” she said. “Fuck, like that. Don’t stop. Put them deeper.”

I added a third finger. I fucked her slowly, pulling them almost all the way out and pushing them back in to the knuckles, with a wet slapping sound filling the room. I sucked her clitoris harder, giving it little flicks of my tongue. Her thighs began to tremble. I ran my free hand over her belly until I found a nipple and pinched it hard. I heard her moaning with her voice growing more open, no longer caring about anything, saying my name in broken bursts. She came with a long, deep contraction that squeezed my fingers rhythmically, and kept trembling for a while afterward, her hands clutching the sheets and her hips convulsing against my face. I kept licking her gently until she went limp, drawing one more spasm from her at the end.

When I lifted my head, my chin was shining with her juices, and her eyes were bright, her smile more sincere than any I had ever seen on her.

“Come here,” she said. “Now you. Get up here.”

***

Knowing what a woman wants is a matter of attention or experience. Daniela had attention to spare. She pulled me by the wrist and made me lie down in her place. She started with her mouth on my neck, biting me slowly, then moved down over my tits, stopping at each nipple to suck them until they were red, and kissed my belly without skipping anything. She stopped at my navel, ran her tongue around it, and kept moving down.

“Open up,” she asked. “Let me see you.”

I spread my legs with the embarrassment of sixty-three and the desire of twenty. She positioned herself between my thighs, rested her cheeks against the insides, and blew gently over my pussy. I felt it open on its own, soaked, offering itself. She ran two fingers over my lips, teasing me without reaching my clitoris.

“You’re so wet,” she said. “All for me.”

“Eat me already,” I begged. I was surprised by how direct my voice sounded. “Please.”

She smiled and lowered her mouth. Her tongue knew where to go. She began with my outer lips, sucking them one by one, then slipped between them with the flat tip, licking me from my opening to my clitoris with a slowness that made me lift my hips to ask for more. Her fingers moved with a precision I hadn’t expected. She put one inside me first, then two, and curled them just as I had with her, finding the exact spot that made me clench my teeth.

“Don’t hold back,” she told me between licks, her voice vibrating against my clitoris. “I want to hear you. Scream if you have to.”

I didn’t hold back. I grabbed her head with both hands and pressed her against my pussy while she eagerly sucked my clitoris, alternating long licks with short sucks. She fucked me with her fingers at a steady rhythm, and with her other hand she found one of my tits and squeezed my nipple. I felt the orgasm rising from my feet, like a slow wave growing larger and larger. I told her not to stop. I told her filthy things I hadn’t said to anyone in ten years. I told her to eat me, fuck me, make me come in her mouth.

The orgasm came from inside, long and undulating. My pussy squeezed her fingers several times in succession, trembling around them. I let out a scream that surprised even me and kept my hands clutched around her shoulders until the last tremor had completely passed. She didn’t give me even a second’s rest: she kept licking me gently, without pressure, until she drew a second, smaller, trembling orgasm from me that left my thighs weak.

She climbed up my body and kissed me on the mouth. I tasted myself on her lips.

We lay beside each other with the fan turning and the lamp on, the sheet stuck to our thighs with sweat and juices. The August heat was still there, but it no longer bothered us.

“Had you been with a woman before?” she asked, running a finger along the line between my breasts.

“Yes. A long time ago. Before I got married.” I paused. “And you?”

“Only women,” she replied. “I was never interested in anything else. I never liked the idea of a cock.”

She kissed my temple.

“And what do we do now?” I asked.

“Right now, sleep.” She laughed softly. “After breakfast, I’ll eat your pussy again. Tomorrow we’ll see about the rest.”

***

Tomorrow came, and it wasn’t awkward. We had breakfast together with the same natural ease as always, but with something different in the space between us. A new, warm density. When she left for work, she kissed me on the mouth instead of saying goodbye from the door as she usually did, and slipped her hand beneath my robe to caress one of my tits as she passed.

From then on, we sought each other out almost every night. Sometimes urgently, with our hands slipping beneath our clothes in the kitchen before we even reached the bed, her kneeling in front of me and eating my pussy against the counter while the dishcloth fell to the floor. Other times slowly, with all the time in the world, lying in a scissors position with our pussies pressed together, rubbing them until we came at the same time, looking into each other’s eyes. Daniela taught me things I hadn’t known my body could still do: the first time I asked, she put a finger in my ass, with Vaseline and patience, and made me come harder than I ever had before. She sat on my face and rode my mouth with her pussy until my chin was soaked. I taught her things you only learn with age: that taking your time has its own pleasure, that the silence just before touching can be as intense as touch itself, that sometimes the best way to come is to hold back until you can’t anymore.

My sixty-three-year-old body responded without apology. That surprised me every time. The wetness, the heat gathering, the contractions when I came, the juices running down my thighs when she began to lick me. It was all still there, waiting for someone to invite it to wake up.

One night, while I stroked her hair in the darkness, her scent still clinging to my fingers, she said:

“I never thought I’d be like this with someone like you.”

“Someone like me?” I repeated.

“Someone who knows what she wants.” She paused. “Most people my age still don’t know. You tell me how to touch you, where to put my fingers, when to squeeze. That’s a luxury.”

I said nothing. I held her a little tighter and ran my hand over the curve of her naked ass.

The apartment stopped being just an apartment with a vacant room. Marcos’s room stopped smelling of absence. The Tuesdays and Thursdays when we used to have dinner together became every day, and the nights stopped being that long, quiet space I crossed alone.

I don’t know whether what we have has an exact name. I don’t care to look for one. I only know that at sixty-three I began waking up wet again, wanting night to come, and after ten years, that was more than I had expected.

Desire doesn’t expire. Sometimes it just needs someone to knock on your door and offer to eat your pussy.