She Fell Into My Arms Before She Could Kiss Me Again

Mariana collapsed in front of Camila as if the roof of the world had caved in on her. The dull thud of her forehead against the parquet made Camila’s nape prickle before her brain could even process it. She didn’t think. She didn’t breathe. She launched herself at her with the animal urgency of someone who has seen too many bodies fall in too many places.

She held her against her chest. She felt her light and, at the same time, impossible to carry, as if she were dragging an entire history around in her bones. The fever burned her forehead, the sweat stuck her fringe to her temples, and even so, in the middle of that disaster, Camila noticed the faint perfume rising from her neck. Green lemon. The same scent she’d caught on her the first night in the car, when Mariana had leaned over to turn off the radio and they had almost kissed by accident.

—Sofía, open the bedroom door —she ordered in the voice she used on operations.

Sofía obeyed. The apartment door slammed shut on its own, echoing off the bare hallway walls. Camila laid Mariana on the sofa and began moving through the exact choreography of military and medical memory: erratic pulse, blood pressure far too low, blood sugar that barely registered. Every data point was a slap. Mariana’s skin was cold on the outside and burning on the inside, like a house with the windows shut and a fire in the basement.

—We need to get her to bed —she said, more to herself than to Sofía.

Between the two of them, they lifted her. The white sheets in the guest room looked too clean, too new, to hold a body in that state. Camila undressed her carefully, and then she felt a shiver that had nothing to do with medical urgency.

Mariana’s body was no mystery to her.

I know you like this already, naked and spent. Only last time it wasn’t illness that left you breathless, it was my tongue buried all the way inside your cunt.

***

Three weeks earlier, in a hotel room downtown, Mariana had asked her to turn off the light and Camila had refused.

—I want to see you —she’d told her, with the hoarse voice of someone who had gone years without wanting anyone this badly—. I want to see the look on your face when you come in my mouth.

Mariana had bitten her lower lip, that little gesture of hers when she was thinking too much, and slowly peeled off her blouse, letting it fall to the floor like a white flag. Her back was straighter than Camila remembered from fencing classes, her shoulders tense, her nipples already hard beneath the white bra, her hair gathered in a bun that was coming undone with every breath.

—Then look at me properly —she’d replied—. I don’t know if I’ll have the courage to ask you for this again.

Camila had come closer, slowly. She traced her collarbone with the pad of her index finger, followed the line of her sternum, circled the curve of her left breast without touching it yet. Mariana had shuddered. She was a twenty-two-year-old body used to training, obeying, holding discipline; but that night she trembled at something no coach had ever taught her to control.

Camila unclasped her bra with one hand, and Mariana’s breasts fell free, round, with dark nipples bristling upward. She bent down and caught one with her mouth, sucking slowly, rolling it with her tongue until Mariana moaned for the first time, a low, startled moan, as if she hadn’t expected her body to answer so fast. Camila bit it carefully, teased the nipple between her teeth, while with her free hand she squeezed the other breast, pinching the nipple between index finger and thumb. Mariana threw her head back.

—God, Camila…

—Don’t go asking anyone else for help yet —she whispered against her skin—. I’m just getting started.

She yanked down her tracksuit bottoms and the panties clung to her, wet, outlining her slit. Camila ran her fingers over the fabric and felt how soaked she was. She licked her lips without even trying to hide it.

—Look at you —she said—. I haven’t even touched your cunt and you’ve already got it dripping for me.

Mariana flushed, but she didn’t look away. Camila knelt between her legs, ripped the panties off with her teeth, and spread her thighs open with the palms of her hands, without asking permission. Mariana’s cunt was shining, swollen, with the pink lips parted and her clit already peeking out hard. Camila blew slowly over it and Mariana shivered all over.

—Please —she whispered.

—Ask me with words.

—Eat me out. Eat my cunt, Camila, please.

Camila smiled and buried her face between her legs. She dragged her whole tongue from bottom to top, licking her slit with obscene slowness, tasting her. Mariana screamed. Camila sucked on her clit with closed lips, tugging gently, then slipped her tongue inside, fucking her with her mouth as if it were a cock. The tip went in and out, and Mariana started grinding her hips against Camila’s face, searching, demanding.

—Yes, like that, deeper, more…

Camila slipped two fingers in along with her tongue. Mariana’s cunt clamped down on her immediately, hot and slick, closing around her fingers as if it didn’t want to let go. She started fucking her with her fingers while sucking her clit, curling the fingertips to hit that spot inside that made Mariana lose control. And she did. She drove her heels into Camila’s back, buried her fingers in her hair, and started shaking all over.

The hotel bed was too small for them. Camila kissed her first on the mouth —making her taste her own flavor— and then behind the ear, moved down her neck until she bit her shoulder, learned the map of her scars —the one at her elbow from a bike fall, the one on her thigh from a poorly held foil— like someone studying a new language and forcing herself to memorize it. Mariana arched her back. She moaned with a tight throat, holding back, always holding back, as if she were afraid of scaring away what was happening if she made a sound of it.

—Don’t keep quiet —Camila whispered against the inside of her thigh—. Not with me. Tell me to eat you, tell me how you want it, you filthy girl, tell me.

And Mariana, for the first time in her life, stopped measuring the sound of her own voice. She spread her legs with the same determination with which she entered a fight, buried her fingers in Camila’s hair, said her name three times in a row, each time lower, until the name was barely a tremor in the air.

—Harder, put another finger in me, more, more…

Camila slid in a third finger and started fucking her without mercy, her wrist cramping, the wet sound of her cunt squelching filling the room. Mariana came with a muffled cry, clenching around her fingers with her inner walls, soaking her hand completely. Camila pulled them out slowly, glistening, and sucked them one by one in front of her, never looking away.

—You taste fucking delicious —she told her—. Better than anything I’ve tasted in years.

Mariana grabbed her by the hair and pulled her up to her mouth. She kissed her desperately, licking her lips, looking for her own taste on Camila’s tongue. Then she shoved her onto her back and climbed on top of her.

—Now me —she said, her voice rough—. Show me how you like it.

Camila let her. Mariana had no experience, but she was hungry, and sometimes that was better. She pulled down her trousers, opened her legs, and stared for a few seconds, memorizing her. Then she lowered her mouth. At first shy, tentative. Camila grabbed the back of her neck and taught her the rhythm, showed her where to press with her tongue, how to part her lips with her thumbs, how to work her with her fingers while she kept sucking. Mariana learned fast. She started eating her cunt with a devotion Camila had never felt before, moaning too against her flesh, as if it turned her on to be there, kneeling, her face buried between another woman’s thighs.

Camila came with her back arched, pressing Mariana’s head against her cunt, shouting her name up at the hotel ceiling. And then, before letting her recover, she grabbed her and turned her facedown, spread her ass cheeks, and ran her tongue over her asshole, over her cunt, all over, while Mariana trembled and begged and came again with two fingers inside and another tongue at her asshole.

When it was all over, Mariana lay on her back staring at the ceiling, breathing in ragged gasps, her thighs slick with saliva and come, wearing a smile Camila had never seen on her, not even when she won a tournament. Camila stroked her thigh with an open hand and said, half as a joke, half in earnest:

—If my mother knew I was here, she’d kill me.

And they both laughed. As if the line wasn’t really a crack.

***

Sofía came into the room with the IV and the thermometer, and the image dissolved. Camila blinked and came back. Her hands were shaking a little more than she would have admitted to anyone.

—How is she? —Sofía asked.

—Bad. But stable.

—Are you going to be able to handle this?

Camila didn’t answer. She handed over the thermometer and sat on the edge of the mattress. She tucked a damp lock of hair behind Mariana’s ear. Mariana didn’t open her eyes. Didn’t speak. Only a weak moan escaped her, so faint it almost seemed to apologize for existing.

A sharp beep cut through the room. Camila’s phone buzzed on the bedside table: Prosecutor’s Office, urgent message. “New case confirmed. Recent discovery. Las Magnolias Residential. Female victim, fifty-sixty years old. Full team en route.”

Camila didn’t even take her eyes off Mariana. Renata, who had just arrived, noticed it from the doorway. She looked at her with that strange mix of professionalism and pain that only surfaced when something hit a private nerve. She wanted to say something. She didn’t know what. Because seeing her like this, bent over another woman with that devotion that had once been hers, broke something old and poorly healed inside her.

—Do you want me to take the case? —Renata asked, her voice low but steady.

Camila nodded without blinking.

Renata went out to the living room. Sofía followed shortly after, with a yellow envelope and a stricken face. The pages were marked in red, handwritten notes, that rushed kind of handwriting people use when they write without wanting to believe what they’re writing.

—I need to talk to you alone —she told Renata, barely above a whisper.

She showed her the report. Name. Age. Address. Photo.

—We need to pull Camila off the case —Sofía said.

—And what’s the reason? Is she suddenly unable to pull herself together because that girl is like this? —Renata shot back, her tone harsher than she intended. It hurt. It hurt to have become, from one day to the next, the woman who no longer got told the important things first.

Sofía didn’t answer right away. She lifted the red-marked page and held it in front of Renata’s face like a sentence.

—The victim is Mariana’s mother —she said at last, lowering her voice, as if saying it out loud made it more real—. The woman who raised that girl you have sleeping in the next room, all by herself.

Renata went still.

—Are you sure?

—The photos, the name, the address, the age. Everything matches. I’m going ahead with the team, but there’s more.

—Tell me.

—The body shows signs of a struggle. Recent bruise on the forearm. The lock was forced carefully, as if whoever got in knew there was someone inside who wouldn’t resist. It wasn’t a robbery. Nothing was taken. They killed her. And if there weren’t already suspicion of something shady, they wouldn’t have assigned the case to you.

Renata felt her stomach twist.

—Mariana probably senses it —Sofía went on—. Maybe she doesn’t know the details, but her body has already reacted to the pain. That’s why she’s like this. It isn’t exhaustion. It’s pure trauma. It’s grief in the raw.

Renata ran a hand over her neck. She looked toward the bedroom. Looked at Sofía.

—She has to be taken off the case —she said—. Whatever it costs me.

—And how do we tell her? She won’t accept it.

—Then don’t tell her. Act. I’ll handle it.

But there was no need.

Camila was standing in the hallway. She had heard both of them.

Her face was empty. No rage. No tears. Only that absolute cold that appears when the mind understands it’s going to have to hold something too big and prefers to shut down so it won’t break before its time.

Then something inside her cracked.

Her knees gave way slowly and her back pressed against the wall as if someone had torn the air from her chest with a single blow. They weren’t tears: they were floods. Her breathing shattered into pieces. The phrase “Mariana’s mother” kept bouncing inside her skull like a stone in an empty can.

Suddenly everything turned against her. Every conversation. Every clue she hadn’t seen.

Camila remembered that afternoon in the car, when they were driving back from Mariana’s house after the competition.

My mom doesn’t understand fencing at all, but she always comes. She says she likes seeing me shine, even if she doesn’t know why I lose sometimes.

Sometimes I feel like I only train for her. Because the day I win a medal, I want her to see it. To know it was all worth it.

That voice, leaning against the window with a little sunlight slipping in between her lashes, had been the last beautiful thing Camila heard before climbing into this bed and forgetting to breathe.

She brought a hand to her mouth to hold back a scream that didn’t come. She saw Mariana’s body in the room. She saw that woman —the mother, Mariana’s whole home— on a cold gurney that now belonged to someone who hadn’t arrived in time.

She hadn’t been there. She had arrived late, again.

—God —she whispered, not knowing who she was saying it to. She hadn’t prayed in years.

Renata came closer. Camila lifted her hand. She didn’t want to be touched. Not by her. Not today. Not after the months they had spent avoiding each other in hallways, after the last slammed door, after staring at each other in the kitchen and saying with their eyes what neither had had the courage to say out loud.

Renata lowered her arm. Accepted it.

Camila wiped her face with a rough swipe. Not out of pride. Out of urgency. She went back into the room. Sat on the edge of the bed and took Mariana’s hand with a tenderness that hurt.

And now she understood.

Now everything fit.

Mariana wasn’t sick. She had been broken for days. Her body, more honest than her mouth, had signed the surrender before her mind knew what it was signing. She had seen it in her nightmares, in the way she clung to the sheet when she slept against her, in how her voice cracked every time the phone rang and it wasn’t her mother.

Camila stroked the back of her hand with her thumb. She kissed her knuckles one by one, slowly, the way she had learned to kiss her whole body in that hotel room. Only this time there was no rush, no heated desire, nothing urging her to get anywhere.

Only the stubborn, ancient desire to stay.

—I’m here —she told her quietly, against her palm—. I’m not going anywhere.

Mariana didn’t answer. But her fingers —the same fingers that three weeks earlier had left marks on Camila’s back while Camila came in her mouth in a cheap hotel— closed ever so slightly over hers.

It was little.

It was everything.

And though Camila didn’t know it yet, the real hell was only beginning.