The Anniversary Massage I Should Never Have Accepted

We were celebrating seven years of marriage. Seven years since that yes in front of the judge, when my family cried in the front row and Tomás trembled as he slipped the ring onto my finger. I was thirty-one, an architect, with wavy brown hair down to my shoulders and a stable life anyone would envy. My husband was thirty-seven, the owner of a neighborhood hardware store, tall, dark-skinned, with an unkempt beard and a smile that still made me feel silly whenever he came home.

We were a sociable couple, the kind of friends who got everyone together in the backyard on Saturdays. Our sex life was good, without tricks or kinks, but not routine either. We knew each other’s timing, tastes, and looks. I thought I already knew everything about myself.

For our anniversary, I had bought Tomás a pair of soccer cleats he’d been looking at online for months—gray with blue details, the kind that cost a fortune and that he would never buy for himself. He, on the other hand, told me he’d thought of something different, something I couldn’t give myself without feeling guilty. Then he handed me an envelope containing a voucher for a spa downtown: a ninety-minute full-body massage, aromatic oils, private room.

“You deserve it,” he told me, kissing my temple. “You’ve been coming home from the office with your back in pieces for months.”

We began our anniversary with breakfast in bed: strong coffee, warm croissants, and a kiss that promised more for the evening. Then I went to work like any other morning. I left the office at five, drove to the address on the voucher, parked, and went inside.

The place didn’t look anything like I’d imagined. It was an old house remodeled with good taste, white walls, large plants in the corners, and a scent of wood I couldn’t quite identify. The receptionist, a very young woman in a beige apron, offered me ginger tea and asked me to sit and wait. I sank into a cushioned armchair, opened Instagram on my phone, and mindlessly looked at photos of strangers until I heard my name.

“Mariana?”

I looked up. A woman was standing a few feet away, smiling. I guessed she was in her early thirties. Her blonde hair was clearly dyed, her eyes honey-colored, and her white uniform fit just tightly enough to hint at a full figure, with generous breasts and round hips. She introduced herself as Renata.

“Come on, I’ll take you to the room.”

I walked behind her down a narrow hallway. Something about the way she moved, the way she looked at me unhurriedly whenever she turned her head to speak to me, gave me a strange feeling I didn’t know how to name. The room was small, with white tiles, very low warm lighting, a dark wooden screen, a massage table covered with a sheet, and candles, bottles of oil, and some polished stones on a little table.

“Behind the screen, I’ll leave you a robe and two small towels,” Renata told me. “Take off all your clothes, including your underwear. The towels are for covering yourself while you wait for me face down.”

She left the room. I undressed slowly, folded my clothes over a chair, and put on the robe. It smelled of orange blossoms. I took it off at once, lay face down, and arranged the towels as she had instructed: one over the lower part of my back, covering me from the waist to the end of my curve, and the other within reach in case I turned over.

Renata came back in after knocking softly.

“Comfortable?”

“Yes,” I replied, my face resting in the table’s opening.

She lit the candles. Instrumental music with soft flutes began to play. I heard the sound of oil being poured into her hands, and then her warm palms settled onto my back as though they knew exactly where my knots were. She started with my shoulders. She pressed her thumbs into either side of my spine and moved up to my neck with firm pressure that drew an involuntary sigh from me.

“You’re completely tense,” she murmured.

“Architecture school,” I answered. “I live hunched over blueprints.”

She continued. She worked on my shoulder blades, my arms, my hands, finger by finger. By the time she reached my lower back, my eyes were closed and I felt as though I were floating over something very far away. She moved on to my legs. From my ankles upward, again and again, she rose to just beneath where the towel covered my ass and then went back down. The music, the warm oil, the scent of the candles. I had surrendered completely.

“Turn over, slowly.”

I did. As I turned, I arranged the first towel over my breasts and the second over my pubis, in a slightly awkward movement that betrayed a certain modesty. Renata smiled without saying anything and continued. She massaged my neck, then placed two warm stones on my abdomen, one on either side of my navel. I breathed deeply, letting the air out through my mouth. I thought I was going to fall asleep.

Her hands moved down my waist, avoided the towel over my pubis, and settled on my thighs. New oil. More of it. She began on the outside, then moved to the inside, going upward. I kept my eyes closed. She lifted one knee, then the other, alternating as she massaged my inner thighs with pressure that wasn’t quite the same as before. Her movements grew longer. The tips of her fingers advanced a little farther each time, until, on one of those upward strokes, the back of her hand brushed, seemingly by accident, against the lips of my pussy. A gasp escaped me before I could hide it.

I opened my eyes.

Renata was looking at me. Not with the professional smile from reception, but with something quieter, more direct. The towel over my pubis had shifted slightly. She didn’t adjust it.

“Does it bother you?” she asked in a low voice.

I should have said yes. I should have sat up, asked her to stop, thanked her, and left. Tomás was at home preparing dinner. It was our anniversary. I had never been with a woman, hadn’t even seriously thought about it.

But the body has a logic of its own. And mine, after an hour of oils and warm hands, had stopped obeying my mind.

“No,” I said.

And at that very moment, I knew I was going to have to lie to my husband that night.

***

Renata moved the towel aside completely. She let it fall to the floor without ceremony. Her fingers, the same ones that until a minute earlier had been massaging me with clinical technique, traced the sides of my pussy with a new softness, as if they were getting to know a territory. She parted my outer lips with two fingers, very slowly, and blew gently. I reflexively squeezed my thighs together, but she opened them again with her palms.

“Relax,” she whispered. “Let me look.”

She lowered her face until it was only inches away. I felt her looking at me down there with an attention no one had ever given me. Tomás went straight to the point, hurried and eager. She took her time. She ran a finger along the edge of my opening, wet it with what was already beginning to seep out without permission, and brought it up to my clitoris to draw a slow circle. The mixture of oil and the moisture already appearing surprised me with how quickly it arrived. I squeezed the warm stones still resting in my hands.

“Let them go,” she said. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

I let go. One rolled to the edge of the table and dropped to the floor with a dull thud. Neither of us looked.

Her left hand lay flat on my belly, just below my navel, while her right hand moved up and down with a slowness that made me increasingly desperate. She inserted one finger. She did it slowly, millimeter by millimeter, watching my face to read every expression. Once it was fully inside, she curled it upward and searched for a spot Tomás had never found. She found it immediately. My back arched.

“There,” I said, unable to keep quiet.

“I know,” she replied.

She added a second finger. She moved them inside me at a lazy rhythm, without taking them out, pressing that spot again and again, while her thumb stroked my clitoris with the slightest touch that was driving me crazy. I breathed through my mouth, raggedly. I lifted my hips a little without thinking, and she took that signal as an answer.

“Sit up a little,” she asked, withdrawing her fingers with the same calmness with which she had inserted them.

I sat up until I was propped on my elbows. The towel over my breasts slipped to one side. Renata moved closer. We were face to face. I looked at her mouth before her eyes. She brought her two wet fingers to her tongue and sucked them without hurrying, never breaking eye contact.

“Never with a woman, right?”

I shook my head.

“Then tell me if you want me to stop. Whenever you want.”

I nodded. She leaned in and kissed me. The first kiss was short and exploratory, almost asking permission. The second was longer. By the third, I already had one hand on the back of her neck and was burying my fingers in her blonde hair. Her mouth tasted of something sweet, perhaps the ginger tea, perhaps a candy, and underneath that, of me. It was different from kissing Tomás, different in a way I couldn’t explain. Softer. No beard scraping against me. No urgency.

As we kissed, my hand moved down her arm, along her waist, and began tugging at the zipper of her uniform. Renata laughed against my mouth.

“Wait.”

She pulled away. She undid the buttons down the front one by one, unhurriedly, without taking her eyes off me. She wasn’t wearing a bra underneath. Her breasts were exactly as I had imagined them beneath the fabric: full, heavy, with dark, hard nipples. I leaned forward and sucked one. Then the other. I sucked them hungrily, surprised by how badly I wanted to, and ran my tongue around her areola until I heard her moan. I felt her pulse against my tongue. I squeezed both her breasts with my hands, pressed them together, and played with her nipples at the same time with my mouth.

“Lie down,” she told me, her voice a little huskier.

I obeyed her. I lay on my back again, now completely naked, on a massage table that was no longer a massage table but something else. Renata removed the lower half of her uniform and the black lingerie I discovered beneath it. When she was completely naked, I stared at her. She had a strip of trimmed blonde hair over her pubis, thick thighs, and a soft belly that moved as she breathed. I thought she was prettier naked than dressed.

She climbed onto the edge of the table, parted my legs with her hands, and moved down my body, kissing everything she found along the way. My breasts, lightly biting my nipples. The side of my waist. My hipbone. The inside of my thigh, her mouth open, leaving saliva behind. Each kiss went lower and slower. When she reached the crease of my groin, she stopped, blew gently, and continued to the other thigh. She was making me wait on purpose.

“Please,” escaped me.

“What?” she asked, her mouth inches away. “Say it.”

“Eat me out.”

She didn’t make me repeat it.

When her mouth reached my pussy, I squeezed my eyes shut. What Tomás had done other times was affectionate and attentive, but this was something else. Renata knew. She knew where, she knew how much, she knew when to ease up and when to press harder. It was as if she had studied me for years. She began with the flat of her tongue, one long lick from the bottom up to my clitoris, then another, and another, until she had me dripping onto the sheet. Then she closed her lips around my clitoris and sucked it gently, with minimal suction, while her tongue traced a circular movement that made my legs tremble. At the same time, two fingers moved in and out with a rhythm that matched mine, curling inside me to touch the spot she already knew exactly where to find.

I gripped the edges of the table. I bit my own forearm so I wouldn’t scream. Words escaped me in fragments, dirty words I had never said in bed with Tomás.

“Like that, don’t stop, like that, like that, fuck.”

She didn’t stop. When she felt I was about to come, she reduced her speed by half and left me on the edge, hanging there. She lifted her face. Her mouth was shiny, her chin wet.

“Not yet,” she said. “Hold on.”

“I can’t.”

“You can.”

She lowered herself again. This time she added a third finger. I felt her opening me wider, a faint sting that immediately turned into pleasure, while her tongue worked over my clitoris with an insistence that was impossible to stop. I came with a long spasm, squeezing her head between my thighs, feeling the contractions around her fingers, hearing myself release an animal moan I didn’t recognize as my own. She didn’t withdraw her fingers until I stopped trembling.

I’ll never forgive myself for this, I thought. But I’m not stopping it either.

***

After a long while, still breathing heavily, Renata sat up, climbed onto the table, and settled herself over me, one leg on either side of my head, her waist close to my face. She was offered to me with a naturalness that intimidated me for a second. I had never seen another woman like that, so close, so willing. I stared at her pussy, pink, shiny, swollen. I saw it contract slightly when she felt me breathing near it.

“If you don’t want to, don’t,” she murmured from above.

But I did want to. That was the uncomfortable truth. I wanted to try what she knew how to do; I wanted to know whether I could learn. I placed my hands on her buttocks, gripped her firmly, and pulled her down to my mouth. I touched her first with the tip of my tongue, a timid lick from top to bottom. I tasted her, different from anything I had ever tasted before, sour and sweet at the same time. I felt the heat, the wetness, and heard a moan from her that gave me a confidence I hadn’t expected.

I continued. I learned as I went. I copied what she had done to me: the flat of the tongue first, then the tip searching for the clitoris, then closed lips sucking gently. Renata began moving her hips, rubbing herself against my face, and I let her. I dug my fingers into the flesh of her ass and pressed her harder against me. She grabbed my hair with both hands.

“That’s it, idiot, just like that. You’re a fast learner.”

I pushed my tongue inside her, as far as I could, and felt her tremble. Then I returned to her clitoris and sucked without stopping. She rubbed herself harder and harder against me, and at one point she lifted a hand and pinched one of my nipples between two fingers. I arched beneath her. I was beginning all over again too.

Renata didn’t stay still for long. She turned without getting completely off me, and we ended up in the reverse position: her mouth on my pussy again, mine on hers. Leaning over me, her fingers went back to work between my legs, her mouth found my clitoris again, and for a while there was nothing else in the world but that mirrored image: two women giving each other the same thing at the same time, without speaking, without names, without promises. I felt her moaning against my pussy and knew she felt me moaning against hers, and every vibration was another shove toward the end.

I felt her come before I did. Her whole body contracted, she squeezed my head between her thighs, and released a muffled cry against my flesh. Her tongue trembled over my clitoris, and that was enough to make me come again, shorter than the first time but just as intense, biting the inside of her thigh so I wouldn’t scream.

Then we changed positions again. Renata lay on her side, panting, took me by the waist, and arranged us until our pussies were locked together. She crossed one leg over mine and explained without words, with nothing but a movement of her hips, what I had to do. I answered. We began slowly and built up from there. Every rub was a sharp blow of pleasure, a wet slapping sound that carried through the entire room over the music. Our clitorises collided, rubbed, searched for each other. She held my ass with one hand, pulling me forward so the friction would be stronger, and squeezed one of my breasts with the other, pinching my nipple. I took her free hand and laced my fingers through hers.

“Fuck me harder,” she asked, her eyes half-closed. “Come on.”

I obeyed. I thrust my hips with all the strength I had left, grabbed her ass with both hands, and dragged her against me. She did the same. Our thighs slapped together, our pussies pressed together with a wet sound that made me want it even more. At one point she brought two fingers to her mouth, moistened them thoroughly, and slipped them between our sexes to stroke both our clitorises at once. It was too much.

I don’t know how long it lasted. I don’t know what my face looked like when I came. I know she came too, almost at the same time, and that we ended up sweaty, laughing for no reason, still with our legs tangled and the table nearly on the verge of throwing us onto the floor. My hair was stuck to my forehead, my chest rose and fell, and my throat was dry from so much moaning.

She kissed me one last time before getting up. A short, soft kiss, tasting of me, without the urgency of before. Then she dressed, left me a clean towel, and walked out of the room with the casualness of someone who had just finished an ordinary massage.

I showered in the tiny stall at the back. I soaped myself slowly, trying to wash away the smell of her and me mixed together, but I couldn’t quite manage it. I got dressed. I looked at myself in the mirror and found nothing different in my face, which was almost worse than finding something.

At reception, Renata was behind the counter, writing something in a folder. She looked up and smiled at me as if she were seeing me for the first time.

“Enjoy the rest of your anniversary.”

“Thank you.”

I walked out to the parking lot with my car keys in my hand and a strange sensation between my legs, a mixture of oil, exhaustion, and something I didn’t want to name. It was seven-thirty. Tomás was waiting for me with the table set, the candles he hated but lit for me anyway, and his usual smile. I kissed him on the mouth. I ate. I smiled. I told him the massage had been incredible, that the girl had magical hands, that she had made me feel brand-new.

I hadn’t lied to him completely.