The Night Gabriela Came Down From the Stage to Me

Daniela works Monday through Friday as an administrative assistant at a municipal office. She arrives on time, serves the public with a textbook smile, and no one would suspect that on Friday and Saturday nights she becomes a completely different person.

She’s a stripper at the Crimson, a club on the outskirts that has more customers than it looks like from the outside. And she must do it very well, because the money she makes those two days far exceeds her fixed salary for the entire week. She’s never told me that in so many words, but you can tell from the clothes she wears, the trips she allows herself, the ease with which she talks about money.

We’ve been friends since we were seventeen. We met in English class and since then we’ve shared practically everything: apartments, boyfriends, crises, celebrations. But there’s one thing I’ve never told her, one thing I keep carefully hidden behind everything else.

That I want her.

Daniela has that kind of body that’s hard to ignore even when you want to. She’s almost six feet tall, all legs, with dark brown hair down to the middle of her back and eyes that, depending on the daylight, look brown or green. People turn to look when she walks into a place. Men, women, people who are with their partners and people who aren’t. Everyone.

And for years I’ve been pretending I’m just another face in that anonymous crowd admiring her from far away.

***

That night I went to the Crimson for the first time. I had considered it several times over the years and always found an excuse. I had plans. I was embarrassed. It wasn’t the right time. The truth was simpler: I was afraid of seeing what I was going to see and not being able to control what I would feel.

But that night I went.

The place smelled like expensive perfume and machine smoke. The light was dim and red, the kind that hides faces and exaggerates bodies. I sat at one of the tables near the stage, ordered something to drink, and waited.

When she came out, the atmosphere changed.

It wasn’t that people suddenly stopped talking or started applauding. It was subtler than that. A kind of collective attention shifting, like when someone enters a room and without saying a word claims all the space.

Daniela was wearing a tiny black thong and nothing else. Her hair was loose and wet, her body shining under the spotlights. She moved with calculated slowness, as if she knew exactly how long she could keep someone on the edge of breath before they had to let it out.

I didn’t let out my breath at all.

She danced for several minutes without looking at anyone in particular. She stared into the void, or else she looked at everyone with the same elegant indifference. But at one point, her eyes met mine.

And she didn’t look away.

She kept dancing while staring straight at me. No gestures, no signals, no coded messages. Just that fixed gaze that was saying something I still didn’t know how to interpret. My heart was doing things it had no business doing when I looked at my best friend, and between my legs I felt a hot, wet pulse I’d been suppressing for years, a throb that climbed up my belly and pressed my nipples hard against my bra until they were stone-hard.

Look away, I told myself. Act normal. This is what she does. She does this to everyone in front of her.

But I didn’t look away.

***

When her number came to an end, Daniela knelt at the edge of the stage. She did it slowly, with that grace she has for making any movement look deliberate and necessary. She leaned toward me.

And kissed me.

It wasn’t a brush of lips. It was a real kiss, intentional, with her hand gripping my jaw so I couldn’t move even if I’d wanted to. She opened my lips with hers and shoved her entire tongue into my mouth, finding me as if she’d known for years what I tasted like, devouring me for a second that stretched much longer than it should have.

The noise of the room disappeared.

When she pulled away, there was something different in her expression. A question, maybe. Or an answer to something neither of us had said out loud yet.

I stood up.

I can’t really explain what happened in that moment or what part of me made the decision, but I stood and climbed up onto the stage with her. There was applause, a few whistles, the murmur of people watching. None of it mattered to me.

I hugged her and kissed her again, this time without anyone initiating it, this time both of us at once. I bit her lower lip and she let out a small moan into my mouth that went straight down to my cunt.

Her skin was exactly as I had imagined: soft, warm, with that particular heat of someone who’s been dancing for a while and has their body in full circulation. I ran my hands down her back and felt the contrast between the cold metal of the stage under my knees and the heat she radiated. Her tits, free, bare, flattened against me when I pulled her close, and I felt her hard nipples pressing through my blouse.

We knelt together without breaking the kiss.

Daniela held my face with both hands and deepened the kiss, leaning into me until her bare chest pressed against my clothes. I could feel her through the fabric, the warmth of her skin seeping into mine, and I also felt her grinding her hips against my thigh, searching for friction with an insistence that left no doubt she was just as wet as I was.

My mind emptied of everything except her.

She slid her hands over my neck, over my shoulders, and at some point her fingers found the buttons of my blouse. She didn’t ask. I didn’t protest. The buttons popped off one by one and the fabric opened. She tore my bra away in one pull and my tits were left exposed in front of the whole club, my nipples so hard they hurt.

—I’ve seen you looking at me —she said against my ear, and she licked my earlobe before biting it—. Fucking me with your eyes, you filthy slut. Every time.

—I know —I answered, my voice breaking.

—Do you know how many times I’ve come thinking about you? —she whispered—. With my fingers buried deep, imagining they were yours?

I let out a moan I couldn’t swallow.

Her hands grabbed my breasts with a confidence that unsettled me. There was nothing tentative in how she touched me. She did it like someone who knows exactly what she has in her hands and what she wants to do with it. She pinched my nipples between her thumb and forefinger, tugging until another moan escaped me, and then she bent down and took one fully into her mouth, sucking hard, biting, pulling with her teeth until my legs shook.

I gently pushed her back until she was lying beneath the lights. I leaned over her and started kissing her neck, her collarbone, each nipple with the same attention and without haste. She searched for my lips with her chest, lifting her body toward me, arching to push herself further into my mouth.

I bit her left nipple carefully, then licked it, then sucked it whole, my tongue circling around it and my lips pulling hungrily. I did the same to the other one. I heard the small sound she made, half moan half gasp, and I held onto it.

Her hands slid down my sides and found the closure of my skirt. She pulled it down without effort, with a practiced ease that made me wonder how many times she’d imagined this, if she had imagined it at all, if this had been something she’d been waiting for too without saying so. When I was left in only my panties, she slipped her hand between my legs over the fabric and felt how soaked I was.

—Fuck, girl —she murmured—. You’re dripping.

—For you —I told her—. Only for you.

She moved the fabric aside and shoved two fingers into me all at once, no transition. I cried out against her mouth. She pulled them out, brought them to her lips, and sucked them slowly, staring straight into my eyes, tasting me as if she’d spent years wanting to know what I tasted like.

—Later —she said, and pushed against my shoulders until I was the one on the bottom—. First you get me.

I went down her body slowly.

I kissed her stomach, her hip, the inside of her thigh. I listened to her breathing change rhythm, heard the rough gasp she let out when I ran my tongue over the fold of her groin. I hooked my fingers in her thong and pulled it down her legs, off over her ankles. She was left completely naked beneath me, legs spread on the stage, her shaved cunt shining with how wet she was.

Her smell went straight to my head.

I parted the lips of her cunt with two fingers and ran my tongue all the way up, from the entrance to the clit, tasting her for the first time. She tasted exactly like I’d imagined for years, and at the same time like something entirely new. I did it again, slower, sinking my tongue into her hot, wet flesh.

—Oh God —she whispered—. Oh, fuck.

I licked her calmly at first, learning how she reacted, what rhythm made her thighs tense, what pressure made her grip the edge of the stage with her fingers. I ran my tongue from her clit down and back again, over and over, measuring her reactions. I slipped the tip of my tongue inside her and felt her clench around it. Then I went back up and trapped her clit between my lips, sucking it gently, and she let out a strangled cry.

—There —she said, her voice hoarse—. Don’t move. There, you filthy slut, suck it like that.

I didn’t move.

I felt her body starting to build tension, her hips seeking my mouth with increasingly uncontrolled movements, rubbing against my face without any shame at all. She grabbed my hair with both hands and pressed me to her, nearly smothering me, fucking my mouth with her cunt. I kept the same rhythm without speeding up, letting the desperation build slowly, alternating the flat of my tongue with the tip, my lips sucking, my teeth just barely brushing her swollen clit.

When I lifted my head to kiss her on the mouth, the sound she made mixed complaint and desire. She kissed me urgently, her hands on the back of my neck holding me close, licking my lips and chin, tasting herself on my face.

—Put it in me —she gasped—. Put it in me now, please.

I slid my hand down her belly until I reached her. I touched her with my palm first, feeling the heat and wetness dripping down her thighs, then I slipped one finger in carefully, to the knuckle, all the way in.

Her hips lifted off the floor.

—More —she said against my mouth—. More, fuck, more.

I added a second finger and started moving, slowly at first, finding the angle that made her legs part a little wider, that turned her breathing into something she could no longer control. With my thumb I searched for the exact spot on her clit while my fingers worked inside her, curling upward, finding that rough patch that made her writhe.

—Three —she begged—. Put in three.

I added a third finger and she let out a long, guttural moan that could be heard over the music. I fucked her with my hand, in and out hard, while continuing to rub her clit with my thumb in quick circles. The wet sound of my fingers going in and out of her cunt mixed with her gasps, with the music, with the murmur of the audience that had stopped pretending to look elsewhere.

Daniela threw her head back.

I watched her. Her lips were parted, her hair spread out across the stage, her eyes closed and that expression of someone who is no longer thinking about anything except what she feels. Her nipples were erect, her skin shining with sweat, her thighs trembling around my hand. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life, and that included watching her dance for the last twenty minutes.

I sped up.

She responded by lifting her hips to meet every movement, going along with her whole body, losing control of the composure she always kept even when she danced, even when she seduced an entire audience. There was no composure now. Only urgency. Only a wet cunt swallowing my fingers to the hilt again and again, only a mouth moaning curse words that became more and more incoherent.

—Don’t stop —she begged, and it wasn’t a voice I had heard before. It was a voice without a filter, without distance, without the mask of confidence Daniela always wore—. I’m gonna come, fuck, I’m gonna come, don’t stop.

I didn’t stop.

I lowered my head and caught her clit between my lips while I kept pumping the three fingers in and out hard. I sucked hard, licking quickly with the tip of my tongue, not letting go, while I fucked her with my hand at the same rhythm.

Her walls clenched around my fingers. She screamed, or something like a scream, her back arched and her hands gripping my shoulders with a force that would leave marks. She came intensely and for a long time, with her whole body involved, trembling, clamping down so hard I could barely move my fingers, while a hot stream soaked the insides of her thighs and drenched my wrist. She kept coming for several seconds, arched, her mouth open in a moan that didn’t end.

When she finally collapsed against the stage, I slowly pulled my fingers out and brought them to my mouth. I sucked them one by one, watching her, and she watched me with half-lidded eyes, still breathing hard.

—Come here —she whispered, and tugged me up.

She set me astride her face, with my knees beside her head. She ripped my panties off in one pull and grabbed my hips to lower me onto her mouth. I felt her tongue opening me, long and hot, going from my entrance to my clit in a single lick.

—Ride my face —she said from below—. Fuck my mouth.

And I did. I started moving my hips on top of her, rubbing my cunt against her mouth with absolutely no decency, clutching the edge of the stage so I wouldn’t lose my balance. She sucked me hungrily, pushed her tongue inside me, trapped my clit with her lips, dug her nails into my ass cheeks to press me harder against her face.

I didn’t last long. I’d been building this up for years and there was no way to hold out. When I felt her fingers spreading my ass cheeks and the tip of her tongue brushing my hole too, I broke. I came on her mouth with a cry I no longer cared who heard, trembling, riding her face through the last contraction, while she kept licking me without letting go.

Then silence, or what passes for silence when there’s music in the background and dozens of people watching from the tables.

I let myself fall and lay down beside her on the stage. Neither of us spoke for a moment. We were both naked, sweaty, our legs still tangled and our hair stuck to our faces.

—How long have you been thinking about this? —she asked at last, still staring at the ceiling.

—Years —I answered without hesitation.

She turned toward me. She smiled in a way I hadn’t seen before, or maybe had always seen and never understood.

—Me too —she said.

***

That’s what I imagine when I close my eyes and think about her.

Daniela exists for real. She works at a municipal office Monday through Friday and at the Crimson on weekends. She’s been my best friend for more than ten years. She’s exactly as I described her: the body, the hair, the eyes that change color depending on the light.

Everything else is what I’d like to happen someday.

The fantasy always ends the same way, at that moment when we look at each other from the stage and anything seems possible. When I wake from it, Daniela is still my best friend who knows nothing about any of this, and I’m still the one watching her dance from the safe distance of what is never said.

Even if that distance feels a little smaller every time.