The Night I Tasted My Best Friend’s Milk

I had been at Marisol’s house for three days when the silence between us began to weigh more than words. I had come up into the mountains to help her with the baby; that’s what I told my mother, that’s what I kept repeating to myself on the bus ride. But the night before, in the kitchen, while I was washing the cups, she had come up behind me. She kissed me on the cheek. And I, without thinking, turned my face. Our lips barely brushed, for a second, maybe less. Enough for neither of us to sleep for the rest of the night.

In the morning we avoided talking about it. We had breakfast in silence, she with little Tomás in her arms, me staring into my cup of coffee. The house cooled down quickly in those mountain areas, and the only stove that worked was the one in the living room. That was where we spent the hours: her nursing the child, me pretending to read a novel I’d had open to page three since Monday.

—Camila —she said suddenly, without lifting her eyes from the baby—. About last night…

—There’s no need to talk about it.

—Yes, there is.

Her voice broke a little. Marisol never cried out loud. Since Iván had died on that bend in the road, five months earlier, I had seen her cry twice, both times in silence, biting her lip so as not to scare the child. This time she bit her lip too, but it didn’t quite work.

—I kissed you —she said—. And you didn’t pull away.

—I didn’t pull away.

—Why?

I didn’t know how to answer. I had spent years searching for that same answer in a thousand different ways. Marisol had been my best friend for more than a decade. We had shared bunks in university camps, secrets over long lunches, tears after every breakup. When she married Iván, I cried at her wedding, and no one ever really knew why. When he died, I was the first to arrive at this house.

—I kissed you last night because I’ve wanted to for months —she murmured—. And because I can’t find any other way to tell you what I think when you look at me.

Tomás let out a soft whimper and started rooting for the breast. Marisol undid her nightgown with one hand, never taking her eyes off me. The gray morning light fell across her shoulder, and I saw the little boy latch on and start swallowing with that hoarse avidness very hungry babies have. Her skin was paler than I remembered, crisscrossed with fine veins marked by breastfeeding.

***

That night I slept badly. The guest room was at the end of the hall, separated from hers by only a thin wall. I heard every movement of the baby, every step Marisol took when she got up to soothe him. Around three-thirty, I heard him cry again. And I heard, too, a sob that wasn’t the child’s.

I put my sweater over my nightgown and crossed the hall barefoot. My cunt was already wet before I touched the door, and I was ashamed to admit it even to myself. I had spent three nights masturbating in silence thinking about her, covering my mouth with the pillow so she wouldn’t hear me come.

The door was ajar. I pushed it gently. Marisol was sitting on the edge of the bed, the baby against her chest, completely naked from the waist up. The table lamp lit her from behind, and I saw that her face was wet, not with milk, with tears.

—Come in —she said, without looking up—. It’s all right. Come in.

I went in. I closed the door. I sat down on the low chair in front of the bed, the same one where we used to talk until dawn when I stayed over years ago. Tomás was suckling with half-closed eyes, content. Marisol held him with one arm and used the other hand to wipe her face.

—I don’t know what’s wrong with me today —she whispered—. I can’t stop crying.

—It’s the lack of sleep.

—It’s not just that.

She looked up and met my eyes. And then something happened I hadn’t imagined: the other breast, the one the baby wasn’t on, began to leak milk all on its own. A warm white thread ran down to her navel, followed her abdomen, and disappeared into the wrinkled nightgown at her hips.

She didn’t move. Neither did I.

—It happens when I get upset —she said, almost apologetically—. Iván used to say it was the body being rude. That it didn’t ask anyone’s permission.

I laughed despite myself. She laughed too, and the laugh was so sad that I had to swallow hard to keep from crying myself.

***

—Come closer —she said after a while.

She said it softly, as if she didn’t want to frighten me. I went closer. I knelt on the rug at her feet. The milk kept dripping, now more slowly, and the sweet smell mixed with the lavender soap we’d both used since boarding school.

—Marisol…

—You don’t have to do anything —she cut in—. Just stay close. I need someone close.

I rested my forehead against her knee. Her skin was warm, and her thighs were firm from walking so much in the mountains. I ran my hand over her calf slowly, not knowing what I was doing. She let me.

The baby fell asleep against her breast. Marisol carefully detached him, stood up with me still kneeling in front of her, and laid him in the cradle beside the bed. When she sat back down, the nightgown had slipped all the way down. She was facing me, almost naked, with milk still sliding down her belly.

—Do you want to? —she asked.

—What?

—Taste it.

No one had ever asked me like that before. It wasn’t a command, it wasn’t one of those seductive invitations from the movies. It was a simple question, almost childish, asked by a woman who was afraid of the answer.

—Yes —I said.

I leaned in. I brought my mouth to her left nipple, the one that was dripping more, and brushed her skin with my lips before closing them around it. The first taste surprised me: sweet, yes, but also with an earthy note, almost salty, like spring water that has passed through the ground. I swallowed. I swallowed again. I sucked harder, searching for the milk, and she gave it to me: a hot stream filled my mouth and slid down my throat. Marisol let out such a deep moan that the nipple hardened between my lips, thick, swollen, still leaking between sucks. I bit the tip carefully. I licked her whole areola. I sucked her the way the baby did, but slower, deeper, until I could feel her breasts throbbing against my face.

I ran my hand down her back. I felt her heart beating against my cheek. I kept drinking, slowly, because I didn’t know how to do it any other way. The other breast was still dripping, neglected, and I lifted my hand and squeezed it until a thin jet came out and wet my fingers. I sucked my fingers in front of her. Marisol bit her lip.

—Camila…

Her voice was different. Lower, tighter. I felt her body contract against mine, her hips shifting forward a little, her knees parting slowly without me having asked for anything. I let go of her breast. I lifted my face. Her eyes were closed and her mouth open, and one hand had slipped on its own between her thighs, under the fallen nightgown. She was touching her cunt in front of me without even realizing it.

—Don’t stop —she murmured.

***

I went back to the nipple. This time I switched sides, found the other one, the one the baby had partly emptied. Barely anything came out. I sucked harder, hungry, and she thanked me with a long gasp. The milk began to flow again, thicker, slower, and I swallowed it all. I bit the tip of the nipple lightly between my milk teeth, just enough to feel the skin tighten in my mouth. Marisol sighed harder and grabbed my hair with one hand. Not to guide me: to steady herself. I could feel her knees going weak even though she was sitting down.

I slid my other hand up her thigh. Slowly. Waiting for her to stop me. She didn’t. I brushed the inside of her leg, that soft place where the thigh stops being hard and turns warm. I pulled her own hand away from between her legs and put mine in its place. She was soaked through. The hair there stuck to her skin, her cunt was leaking down her thighs, and when I ran one finger through the open slit I felt her clit swell against my fingertip, thick, throbbing.

—Are you sure? —I asked.

—I haven’t been sure of anything for five months —she said—. Only of you. Put it in. Please. Put it in.

I slid a finger inside her. She swallowed it whole. She was so wet it went in without resistance, and after a few seconds I slipped in a second finger. Her cunt clenched around me, hot, pulsing, and I could feel how swollen everything was inside, as if she’d been waiting for me for months. I started fucking her with my fingers slowly, watching her face. Marisol gripped the edge of the bed with both hands, threw her head back, and opened her legs wider.

I let go of her breast again. I straightened a little to kiss her mouth, without pulling my fingers out of her cunt, and this kiss was nothing like the one in the kitchen that night. This kiss was long, slow, tasting of her own milk between us. I pushed my tongue deep into her mouth while I kept pushing my fingers deep into her cunt. Marisol grabbed my face with both hands and kissed me as if she’d been waiting for years, and she sucked my tongue as if she wanted to rip it out.

We moved to the bed. I took off her nightgown completely. I took off my sweater, my own nightgown, my panties, everything. We were both naked under the yellow light of the lamp, she still with skin wet with milk and tears, me trembling, not from cold. I saw her whole body for the first time: mother’s heavy breasts, with blue veins and dark, broad nipples; the soft belly marked with stretch marks; the wide hips, the pubic hair, and that pink, open cunt shining between her thighs.

I traced her with my mouth. I kissed her neck, her shoulders, the heavy breasts that were still dripping a little when I touched them. I sucked her nipples again, one and then the other, alternating, until my mouth filled with milk and I spat a little between her breasts and licked it up. I licked the sweat from her sternum. I went down slowly, kissed the softened abdomen of pregnancy, slipped my tongue into her navel, bit her wide hips. I reached her pelvis, the dark pubic hair she had never shaved and that smelled like her, like her soap, like her mother-sweat, like hot cunt. I looked at her with my eyes. She told me yes with the smallest nod.

I tasted her. The flavor was different from the milk, more intense, more acidic, more alive. I ran my whole tongue from bottom to top, from her ass to her clit, and I felt her belly trembling against my forehead. Marisol arched her back and pressed the back of her hand to her mouth so she wouldn’t make noise. The baby was still asleep a meter away from us, and that care of hers seemed to me the tenderest thing in the world.

I parted her cunt lips with two fingers and found her clit with the tip of my tongue. I found it big, hard, throbbing. I sucked it the way I had sucked her nipple, taking it into my whole mouth, drawing it inward. Marisol let out a muffled cry and shoved her fist into her mouth. I pushed my tongue into the hole, deep, as deep as I could, fucking her slowly with it, and then returned to the clit. I licked in circles. I licked from top to bottom. I buried my nose in her pubic hair and breathed in her scent while I kept sucking the little bud.

I moved my tongue slowly, searching for the rhythm that would make her breathe harder. I found it quickly. Marisol grabbed my hair again, and this time she was guiding me, saying nothing, setting the pace with her pelvis. I slid two fingers inside her again while I sucked her clit, and searched inside her for that rough little spot, the one up top, and rubbed it relentlessly. I felt her thighs tightening on both sides of my face, closing around my ears, her breathing speeding up until it turned into short, hoarse, urgent gasps. A low, nearly smothered “fuck me” escaped her, and that “fuck me” in her voice squeezed my cunt like a shock.

And then she broke.

I felt her whole body convulse. I felt, too, a new wetness, different from the one before, hotter, a gush that soaked my chin, my neck, my breasts. A thread of milk slipped from both nipples at once too, and I watched her coming and leaking from top and bottom, soaking the entire bed. I didn’t pull away. I kept sucking her as she came, gentler, until she stopped trembling and pushed my face away with both hands because she couldn’t take any more.

She sat up, grabbed my shoulders, and laid me flat on my back. She climbed on top of me, still breathless, and kissed my mouth full of her. She licked her lips. She dragged her breasts across my face and put a nipple in my mouth. I sucked. I swallowed the milk she had left. She wedged one knee between my thighs and pressed it against my cunt, and I was so wet that my skin stuck to hers at the first touch.

—Open up —she whispered in my ear, and bit my earlobe.

I spread my legs. She rode me with her thigh pressed against my cunt and started rubbing me, slowly, looking me in the face. I felt her open my lips with her knee, felt my clit trapped against the hard skin of her thigh, felt her leg growing wet with me. I grabbed her ass with both hands and helped her move on top of me, setting the rhythm myself too, grinding against her like a bitch in heat.

She got off me. She spread my legs wide open. She looked at my cunt for a second before lowering her head, and then she ate me whole. The first lick made my hips lift off the bed. The second tore a moan from me that I had to smother with the back of my hand. She sucked my clit with the same hunger her son used to suck her breast, and that comparison embarrassed me and turned me on at the same time. She put two fingers in me and curled them upward. She searched inside me. She found it. She rubbed it mercilessly while she licked my bud, and within two minutes I was biting my hand too so I wouldn’t scream, my legs trembling around her head and my cunt exploding against her mouth.

After that I let myself collapse beside her. Marisol turned toward me and curled up against my chest. I held her. We stayed like that for a good while, saying nothing, hearing only the baby’s quiet breathing on the other side of the room. She ran her tongue over my nipple, absentmindedly, as if she couldn’t stop tasting me, and I stroked her sweaty hair.

—I’m scared —she said at last.

—Of what?

—That tomorrow you’ll regret it.

—I’m not going to regret it.

—How do you know?

—Because I’ve wanted you like this for twelve years —I said, and saying it out loud made me realize it was true. Twelve exact years. Since that university camp where we slept in the same bunk and I couldn’t understand why it was so hard for me to close my eyes, why I touched my cunt in silence in the top bunk while listening to her breathe below me.

She fell silent. I felt a tear fall onto my shoulder.

—Iván knew —she murmured—. He told me once. That if I ever lost you, I’d lose everything.

I didn’t know what to say. I kissed her forehead. I stroked her back until she fell asleep, one hand still resting on my breast and her mouth slightly open against my neck.

When dawn came, the baby woke hungry. Marisol sat up, still naked, and lifted him from the cradle. She came back to the bed, sat against the headboard, and put him to her breast. I stayed lying beside her, watching her, with my cunt still sore from the night and the marks of her teeth on the insides of my thighs.

—Stay a few more days —she said, without looking at me.

—I’m staying all winter —I answered.

She smiled, and this time the smile had no shadows. I rested my cheek against her bare thigh and closed my eyes. The baby was suckling with that hoarse strength of the world’s very first morning, and for the first time in five months, in my friend’s house, there was peace.