The Singer Dragged Me Out of the Crowd in Pink Handcuffs

Two songs before the end of the show, I started regretting coming. Not the concert itself—Daniela was singing better than ever, and the whole stadium was singing along—but having turned down the backstage pass that had reached my hotel that same afternoon. I’d done it on purpose. I knew that if I saw her in her dressing room, with that smile I’d known since our years in Buenos Aires, I’d end up doing something I wouldn’t be able to talk about with anyone afterward.

I was wearing a short black dress, low heels, and an engagement ring on the ring finger of my left hand. Marcelo had put it there six months earlier on a terrace overlooking the river, and he was the kind of man any friend would have picked for me. Calm, patient, with that sort of kindness you can’t fake. Which is exactly why I’d gone down to the floor to blend in with the crowd instead of staying backstage, where I would have been three hallways and one door away from Daniela.

I thought the dress would help me disappear. Black, simple, like a thousand other girls in the stadium. I didn’t count on the projector camera, or on the trained eye of someone who’d spent ten years looking for familiar faces from a stage.

—Last song! —she shouted from above, and the crowd roared.

I raised my phone, pretended to record the ending, and hid my face behind the screen. Bad idea. The camera found me in less than three seconds.

—Wait. Wait a moment. —Her voice cut through the stadium air. The music went silent. Twenty thousand people turned as one toward where the beam of light pointed at me—. I know that face. That face owes me explanations.

I felt my cheeks burn. I smiled, waved with my free hand, tried to dissolve the moment like it was some private joke between friends. It didn’t work.

—Bring her up. I want her up here.

Two firm hands grabbed me by the waist before I could protest. A guard with an earpiece guided me up a side stair while the crowd applauded as if I were part of the act. When I reached the stage, Daniela already had the handcuffs in her hand. Pink. Plastic, but with a real lock.

—You’re under arrest —she announced into the microphone, with that serious face that would have been hilarious in any other situation—. For coming without warning. For wearing that dress. For both things.

She snapped the cuffs onto my wrists with a dry click. Then she leaned in and, away from the microphone, whispered in my ear:

—If you want them off, you’re going to have to come find me. And I’ll take them off when you’re so wet you can’t close your legs.

Her breath hit my cheek. She smelled like mint and clean sweat. I didn’t answer. I only nodded faintly and let myself be led back down to the floor amid the audience’s laughter, because they thought it was all part of the number. Between my legs, my panties were already sticking to my lips.

***

The last song lasted four minutes. For me it lasted half a lifetime. I stayed at the side of the stage, my wrists bound at belly height, watching Daniela say goodbye to twenty thousand people with a broad wave and two kisses blown into the air. When she came down, she didn’t look at me. She passed by me, said “come on” without turning her head, and disappeared into a black-painted side corridor.

I followed her. I had no other choice, of course, but I didn’t want to have one.

The coordinator crossed paths with us twice and lowered his eyes both times. The people around Daniela that night knew how to read scenes: when to offer water, when to offer silence, when to disappear. We reached the end of the hallway. Last door on the right. She opened it, let me go in first, and locked it behind me.

It wasn’t a normal dressing room. It was an empty room with white walls, a double bed in the middle covered with a clean sheet, and a low table at the side. A single lamp lit it from a corner. On the table there was an unopened bottle of water, a folded towel, and a dark wooden box secured with a small latch.

—What is this? —I asked.

—What I always wished I had when we talked on the phone and you hung up too soon. When I hung up with my hand inside my panties, thinking about your mouth.

***

I lifted my wrists in front of her.

—Take them off me.

—When you’ve earned it. When you’ve licked me the way you should.

She walked toward me slowly, unhurried. She put her hands on my waist and pushed me two steps back until the wall stopped me. My back bumped softly against the plaster. She raised my cuffed arms above my head and left them there, holding them with one hand.

—Daniela, I’m getting married in March —I murmured, looking at her mouth.

—I know. And tonight I’m going to fuck you in a way he won’t fuck you for twenty years.

—This shouldn’t be happening.

—I know. Open your legs.

I obeyed without thinking. I spread my heels a little and she slid her thigh between mine, pressing hard against my cunt over the fabric. She kissed my neck first, right where the ear turns into the jaw. I felt my own breathing speed up and felt ashamed that it sped up so quickly. Her free hand went down my back, found the dress zipper, and pulled it all the way open with a movement that could not have been the first time she’d rehearsed it.

—Marcelo’s going to have you for the rest of your life —she said against my skin—. Tonight this cunt is mine.

The dress fell to the floor in one motion. I stayed against the wall in a black lace bra, matching panties, and my heels still on. The cuffs were still above my head. The light from the single lamp hit me diagonally and made me feel more naked than I was.

Daniela hooked one cup of my bra down with two fingers, without unfastening it, and left one breast exposed. My nipple had hardened just from the cold of the room. She bent slightly and sucked it fully into her mouth, wrapping it with her tongue, then biting with her teeth just enough to make me moan. She repeated it with the other one. She still held my wrists against the wall with one hand; with the other she squeezed my free breast, rolling the nipple between her fingers.

—Look at me —she said, lifting her face without letting go of my breast—. I want you to watch me while I do it.

She went down. Slowly. She kissed below my breast, at my navel, at my hip. She knelt in front of me and kissed me over the lace. At first she didn’t take it off. She only kissed, nipped softly, let her hot breath go through the fabric. I closed my eyes. Her hands slid up and down my thighs in a caress that never seemed to end.

—You’re soaked —she murmured, and ran her tongue over my panties, flat and wide, from bottom to top—. Look how the fabric sticks to you. Marcelo’s never seen you like this, has he?

—No —I said, and hated myself for saying it out loud.

—Daniela —I said again after that, and I didn’t know whether it was a plea for her to stop or to keep going.

She pulled my panties down with her teeth. I felt them wet against my own skin as they passed over my knees. She took them off completely, held them up in front of me, and showed me the dark stain in the center before tossing them to the floor.

—This is for me —she said—. Don’t forget it.

Then she came back up, now with no last barrier between her mouth and my cunt. She opened my lips with two fingers, took her time looking at me up close, and blew slowly over my clit before touching me. I almost fell to my knees.

The first lick tore a sound out of me I had never made before. Long, deep, from some place in my chest I never used with Marcelo. Daniela smiled against me—I felt it more than saw it—and kept going. Slow at first, her flat tongue sweeping from my entrance to my clit in one long pass, again and again, as if she were eating something she didn’t want to run out of. Then she started aiming. Tight circles over my clit, the tip of her tongue small and precise, and suddenly she’d open her mouth all the way again and suck on everything.

When she slipped the first finger in, I cried out. Then the second. She curled them inside me, searching for that spot I could never quite find on my own, and when she hit it I knew because my legs trembled in a way I didn’t know legs could tremble.

—There —I said—. There, Daniela, don’t stop.

—I’m not stopping until you come in my mouth.

I lowered my bound wrists and grabbed her head. I pushed her against me. Nothing else mattered. Not the projector camera, not the hallway coordinator, not the cell phone vibrating in the pocket of the dress thrown on the floor. I mounted her face with both cuffed hands, moving my hips against her tongue, and she let me use her. She pulled her fingers out for a second, brought them to her mouth, sucked them while looking at me from below, and put them back inside me. Three this time.

—Tell me you’re going to come —she panted against my cunt.

—I’m going to come. I’m going to come. Oh, Daniela, I’m going to…

***

When she felt I was close, she stopped. Pulled her fingers out, moved her mouth away, and for a second I was left hanging in the air, moaning with nothing inside me, my thighs trembling with sheer emptiness.

—Not yet —she said—. Not here yet.

She took me by the wrists to the bed and turned me over. I rested my face and chest on the sheet, hips raised, the cuffs still in front, and felt her start again from behind. She spread my ass with both hands, shameless, and looked at all of me before touching me. Then she lowered her mouth. She ran her tongue from my clit to my other hole in one long line, and came back, and came back again. This time without stopping.

—My God —I said into the fabric.

—Say it again.

—My God. Daniela. My God.

She slid her fingers into me again, this time from behind, and with her free hand she found my clit from underneath. Both rhythms at once: in and out with her fingers, quick circles with her thumb. I buried my face in the sheet so I wouldn’t scream too loud and she yanked my hair upward.

—No. I want to hear you. I want to hear how you come apart.

I came like that, with my hips in the air, her fingers deep inside me, her mouth biting one cheek of my ass, and a scream that came out without permission. I felt the whole contraction, long, the kind that starts low and climbs up the spine to the nape of the neck. I hung from the cuffs against the sheet, trembling, and she didn’t pull her fingers out until I’d finished trembling completely.

When I was done, her hands were trembling too. She turned me over again, laid me on my back on the bed, and pulled a small key from the pocket of her jeans. She opened the handcuffs with a short motion. My wrists were marked, two parallel pink lines, and for some reason that—the physical proof of the night—pleased me more than everything that had come before.

—Your turn —she said.

—Yes —I answered—. My turn.

I turned her over. I pulled her black T-shirt over her head, unfastened her bra without looking, and took her jeans and panties down together in one motion. Daniela had always been taller than me, and naked she was even more so. She had the body of someone who sang for two hours straight and walked stages every night: firm, without excess, with that functional beauty that has nothing performative about it. Dark nipples, small, hard. Short-cropped pubic hair and a shine between her thighs that answered to the mouth before she did.

I kissed her on the mouth for the first time. Only then. Before that we’d done everything but that. Her lips tasted like me, like mint, and something older, some memory I didn’t want to track down just then. I put my whole tongue in her mouth, bit her lower lip, and she moaned with her mouth open against mine.

I sucked her neck, then her breasts, one after the other, unhurried, biting her nipples with my teeth until her nails dug into my back. I ran two fingers through her cunt while I kept at her breasts, just to feel how wet she was. She was drenched. My fingers slid in without resistance, sank to the knuckles, and she arched her back against my hand.

—Down —she asked—. Go down now.

I went down the way she had gone down on me. I took her by the hips, spread her legs with my shoulders, and heard her pant when I started using my tongue. I licked the outer lips first, slowly, one and then the other, leaving her waiting. Then I parted everything with my fingers and buried myself in her clit. Straight in. No detours. I had thought about doing this a thousand times. A thousand times I had cut it off in time. That night I didn’t cut anything off. I poured into every movement all the years I’d restrained myself, all the calls I let ring out, all the messages I deleted without answering.

I slid in two fingers and curled them the way she’d done to me. I felt her tighten around them. I started sucking her clit with my lips, enclosing it, tugging it slightly upward, while my tongue never stopped moving. She grabbed the back of my neck with both hands and pressed me against her cunt until I, too, ran out of breath. I didn’t care.

—Like that —she panted—, like that, don’t move, oh, like that, stay there…

I slid in a third finger. She opened her legs wider. I heard her say my name twice, three times, each time faster and softer, until her voice broke on the last one.

Daniela’s nails dug into my nape. Then my shoulders. Then my back. When she came, she shouted something that wasn’t a word and stayed there with her eyes closed, laughing and breathing hard at the same time. I felt the whole contraction in my mouth, long, and didn’t let go until she herself pushed my head up gently, because her clit couldn’t take any more.

I went up to kiss her. I ran my tongue over her mouth, still carrying her taste, and she sucked my fingers one by one.

—I had no idea —she said when she could speak— how much I needed you to come today.

—Neither did I, how much I wanted this to happen.

***

I climbed up beside her. I rested my head on her shoulder. We stayed silent for a long while, the single lamp casting light along one side of us and our feet still hanging off the bed. The whole stadium had emptied out beyond the room. You could barely hear, far away, the sound of a cleaning crew moving between the seats.

She rolled onto her elbow and looked at me. Her mascara was smudged, her hair stuck to her forehead, and she had a smile that was neither triumphant nor conspiratorial. It was a tired, honest smile. The smile that only appears afterward.

—Are you still getting married in March?

—I don’t know.

—That’s the first honest answer you’ve given me in six years.

I laughed. She laughed too, slowly, as if it hurt a little. She ran a hand through my hair, then over my face, then down my neck. She cupped a breast, paused at the nipple, played with it between two fingers with no urgency at all, like someone returning to a place she already knows is hers. There was no hurry. No schedule. For the first time in a long while, someone was touching me without already thinking about what would come next.

The phone in the pocket of the dress thrown on the floor vibrated for what felt like the hundredth time. This time neither of us looked. Daniela rested her forehead against mine and closed her eyes.

—Stay until daylight —she asked—. And let me fuck you one more time before then.

—I’ll stay. As many times as you want.

And I stayed. Still not knowing what I was going to do with the ring the next morning, not knowing what I was going to tell Marcelo, not knowing whether Daniela and I had a future or only that night. The only thing I knew, with a new and slightly frightened clarity, was that something that had been asleep inside me since I was twenty had just woken up and was never going to go quiet again.