The Teacher Who Answered My Ad That Afternoon

It started on a Tuesday in May, with the cold from the south almost in, when my phone vibrated on the kitchen table while I was finishing a sandwich I hadn’t even heated up properly. The message came from an unknown number and the question was simple: how much did I charge.

I’d had the ad up on a social network for months, one of those that gets hidden among ads for nails and home haircuts. It said something like “professional massages with relaxing finish.” Anyone with two brain cells to rub together understood. I only saw men because I felt safer that way, because I controlled the situation better and because, frankly, they were the ones who paid without haggling. But that message wasn’t from a man.

Marisela — I later learned her name was Marisela, though we started without names — asked me twice whether I’d be up for giving a woman a session. The first answer I typed said no, thanks. I deleted it before sending it. The second said yes, but more expensive. I deleted that one too.

I’m a lesbian. I’m making that clear because in my line of work that confuses more than one person. My then partner, Daniela, had been with me seven years, and the last two we spent arguing in whispers so we wouldn’t wake the neighbors. She knew what I did for a living. We had talked about it and, in theory, she had accepted it as a temporary solution while the factory where I had worked for a decade remained closed. In practice, every time I came home, Daniela would turn over in bed and pretend to be asleep.

I hadn’t touched her in months. I hadn’t been touched in months with real desire, because my clients, however nice they were, wanted something very specific and very fast: for me to suck their dick and let them come in my mouth or in my hand, pay up, and that was that. When I read Marisela’s message for the third time, I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time: genuine curiosity. And a little fear.

I replied with my rate and made it clear it was the first time I’d agreed to a woman. She answered with a fourteen-second voice note. She had a low, calm voice, with that cadence of someone used to speaking in front of a classroom. She told me it was her first time paying for something like this too, and that if I had doubts she understood. I didn’t have doubts.

We arranged to meet at her house the following Thursday, at four in the afternoon, while her daughter was in a swimming class that ended at six.

***

I got myself ready slowly. I hadn’t dressed like that for myself since I turned thirty, and that had been a while ago. I chose a lingerie set I’d kept in the bottom drawer, a wine-colored one I had never worn because Daniela hated ruffles. Over it I put on a light black dress, no bra, and a pair of thigh-high stockings that stayed up on their own. I did my eye makeup. I sprayed perfume on my neck, the nape of my neck, my wrists and, I don’t know why, behind my knees too.

The address was in a quiet neighborhood, with low houses and vines on the fences. Marisela lived in a ground-floor apartment with a small patio and an old fig tree. I rang the bell and waited. Thirty seconds passed. A minute. I started thinking she’d changed her mind and I’d have to go back with the worst feeling in the world. And then the door opened.

She was shorter than I had imagined. She must have been in her forties, dark hair with some gray at the temples and big, brown, frightened eyes. She wore an oversized sweater and linen pants. She smelled of citrus cologne and something older underneath, like bar soap.

“Come in,” she said, stepping aside.

The living room was intentionally dim, with only one lamp on and the curtain drawn. On the coffee table there was an open bottle of wine and two glasses. Also a tray of cheeses neither of us was going to touch.

“Don’t be mad if I drink slowly,” she said as she poured. “I’m not used to this.”

“Take all the time you want,” I answered.

We talked for a while about unimportant things. About her job — she taught literature at a high school in the area — about mine — I lied and told her I was studying nursing — about the heat that week and the fig tree in the patio, which gave huge figs in February. Every so often, Marisela looked at my mouth a second too long and then looked away. I let her look.

At one point, the air filled with those tiny bugs that show up around lamps in May. One of them flew down my back neckline. I twisted a little and, before I thought twice, I asked her a favor.

“Scratch me? Here, I can’t reach,” I said, turning my back to her.

It took her two seconds to understand it was an excuse. I felt her cold hand against my skin, soft, hesitant. She ran her fingers down my spine to where the dress fabric ended. I said nothing. Neither did she.

I turned around without stepping away. We were a handspan apart. She had a small mole above her lip that I hadn’t noticed before, and her eyes were very wide, as if waiting for me to decide for both of us. I decided.

I kissed her slowly. Barely a brush, so she could pull back if she wanted. She didn’t pull back. I parted her lips with my tongue and she met it with a shiver, awkward at first, searching inside my mouth as if she had never kissed anyone like that before. I kissed her neck under the ear, and a low moan, almost embarrassed, escaped her from somewhere she’d kept closed for a long time. I ran my tongue along the rim of her ear and bit the lobe, and I felt her knees go weak against mine. I grabbed one of her tits over the sweater, without asking permission, and she let out a little “ah” that was almost a plea. That was the first proof the afternoon wasn’t going to be enough.

“Come on,” she said after a long while, her voice rough. “Let’s go to the bedroom.”

“Okay,” I answered, and followed her down the narrow hallway.

***

The bedroom had a pale bedspread, a dresser with empty perfume bottles, and a crucifix above the headboard. I didn’t say anything about the crucifix. Marisela closed the door as if the rest of the world were listening, and I liked that. I liked thinking I was her secret.

We kept kissing standing up beside the bed, with that awkwardness of first times: hers, because she had never been with a stranger, and mine, because I had never been with a woman in a transaction. I slid my hands under her sweater and found warm skin, soft sides, a back with a bra clasp that no functional designer had solved. I unfastened it by instinct.

“Stop,” she said suddenly.

I stopped.

“Is it okay if I leave the light on?” she asked, glancing at the bedside lamp. “I want to see you.”

“It’s okay,” I told her.

She pulled my dress over my head carefully, like someone unwrapping a gift. When she saw the wine-colored lingerie, she went still. I smiled.

“You like it?”

She nodded without speaking. She was staring at my tits pressed against the lace bra as if she had never seen a pair of tits in her life, even though she had her own. I took her hand and put it there, right on top. I pressed it so she’d learn. I ran my thumb over hers, so she’d feel how my nipple was hardening under the fabric. Marisela swallowed.

“You can take it off me,” I said.

She took it off. It took her two tries with the back clasp, and when it finally dropped to the floor she stared at my breasts with a hungry expression she didn’t even know she had. She bent down and sucked one nipple, timidly at first, then harder, and I grabbed the back of her neck and pressed so she wouldn’t slack off. I ran my other hand through her hair. I told her softly, like that, keep going, suck me well. And she did. She ran her tongue under my breast, bit me slowly, wrapped it entirely in her mouth, and I started getting wet as if I were twenty again.

Then I undressed her. She didn’t have a model’s body and she knew it. I noticed in the way she crossed her arms over her stomach as soon as she took off the sweater. I opened her arms slowly and kissed her shoulders, her collarbones, her breasts, which were bigger than they looked and had some old pregnancy stretch marks that made her tense. I left a long kiss right there, on the marks, until she softened. I pulled down her pants and panties together, in one yank. When I saw her naked, with dark hair between her legs and a glossy thread already running down the inner part of her thigh, my mouth went dry.

“You’re soaked,” I said, running two fingers over her cunt without putting them in.

“I don’t know why I’m like this,” she answered, covering her face with her arm.

“I do.”

We fell onto the bed tangled together. The clothes ended up everywhere. I would later remember that her underwear showed up the next day under the nightstand, folded carefully, as if Marisela had put it away so no one would see it.

I arranged her face down and ran my hands over her back first. After all, I was being paid to give a massage. I kneaded her shoulders, the base of her neck, her sides. I worked down to her waist, and then a little farther. I spread her ass cheeks with both hands and blew gently between them, just enough for her to feel the hot air against her ass and cunt at the same time. A sound escaped her, half laugh, half sigh, ending in a moan when I ran my tongue all the way through, from bottom to top, from the clit to the rim of her asshole.

“Oh my God,” she said into the pillow. “Oh my God, what are you doing to me.”

“I haven’t even started,” I said, and buried my tongue in her cunt from behind.

I took my time there. I opened her lips with my thumbs and licked inside, searching for the clit with the tip and then going back down. Marisela lifted her ass against my face without realizing it, offering herself to me. I sank my teeth carefully into one cheek and put my tongue in again, deeper, until it dripped down my chin. She tasted strong, like real woman, not like soap, and I liked it so much I kept sucking her until I felt her tremble. I pulled her back at the last second so she wouldn’t come like that.

“Turn over,” I told her.

She turned over with a red face, breathing through her mouth, and I moved in behind her, pressed close, and held her from behind when she turned onto her side again. I wrapped one arm around her waist and pulled her against my pubis. I kissed the nape of her neck. I slowly bit the edge of her ear. One hand went up to her breasts and I pinched one nipple between thumb and forefinger, squeezing it until she moaned. The other went down her hip, along the inner thigh, until I found her. She was drenched. More than I expected from someone so frightened.

“Oh, sorry,” she whispered.

“Don’t apologize for that,” I told her in her ear. “I love the way your cunt feels. Like that, dripping for me.”

I slid two fingers in without hurry, all the way to the hilt, and she jolted and then softened and swallowed them whole. I started moving slowly, searching for the angle, reading what made her hold her breath. When I found it, inside, that spongy spot women know and men take a lifetime to learn, I kept at it. And again. And again. I curved my fingers and rubbed her there patiently while my thumb searched for her clit outside. I pressed her tighter against me, whispered things I don’t remember, told her I wanted to feel her, told her to let go. I bit her neck carefully enough not to leave a mark.

“Come,” I told her in her ear. “Come in my hand, come on, I want to feel it.”

Marisela came like that, clenched against my body, biting the pillow so she wouldn’t scream, while I held one breast with one hand and moved my fingers inside her with the other. I felt her walls closing around my fingers, one long pulse, and a new wetness running down her thigh. When she finished, she kept trembling for a long while. I rested my forehead against the back of her neck and let her tremble, without taking my fingers out, feeling the aftershocks of her climax from within.

***

I would have fallen asleep right there, pressed against her back, smelling her apple shampoo, if I weren’t who I am. But I’m insatiable and always have been. Once is never enough. Twice isn’t either.

Marisela turned around, eyes shining and face flushed, and started apologizing for finishing so quickly. I covered her mouth with a kiss and slid my hand between her legs. She was still hot, swollen, with a sheen that made me lose my head. I brought my fingers to my mouth in front of her and licked off what was hers slowly, looking into her eyes so she’d learn how it was.

“Taste yourself,” I told her, and put a finger in her mouth.

She sucked my finger with her whole tongue, never breaking eye contact, and I felt a tug low in my belly that finished lighting me up.

“Stay still,” I told her.

I opened her legs with my knee and settled on top of her, but not the way anyone had ever taught me in any manual, rather the way my body taught me. I slid one leg under mine and hooked the other over it, in that scissor position that works for everything, and pressed my sex against hers just enough for them to rub. I felt the heat of her cunt against mine, the wetness of both mixing, her swollen clit against mine. The first thrust drew a moan out of me, not her. I was more turned on than I had allowed myself to admit.

I moved slowly at first, feeling how our skins caught each other wetly, how every push opened my lips and hers, how our clits found each other little by little. Marisela looked up at me from below with her mouth open, amazed that this was possible, that two women could fuck like this, with no plastic, no lies, cunt against cunt, period.

“It can happen,” I told her, guessing what she was thinking. “It can be like this. Look.”

I took her hands and set them on my hips. I marked the rhythm. Without words I said: follow me. She started pushing up against me from below, awkward at first, then desperate, then hungry. Every rub sent something up my spine, a current that couldn’t find anywhere to stay.

I sped up. I leaned back, planted my palms on her thighs and rode her with my eyes closed. I watched her cunt opening against mine, glossy, tangled with mine, and I almost came from seeing it alone. Her breasts shook with every thrust, the stretch marks on her belly shifting, her mouth left open in a continuous moan that never stopped. Marisela started moaning louder, forgetting her daughter, the crucifix, the neighbor upstairs.

“Tell me how you feel,” I begged, gasping. “Say it.”

“You’re… you’re fucking me,” she said, blushing. “You’re fucking me, oh my God, you’re fucking me.”

“That’s right,” I said. “That’s how you’ll be fucked from now on, whenever you want.”

I dropped one hand and went for my clit with two fingers, without stopping rubbing against her, and asked her to do the same. We masturbated ourselves at the same time, sex against sex, our hands busy with our own, looking at each other, and that was too much. I wasn’t thinking about Daniela either. In that room there were only the two of us and the wet sound of our sex searching for each other, and the sticky slap of fingers, and the moans that were no longer low.

I came first that time, hard, with a long cry that escaped me without permission. I felt the orgasm rise from my feet, shake me whole, soak her thigh. Marisela followed a few seconds later, grabbing my hips with both hands so I wouldn’t pull away, pushing up against me to squeeze out the last contraction. I collapsed on top of her, both of us sticky, both of us breathless, both of us still throbbing in the pubis.

She stayed silent for a long while, stroking my back with a distracted touch that I liked. She ran one finger through the wetness between our legs, mixed together, and sucked it again, learning. Then she said:

“Can I ask you to come back?”

I laughed against her neck.

“You’d have to pay me again,” I said.

“I’ll pay you whatever you want.”

I didn’t answer then. I got up, showered in her bathroom with someone else’s soap, and left before her daughter got back from the pool. At the door, while I tied my shoes, Marisela grabbed my arm and kissed me again, without the urgency of before, with that sad calm of things that are just beginning and already know they won’t end well.

That was the first of many afternoons. The teacher and I, twice a week, when her daughter went swimming. Daniela kept pretending to be asleep. Marisela kept paying. And I, for months, stopped thinking about my clients’ happy ending and started waiting for hers.