What My Cook Put in My Food for Five Years

Mariela had been cooking for me for five years. Five years of lonely lunches at that table that was too big, five years of watching her appear through the kitchen door with a plate in each hand and her eyes always lowered. I was thirty-eight, she was twenty-six, and between us there was that invisible boundary that separates the ladies of the house from the employees in a house like mine.

Or at least that’s what I thought.

My husband had left three years earlier. Not for another woman or after a huge fight, but from a kind of accumulated exhaustion that eventually wears anyone down. He left me the house, the surname, the fortune, and an emptiness I learned to fill with paid visits on Fridays and red wine for the rest of the week. Mariela cooked for me, ironed for me, drew my bath for me. She had never held my gaze for more than three seconds at a time.

That afternoon the stew tasted different. Not different as in spiced differently or saltier. Something else. A low note, almost sweet, that lingered on the palate after every bite. I tasted it three times before admitting it out loud.

—Mariela —I called, in the soft tone I reserve for when I’m not angry but want immediate attention.

She appeared in the dining room, drying her hands on her apron.

—Yes, ma’am?

—The food tastes different today.

—Did you like it?

—I loved it. That’s why I’m asking. Did you use a new ingredient?

She took two steps closer. I saw how, without quite trying to hide it, she tugged the neckline of her blouse down. The tan skin of her chest peeked out a little more than usual, and for the first time in five years I allowed myself to look at her without immediately looking away.

—A very special one, ma’am.

—Which one?

—A good cook doesn’t reveal her secrets.

I stood up. The chair scraped against the marble with that sound that in my house always means something. I ended up in front of her, barely taller, and the air between our bodies filled with an electricity I recognized immediately because I had felt it before, but never with a woman and never with someone who took home a paycheck under my roof.

—I promise I won’t tell anyone.

—All right. —She lowered her voice until it became a whisper—. Today’s ingredient was juice from my cunt.

I raised my hand to slap her before she finished the sentence.

—You insolent girl!

—It’s not the first time —she said without backing away, looking me in the eyes—. I’ve been doing it for years. Sticking two fingers in my cunt while I stir the pot, dribbling them over the plate before serving it to you. You never noticed.

Five years. Five years of tasting that woman’s body without knowing it. Five years of putting something of hers in my mouth every day without realizing. The anger I felt was intense, but underneath it there was something else, a vibration I recognized as shame and as something more, something I wasn’t going to allow myself to name.

—How dare you alter the food of the lady of the house? Who do you think you are?

—I do the same thing you do on Friday nights, ma’am. When your visitors come and I stay in my room pretending I can’t hear them fucking you against the headboard.

I felt the heat rise up my neck.

—What I do with my money is none of your business.

—Of course not, ma’am. —She smiled for the first time in the conversation—. But I’ve also seen you on the nights no one comes. I’ve seen you shove three fingers all the way in, rub your clit with the other hand, and bite the pillow so no one hears you come. And I’ve wanted to tell you so many times that there’d be no need to bite anything if you called me to lick it for you.

I took a step toward her with my hand still in the air. I was going to slap her. I was going to fire her. I was going to break something. What I did was grab her apron and yank it down with such force that a button popped off and bounced against the table leg.

—You can fire me, ma’am —she said, not blinking—. Or you can taste me and tell me whether you like me better on the plate or straight from the source.

***

I shoved her against the table.

Her skirt rode up at once against the edge. I yanked her underwear down and that round ass, copper-colored in the way I had studied it furtively for five years from the kitchen to the hallway, was finally bare. I landed the first slap with an open palm and the sound cracked against the tile. My five fingers left a red print on her copper flesh.

Mariela didn’t complain. She moved her hips with deliberate slowness, as if she had been waiting for me. I saw her cunt from behind, swollen, glossy, with the lips parted and a thick thread hanging between her thighs. She was soaking wet. She had probably been soaking wet since before she served me the plate.

—This is for deceiving me.

—Yes, ma’am.

—And this.

—Yes, ma’am.

—And this.

Five. Six. Seven. Each slap harder than the last, until both cheeks were burning and she started pushing her ass back, asking for the next one. When she started counting with me, I knew my rage had turned into something else. I knelt down. It wasn’t a decision; it was a descent. I spread her ass cheeks with my thumbs and ran my tongue along the seam with a violence I didn’t recognize in myself. I licked the entrance to her ass first, with the tip, and she shuddered all over. Then I went down, slowly, to the split of her cunt and buried my tongue inside as deep as I could. Mariela let out a long, sharp moan that made me close my eyes.

Saliva, sweat, and that flavor I could now identify, the same one I had tasted in the dish, mixed in my mouth. I licked. I sucked. I buried my nose against her perineum and ate her cunt with the same hunger with which she had cooked for five years. I searched for her clit with the tip of my tongue and licked it in circles until her whole thigh trembled against my cheek.

—You’ve been putting this in my food for years.

—Yes, ma’am.

—And I never noticed.

—Every bite, ma’am. Every spoonful had my juice in it.

I shoved two fingers into her at once and she folded over the table. I pulled them out dripping and brought them to my mouth without taking my eyes off her spread ass. She was hot inside, tight, alive. I pushed my fingers back in, three this time, and found that spot up top that makes women scream. I found it. Mariela dug her nails into the tablecloth and let out a curse I had never heard from her in five years.

—Fuck me, ma’am, yes, yes.

I rose. I bit the nape of her neck above the collar of her uniform without taking my fingers out of her cunt. I slipped my other hand underneath and found her nipples hard, two small points that I pinched between two fingers until she arched her back and shoved her ass against my pelvis.

—Up —I ordered—. To my room. Now.

***

I locked the door. She stood in the center of the bedroom, barefoot, with her uniform half-open and her eyes still lowered, but no longer out of habit, now for something new. I sat on the edge of the bed and started undressing without taking my eyes off her.

—Take everything off.

She obeyed. Her copper skin stood out against the white wall like a mark. She had a more generous body than mine, wider hips, heavier breasts, with dark, broad nipples that hardened just from the air, a small scar beside her navel, and between her legs a clipped black triangle that made me swallow. I had always seen her in uniform and imagined her curves without daring to dwell on them for long. Now they were there, three meters away, waiting for me.

I opened the nightstand drawer and took out two leather nipple clamps, old gifts from a night I’d rather not remember. I put them on her nipples one by one, tightening them slowly until she opened her mouth without making a sound. Her nipples swelled at the edge of the leather, almost purple.

—If it hurts, say so.

—If it hurts, ma’am, I like it.

I also took out a collar. Black, with a short braided leather leash. I fastened it around her neck with a calm I hadn’t felt in years. I tugged once, just to test the tension. She leaned toward me with the docility of someone who had been waiting for this for a very long time.

I spread my legs at the edge of the bed. My cunt was swollen, wet, throbbing with pure anticipation. I pulled harder on the leash.

—What you put in yourself in the kitchen today, now you’re going to taste for me. And you’re going to lick me the way you know pussy gets licked.

Mariela lowered herself to the floor and settled between my thighs. Before touching me, she blew. A warm, slow breath over my cunt lips that made me grip the sheets with both fists. Then she kissed. She kissed slowly, with her lips closed, the inner side of each thigh, moving upward, leaving a trail of saliva. When she reached my pubis, she stopped. She lifted her face to look at me.

—Five years, ma’am.

—Five years what.

—Five years imagining this.

And she drove her tongue between my lips in one long lick, from bottom to top, ending right on the clit. Her tongue was broad, warm, and moved with the same confidence with which she cut an onion. She knew where to press. She knew where to stay still. She knew when to go up and when to come back. She sucked my clit between her lips and drew it in with a slow rhythm, that rhythm that makes you lift your hips to ask for more. She got it from me. She put her tongue inside, pulled it out, went back to my clit, and all the while I guided her with short tugs on the collar and ground my cunt against her face without letting her breathe.

How many times must you have imagined this while serving me lunch.

I pulled her hair and tilted her head to force the angle. She obeyed without protest, without lifting her eyes, without breaking the rhythm. She was the best employee I had ever had in my life. She shoved two fingers into me while still eating me with her mouth, and bent them upward, and immediately found what it took my paid visitors half an hour to find.

—Faster.

She did it faster. Fingers going in and out, tongue hammering my clit, a wet, obscene sound filling the room.

—Slower.

She did it slower. Almost stopped. Left me on the edge, trembling, my cunt clenched around her fingers, and stayed there, waiting, motionless, while I begged her with my breathing.

—Look at me.

She lifted her eyes without taking her mouth away. And then everything started shaking—my knees, my hands, my back. I grabbed her head with both hands and held her against me, grinding my cunt into her face, until my vision went black and I felt the contractions rise in waves from deep inside. I came in her mouth. I came screaming for the first time in three years, without biting a pillow, letting the whole house hear me. When I could breathe again, she was still there, her mouth shining and a little smile on her face I had never seen in five years, my juice dripping down her chin.

She ran a finger along her chin, caught the drip, and brought it to her mouth.

—Now we both know what you taste like, ma’am.

***

I thought it would end there. It didn’t.

I went back down to the kitchen wrapped in a robe. I brought her behind me, naked, with the clamps still on and the leash loose in my hand. I sat her on the table where she had served me food for years.

—Lie down.

She lay down on her back. I took off the clamps one by one, and kissed her marked nipples with a tenderness that did not belong to the moment. She had two circular marks, pink and deep, one on each side. I sucked them slowly to bring the blood back, biting them just a little, and she moaned with a new vulnerability. I wanted to see those marks for days beneath the uniform, knowing they were there, knowing that every time she bent to serve me the plate, the fabric would brush those marks and remind both of us.

I spread her legs over the table. I saw her cunt red, swollen, gleaming all over. I lowered my face and returned the favor with the same dedication she had shown me upstairs. I sucked her clit, I took my tongue down to her throat, I bit her inner lips with my teeth wrapped by my lip so I wouldn’t hurt her. She writhed on the cold marble, back arched, squeezing her tits with both hands.

—Ma’am, like this I can’t take it.

—You don’t have to take it.

I shoved three fingers into her and found that spot again. With my other hand I rubbed her clit in circles, fast, nonstop. Mariela started shaking her head from side to side, mouth open, no sound, and suddenly a warm stream moistened my wrist and ran down her thighs to the edge of the table. She came so hard she splashed the marble.

I kept watching her, my fingers still inside, until she stopped trembling.

—Not yet —I told her—. We’re not done yet.

I lifted her thighs up onto me. I crossed one leg over mine and the other underneath, and our sex met in the position some women call scissors, and which I had never tried with anyone. Our cunts collided, hot, sliding against each other with a liquid sound that raised the hair on my skin.

—Feel how good this is, ma’am.

I covered her mouth with two fingers.

—From now on, in bed, you don’t call me ma’am.

—What do I call you?

—My name.

—Renata.

I drove into her with my hips. We both slid against the wood, the wet friction slow, insistent. I held her thighs open and she clung with both hands to the edge of the table so she wouldn’t escape. Our clits brushed with each thrust, and her cunt was drenching mine, and mine hers, and it was no longer possible to tell whose juice was whose. I was going to come again; I could feel it in a place in my belly that tightened on its own, but I wanted her to come first. I brought one hand down and stroked where she needed one more finger. I rubbed her clit with my thumb while I kept moving my hips against her, faster and faster, the table creaking beneath our bodies. Mariela squeezed her eyes shut and let out a broken moan, and then another, and on the third her eyes filled with tears and I knew she had come. I felt the pulse of her cunt against mine, those tight, unmistakable throbs, and I let myself fall back and came too, grinding against her until the last contraction.

Afterward I let myself fall, my forehead against her chest. She smelled of spices and of something even more mine that I didn’t want to name.

***

We ate later, sitting together at the table for the first time in five years. She had made something else, something quick, an omelet. It was good, but it lacked flavor.

—You didn’t put anything in this one.

—I don’t need to anymore —she said—. Now you know the flavor without having to eat it in secret.

I took her hand across the table.

—Tonight you stay.

—In the back room?

—In my bed.

—Every night?

—As many as you want.

Mariela lowered her eyes the way she always had, but this time I saw a smile rising underneath. Five years of eating her flavor without knowing it. It would take me another five to forgive her deception. But something told me, as I stroked her knuckles with my thumb, that this time she wouldn’t have to cook in secret to make herself noticed. The next dish I would taste from her hand, not from her recipe. And for the first time in years, I looked forward to night hungry.