What She Made Me Feel Without Us Ever Touching

Just over a year ago, right before a short trip with my mother, I met a girl inside a virtual reality game. Her name was Belén and she lived more than ten thousand kilometers from me. We never touched, and yet it was one of the most intense experiences I remember.

By then I had just gotten out of a long-distance relationship that had broken up and gotten back together so many times no one was keeping count anymore. I really loved him, and that was the worst part. He said he loved me too, but words came easily to him and actions took forever.

When I finally understood that two years of promises did not add up to even a single concrete decision, I left him. Again. This time, I promised myself, for real.

I was bored, stressed, and my head was full of noise. So I did what I always do in those circumstances: I locked myself in my room and dove into a new game. A kind of social simulator in virtual reality, similar to those classics where you build houses and whole lives, but with detailed bodies, real voices, and the possibility of talking to anyone connected to the server anywhere in the world.

I found her on the second night. She was sitting on a virtual terrace facing a painted cardboard sea, playing with a dog that barked with a sound that was too real. I walked over to pet the dog and she laughed. The laugh came through my headphones with such clarity it left me dumb for a few seconds.

—You’re the first person who comes up to the dog and not to me —she said in Spanish, with a sweet accent I couldn’t quite place.

I answered awkwardly, something about dogs being better than people. She laughed again and invited me to sit down.

Belén was in her early twenties. She lived in a coastal city on the other side of the ocean, in a country I only knew from photos. That same night she showed me hers, the real ones, the ones outside the game. Her skin was the color of toasted cinnamon and her hair was gathered into a loose braid that let strands escape everywhere.

In one of the photos she wore a white dress and looked at the camera with an expression I couldn’t quite define: half challenge, half promise. I told her she was beautiful and she said her summer tan was showing. She did like the beach. She did like the sun.

I didn’t. The sun beats me down. But that night, while I listened to her tell stories about the sea on the other side of the world, I thought that maybe if it was with her, even the sun would feel good.

***

We talked every night for two weeks. Belén was extroverted in the way I had always wanted to be and never was. She talked with her hands even though I couldn’t see them; I could hear it in the rhythm. She had two cats who climbed on her keyboard and a dog she spoke to like it was her child.

Otherwise we were opposites. I’m quiet, she was a waterfall. I distrust, she gave herself instantly. I was skinny and pale, with a waist that barely showed; she had a runway model’s body, narrow shoulders, wide hips that knew how to move even in the way she sat in a chair, and a pair of big, firm tits that stood out under any T-shirt. She dressed like she knew exactly what she was doing with every inch of fabric. And she laughed at me when I said so.

—You’re pretty too, silly —she told me one night—. You just don’t believe it.

A week later, after a lot of laughing and some confessions that were no longer entirely innocent, she said it. Not in the game, but in a private chat we had ended up moving to for certain conversations.

—With people I trust —she typed—, fair warning, I can be pretty horny. Very horny. The kind who talks dirty and doesn’t hold back.

I read that sentence three times. I felt the heat rising from my stomach to my cunt, a deep, thick pull that made me clamp my thighs together. I stared at the screen with my mouth half open and, for the first time in a long while, all the noise in my head went quiet.

I told her I could be that way too. That it had been months since anyone had touched me and everything had been piling up inside me.

That night I didn’t sleep. I slipped my hand under my pajamas and came twice thinking about her mouth, her accent, the idea of having her kneeling between my legs saying filthy things to me in that sweet Spanish.

***

From then on, the conversations changed. Not all at once. It was more like when a door opens slowly, that barely perceptible sound, and you know there’s something on the other side that’s going to come in.

My head started filling with scenes in which she and I were the protagonists. When I was alone, which was almost always, I closed my eyes and invented her beside me. At first I imagined her talking, still dressed, looking at me with that half smile. Then leaning closer, breathing me in at the neck, biting my earlobe with the same laugh she used on me in the chats.

Imagining her was almost like having her. Almost.

I ran my open palm down her back and felt her arch into it. I put my hands on her waist, where that curve I had seen so many times in photos was marked, and went slowly down to her hips, to slide my fingers under the waistband of her panties and feel her firm, warm, tight ass. I unclasped her bra and brought her tits into the light, those big tits with the dark, erect nipples I had been imagining for weeks. I licked one while I pinched the other between thumb and forefinger, drawing out that clumsy gasp that had me obsessed. I bit her nipple until she cried out softly and then I flattened my tongue over it, slowly, to soothe her.

Belén would throw her head back and narrow her eyelids, like when someone is about to fall asleep, but the opposite: waking up inward. She’d grab my hair and push me down, saying nothing, just with her hand.

Her voice was what obsessed me most. The voice I already knew, the real one, the one that had made me laugh for weeks, now sounded in my imagination broken up, breathing catching every time I touched her in the right place. The moans were not theatrical. They were clumsy, almost childish, as if she herself were surprised by what her body could do.

—Keep going, don’t stop, lower —she would beg in my head, her accent chopped up by how little air she had—. Put it in me, eat me, please.

I’d go down, put my mouth where my hands had been. I’d spread her thighs with both hands and find her cunt swollen, slick, with the clit already hard, peeking between the folds. I’d run my whole tongue over it, bottom to top, slowly, tasting her. She’d let out a long, filthy moan and dig her heels into my back. I’d suck her clit with my lips, nibble it just a little, hold it between my tongue and the roof of my mouth while I slid two fingers into her and curved them inside, searching for that spot that made her writhe. I could hear her dig her nails into my shoulders, say something in that sweet accent of hers that wasn’t even a word, just an animal sound. She always moaned my name wrong, split into two syllables that barely sounded like me.

I fucked her with my fingers until her whole cunt tightened around my hand and she came on my face with a long tremble, panting, pushing her pelvis against my mouth while I never stopped licking her swollen clit. Then I’d work my way up her body, pass my wet lips over her nipples, over her neck, and slip my tongue into her mouth so she could taste herself.

And then, what surprised me most about myself: I didn’t want to finish fast. My mind, which had learned to rush everything, learned how to stretch it out. To make her come two, three times in a row before climbing up to kiss her mouth. To imagine her giving me everything back, opening my legs and doing the same to me, sucking my cunt until I couldn’t speak.

I always came thinking about her tongue between my thighs. Always.

***

A few weeks later, in the middle of the messy tangle of that fantasy that had grown by itself, we went on a trip with my mother.

She was pregnant with my younger sister and needed to rest, so we booked five nights in a small hotel facing the sea, a couple of hours from home. The place was beautiful, all white and wood, with an infinity pool that looked out over the sand.

My mother looked happy. I, who’m not a fan of the sun or the beach, only needed one full day at the water’s edge to end up with a fever.

The fever left me sprawled on the hotel bed while my mother took care of the baby that still hadn’t been born. The curtains were drawn, the golden light filtering in barely, and the sound of the sea came through the half-open window. It was the perfect setting to miss someone.

I wrote to Belén. I sent her a photo of the ceiling in my room. I told her I felt like a wreck, that I was alone, that I didn’t want to bother her but I wanted to hear her.

She called me.

She spoke softly because at that hour, in her time zone, her house was already asleep. I closed my eyes and listened. She told me silly things, that her dog was mad at her because she hadn’t taken him for a walk, that she was working a double shift the next day and was tired. She spoke to me the way you speak to someone you want to take care of.

At one point, out of nowhere, she said:

—If I were there right now, I’d put my hand on your forehead to see if your fever had gone down.

I told her not to put it there.

There was silence on the other end. A short, heavy silence, the kind you only understand when someone is thinking the same thing you are.

—Where, then?

—Lower —I told her, my voice already hoarse—. Much lower. Put it between my legs.

I heard her suck in air sharply. She, who was brave where I had never been, didn’t hesitate for a second.

—Are you naked under the sheet?

—Just in my T-shirt.

—Take your panties off. Now.

I obeyed. I lifted my hips and pulled them down slowly, feeling the wet cotton peel away from my cunt. I dropped them to the floor. I was left with my T-shirt pushed up to my tits and my legs open under the sheet, waiting for her voice like it was an order.

—Is that it? —I said.

—That’s it. Now spread your legs for me. All the way open. I want to imagine you like that.

I did it. I bent my knees and let them fall to the sides. The fan’s air hit me right between my thighs and I felt the cold against the wetness I’d already had there before I hung up the phone.

—Put a finger in —she told me—. Just one. Slowly. The way I’d put it in if I were there.

I sucked my index finger, brought it down my stomach, over my pubic mound, until I found my swollen, throbbing clit. I rubbed over it in little circles. A moan escaped into the pillow.

—Don’t hold it back —she whispered—. I want to hear you.

—I can’t, my mother’s in the next room.

—Then bite the pillow, but let me hear you breathe. And put that finger in already, don’t make me wait.

I pushed it all the way in. I was so wet it went in without resistance. A long gasp slipped out of me, and Belén caught it instantly.

—That’s it. Now two. Put two in and move them slowly, like it’s my tongue. I’d be licking you right now, you know that? I’d have your clit between my lips and I’d be eating your cunt until you asked me to stop.

—I wouldn’t stop —I told her into the pillow, my voice broken—. I’d never let you stop.

—Then keep touching yourself for me. Put your palm over it, over your clit, and move in circles while you keep fucking yourself with your fingers. Yes, like that. Are you wet?

—Soaked.

—Suck your fingers after. I want you to know what you taste like, because I want to taste you someday.

I listened with my face buried in the pillow so the sound wouldn’t drift out into the hallway. One hand held the phone. The other did exactly what she described, slowly, in time with her voice. I pushed two fingers in to the knuckle, curled them, pulled them out glistening, and slid them back in. With my palm I pressed my clit against the bone and moved my whole hand in little circles that made my thighs shake.

Belén’s breathing got heavier on the other end. I realized she was doing the same. I didn’t need to ask her. I could hear the wet friction of her hand against her own cunt, a small, almost obscene sound that slipped in between her words.

—I’m touching myself too —she confessed—. I’ve got my tits out and I’m pinching a nipple while I rub myself. I’m thinking about your mouth. About how you’d eat me. I’d fuck your tongue right now.

—Tell me everything —I begged—. Don’t stop talking.

—I’d take it all the way in, until you felt me pulsing against your lips. I’d grab your hair and not let you come up until I came in your mouth. Would you drink me?

—All of it. Not a drop left behind.

Her sentences got shorter and shorter. Mine too. Until they stopped being sentences and turned into breaths, and the breaths into her name said into the pillow, and mine said into the receiver.

—I’m coming —she gasped—. I’m coming, fuck, I’m coming thinking about you.

—Me too, Belén, me too, don’t stop.

I heard her voice crack into a long, tight moan, something she tried to hold in with her mouth shut and couldn’t. That sound yanked inward at my cunt and made me come too, biting the pillow with my fingers buried to the knuckle, feeling the muscles tighten over and over around my own hand. I got soaked through. My hand was left shining, my thigh sticky, the sheet marked dark beneath my ass.

When it was over, neither of us said anything. Neither of us hung up. We listened to each other breathing for several minutes. I sucked my fingers, obedient, just as she had asked, and let out a sigh she caught on the other end.

—Does it taste like anything? —she asked me, with a tired laugh.

—Salt. Sea.

—Someday I’m going to touch you —she said.

—Someday —I answered.

***

It never happened. Life went on, the distance got heavier, the travel plans stayed plans. She met someone else, I met someone else, and our messages grew farther and farther apart until they stopped altogether. The last time I saw her profile was months ago, almost by accident, while I was looking for someone else.

But sometimes, when I’m alone and my head fills up with noise again, I remember that week in the hotel facing the sea. The fever, the sound of the ocean coming in through the window, her voice climbing slowly over the receiver while I pushed my fingers in all the way. The sound of her coming on the other side of the world, just for me.

And I understand something I couldn’t name then: I didn’t need to touch her for her to change my whole body.

Belén taught me that desire between two women doesn’t need flesh to be real. That two girls can catch fire through a screen, a voice, a promise neither of them will ever keep. And that some fantasies, the best ones, don’t have a happy ending: they have an ending that keeps telling itself, over and over, every time I close my eyes and slip my hand under the sheet.