What We Signed in My Office Was Not Just Paperwork

Running the town hall of a place with twenty thousand souls means giving up many things, and the first one they took from me was my sex life. Before the campaign, I could slip away to a hotel in the capital without anyone finding out; now, if I ask for a different coffee in the square, even the priest hears about it.

My husband has spent years settling for missionary on Thursdays and, honestly, missionary on Thursdays bores me. I turned forty-seven two springs ago and, far from fading, I’ve started to burn inside with an itch that neither marriage nor office can disguise.

I’ve become an expert at ordering things online using my sister’s address. Lingerie I would never wear in front of my husband, silicone toys I keep locked in a drawer, books I prefer not to leave on the bedside table. Discretion is my new form of pleasure.

As for women, I must confess it’s nothing new to me. In my university years I shared a bed, fingers, and tongue with two girls from the dorm. They were label-free encounters: we got naked, ate each other’s mouths, made each other come, and the next day went to class as if nothing had happened. I still remember those afternoons as the best anyone has ever given me.

The passing years, the mirror that no longer forgives, and the feeling that the train was leaving without me pushed me to recover old appetites. And then Mariela appeared.

Mariela is the presiding judge of the judicial district. She’s almost my age, with a deep voice, copper hair, and a reputation as a dyke that nobody in town says out loud. We crossed paths over several zoning files, at an official ceremony or two, and at two chamber-of-commerce dinners. Every time we were close, I noticed her eyes lingering a second too long on my cleavage.

I started dressing for her without her knowing it. I replaced my closed blazers with thinner blouses. I debuted a pair of heels that made my legs look indecently long. The first afternoon I showed up in her office in a skirt two fingers above the knee, Mariela took an extra moment to greet me. That night I masturbated thinking about her gaze.

***

—We still have the agreements for the old quarter pending —she told me on the phone one Friday.

—Today, if you like —I replied in a tone I barely recognized as my own—. Come by town hall around seven. I’ll be waiting.

Seven on a Friday evening in my town hall was the perfect setting. The building is empty except for a cleaning girl, and my secretary had already left with the archive keys. No one would knock on the door, no one would hear a thing.

That afternoon I got ready like someone dressing for a first date. I took out of the drawer a set I’d ordered two weeks earlier: a black gauze bra and thong that promised far more than it covered, a garter belt, and straight-seam stockings. Over that I put on a burgundy pencil skirt and an almost sheer silk blouse.

At six fifty, looking at myself in the mirror of the private bathroom, I decided the blouse was unnecessary. I took it off, folded the garment into a desk drawer, and pulled only a thin blazer over the bra. The neckline was a signed invitation. If this doesn’t work, then she doesn’t like women and the whole town is mistaken.

As soon as the door shut behind my secretary, the intercom rang. I went down myself to open the main gate. We went up in silence, I let her enter the office first, and I turned the bolt. Her perfume—something between leather and vanilla—mixed with the heat from the radiator that had been on full blast for two hours.

—Hi, beautiful. Did you come with the signatures ready? —I asked, trying to buy time.

—Always straight to business —she replied, setting a folder on my desk—. Don’t you ever ease up?

—Duty first, pleasure second. An old rule of mine.

—Will there be pleasure today too? —she said, unable to hide her smile.

—That depends on you, Mariela. But I think so.

We sat together on the edge of the long meeting table. She wore a green knit wrap dress that parted every time she bent over to point at a paragraph. I had tied my hair back in a loose ponytail to leave my neck bare. We went over the agreements amid laughter, looks that lasted too long, and silences that were no longer professional.

It was genuinely hot. I unbuttoned the second button of my blazer with a distracted gesture. Mariela lowered her eyes for a second, then back to the papers, then again to my cleavage. Deliberately, I slid a finger under the underwire of my bra to adjust the cup, letting my nipple show. She swallowed carefully.

—I like your lingerie —she said at last, almost in a whisper.

—And you haven’t even seen what’s underneath. I should warn you, yours looks very skimpy too —I replied, looking at the thighs peeking out beneath her hiked-up dress.

She turned toward me. Her hand brushed my thigh over the stocking. We both held still for a very long second, checking whether the other would pull away. Neither of us did.

—Maybe you want to check for yourself —she murmured.

—Lift your skirt —I told her.

—You do it.

***

I pulled the fabric up until her waist was bare. She was wearing a string thong, tiny, soaked at the center. I ran my fingers over the fabric and found it drenched.

—Do you like what you see? —she asked.

—More than I expected. May I take it off?

—I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.

I yanked the elastic a little harder than was wise and the thong tore at the hip. I was left holding the garment between my fingers, still damp, and lifted it like a trophy. Mariela’s scent hit my nose: warm, metallic, alive.

—Damn. It ripped —I said, pretending to lament—. You’ll have to go home naked under your skirt.

—Or I’ll take yours. If you switch with me, that is.

—Take mine off yourself.

Her hands slipped under my skirt as if they already knew the way. My thong was even more fragile than hers; with the first pull it tore too. Mariela held the fabric in her palm, brought it to her face, and smelled it shamelessly.

—We’re both going back to the car with our cunts out, Mayor.

—Sounds fair —I answered.

She let the two scraps of fabric fall onto the carpet. What came next was her hand sliding between my thighs without permission or excuses. Her fingers found my clit with a precision that only years can give. I answered in her sex and confirmed that she was open too, undone, ready.

We kissed to hush ourselves. It was a long, wet kiss, with our moans trapped between our tongues. Sitting face to face on my meeting table, we made each other come with our fingers before either of us had finished taking off our clothes. I had my first orgasm right there, biting her lower lip so I wouldn’t scream.

—You just came very fast —she whispered.

—I’d been thinking about this for weeks, Mariela. Don’t judge me.

—I’m a judge. I always judge —she said, and laughed softly against my neck.

***

She gently pushed me until I was sitting on the desk, between the computer screen and the stack of reports. She opened my blazer all the way, freed my breasts from the bra, and paused for a moment to look at them before lowering her head. Her mouth sucked, licked, and bit with a mix of hunger and method that made me understand why she had the reputation she did.

When she started moving down my stomach, I knew what was coming. She knelt between my legs, pushed my gathered skirt aside without ceremony, and ran her tongue over my lips with professional calm. I gripped the edge of the desk with both hands to keep from collapsing.

—I like the garter belt —she said between licks—. It gives such a filthy edge to such a proper woman.

I wasn’t able to answer. She alternated her tongue on my clit with two firm fingers inside me, and the combination made me come again, this time actually screaming, my forehead pressed against her copper hair. It had been years, maybe a whole decade, since any mouth had done something like that to me.

—Come here —I asked once I’d caught my breath—. I want to taste you too. I haven’t eaten a cunt in a long time; maybe I’m out of practice.

—There’s only one way to find out —she answered, and pulled her skirt up to her waist.

She swept the folders aside with one blow and leaned over the table, offering me her ass. It was a mature woman’s ass, broad, still firm, with the line of the stockings pressed into her thigh. I knelt in my own chair—the one my predecessor, a man weighing one hundred and twenty kilos, had endured for twelve years—and spread her with both hands.

—Eat, Mayor —she said.

—Your Honor —I answered before burying my face between her cheeks.

***

I ran my tongue from top to bottom, slowly, missing nothing. I licked her asshole with the same dedication I used on her lips, and wherever my mouth couldn’t reach I used two fingers. Mariela pressed her cheek against the files, moaned with a rough voice, and begged for more without saying a word.

—You haven’t lost the practice you said you had —she panted.

—Some things are worth the effort, Your Honor.

When she came for the third time she asked for a truce. She made me stand up from the chair and sat herself on top of me, straddling me, seeking my mouth to taste her own flavor on my lips. We kissed for long minutes, groping each other’s breasts, pinching our nipples, laughing into each other’s teeth like two teenagers who’d found each other in the bathroom at a party.

—We have to do this again, gorgeous —she said at last—. But in a real bed. And with some toys.

—I’ve got several at home I haven’t used yet.

—Then I’ll bring mine. And a good bottle of wine.

When our breathing finally slowed, I looked at the clock and saw we’d been in there nearly two hours. The cleaning girl must already have been in the upstairs corridor. Mariela pulled her dress back on over her naked skin; I put my blouse back on, straightened my skirt, and left the bra in the drawer along with the two torn thongs. I decided to keep them as a reminder: soaked garments with the juices of two women who could no longer pretend anything in front of each other.

I left my blazer hanging on the coat rack. No one would see me until I got to my house’s garage, and I preferred to feel the raw fabric of the blouse brushing my still-sensitive nipples. We said goodbye at the door with one last long, messy kiss that tasted of both of us.

—I have a hearing until six on Tuesday —Mariela murmured while adjusting her neckline—. At eight, at my place.

—I’ll be there, Your Honor.

I locked the door and leaned against the wood, my heart still racing. For the first time in a long while, being mayor felt like a perfect idea.