Mature

I crossed half of Spain to leave that afternoon by the pool behind, but music and a stranger dragged me into repeating what I swore I’d never feel again.

I’d been at the company barely a month when my director put her hand on my thigh and ordered me upstairs for a drink. I wasn’t about to disobey her.

From the darkness I watched them through the fence of plants. He was small and quiet, but what he was hiding under his pants took my breath away that night.

She gave me a hundred euros in tip for a three-kilometer ride. It took me two days to understand the money was only the beginning of what she wanted.

I lowered my eyes every time she came into the shop, pretending to count screws. What I never knew was that she was studying me too.

I opened the door wearing a single button-front dress and nothing underneath. If he understood the invitation, perfect; if not, I’d make it clear.

I’d been crossing paths with him in the water for months without saying a word. That Sunday, when his hands brushed my waist on the ladder, I stopped pretending I didn’t want him.

When I knelt in front of him while he was driving, I knew those last miles of road would stay with me far more than I admitted.

I found a glass of wine, a black blindfold, and a heated text on the screen. I read it slowly and understood that that night my husband had decided to fulfill his greatest desire.

Mariela recognized that hoarse voice before she even turned around. The true owner of the office had returned, bringing all the old rules with him.

I wore a white dress for a night with my boyfriend that never came. At 3 a.m., the only one who answered my call was my tenant.

I’d been watching her train for months without daring to do anything. That night she invited me to her place, and I discovered the shy woman from the gym was hiding someone very different.

She was forty-two, newly buried in a marriage, and desperate to feel desired again. That night, at the bar, someone was watching her.

I spotted her in the back of the bar and my heart lurched: it was her, the teacher who stole my sleep when I was just a kid. And this time I was no longer that child.

She walked down the carpeted corridor with her heart racing: behind that door waited the man she had spent half her life imagining.

I told him he’d left a T-shirt behind just to get him to my table. What he found that night bore no resemblance to the wife he left.

I climbed up to steady the ladder without imagining what I’d find when I looked up. That afternoon, in the back room, I learned who was really in charge.

I told him everything would be upfront. He smiled, transferred half, and met me in an apartment where no one would ask questions. I went up ready to collect every minute.

My tits were always my secret weapon, and that Friday with the office empty I decided to use them to get from him what I really wanted.

I grew up understanding naturism as something natural, but nothing prepared me for the day my mother’s boyfriend stopped covering himself in front of me.