The Driver’s Trap and What Came After

I’d been messaging with Ernesto for three weeks when I finally decided to go look for him in person. We were what people call “friends with benefits,” though the word friends felt exaggerated for someone I only knew through WhatsApp and one afternoon between the boxes in the warehouse where I work. Forty-two years old, separated for two, and I still got nervous reading his messages on my lunch break.

It was Monday. That May morning’s heat had been pressing in from early on, and I’d chosen a dark blue skirt, fitted, that fell just halfway down my thigh. Underneath, cream lace panties that had no reason to be there except the one Ernesto gave me every time he wrote what he wanted to do to me when we saw each other. I liked that feeling of being dressed for a sin I still hadn’t committed, but which was already burning between my legs before I left the house.

I ordered a taxi and gave him the address of the base where he worked.

***

The area was not what I expected. Unpaved streets, vacant lots, a few high-voltage towers cutting through the landscape like metal giants. The base was a wide yard with several trucks parked and men moving back and forth in T-shirts and buckets. When I got out of the taxi, the sun hit me all at once.

I didn’t see Ernesto anywhere.

A young man came up to me. Dark shorts, white T-shirt, a smile that took too many liberties for someone who had just met me. He asked if I was looking for someone; I gave him the name and he nodded slowly, as if the question confirmed something he already knew.

—He just left —he said—. It’ll take him a couple of hours to get back.

While we were talking, two other men came over. One was older, dark-skinned, in work boots and clothes stained with oil. The other wore the transport company’s white shirt, tattoos on his arms, and the kind of look that hides nothing.

The latter stepped away from the group and held out his hand.

—Rodrigo —he said, as if the name established something between us.

Forty-something, broad jaw, big hands resting at his sides with that calm certain men have when they know exactly what they want. I understood his intentions the second he offered to take me to Ernesto on the way to the workshop. It was such a flimsy excuse it was almost pathetic.

I sent the taxi driver a message so he wouldn’t wait for me.

***

Rodrigo’s pickup was big, one of those with high seats and a metal partition behind the cab. It smelled like cold coffee and hot plastic from the sun. When I climbed in, I settled into the passenger seat and he pulled off without haste.

We left by way of the dirt roads, slowly, dodging potholes. Rodrigo didn’t talk, but he watched me whenever he could. The fitted skirt and the seat belt crossing between my breasts weren’t helping me hide anything, and he wasn’t pretending not to look either. I could feel his eyes sliding down my legs, lingering a second too long on my thighs, on my mouth, as if he were already unfastening me with his eyes.

After a few minutes he took a side road running parallel to the high-voltage towers. The kind of detour that doesn’t lead to any workshop.

—Ernesto talks about you a lot —he said, not looking at me this time.

—Does he?

—He says you’re very good. —A pause that meant more than ten words—. I asked him to give me your number, but he kept putting me off.

I stayed quiet. Not because I didn’t know what to say, but because I was deciding how much I wanted to give in.

He stopped in the middle of the road. The towers hummed softly above our heads. There was no one around.

—I just want to see if Ernesto exaggerates —he said—. Or if everything he says is true.

He unbuckled his seat belt and lowered his hand to his pants. He undid them without hurry, with that slowness that sometimes works better than any argument. What he pulled out was dark, thick, already half-awake, with the foreskin drawn back and the head shiny, swollen with blood and impatience. There was no need to touch it to know he was truly hard; the fabric of his pants was doing nothing to contain it anymore, and he himself was breathing heavier, as if his body were asking for the same thing his mouth was.

—I’ll pay you well —he added—. That’s all I want.

I put on my best doubtful face. It wasn’t entirely false: Ernesto gave me something like loyalty, even though we still hadn’t put a name to what we had. But forty-two years had taught me that loyalty and desire rarely coexist in the same moment without one of them giving way.

—I don’t know —I said—. Ernesto and I are... something.

—Ernesto won’t find out. And I know how to keep secrets.

He took my hands and brought them to him. The heat of his skin went through my fingers. The thick fabric over his crotch gave under my palms; I could feel the shape, the pulse, the living tension of his cock hardening more with every second I took to decide. He looked at me without blinking, his mouth barely open, as if he were already losing patience.

That was enough for the doubt to finish dissolving.

—Our secret —I repeated, and leaned toward him.

***

I settled myself between the seats and started slowly, without rushing. I lowered the zipper and freed him with my hand, pulling him out completely so I could feel him better. Rodrigo’s hands brushed my hair with a softness I hadn’t expected from someone who looked like that. I gave him what he was asking for: first very slowly, studying every reaction, then with the deliberate calm of someone who knows exactly what she’s doing and enjoys the journey as much as the destination.

I like taking my time. At forty-two, I’m not in a hurry for these things anymore.

Rodrigo made that low sound men make when something gets the better of them, and I allowed myself a small smile every time I heard it. I stroked the base with my hand, moistened the tip with my tongue, and then took him into my mouth with a decisiveness that drew an immediate groan from him. I tasted the salt, the growing heat, the taut skin under my lips. I went up and down slowly, letting him thrust just a little, controlling the rhythm so he wouldn’t come over me too soon.

He liked it so much that he held me by the nape without applying force, just enough to tell me without words that he had no intention of pulling away. I kept going, swallowing him as far as I could, feeling his thighs tighten, his breathing tremble, how he filled my mouth and made my eyes water a little from pure pleasure. I spent several minutes enjoying him, without speeding up, exploring, until he put a hand on my shoulder and stopped me.

—I want more —he said.

—You only asked for this —I answered, not moving.

He looked at me, eyes half-closed like someone who had already lost the negotiation before it began. He took out his wallet and left bills on the seat, an amount I hadn’t expected.

—Please.

That word in his mouth was more persuasive than everything before it.

I got out of the pickup, opened the back door, and climbed in. He followed right away, still adjusting his clothes, with that clumsy urgency men have when they’re no longer thinking clearly.

I lay back on the long seat and waited for him. Rodrigo knelt in front of me and pushed my skirt up with both hands, with more care than the situation deserved. He spread my legs with his knees, bracing himself between them so he wouldn’t lose his balance, and ran his tongue over the lace of my panties, pushing against the fabric, without taking them off yet. I let him stay there for a moment, feeling him, before helping him.

I closed my eyes.

When he finally pulled them down, I’d already been ready for a while. He ran his fingers over my cunt, slow, testing the wetness I was offering him myself, and let out a low laugh when he noticed how soaked I was. He opened me wider, kissed me right there, direct and hungry, and I grabbed his hair because my breath was getting away from me. Then he licked me with his whole mouth, with a firm, persistent tongue, shameless, and I arched my back against the seat feeling that electric heat climb through me and leave me unable to think. I didn’t take long to answer with the same hunger: I grabbed his head, pulled him closer, set the pace until my thighs shook.

***

What came after was direct and to the point, which is the only way I like it with a stranger. Rodrigo knew what he was doing. He wasn’t a man who needed instructions.

First he took me from below, his hands on my hips setting the rhythm. Then I lifted my legs to his waist and guided him to my entrance. I felt him push in, wide and hot, opening me slowly at first and then with a delicious pressure that made me dig my nails into his back. He went in all the way with a hard snap of his hips, and both of us let out a groan almost at the same time. The pickup creaked a little when he started moving over me, back and forth, firm, without losing the beat.

Then we got out of the pickup: he spread a towel over the dry grass and we continued outdoors, with the midday sun beating down hard and the wind between the towers doing what it could to cool us. He put me face down first, ass lifted, and fucked me from behind again, holding me by the waist and going deeper, dirtier, more brutally. I braced my hands on the towel and let myself go, feeling every thrust shake my belly, the rough brush of his pelvis against my ass, the wet sound of our bodies mixing with no delicacy at all. The earth smelled dry, the air was hot, and I didn’t give a damn.

From a house at the edge of the road, a man watched us leaning against his wall. He didn’t even try to hide it. Rodrigo noticed and lifted his arms as if celebrating something. I kept moving, not stopping, knowing he was watching us. I liked more than I should have that there were eyes on us; it burned between my legs with an intensity that made me squeeze him even tighter, forcing him to drive in harder.

We changed positions again. He made me kneel and held me by the waist while he drove his cock into me from behind, slamming deep, over and over, until he had me drooling from pleasure and effort. Each thrust tore a different moan from me. He grabbed my hair, told me not to slack off, to keep his rhythm, to take him all the way when he turned me around again. And I obeyed because I loved watching a man who thought he controlled the situation come apart.

We finished the way we’d started: me on my knees, him standing, both of us sweaty and satisfied. Rodrigo held my jaw and made me open my mouth to take the tip again, quick, before he came. His whole body went rigid, he spat a curse through clenched teeth, and filled my tongue with a thick, hot load that forced me to swallow slowly, looking him in the eye while I did it. Then he set a hand on the back of my neck, breathing hard, still trembling.

Rodrigo pulled a bucket of water out from under a seat and helped me clean up. We laughed a little while we straightened our clothes, that laugh that appears when two people have done something they shouldn’t and neither of them regrets it. My legs were weak, my skin sensitive, my cunt still throbbing inside, and he walked with that satisfied arrogance of men who have just been very well taken care of.

I asked him to drop me off on the main avenue.

Before I got out, I gave him my number. Encounters that begin as mistakes sometimes deserve a second chance.

***

Ernesto texted me while I was waiting on the corner. He was coming back and wanted to see me. He asked where I was and I told him near the market, that we could meet in half an hour.

I went into a café, ordered a cold lemonade, and cooled off as best I could. I touched up my makeup in the bathroom mirror, fixed my hair. No one would have suspected anything, except maybe for the slight tremble still in my legs and the way my lips stayed a little more sensitive after being punished like that.

Ernesto arrived on time in his truck. I recognized him from the corner by his silhouette behind the glass. I smiled before he saw me.

I got in and paid the fare as if I were any ordinary passenger. He asked me where I was going with that half-smile I already knew well.

—Wherever you take me —I said.

***

Ernesto was different from Rodrigo. Thinner, younger, with the kind of humor that makes you lower your guard before you realize it. For months he’d been texting me things that made me blush in my living room at eleven at night, with the TV on in the background as an excuse not to admit I was waiting for him.

We stopped at a seafood place he knew, ate, drank a beer each. He put his hand on my thigh under the long tablecloths while we waited for the bill. I let him, my eyes fixed on some point on the wall as if nothing were happening. I felt his thumb tracing slow circles over my skin, higher and higher, until it brushed the edge of my underwear. I didn’t move my leg away. He understood the signal and squeezed with more confidence, smiling like a happy idiot.

After that we went back to the truck. I suggested going to the back.

—Wait —he said—. First I want to shower. I’ve been working all morning and that doesn’t seem fair to you.

I liked that. That consideration said more about him than anything he’d ever written to me in messages.

His apartment was fifteen minutes away. A small complex, cement stairs, a living room with a brown sofa and a kitchen that smelled like coffee. He poured me a glass of cold water and went to turn on the water heater. While we waited, we sat and talked.

Ernesto had a good sense of humor. He didn’t try to impress me with anything grand. Only with small things done well: bringing water without me asking, really listening when I spoke, remembering things I’d mentioned weeks earlier as if he had written them down.

We got into the shower together. The water took a while to warm up but neither of us noticed much. He washed my back carefully; I soaped his chest. Wet hands on skin have their own rhythm, their own language. We took our time. I washed his cock with my fingers, stroking him under the stream until he was fully hard, and he answered just as slowly, sliding his hands over my ass, squeezing my cheeks with a patience that made me smile. We kissed there, among the steam and the noise of the water, our breathing mixed and our bodies slick, as if the whole bathroom had suddenly become too small.

When we got out, he took me to his room.

***

What happened on that bed was different from the morning. Ernesto wasn’t in a hurry. He kissed me for a good while, traced my neck with his lips, found the places that mattered with a patience I hadn’t expected. He touched me in a way that made me forget, for a moment, everything that had happened earlier in the day. He undid the rest of my clothes with slow fingers, looking at me as if he really liked what he saw, as if he wanted to learn me by heart. I took his off too, and there it was: held-back tension, hard cock, chest rising and falling, the clear, hot look of someone who doesn’t need to pretend to be anything else.

We moved slowly. First me on top, hands on his chest, setting the rhythm myself. I opened over him, lowered myself little by little until he was all the way inside, feeling how he filled me and how every movement made me let out a more broken breath than the last. I liked dominating him for a while, watching his jaw tighten and the way he held my waist so he wouldn’t miss the sway. Then him, taking control without roughness, with the exact cadence I needed. He got on top and started driving into me with dirty precision, deep, making me moan against his mouth while he spread my legs wider and wider until I felt the bed hitting the wall with every thrust.

Later, on my side, my back against his chest, his arm around my waist and his hand finding the exact place so I couldn’t stay still. His finger entered me at the same time his cock stayed inside, filling me by two different routes, and I writhed with pleasure, scratching his forearm, asking for more without even opening my mouth. He kissed me behind the ear and spoke softly, telling me yes, just like that, don’t let up, he wanted to see me break a little.

I came twice. The first time almost without noticing, surprising myself in the middle of a sigh I hadn’t expected to hear from myself. The second was deliberate, eyes closed and feet braced on the mattress, letting myself go completely. I felt the orgasm rise from my belly to my throat, clench me from the inside, leave me wet and trembling while he kept moving to stretch it out as long as possible. Afterward there was that delicious sensitivity left over, that kind of throbbing at the center of the body that makes you want to keep going even when you can’t anymore.

He finished inside me, which was what he asked for at the end, in my ear, with that hoarse voice men have when they can barely stand it anymore. I told him yes because I wanted to, not because I couldn’t refuse him. He gripped my hip, drove in one last time and stayed there, panting, spilling his hot release inside me while he looked at me as if he were coming apart from pleasure. I held his face with both hands and kissed him slowly while he finished emptying himself.

We stayed still. The two of us breathing unevenly, the white ceiling above us, the afternoon coming in slowly through the half-open window.

—When are you coming back? —he asked.

—When you invite me properly —I said.

He laughed. I liked that sound more than I wanted to admit.

***

I dressed quickly when I saw the time. I still had to get home before dark. I fixed myself in the bathroom mirror, put a little perfume on my wrist, and gathered my things.

Ernesto wanted to take me, but he still had more routes to do. I told him not to worry, I’d get a taxi. At the door he gave me a long kiss, one of those without hurry that stays with you all the way down the stairs.

Out on the street, I waited with my back against the wall, the sun gentler now at that hour. I thought about Rodrigo and Ernesto. How different the two encounters had been. How the first was urgent and without real names, and the second was slow and had hot water and laughter in the kitchen.

Forty-two years old. Separated for two. Still able to be surprised by what I could do on a day that had started with no plan at all.

The taxi arrived. I got in, gave the address, and leaned back in the seat with my eyes half-closed. The driver didn’t say anything. Perfect.

That night I ate alone, watched a movie I couldn’t manage to follow, and went to bed early. Before turning off the light, I checked my phone. Ernesto had written: “Next time you’re staying the night.”

I closed the screen smiling and turned off the light.