The Woman Who Made Him an Indecent Proposal

Elena looked at herself in the bathroom mirror without haste and without mercy. Forty-six years old. Her body was no longer the one she had at twenty, and it did not pretend to be: wider hips, breasts a little sagged, skin yielding to gravity with more resignation than before. But there was still something there. She looked good. Or at least that was what she kept repeating to herself while she applied the wine-colored lipstick that matched the gray suit.

She was a lawyer. She had a one-hundred-and-twenty-square-meter apartment in Recoleta that she had decorated herself, a career that had taken her twenty years to build, and an agenda full of commitments that never filled the silence of the nights. Her friends called her. She went out on weekends. But there was a difference between being accompanied and not being alone, and Elena knew that difference by heart. It had been almost two years since a man had touched her, and her cunt had become forgotten territory even to herself, barely visited with two hurried fingers and the muted buzz of a vibrator she almost never turned on anymore.

She saw him on a Tuesday in mid-April, in front of the café where she had her first cortado of the morning. He was sitting on the edge of the square with a sketchpad on his knees and a box of charcoal at his feet. He must have been twenty-four or twenty-five. Curly, dirty hair, worn-out clothes, hands permanently stained black. Skinny, almost too skinny, but with something in his posture that Elena found hard to ignore.

She kept looking at him longer than was reasonable.

—Do you want me to draw you? —he asked without looking up from the pad.

She hesitated for only a second. Then she said yes.

She sat down in front of him and watched him work for twenty minutes. The boy—Marcos, his name was Marcos—drew with a concentration that bordered on indifference. He did not look at her the way a man looks at a woman. He studied her the way a technician studies a problem. And that, strangely enough, made her feel more exposed than any look of desire ever had.

The portrait was not entirely faithful, but it said something true: on the page, he had made a version of her that seemed younger and also lonelier. Elena felt something tighten in her throat.

She paid him double what he asked.

—Thank you —he said, pocketing the bill without looking at it—. I’m Marcos.

—Elena —she replied, and when they shook hands, she noticed that his was cold and rough.

***

She couldn’t get him out of her head in the days that followed. She went back to the square on the excuse of getting coffee, but he wasn’t there. A week later she found him painting watercolors on the sidewalk on Juncal Street, in front of a tiled façade he was reproducing with monastic patience.

—Do you remember me? —she asked, and the question sounded needier than she wanted.

—The woman from the portrait —he said, recognizing her—. Did you like it?

—Very much —Elena lied.

They talked for almost an hour. Marcos told her he had dropped out of the Fine Arts program halfway through because it was a waste of time, that he got by on street work and the occasional commission, that he lived in a boarding house in Once with three other people in the same room. He spoke without complaining, with the indifference of someone who had already accepted that things are what they are.

Elena listened and noticed something she preferred not to fully name: a dull envy of his freedom, of his lack of an agenda, and also, mixed in with that, a physical desire she had not felt so clearly in months. Her panties were getting wet as she watched him move his hands, and she found herself wondering what the cock of that skinny kid with the stained hands would be like.

—Have you eaten today? —she asked suddenly.

Marcos looked at her with something like distrust.

—Not yet.

—I live three blocks from here. We can get something to eat, if you want.

The invitation floated between them, too transparent to pretend innocence. Marcos weighed it for a moment.

—Okay —he said.

***

The walk there was almost silent. He looked at the building, the mirrored elevator, the two locks on the door. The apartment took him by surprise even if he hid it well: one hundred and twenty square meters of careful order, books neatly placed, a kitchen that smelled of fresh coffee.

—Sit down —Elena said, pointing at the sofa—. I’ll make something quick.

While she heated up the food, she watched herself in the reflection of the stovetop and wondered what exactly she was doing. It wasn’t the first time she had thought about a younger man, but it was the first time she had brought one home. Common sense had spent too long sitting on that same sofa without solving anything.

They ate. He with real hunger, without hiding it. She drank wine and watched him.

—Why did you invite me? —Marcos asked at some point, bluntly.

Elena set the glass down on the table more carefully than necessary.

—Because I find you interesting —she said.

—Is that all?

She didn’t answer right away. She got up, cleared the plates, and when she came back from the living room she stopped behind the sofa where he was sitting. She hesitated for a moment. Then she laid her hands on his shoulders and began to massage them slowly.

Marcos tensed under her hands. But he did not move.

—What are you doing? —he asked, his voice lower than before.

—What I should have done a while ago —Elena replied, leaning down until her lips almost brushed his neck.

He smelled of cheap soap and something else, something unmistakably male and unpretentious, and it completely undid her. She slid her hands forward over his chest, down to his waist and from there to his crotch, where a hard, throbbing bulge could already be felt under the denim of his jeans.

—You’re already hard —she murmured against his ear, pressing her palm over the boy’s cock.

—Since you opened the door —he answered hoarsely.

Marcos spun around abruptly. Their eyes met. Elena saw in his a mixture that was hard to decipher: surprise, lust, something darker.

The kiss was not soft. It was urgent and clumsy at first, loaded with everything neither of them had said out loud. Marcos grabbed her by the waist with a force she had not expected and pulled her against him. Elena felt something loosen somewhere in her chest, and lower down too, a wet tug between her legs that no one had made her feel in years with just a kiss.

Clothes disappeared without strategy. Marcos yanked off her gray jacket and blouse with clumsy fingers, not bothering with the buttons. When he unhooked her bra, Elena’s breasts fell heavily against his torso, her nipples already hard, and he lowered his mouth without hesitation. He sucked her hard, alternating between one and the other, biting the nipples with his teeth until she moaned and dug her nails into the back of his neck. The boy’s tongue was hot and impatient, and it left her nipples shiny with saliva and so sensitive that every brush of air made her shiver.

Marcos’s body was young in a way that hurt a little to look at: skin almost unmarked, muscles defined without effort, that unconscious firmness of someone who still doesn’t know what he has. When Elena finally pulled down his jeans and boxers, the cock sprang out hard, long, straight, the tip already wet with pre-cum. She wrapped her hand around it and felt the weight, the heat, the pulsing vein running along the underside. Her mouth flooded with saliva.

She knelt right there, between the sofa and the coffee table, and took it all into her mouth. She sucked it slowly at first, measuring it with her tongue, savoring the salty peak at the tip, and then she began to deep-throat him, her hand keeping pace with the motion, hollowing her cheeks so he could feel the suction. Marcos rested one hand on her head, more to steady himself than to guide her, and let out a rough moan that made her clamp her thighs together.

—Elena… like that I can’t take it —he murmured.

She pulled it out of her mouth with a wet sound, smiling with glossy lips.

—Don’t take it here —she said, getting to her feet and leading him by the hand to the bedroom.

In the room, Elena lay back and opened her legs without ceremony. Marcos paused for a second to look at her cunt, wet and open, with neatly trimmed hair and lips swollen with desire. Then he lowered his head between her thighs and began to lick her with the same hunger with which he had eaten at the table. His tongue traced her lips, slid inside, rose to her clit and stayed there, circling, sucking, alternating broad licks with short suctions. Elena grabbed his curly hair with both hands and pressed his face against her cunt, moving her hips against his mouth without a trace of shame.

—Put your fingers in me —she panted—. Yes, like that, two… harder.

Marcos obeyed. His fingers went in and out, curling inside her, while his tongue never left her clit. Elena felt the first orgasm rise from her heels, a long pull that squeezed her thighs around the boy’s head and tore a rough cry from her throat that bounced off the bedroom walls. She came all over his chin and jaw, and Marcos kept licking slowly, easing the pace, milking the last contractions out of her.

When he finally raised his body and fit his cock at her entrance, Elena was so wet that he sank all the way in with one thrust. They both moaned at once. Marcos started fucking her slowly at first, measuring the depth, and then sped up, bracing himself on his arms, watching her tits bounce with every shove. Elena hooked her legs around his waist and forced him in deeper. The sound of skin slapping skin filled the room, mixed with her broken moans and his low grunts.

—Harder, you —Elena begged between gasps—. Hold out, I’m gonna come again.

Marcos clenched his teeth and slowed down, pulling out almost completely and sinking back in slowly, torturing her. He took her nipples between his fingers and pinched them at the same time, and Elena arched her back with a sob. The second orgasm split her open, longer than the first, and she felt her cunt clenching in spasms around the boy’s cock. Only then did Marcos let go. He held her by the hips and fucked her with short, furious thrusts until he spilled inside her with a muffled groan, pressing her against the mattress with all his weight.

Afterward they stayed in the dark, his semen still sliding between her thighs, and Elena listened to Marcos’s breathing beside her as if it were music she didn’t remember ever hearing.

—What happens now? —he asked.

Elena knew that was the question. She could let him go, go back to her usual life, keep this night as a parenthesis. Or she could say what she had been thinking since the moment she saw him in the square.

—Stay —she said.

Marcos propped himself up on one elbow.

—What do you mean?

—I’m offering you a deal —Elena said, and her voice did not tremble—. You can stay here. Roof, food, whatever you need. In exchange for we keep doing this. When I want to.

The silence that followed was long.

—So basically I’m a gigolo —he said.

—A gigolo without multiple clients —Elena corrected him—. Just me. No other obligations.

—And if at some point I don’t want to keep going?

—You leave. No drama, no reproaches. The deal lasts as long as we both agree.

Marcos did not answer that night. He got up before her the next morning. When Elena stepped out onto the balcony wrapped in her robe, she found him smoking, watching the city wake up over the rooftops.

—I accept —he said, without turning around—. But without pretending anything. I’m not your boyfriend or your company. This is what it is.

—Perfect —Elena said—. That’s exactly what I want.

***

The first few days were strange, charged with a tension they both tried to ignore. Marcos moved into the guest room with a backpack that contained basically nothing. By day he drew, sometimes went out walking around the neighborhood, sometimes didn’t. Elena went to work and came back with an anticipation she hadn’t felt in years. In the office, between meetings and briefs, she found herself squeezing her thighs under the desk, imagining the boy’s cock entering her as soon as he crossed the apartment door.

The third night she found him in the living room, with a notebook open on the coffee table.

—I want you to come to the bedroom —she said.

Marcos closed the notebook without saying anything and followed her.

No preamble that time. Elena undressed with determination, took off the gray suit, the blouse, the panties, and stood by the edge of the bed, offered up. Marcos pulled his pants down to his knees, spat on his hand, and ran the saliva over his already hard cock without hurrying. Then he took her from behind without beating around the bush, gripping her hips with a force she had not fully anticipated, and drove into her all at once.

The impact of Marcos’s body against hers tore a sound from her she hadn’t made in a long time. A low, animal cry escaped her throat before she could even think about it. He gave her no respite. He started fucking her hard from the first second, fingers dug into the flesh of her hips, pulling the cock almost all the way out and then driving it back in to the hilt. Elena braced her hands and face against the duvet and endured as best she could, feeling how each thrust pushed her forward, how her tits bounced and hung, how her cunt opened wider and wider to take him.

—Like this? —he asked, without stopping.

—Harder —she said.

And he obeyed. He gave her a sharp slap on the ass, once, then again, and increased the pace until Elena’s legs began to tremble. He grabbed a lock of her hair and yanked her head back, forcing her to arch her spine, and like that, with her bent in two, he kept fucking her until the sound of skin slapping skin became a sustained drumbeat in the room. Elena could not control the noises she made, or the dirty words that came out of her on their own: yes, like that, harder, fuck me, fuck me hard, don’t stop. She lost track of her own thoughts and all that remained was sensation, pressure, the heat of the boy’s cock filling her over and over.

She came biting into the duvet, her thighs shaking so hard she almost fell. Marcos held on for a few more thrusts and then pulled out, turned her over, and came on her tits and neck in two long, thick spurts, gasping. She stayed there, sitting on the edge of the bed, with his warm semen running between her breasts, looking up at him from below.

When they were done, Elena took several minutes to catch her breath.

—Next time, you ask —Marcos said, pulling up his pants and standing.

Elena didn’t answer. But she knew he was right.

***

The following weeks established a routine. By day, each to their own. At night, or sometimes in the middle of the afternoon, Elena said his name in a particular tone and he understood. Sometimes in the bedroom, sometimes on the sofa with her riding him, moving slowly until she came, once on the kitchen table with her legs open and her skirt hiked up to her waist, once under the hot water of the shower with him holding her against the cold tiles, steam clouding their vision as he took her from behind while holding her by the waist, biting her shoulder so she wouldn’t scream.

She learned to ask. It took effort the first few times—“suck my cock,” “fuck my ass,” “come inside me”—but every dirty word that left her mouth sent a jolt straight to her belly, and Marcos would not let her get away with half measures: if she hesitated, he stopped and waited, looking at her, until she said it clearly.

It was on one of those afternoons that something changed.

After a long encounter that left her trembling, with the sheets soaked in sweat and spit, Marcos stayed sitting on the edge of the bed and looked at her differently.

—You know what you want —he said.

—Is that an observation or a complaint? —she replied.

—An observation. But there’s something you want and you still haven’t asked me for it.

—How do you know?

—Because I can tell how your breathing changes when I’m on top of you. There’s something that turns you on more than what we do, and you hold it back.

Elena felt heat rise to her face. It wasn’t exactly shame, but it was close.

—What you want —Marcos continued, and his voice had dropped a tone— is for me to decide. Without you having to ask.

She didn’t answer. There was no need.

***

The next night, Marcos went into the bedroom without Elena calling him. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, in black lingerie she had put on without fully knowing why: a lace bra that lifted her breasts, a tiny thong, thigh-high stockings held up with a garter belt. He looked her up and down, slowly, unhurriedly, assessing her the way he had assessed the woman in the portrait months earlier.

—Kneel —he said.

Something in Elena loosened all at once.

She obeyed.

She slid from the bed to the floor and knelt on the rug, hands resting on her thighs, waiting. Marcos approached, unbuckled his belt slowly, never taking his eyes off her. He pulled down his pants and boxers in one tug. The cock sprang out hard, thick, pointing at her face.

—Open your mouth —he ordered.

Elena obeyed. He rested the tip on her lips and dragged it over her open mouth without letting her close it yet, marking her with his own pre-cum. Then he grabbed her head with both hands and shoved it in all the way. She felt him grow between her tongue and the roof of her mouth while he tangled his fingers in her hair, setting the rhythm, guiding her with a firmness that excited her to the bone. She lost herself in the act, in the concrete fact of not having to decide anything, of being completely in someone else’s hands.

—Like that —he said, without raising his voice—. Don’t stop. All the way in.

Marcos started fucking her mouth with short thrusts, hitting the back of her throat. Elena gagged and he slowed for a second, let her breathe through her nose, then pushed in again. Tears welled in her eyes from the effort, her mascara ran, a thread of saliva escaped from the corner of her mouth and hung from her chin, but she did not want him to stop. She wanted more. She wanted him to keep going exactly like that, using her.

—Look at me —he ordered.

Elena lifted her misted eyes and looked up at him, his cock buried in her mouth, and saw on Marcos’s face something new, a dark, contained satisfaction that made her clamp her thighs together and feel her thong soak through completely.

After several minutes, Marcos took her by the hair and pulled her away with a sharp tug. A string of spit still connected her mouth to his tip for a second before breaking. He made her lie face down on the bed with a curt order—“here, ass up”—and Elena obeyed without hesitation, face buried in the pillow, back arched, ass lifted. She heard him rummaging in the nightstand drawer.

She felt the cold of a liquid on her lower back, sliding down the cleft of her ass to the entrance.

—Relax —Marcos said, and it was not a suggestion.

His fingers prepared her slowly, deliberately, without hurry but without asking. One finger first, turning, going in and out until she got used to it. Then two, opening her, listening to the long gasp that escaped her into the pillow. With his other hand he found her clit and began to rub it in slow circles, distracting her, stealing her breath. Elena bit the pillow, feeling pain and pleasure mingle until they became indistinguishable. It was new territory for her, or at least territory she had never reached like this, surrendered this way, with her ass soaked in lube and someone else’s fingers inside.

—Do you want me to stop? —he asked, the only time he asked.

—No —Elena replied, and her own voice surprised her.

Marcos pressed the tip of his cock against the tight little hole and began to push slowly. The pain was intense and real, a stinging burn that made her clench her fists and breathe through her nose. Elena took it through clenched teeth, not fleeing, letting her body adapt centimeter by centimeter. He entered little by little, pausing each time he felt her tighten, giving her time to relax, until finally his groin struck her ass cheeks and she felt his hot belly pressed against her lower back. He was buried in her all the way.

—Do you feel that? —he asked, moving only slightly.

—Yes —she managed.

—Now you’re going to remember me every time you sit down.

Marcos gradually increased the pace, with a precision Elena had not expected from someone his age, as if he knew exactly how much he could give and when. He started with short movements, barely half thrusts, and stretched them out until he was fucking her with long, sustained drives. He slid one hand under her belly and found her clit again, rubbing it in time with every thrust. His other hand gripped her hair, holding her steady. She got lost in the sensation, in the weight of his body on hers, in that mixture of surrender and release she had never known until this night. It was fullness, burn, pressure, and a delicious shame at hearing herself moan so loudly for something she had not dared to name until yesterday.

—Tell me what you are —he whispered against her nape.

—Yours —panted Elena—. I’m yours.

The orgasm took her without warning, long and deep, running through her entire body from the soles of her feet to her scalp, leaving her trembling and screaming into the sheets with her ass open in spasms around the boy’s cock. Marcos held out a little longer, clenching his teeth, and came inside with a low, contained sound, emptying himself in three short thrusts before pinning her under his weight for a few moments, his cock still buried, throbbing.

When he pulled out, Elena felt the warm semen sliding down the backs of her thighs. She did not move for several minutes. She could hear her own heart beating against her ribs.

—Where did you learn that? —she finally asked, her voice hoarse.

—You don’t learn it —he said—. You understand it.

***

From that night on, the deal remained the same in formal terms. But what happened between them was no longer a simple exchange.

Marcos knew her in a way no one else had. He knew when she needed hardness and when she needed him to take his time. He knew that what excited her was giving up control completely, that submission was, for her, a form of freedom and not of loss. He made her kneel at any moment of the day—sometimes while she was on the phone with a client, he’d show up in the office with his cock out and wait for her to hang up so he could shove it in her mouth—made her ask for things with the exact words—“ask me to put it in you”—and thank him afterward with a trembling voice. And Elena discovered that she obeyed without effort, with a naturalness that surprised her, her cunt wet even before he finished the sentence.

—You’re the last thing I needed —Elena told him one night, with something close to humor, while she lay naked on her stomach, the red marks from his fingers still warm on her ass.

—Probably —Marcos admitted, running a hand over her back—. But here we are.

She smiled. It was the first time Elena had seen him smile without arrogance or shyness, just real.

—Here we are —she repeated.

She fell asleep late that night, listening to the city outside and the sound of her own breathing, which no longer felt as empty as before. She had found something she had spent years looking for without knowing its name. It was not love, not company. It was something harder to name and, for that very reason, more her own.