Valeria, the manager who never smiled

Rodrigo had always had a weakness for women with a history. Not the twenty-somethings who were still figuring out who they were: the ones in their forties, the ones who carried everything in their gaze and still held themselves up on their own. Valeria was exactly that, even though she would never have said so to his face.

He had known her by sight for months. She was the manager of the neighborhood warehouse store, a large place where you could get everything: deli meats, vegetables, bread, canned goods, a bit of hardware in the back. She ran one of the registers with the absolute authority of someone who knew she was in charge. Dark-haired, brown hair with recent blond highlights that still didn’t quite convince her, about forty-five and wearing it well. Generous build: wide hips, big tits that the fitted sweatshirt did absolutely nothing to hide and that had stuck in Rodrigo’s head from day one. She wore little makeup, just a dark touch on her lips that made her stern expression stand out. She had a hoarse voice and swollen feet from standing so much, though that never stopped her: she yelled at the employees, demanded speed, and accepted no excuses. More than one had mentally told her to go to hell, but none of them dared.

Rodrigo had tried once or twice. A friendly joke while paying, a remark to coax even half a smile out of her. Nothing. Stone face, short answer, next customer. He had resigned himself to wanting her in silence, from the other side of the counter, sometimes imagining what face that so serious woman would make if someone wrung the moans out of her that she was surely keeping hidden.

That night he got home late from work. It was almost nine when he opened the fridge and found two eggs, a yogurt about to expire, and nothing else. The nearby shops were already closing. He remembered the warehouse store had extended hours and walked quickly, arriving just as they were about to lock the door.

Inside, the staff was hurriedly putting goods away in the coolers. Valeria was shouting orders from the register, in a rush to go home. Rodrigo grabbed what he could: a couple of trays of deli meat, bread, tomatoes, some lettuce. He went to pay.

She was standing in front of him. Tight gray sweatshirt that showed everything, stretchy jeans, open sandals. Her feet swollen after hours standing.

“Good thing you were still open,” Rodrigo said as he pulled out his wallet.

“If it were up to these lazy assholes, we’d have been closed hours ago,” she replied without looking at him.

“Well, you’re going home now. Feet up and rest.”

“If only it were that easy,” she said in a tone that didn’t invite further conversation.

“Thanks. See you tomorrow.”

“Bye.”

He left a little frustrated. How little she wanted to deal with people, that woman. He got home, made himself a couple of sandwiches, opened a beer, and sat in front of the TV. Half an hour later, when he reached into his jacket pocket looking for cigarettes and found the pack empty, he got up in a bad mood. The service station at the mall was ten blocks away, he still had time.

He locked the door, got into the car, and started out. Turning the first corner, he saw a woman alone at the bus stop. There had been a transport strike since nine; they’d announced it that morning on the radio. Poor thing, the bus is never going to come, he thought as he watched her.

The gray sweatshirt, the fitted light-blue jeans, the sandals. It was Valeria.

He slowed to a stop. Rolled down the window and turned on the car’s interior light so she could see him properly before he spoke.

“Hi. There’s a transport strike since nine; nothing’s coming through. I’m Rodrigo, a customer at the warehouse store.”

She looked at him warily. Then she recognized him and her expression eased a little. She let loose a string of insults toward the bus company that were not fit to repeat out loud.

“Want me to take you somewhere with more light, or straight home?” Rodrigo offered.

Valeria hesitated for a second. Then she opened the door and got in.

“First I’m going to the service station at the mall,” he said. “Ten blocks. Is that okay?”

“Perfect, I need smokes too.”

The short ride was enough for both of them to know they were alone. She had been divorced for years. No one was waiting at home, only a daughter who already lived on her own. Rodrigo didn’t have anyone waiting for him either. They stopped at the station, each bought their own things, and when she tried to order a cab through the app, no luck. Fifteen tries: nothing available. Demand far outstripped the cars on the street that night.

“Want to have a coffee while you wait?” he suggested.

“No, I have to get up really early tomorrow. Would you take me home? I’ll pay for the ride.”

Rodrigo glanced at the time on the stereo. He was working from home tomorrow, he could stay up. He agreed.

It was pretty far, but he had already said yes. On the drive, something in Valeria slowly loosened. She talked calmly, without the sharp tone she used at the warehouse. She told him about her life: the years of marriage she preferred to forget, the daughter who was almost an adult and had left the nest, the job that consumed all her time but was hers and that counted for something. Rodrigo listened without interrupting much.

They arrived at the building. Valeria reached for her wallet, but he gently put his hand over hers, blocking her.

“You don’t owe me anything.”

They stayed that way for a second. Their hands in contact. She looked at him.

“Get out,” she said. “I’m buying the coffee.”

***

The entryway was poorly lit. Valeria opened the door with her key and went in first, leaving him room to enter. She lived on the ground floor: a short hallway, apartment four. They went inside. She switched on a table lamp that bathed the place in a warm, low light. She pointed him to the two-seat sofa.

“How do you take your coffee?”

“Black, two sugars.”

While she prepared everything in the kitchen, Rodrigo looked around. A shelf with books mixed in with a few small plants, a couple of photos of her with a young girl—the daughter, he supposed—a laptop open on the table. Everything fairly neat for someone who worked twelve hours a day and came home with destroyed feet.

Valeria came back with the tray, set it on the table, and settled beside him on the big sofa. She handed him the steaming cup.

“Mind if I put my feet on the table? They’re wrecked.”

“Not at all.”

She took off her sandals and put her legs up. She slipped her hand into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. She opened it and offered one to Rodrigo. He took it. She brought him the lighter.

Valeria’s first drag was deep: lungs filling, chest expanding, tits pushing up against the gray sweatshirt until the fabric tightened over her nipples. When she exhaled, she glanced sideways at him and found him looking exactly where everyone always looked.

“I’m used to it,” she said, with no anger at all. “Men always look there first.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to be so obvious.”

“Don’t apologize. I’m flattered.”

There was something different about her now. Her hoarse voice was still hoarse, but without the tension of work hours piled on top. Rodrigo looked at her properly for the first time up close: slightly dark skin, full lips, coffee-colored eyes shining under the lamp light. She was prettier than the warehouse let on.

Valeria set the cigarette in the ashtray and began kneading her feet with her fingers, making faces.

“Ugh. They’re so swollen today.”

Rodrigo took the cushion beside him and placed it under her ankles, lifting her legs a little. Then, without thinking too much about it, he started giving her a gentle massage from the toes to the heel, his thumbs making small circles along the sides.

Valeria let out a sound of pure gratitude.

“Besides emergency chauffeur, you’re a masseur too.”

“What sports teach you,” he said.

They stayed silent for a while. The cigarettes, the coffee, the massage. Rodrigo finished his cup and stood up.

“I’ll let you rest. You start early tomorrow.”

Valeria tried to get up too, but her legs had decided not to cooperate. Completely relaxed, they gave way when she put her feet on the floor and she dropped back onto the sofa.

Rodrigo crouched to help her. They were only a few inches apart.

Her perfume—sweet, persistent—beat out the smell of tobacco and every other thought. Rodrigo leaned in and gave her a brief kiss on the lips. Just a second. Then he pulled back.

They looked at each other.

Valeria pulled him in with her arms and the second kiss was anything but brief.

***

Her tongue went in first, hot and uninvited, finding his mouth as if she had known it before. Rodrigo answered with his, sucking on it slowly, nibbling her lower lip until Valeria let out a hoarse moan that vibrated against his teeth. Rodrigo’s hands left the back of the sofa and went straight to the gray sweatshirt. They slid over her waist through the fabric, climbed up her sides and found the hem. They slipped underneath.

She wasn’t wearing a bra. Her nipples were already hard before he found them, two thick points that dug into his palms. Rodrigo pinched them between his fingers, rolled them, tugged them gently, and Valeria arched her back seeking more. He lifted the sweatshirt up to her neck and saw her tits for the first time: big, heavy, with dark areolas and nipples standing up as if they had been waiting for hours. He bent down and took one whole nipple into his mouth. He sucked it hard, swirling his tongue, then bit just enough for her to let out a sharp gasp.

“Holy fuck,” Valeria whispered, one hand at the back of his neck, pressing his face against her chest. “Like that, suck them like that.”

Rodrigo moved to the other nipple without letting go of the first. He sucked it the same way, until it was glossy with saliva, while with his other hand he slid down her jeans, squeezed her crotch through the fabric, and felt the heat already pouring out of her. He undid the button. Pulled the zipper down. Slid his hand under the elastic of her panties and found everything soaked.

“You’re dripping,” he told her in her ear, his voice rough.

“No one’s touched me properly in years. Put it in.”

Rodrigo sank two fingers into her at once. Valeria’s cunt clenched around them, squeezing, and she let her head fall back against the sofa. He started moving his fingers in and out, keeping the rhythm, while his thumb sought out her clit and worked it in firm circles. She opened her legs wider. Rodrigo’s free hand went back to her tits, squeezing them, and his mouth found hers again.

He wanted to strip her right there on the sofa and free her once and for all, but Valeria stopped his hands.

“It’s not the best place,” she said, breathing hard.

“Then take me to your room.”

“Not there either.”

He looked at her, not quite understanding, his fingers still buried in her.

“Don’t leave me like this, Valeria.”

For the first time all night, she smiled. A real smile, not the neutral expression from the warehouse.

“Let’s go to your place. And don’t leave me dressed for even five minutes.”

***

They didn’t stop in the car. Rodrigo drove with one hand; the other was buried between Valeria’s legs, and she hadn’t even pulled up the zipper on her jeans. She had spread her legs as wide as the seat allowed and guided his fingers, moving his wrist, setting the rhythm she wanted. At a traffic light she leaned over him, opened his pants, and pulled his cock out. She grabbed it with her hand, measured it in her palm, and started jerking him off slowly while Rodrigo tried not to lose control of the wheel.

“You have to get there intact,” she told him. “Don’t come in the car.”

“Then get your hand off me.”

“No.”

They arrived in minutes that felt shorter than they were. He opened his front door more awkwardly than usual, with his cock still out and Valeria laughing for the first time that night. He let her in, led her to the bedroom. There was clothes on the bed; he swept them to the floor with one motion. He yanked the sweatshirt over her head, pulled down her jeans and panties in one pull, and she stood naked in the middle of the room. He took off his T-shirt and pants in two movements. They were both naked.

Valeria shoved him onto the bed with a hand to his chest. She climbed on top. She dragged her tits across his face and let them fall onto his mouth, one and then the other, until he took them in both hands and sucked them the way he had been in the sofa, but now without any urgency to finish quickly. He bit her nipples, let them out glossy, sucked them again. She moaned softly, moving over him, rubbing her wet cunt against his stomach.

“Take your clothes off too,” he told her.

“I know what you want.”

Valeria slid down. She ran her tongue over his neck, over his chest, over his belly. When she reached his cock she took it in one hand and looked at it for a second, as if studying it, and then put it in her mouth in one go, all the way to the back. Rodrigo let out a groan that came from his gut. She sucked him hard, her hand matching the movement, alternating with her tongue around the tip, taking his balls into her mouth now and then before going back up. This was not the mouth of a woman trying it for the first time: it was the mouth of one who had gone years without anyone and was now making up for lost time.

“Like that, like that,” he said, one hand on the back of her neck. “All the way in, come on.”

Valeria sucked him with ragged breathing, strings of saliva running down her chin. When she felt him close, she pulled off abruptly and climbed back on top.

“No way I’m letting you come there. I want you inside me.”

She settled astride him, grabbed his cock with her hand, ran it over her soaked cunt a couple of times to wet the opening, and then drove it in with one downward thrust. They both moaned at the same time. She stayed still for a second, feeling him all the way inside, and then started moving.

They got going. She set the rhythm from on top and he followed. Rodrigo’s hands gripped her wide hips, helping her up and down, while her tits bounced in his face. Valeria rode him hard, squeezing every time she came down, grinding herself against him. Ten minutes of urgency with no pretense at all: real moans, real nails, the real creak of the bed against the wall. She leaned forward and planted her palms on his chest to get momentum, and from there she started riding him faster, impaling herself again and again, eyes shut and mouth open.

“I’m about to come,” she gasped. “Holy fuck, I’m going.”

“Come on me.”

Valeria came with a long shudder that shook her whole body, her cunt clenching around his cock in spasms, her head thrown back and a guttural moan she didn’t bother to swallow. Rodrigo held out a few seconds longer, grabbed her hips and slammed her down against him, and came inside her with two, three upward thrusts, feeling his cum shoot out in spurts while she kept squeezing him.

They stayed flattened against each other, not speaking, sweaty, stuck together where they touched.

“I’m not leaving tonight,” she said, still on top of him, catching her breath. “I’ve got some overdue hunger to collect.”

Rodrigo didn’t answer. He just held her tighter.

***

When both of them’s strength faded, Valeria moved off to his side, crossed a leg over him, and closed her eyes. Rodrigo watched her in the dimness.

“You have no idea how many times I thought about this,” he said softly.

“Don’t tell me,” she replied without opening her eyes. “And don’t get your hopes up: this won’t be easy to repeat.”

He didn’t answer. Whatever might happen tomorrow didn’t matter to him at that moment.

A while later, Valeria got up to use the bathroom. Rodrigo watched her walk away naked, her big ass moving with every step, and watched her come back facing him, with her tits hanging free and the dark patch between her legs, and both views were worth everything he had imagined for months while looking at her from the other side of the counter.

When she returned to the bed, she covered the lamp with a T-shirt she found on the floor and left the room in half-light. She lay down beside him and put a hand on his chest.

“Don’t ask, don’t promise. Just enjoy.”

He nodded in silence and let her take the lead.

Valeria explored him slowly, from top to bottom, with no hurry at all. She ran her tongue over his chest, paused at his nipples, bit the skin of his stomach, went down to the cock that had already started half-hardening again and took it in her hand. She worked it slowly, her tongue wrapping around the tip, her lips closing around it and going all the way down until she made it hard as stone. She gave him time to recover fully and when she had him ready, she used him well.

She settled astride him facing the other way: she turned her back to him, spread her ass cheeks with her hands, and sat down on top, guiding his cock with one hand until she sank it all the way back into her cunt. Rodrigo now had the full view of her ass rising and falling over him, the wide cheeks covering half his body, the cunt opening and closing around his cock with every movement. Without him asking, she offered him the image and angle many men would have paid to see.

“Grab my ass,” she told him, looking over her shoulder.

Rodrigo dug his hands into her buttocks and spread them wider. He squeezed them, slapped them now and then, and she responded by tightening her cunt and riding him harder. A long, intense while that kept slowing and resuming, with Valeria easing the pace when she felt he was close, recovering herself too, and speeding up again when she wanted more. At one point she got up, turned around without taking him out, and settled facing him to watch him while she came.

“Both of us now,” she said, her face flushed and her hair stuck to her forehead.

She moved hard, tightening each time, and Rodrigo pushed from below until he felt it coming. They came together: her with another long shudder that left her folded over him, him spilling his second load of the night inside her, both of them moaning into each other’s mouths. They fell asleep almost without speaking, her with his cock still inside her.

***

Valeria’s phone alarm went off early. Rodrigo opened his eyes and watched her fumble for the phone to silence it. There was still time before she left and the hours of sleep had given him his desire back. His cock was hard again just from looking at her, half-naked, with the sheet tangled around one leg.

He took her by the hips gently. Valeria understood without a word being said.

She lay face down, lifted her hips, spread her legs a little, and offered him the image he had imagined so many times while watching her ring people up from the other side of the counter: her big ass in the air, her cunt open and still wet from the night, shining in the dim light. Rodrigo positioned himself behind her, ran his mouth over her back, her waist, lower, until he buried his tongue between her buttocks and licked her from her cunt upward, all of her. Valeria let out a muffled moan into the pillow.

“Eat me out, come on,” she murmured.

Rodrigo spread her cheeks with his thumbs and drove his tongue into her cunt, sucking on it, thrusting the tip in, every so often going up to the other hole to see how she reacted—she arched farther and clutched the pillow with both hands. He ate her cunt until she stopped being patient and reached back for him with her hand to hurry him up.

“Put it in already. I can’t take it anymore.”

Rodrigo straightened behind her, grabbed his cock, and drove it into her with one thrust. Valeria’s cunt took him soaked, still sensitive from the night before. He started fucking her hard from behind, without ceremony, gripping her hips and pulling her back toward him with each thrust. Her butt cheeks bounced against his pelvis with a dry sound, and Valeria’s moans came muffled into the pillow but made no effort to be discreet.

“Like that, give me more, give me more,” she panted. “Harder, don’t be a pussy.”

Rodrigo grabbed her hair with one hand and wound it around his fist. He pulled her head back and kept fucking her from behind, harder, while with the other hand he squeezed a breast hanging loose and swinging with every thrust. She pushed back, meeting each hit, tightening her cunt every time he went all the way in. It was exactly what they both needed: fast, no ceremony, brutal, with every thrust accompanied by real moans.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Valeria gasped into the pillow.

She came first, trembling with her ass still in the air, her cunt clenching around him in spasms. Rodrigo held her hips tight and kept going a few seconds longer until he came too, inside her again, emptying himself completely into her down to the last contraction. He stayed bent over her back, breathing hard, with his cock still inside.

After that, a shower. The two of them under the water, letting it wash away the remnants of the night. Rodrigo soaped her tits from behind, ran his hand between her legs, and she turned around and took his still-sensitive cock, jerking him off slowly under the spray, laughing because he couldn’t take any more. Valeria got dressed, picked up her bag, and looked at him from the bedroom door.

“Thanks for last night,” she said.

“Thank you. If you ever want to come back, you know where it is.”

Valeria smiled. She picked up the underwear left on the chair—the black panties, still with the damp stain from the night before—and held them out to him.

“A souvenir,” she said.

Rodrigo took them without saying anything, brought them to his face, and smelled them without the slightest attempt to hide it. She kissed him deeply, pulled away before he could start anything else, and left.

***

Rodrigo spent the morning in bed, unhurried, with her panties still on the nightstand. He was supposed to be working from home but ignored it for a few hours. When he finally got up to make something for lunch, the doorbell rang.

He looked through the peephole. It was Valeria.

He opened the door. She came in quickly, dropped her bag on the floor, and hung from his neck.

“I was hungry,” she said, her mouth almost on his, already sliding her hand under his pants. “And not just for food.”

Rodrigo didn’t answer. He took her hand and led her to the bedroom. He closed the door.