What I Paid to Be the Institute’s Face

Meridiana Institute for Continuing Education was not the most luxurious place in the city, but it had something no other school had: Gonzalo Fuentes. The rector had spent more than twenty years at the head of that institution and, even at sixty-four, he was still a man who knew how to enter a room. He wore Italian-cut suits, silver cufflinks, and drove a dark sedan that he always parked in the same spot, as if the asphalt owed him something.

He had a way of looking at women that was not exactly brazenness but something more calculated: a slow, unhurried appraisal that let you know with precision what he was thinking without his having to say it. Tanned skin, gray hair slicked back, and that habit of removing his glasses before speaking, as if he wanted to see you better. He was a man who had learned to read people the way one reads a newspaper: quickly and without missing anything important.

I had been in the professional refresher program for a year and a half. I was thirty-eight, had two divorces on my record, and the quiet resolve of someone who has learned, the hard way, that nobody gives anything away. I also had, according to people who told me without being asked, a body that didn’t match my age: firm tits that still held themselves up, a round, perky ass, and a cunt that, according to the last idiot who had been through my bed, knew how to grip like I was twenty. And I wasn’t going to pretend that had done nothing for me in life.

Gonzalo had looked at me from the first day. It was no secret. Neither was he the only one, but he was the one who looked with the most patience, and that patience interested me more than anyone else’s urgency.

***

On a Monday in March, a printed notice appeared on the bulletin boards in large letters: Institute Ambassador Contest — register before Friday. According to the text, the winner would represent the institution at education fairs, open days, and industry events for the rest of the year. Official photo, mention on the school website, modest financial compensation.

There were at least thirty women who were going to sign up before noon. I knew that before the first break ended. I knew it because I heard the comments in the hallway, because I saw them crowding in front of the board, because I know how ambition works when you give it a name and a deadline.

I signed up on Tuesday. Alone, quietly, without telling anyone.

***

The rector’s office was at the far end of the main corridor, behind a dark wooden door that always smelled of floor wax and old paper. I went in at ten in the morning with the form in my hand and the determination of someone who knows she’s playing with an advantage, even if she doesn’t yet know exactly which one.

— Miss Montoya — he said without getting up, looking at me over his glasses. — What do I owe the pleasure?

— I want to enter the contest — I replied, laying the form on his desk.

Gonzalo took it, read it for exactly one second, and set it aside. Then he looked at me. That kind of look that starts at the eyes and travels down slowly, without disguise, with not the slightest intention of hiding it. It lingered on my tits just long enough to let me know he’d seen them, and kept going down to my skirt as if he were calculating exactly what lay underneath.

— Please, sit down.

I sat. I crossed my legs slowly, with my skirt a finger-width higher than strictly necessary. He noticed and didn’t look away.

— Have you ever taken part in this kind of contest before? — he asked.

— No — I said. — But I know how to win them.

He raised an eyebrow. A very small smile crossed the corner of his mouth.

— I like that. Confidence in a mature woman is something hard to find.

— In some women.

— In the ones worth it, yes.

While I filled in the missing details on the form, Gonzalo stood and moved behind me. He said nothing. He was just there, close, with that scent of wood and tobacco that filled the space without asking permission. I bent my head over the paper and kept writing. I could feel his presence at the nape of my neck like something physical, like heat, and I could also feel my nipples tightening under my blouse without my body having asked my permission.

— You have a lot of competitors — he finally said.

— I know.

— Some considerably younger.

— I know that too.

— And you’re entering anyway?

I looked up and met his eyes directly.

— Precisely because of that.

***

Before I left, Gonzalo stopped me for a moment with his hand over the back of mine. A brief, calculated gesture that lasted exactly as long as needed for the message to get through beyond doubt.

— If you’d like any advice on how to prepare your candidacy — he said — you can come by this afternoon, after six. When the building is quieter.

I nodded. I said nothing else. It wasn’t necessary.

I waited for the last students to leave. I gathered my things slowly, unhurriedly, and when the hallway fell silent and the footsteps on the stairs finally faded away, I headed to his office and knocked three discreet times.

— Come in.

He was standing by the window, a glass of cognac in his hand and the city behind him, already lit up. He offered me another glass. I accepted. We stood there for a moment, the two of us, saying nothing, letting the situation settle before either of us moved it along.

— Do you know why I chose you? — he asked at last.

— You haven’t chosen me yet — I replied.

He smiled more broadly than he had in the morning.

— You’re right.

He came closer slowly. He set the glass on the desk without taking his eyes off me and put a hand on my waist, with a firmness that was not violent, only sure. I didn’t move. I let him come because I wanted him to come, because there was something in that older man, calm and self-assured, that awakened a part of me I had thought was more asleep than it was.

He kissed me slowly, with a calm I hadn’t expected. Men his age, when they get to that point, usually rush, as if afraid their bodies will betray them. Gonzalo didn’t. Gonzalo kissed like someone who knows exactly what will happen next and has no urgency whatsoever in getting there. That threw me off more than any haste would have.

His hands moved over my back, down to my skirt, and slowly lifted it, centimeter by centimeter, until the fabric was bunched over my hips. He undid my blouse button by button, never taking his mouth from my neck, and when my tits were bared, still held in place by the black bra, he murmured something I didn’t quite understand but that sounded like satisfaction. He pulled the cups down with his thumbs, left my stiff nipples exposed, and bent to suck them one after the other, unhurriedly, barely biting, tugging at them with his lips until a gasp slipped out of me that I couldn’t hold back.

— What tits — he said against my skin. — What tits, fuck.

I rested my arms over his shoulders and let him lift me until I was sitting on the edge of the desk, between his papers and his half-finished drink. He spread my legs with both hands, without asking, and stared at my cunt through my black panties for a long moment, like someone appraising a piece he was about to buy.

— There’s something about you — he murmured against my neck — that’s had me distracted since you walked through that door on the first day of the course.

— I know.

— And it didn’t bother you?

— Depends on what you did with that distraction.

He slipped a hand under my skirt and carefully moved aside the fabric of my underwear, unhurried. His fingers found exactly what they were looking for: the cunt already wet, parted, waiting for him longer than I was going to admit out loud. He slid a finger along the entire slit, from bottom to top, gathering my wetness and bringing it to my clit with a precision that made me close my eyes. I let out the breath I’d been holding.

— You’re soaked — he said. — Soaked since this morning, I’d dare say.

— Since before that — I replied, and he smiled.

He was skilled. Not clumsy or impatient, but deliberately skilled, like someone who has paid close attention for many years and learned that patience has rewards of its own. He slid two fingers into me slowly, all the way in, and curved them looking for that spot only men who have been fucking for decades and paying attention ever find. With his thumb he rubbed my clit in slow, exact circles, while the two fingers went in and out at a rhythm that kept building, degree by degree. He touched me without any rush, reading every response of my body, until I started moving against his hand without realizing I was doing it, pushing my cunt forward, wanting more, clamping down around him inside me.

— Look at me — he said.

I looked at him. That was the only thing he asked of me in all that time. And while he looked at me, without taking his eyes off mine for a single second, he slipped in a third finger and sped up until a long, sustained moan escaped me, bouncing off the upholstered walls of the office. He didn’t let me come. Just before, when I was already starting to tremble, he pulled his fingers out, brought them to his mouth, and sucked them slowly, watching me.

— Not yet — he said. — Not yet.

***

I got down from the desk. I undid his belt, pulled down the zipper, and freed his cock, thicker than a sixty-four-year-old man has any right to have. It was hard, rigid against his belly, the head already shining with pre-cum. I knelt in front of him on the dark carpet of his office.

Gonzalo rested a hand on my head with a lightness that was not weakness but absolute control. I gripped his cock at the base with one hand, stuck out my tongue, and licked him slowly from top to bottom, following the thick vein running up the side, until I reached the glans and took it all into my mouth. I heard the sound of his breathing change, deepen, become something less managed than anything else I had heard him say. I liked that. That a man so restrained would lose even a centimeter of that composure because of what I did with my mouth.

I sucked him slowly at first, letting my mouth fill with saliva, moving my tongue around the glans each time I came back up. Then I started going lower, until the tip touched the back of my throat and I had to hold my breath. I licked his balls between thrusts, one by one, while working his cock with my hand, and took him in again until I choked, strings of saliva hanging from my chin. When he started tightening his hand on my head, when his breathing became something he could no longer fully control, I knew I was on the right track.

— Like that — he murmured. — Exactly like that.

He pressed my head against his cock with measured firmness, never quite forcing me, setting the pace he wanted. I let him. Having my mouth fucked was part of the agreement we had not yet signed in words. When I felt him too close, when I noticed his cock swelling another degree inside my mouth, I pulled off and licked the head with a flat tongue, looking up at him, smiling.

— Not yet — I gave back to him. — Not yet.

***

He sat in the leather chair behind the desk, his hard cock pointing at the ceiling, shiny with saliva. I took off my panties, hiked my skirt up to my waist, and straddled him with my back to him, my ass resting on his lap. With one hand I grabbed the armrests, with the other I took his cock and eased it into me slowly, centimeter by centimeter, feeling my cunt open, filling in a way I hadn’t expected from a man his age.

— Fuck — I said, when I had him all the way inside.

— Move — he whispered against my nape. — However you want.

I started rising and falling slowly, rolling my hips, squeezing my cunt around his cock each time I had him buried to the hilt. He held my waist without forcing anything, letting me lead, following my rhythm with a discipline that was starting to seem like his most seductive trait. With his hands he pushed my blouse all the way up and grabbed my tits from behind, pinching my nipples to the beat I set with my hips.

It was a dense, complete sensation that filled me completely. I rode him with contained fury, planting my feet on the floor for more leverage, letting my full weight drop onto that cock that felt made to measure. I could hear him breathing behind my ear, could hear him biting his lips to keep from groaning, could hear him muttering things against my neck: what a fucking delicious cunt, what a tight cunt, like that, like that, don’t stop.

The silence of the empty building magnified every sound. The leather chair creaking under the weight of both of us, the wet splash of my soaked cunt swallowing his cock again and again, the breathing of the two of us, my own moans that I tried to hold back and that he never asked me to hold back.

After a while he made me stand up. He bent me over the desk, face down, tits crushed against the cold wood and ass in the air. He lifted my skirt all the way up, spread my cheeks with both hands, and sank into me again in one thrust, pulling a cry from me that I covered with my own hand.

— Quiet — he said, though there was a smile in his voice. — There are still people in the building.

— Then fuck me quietly — I replied.

And he fucked me quietly. With long, deep thrusts, grabbing my hair with one hand and my hip with the other, driving all the way in each time, making the edge of the desk dig into my hip bone. I clamped my cunt around his cock on every withdrawal, sucking him from the inside, feeling each thrust go deeper into me than the last. It didn’t take long before I felt something gathering in me, tight and urgent, with that familiar pressure that rises from within and, when it arrives, asks no permission.

Gonzalo noticed before I did. He slid his free hand underneath, found my clit with two fingers, and started rubbing it in tight circles without stopping his thrusts. Then he bent over me and bit my neck gently at the exact moment I least expected it, and that was enough. More than enough. I came on his cock with a long moan that he smothered by covering my mouth with his other hand, feeling my cunt walls clench around him in waves I couldn’t control.

He held on for a few more thrusts, feeling me come, and then pulled out in time. He turned me around, sat me on the edge of the desk, and came over my tits and belly in thick, hot ropes while I finished milking his cock with my hand, looking him in the eyes. He came a lot. More than I’d expected. Long streams that marked me from neck to navel, sliding between my breasts, dripping down my sides.

It took us a long while to put ourselves back together. When I cleaned up and straightened my clothes in front of the little mirror in the adjoining bathroom, he was already back in his chair, his tie perfectly in place and a freshly refilled glass in his hand, as if the last hour had been a pause not even worth naming. That, too, inexplicably, I liked.

***

The next morning, one of the administrative assistants handed me a note written in blue ink on institute letterhead. It only said: Come to my office at ten. G.F.

When I went in, Gonzalo was reviewing documents. He didn’t look up right away.

— Please sit down.

I sat.

— Your candidacy is moving along well — he said, turning a page. — More than I expected, frankly. It has awakened a particular interest among the board members.

— The board?

— Twelve people. Historical funders of the institute, men with their own judgment and plenty of experience in decision-making. — For the first time since I entered, he looked at me. — The final verdict always comes from the board. That’s the rule since the center was founded. I can make a recommendation, naturally, but they have the final word on any official representation.

He paused. He set the pen back on the desk.

— They’ve asked to meet you in person. A meeting in the boardroom, this afternoon at five. Informal, they told me. They only want to ask you a few questions before delivering the final verdict.

I nodded slowly, processing every word.

— How long will the meeting last? — I asked.

Gonzalo looked at me for a moment that stretched longer than was comfortable.

— That — he said — depends on you.

***

The boardroom was at the end of a corridor I had never walked before, behind a door broader and heavier than the rector’s office door. I knocked once. Someone inside said “come in” in a deep voice I didn’t recognize.

I pushed the door open.

There were twelve men seated around a long dark-wood table. All older. All in suits. All wearing that same expression of calculated patience Gonzalo had, but multiplied by twelve and stripped of any of his kinder nuances. They looked at me in silence for a moment that lasted too long. They ran their eyes over me as if they had already stripped me before I even closed the door.

The man presiding over the table, gray-haired and with his hands clasped on the tabletop, pointed to the empty chair at the far end.

— Miss Montoya — he said. — We’re glad you accepted the invitation. The rector has spoken very highly of you. Exceptionally highly, if I’m being frank.

I smiled. I sat down. I crossed my legs. I felt twelve pairs of eyes follow the same movement.

— All that remains is for us to corroborate the rector’s judgment — he continued. — We trust him, naturally, but on this board we’re used to forming our own opinions. I hope you understand that.

I thought of the glass of cognac. Of the desk. Of the handwritten note in blue ink. Of the semen still warm, sliding between my tits the night before.

I thought of everything I had done to get to that chair and, for the first time since I signed up on the board that Tuesday, I wondered if it was still enough.