Oral

I peered around the waterfall expecting an empty cave. What I found inside changed my entire afternoon.

I texted him, “Door ajar, if you dare,” and turned off almost all the lights. When he came up the stairs, I knew there was no turning back.

She had the seriousness of someone who knew the effect she caused and chose to administer it drop by drop. That night, on the massage table, I stopped pretending I’d only come for my back.

I heard him every night on the other side of the wall and imagined taking my mother’s place with the man who devoured me with his eyes whenever he thought no one was watching.

Her suitcases were in the car and her resignation was in hand. She only had one more door to cross before starting over—and that door changed everything.

We both had partners, and we both knew it. Even so, I took off my sweater in the passenger seat and let him look at me the way he’d wanted to for weeks.

I arrived at the temple half dead, convinced my body was a curse. That same night the priest whispered that I was actually the chosen one.

I walked into that club convinced I was the one in control. Three hours later, a stranger had completely undone me and I was begging him not to stop.

I started dancing just to entertain my husband, but the nervous look on the young man across from us made it clear that night wasn’t going to end with a dance.

He had saved my course without asking for anything in return. That afternoon, I decided to thank him in a way neither of us would ever forget.

It was eight-thirty, half an hour before the client’s call, and I already knew exactly how I wanted us to spend the wait.

Sonia was waiting for me at the restaurant door in a dress so short that every time she breathed it told a secret. And I had come ready to tell mine.

We started the day with a dumb bet and ended it in a stranger’s room, with a phone recording everything.

We went down to the garage to play like we used to when we were dating. What we didn’t expect was that someone else would be awake among the cars that night.

I was twenty-two and had a final project worth the entire course. What wasn’t in any plan was the offer that man made me on the way home.

For years I’d wanted to go to a nude beach, but none of my partners would come with me. That morning I went alone, not knowing how it would end.

I went down for coffee with the woman from the fifth floor and came back stunned: she told me, in vivid detail, what she did with the married man from the eighth floor.

When I locked the door, he turned around and reproached me for kissing another man. I couldn’t tell whether it was rage or desire burning in his eyes.

I recognized his face at the traffic light and knew that work trip would not end like the others. All I needed was an excuse to knock on his door at night.

I was curious and a little scared, but when I knelt in front of him I knew I wasn’t going to back out. That afternoon I learned something new about myself.