Peeping

He climbed into my boat thinking he owned the river. By the time we touched land, he was ours: she was laughing beside me and he had no idea what was waiting for him.

I boarded the catamaran to escape the world for a while. I never imagined I’d end up naked, surrounded, and the one who didn’t want it to stop.

We’d been talking about it for months and never dared. Then a couple invited us to a liberal spa one May afternoon, and Sofía walked through that door before I did.

I arrived in the city knowing no one, and that very afternoon a stranger offered me a slice of pizza. Neither of us knew where that gesture would lead.

She arrived at dinner thinking it would be a quiet evening among friends. She had no idea that night would teach her, in a stranger’s arms, everything her body had kept silent for years.

My aunt lowered her voice as she told me that afternoon at Pilar’s house: the door had been left open on purpose, and she couldn’t look away from what was happening inside.

When Lorena let her dress fall to the floor and stood naked in front of all four of us, I knew that night we weren’t going to set any limits.

No one said aloud what was going to happen, but when the clothes began to come off, all four of us knew we wouldn’t return home that night as the same people.

I knew it before either of them admitted it: every Thursday she made up a clumsy excuse, and I let her go, knowing exactly where and with whom.

There I was on the sofa, whisky in hand, realizing I no longer needed to take part: it was enough to watch someone else do what I’d stopped doing.

I wanted to see another man inside my girlfriend. What I hadn’t reckoned with was what I would feel, lying in the next bed while she moaned for him, not me.

I woke up with my head about to explode. Beside me slept a woman who wasn’t just my wife, and I couldn’t remember a thing about how I got there.

I’d given her permission to let them watch us. What I didn’t expect was for her to pull the curtain herself and move my hand aside to put hers there.

I followed him down the hallway without thinking, my heart in my throat. I knew that if I pushed that door open there would be no going back—and I pushed it anyway.

The cabin was meant to be her refuge in solitude. Until an engine broke the fjord’s silence and Mikkel and Sigrid stepped out, bringing the end of everything Greta thought she was.

Every morning my grandmother woke me with a punishment I’d learned to beg for. That afternoon, her old friend arrived ready to do more than just watch.

I thought I was only going to watch the filming of Europe’s dirtiest movie. They hadn’t told me about the two seats—or the woman occupying the one beside me.

I had never taken a job like that before: he only wanted to sit and watch while other men used me, and keep for the end what they left inside me.

Her feet were swollen from the match and she had a smile that knew everything. I only wanted to kneel and show her how far I was willing to go.

For months we had repeated it in bed as a game of words. That night, when I came back from the bathroom, it was no longer a game: they were kissing on my own sofa.