Seduction

I thought nobody had seen me that afternoon at my grandfather’s house. I was wrong: there were a pair of eyes behind the door, and they took fifteen years to speak.

What happened that night between Lorena and me was never supposed to come out. But the scream from the other side of the wall told me it was already too late.

I’d never looked at another woman that way until she pressed against my back during squats and I stopped counting the reps.

My husband gave me a spa massage for our seventh anniversary. What he never imagined was that another woman would teach me how much I still had to discover.

I found her in a bikini filming videos by the pool. Dad’s new wife. Eight years younger than me. And she thought she could order me around.

When he arrived that night, I was already on the other side of the glass with the lights off, watching her greet him with a smile she had never shown me.

I grew up between prayers and prohibitions, convinced that pleasure was sin. Until the woman next door sat beside me on the bus and everything began to change.

When the whiskey spilled on my pink dress, I knew that wedding wouldn’t end the way I thought. I didn’t know the bride’s uncle would be waiting for me in the darkest hallway.

When she walked into the gym, I knew I recognized her—but from where? An hour later, she was naked with me in the shower, and my life was about to split in two.

I’d been trying for years to get her to give in again. That afternoon, between joints and caresses on the couch, she sat up and kissed me like before.

That morning, her husband left on patrol without looking at her. By nine, she had already chosen the clothes she would wear to open the door to another man.

He knew me when I was a shy boy. Years later I opened the door to him dressed and made up, and in his eyes I saw there was nothing left of the friend he thought he knew.

I came out of the shower wrapped in a towel, knowing my father was alone. That night I wanted to see how far he’d dare go without alcohol.

Her hand slid up my forearm as I tried to pour her more wine, and I knew the drink wasn’t the only reason she had invited me home.

Marina shot me a look through the steam when they came through the door. I already knew then that the night wouldn’t end as we had planned when we came upstairs.

When I moved her panties aside to tend her wound, I thought she’d protest. But she only pressed her face into the pillow and opened her legs a little wider.

The first time I went out on the street dressed as a woman, my legs were shaking. Ten years later, nothing feels better than being watched.

I went down to the garage ready to cry alone, but the hand that tapped my car window that night wasn’t bringing comfort: it was bringing an offer I couldn’t refuse.

Everyone in the neighborhood wanted her, but that birthday afternoon she discovered just how far she was willing to go to be the center of her own family again.

I only wanted to try five minutes of massage before going back to the hotel. I never imagined a stranger’s hand would change my vacation that afternoon.