Seduction

Three months after she dumped me, I saw her kissing someone else in that bar. That same night I walked into a gay bar and began sinking without knowing how far I'd go.

She arrived two hours before her flight, left her suitcase in the hallway, and before I could react, took off her sweatshirt in front of me.

The fireplace burned, rain hammered the windows, and the two of them looked at me with that mix of curiosity and vertigo that comes just before crossing a line.

When I saw him walk into the bar with his two friends, I knew that night I wouldn’t go home the same woman. And I wasn’t wrong.

Thirty candidates, a rector with too much power, and me at thirty-eight with all the experience in the world. I thought I could handle it. I was half right.

When she adjusted his posture for the third time and he felt the pressure under his shorts, he decided that morning’s session was going to be very different from the others.

When I saw Yésica go up the stairs behind him that first night, I knew none of the women serving drinks at that stop would come out of that summer unchanged.

I wasn’t a lesbian, and my wedding was six weeks away. But that night in the hotel, Elena showed me everything I had never wanted to admit.

When they went into the club, Camila and Florencia just wanted a good night out. They had no idea it would end in a wager that would leave them with nothing to cover.

Andrés woke up naked in his greatest rival’s bed. With no memory of the night before, he only wanted to leave. But something kept holding him back.

For weeks I’d felt the way he lingered in his hugs and how he looked at me when he thought I wasn’t paying attention. That dawn I decided to stop pretending.

I’d bought her perfume and a pendant as a farewell gift. She brought me something else. I was eighteen and had never touched anyone in my life.

I arrived looking for a distraction from a life falling apart. Three hours later, I was on my knees before a stranger—and nothing in me was ever the same.

The gym hadn’t opened yet when she grabbed his wrist and pulled him into the empty locker room. That class wasn’t on the app’s menu.

When Mateo whispered that he was going to show her something unforgettable, Camila had no idea her ex-husband would show up and two officers would teach her what winning meant.

We’d been married for three days when Adrián whispered in my ear in a Roman café what was about to happen. I should have said no. I didn’t.

That morning I went into the prison with good news for my client. I came out with a wrinkled blouse, messy hair, and a secret I’d never tell.

I had been reading the evening news for ten years when an ivory envelope arrived at reception. Inside was an offer only a man like him could make.

We’d spent weeks wanting each other, and that carnival night, with no condom and no bed, everything happened where we least expected it.

Don Ernesto was twenty-seven years older than me, with rough laborer’s hands and a hungry gaze I pretended not to see. That night, I closed the curtains myself.