Seduction

I hadn’t felt anything for months. Then she came in behind me in the stall, locked the door, and everything I thought I knew about myself came crashing down.

Her father was speaking in my ear over the phone while she silently slid my thong down. We knew a single moan could give us away, and that made it hotter.

They shared the same class three days a week and stole glances at each other. Until one of them decided she was done pretending nothing was happening.

For months I’d imagined that scene in her office, but I never thought it would be her who made the first move, with the lock clicked shut and her perfume filling everything.

Since I was fifteen, I’d kept quiet about how badly I wanted to kiss her. Now, sitting across from me with that same smile, I wasn’t going to let the chance slip away again.

I’d been stuck in a cast for weeks and bored out of my mind when a TV series stirred something in me. Then she appeared in the doorway with a smile that wasn’t entirely innocent.

When I passed the half-open bathroom and saw her naked from behind, I knew that night at my place was not going to end like two old acquaintances having tea.

It wasn’t sale season and the store was empty. The blonde saleswoman followed me into the fitting room with an excuse, and I left the curtain open on purpose.

When I got into her car that Friday, I knew we were no longer going to talk about my future. There was something else between us, and we’d both spent weeks pretending there wasn’t.

I felt a hand on my hip and a mouth in my ear: “You smell incredible.” When I turned around, it was her—the girl my friend had come to flirt with.

When she took off her sweat-soaked T-shirt in front of that girl, she knew she was no longer sweating just from the heat of the barn.

I had adored her in silence since childhood. The night before she left, she asked me to help her undress, and my hands trembled as they finally brushed her skin.

I had spent ten years resigned to the lukewarm sex of my marriage. Then Lorena locked the shower door from inside and kissed me without asking.

We three met on the last Thursday in December, under the pretext of seeing the year out. None of us said aloud what we were really going to do.

I went up to the seventh floor looking to relax for an hour. I had no idea the masseuse, and then my lover, had other plans for me that night.

I never told her I liked women, or that she kept me up at night. But that midnight, alone by the pool, I was the one who dared to say what I felt.

All it took was for her to tilt her head toward the back door for me to set my glass on the bar and follow her without thinking twice.

Eight years into my career, no patient had ever looked at me like that. That afternoon she put her feet up on my sofa, held my gaze, and everything I thought was solid began to tremble.

Carla couldn’t take her eyes off her while she worked out. Every drop of sweat on her back ignited something she’d never felt for another woman.

When Renata opened the bedroom door wearing a harness and asked if there was room for one more, I knew that Christmas was one none of us would ever forget.