Seduction

I opened the door expecting the smell of damp and abandonment. The house smelled of freshly brewed coffee and of a man. And there he was, pouring himself a cup as if he owned the place.

I promised my friend I wouldn’t touch his little sister. What I didn’t tell him was that his best friend sat next to me every class, too close for me to focus on the numbers.

I’d spent years giving massages to strangers, but none had ever made me tremble like that on the table, waiting for him to beg first.

I came out of the bathroom with my bikini half unfastened and he was there, drying his hair. We froze. What happened next still makes me smile.

When my mother opened the door and I saw who was coming in for dinner, my blood ran cold: it was the man I’d been secretly sleeping with for two months.

I walked into the room dressed as a mime, wearing a trench coat over my lingerie and knowing I was about to do something I’d never regret.

For weeks I’d been hearing my friends tell me I needed to let go. That Saturday, after the second glass of wine, I decided I’d be the one setting the pace.

Everyone at the clinic thought he was crazy. In the dark hallway, he grabbed my arm and told me I was the queen his kingdom needed.

I opened the box in front of him because inside was the perfect excuse. What I didn’t expect was for the neighbor to dare that much — or for me to let him.

She had spent months imagining his hands, his cologne, his voice. She never thought a storm would be enough to make them stop pretending they didn’t want each other.

The cock that had left her trembling on Saturday belonged to the man who would sign her evaluations on Monday. And neither of them planned to stop.

I never knew my grandfather, but his final will tied me to a woman I didn’t expect and to a house where everything ended up changing.

I woke to the smell of coffee and knew those two days locked inside with her, while it rained outside, would stay etched in me forever.

When she told me she hadn’t enjoyed sex in years, the sensible thing would have been to leave. Instead I reached for her leg and she didn’t pull away.

Daniel slept in the front seat while, a meter away, his uncle and his girlfriend shared the truck’s narrow bunk. And Noelia no longer wanted to sleep.

I always avoided him because he was so quiet and weird. Then a shove on the subway made me discover what he was hiding under those huge clothes, and I couldn't think about anything else.

When he stayed to practice a few poses, I could feel him looking at me. I hadn’t had a partner in months, and my body had decided for me long before my head did.

For thirty years we’d kept crossing paths by chance. That rainy afternoon, in the pharmacy queue, she looked at me differently. And I did too.

On the outside I was the perfect girlfriend, the one who turns off the light and moans softly. That morning I came home fired up from the dance floor and decided I was done pretending.

I went upstairs to see why the girl in the back room was screaming. I never imagined she’d drop the towel and ask me to look, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.