Seduction

When the sun began to sink, neither woman needed words to lead: a single glance was enough for every hand to know where it belonged.

She had spent half her life wanting the man twice her age. That afternoon she closed the shutter, switched off the shop lights, and decided to wait no longer.

I booked two seats in an almost empty theater and gave one to a stranger who read me. I didn’t know if she’d come until I saw her find her seat in the dark.

The mirror in the dressing room reflected a woman she didn’t recognize. In a few minutes, dozens of strangers would see her naked. And still, she chose to step through the curtain.

When the elevator doors closed, nobody was pretending anymore. Marina found my hand and guided it under her skirt while you kissed me without taking your eyes off them.

Marcela looked at me through the rearview mirror with a smile that was nothing like a calm mother’s. I didn’t know that afternoon would change everything between us.

I knelt in front of the window, never imagining that one of them had already gone around the house and was watching me in silence from the back door.

I took the first motorway exit without thinking. What she’d just told me made it impossible to keep driving, and I still hadn’t confessed what I really wanted.

I danced pressed against a masked stranger until his voice asked in my ear if I still remembered him. And my body answered before I did.

“There’s only one way to find out,” he said as he moved toward the examining horse. I had come to have the carrot removed, not to orgasm in front of a stranger in a lab coat.

I ran through the downpour to my door thinking I was safe. I didn’t realize he had come in behind me until I felt his hand on my back.

It was almost closing time when the bell rang. He and she came in, asked for black lace, and, without knowing it, offered me the afternoon I’d spent months fantasizing about alone.

That night I went down for a glass of water and he was awake on the sofa. What happened next in my bed, with my stepfather breathing on the other side of the door, still burns me.

I followed a trail of blood to a clearing where something was waiting for me, hanging among the trees. I never imagined the forest creature would choose me as its prey.

She swam toward me without looking away, and in the warm water of dusk I understood that what we had felt as kids had never really disappeared.

I walked onto the stage without thinking, in front of a room full of strangers and a man who no longer looked at me. That night I stopped begging and started feeling.

My whole life I believed I belonged only to him. The afternoon he walked into the dean’s office and found me on the desk, I discovered how much he liked seeing me with another man.

When I got the final dare of the night, I knew I could say no. What no one expected was for me to say yes with that smile on my lips.

She went back to confession every week for the same reason, always leaving out the most important part: that the man on the other side of the grille was the owner of all her sins.

The moment I cast off I knew that afternoon wouldn’t end with a simple sail: she was already looking at me differently, with that half-smile promising much more.