Seduction

I met her in adolescence and never stopped wanting her. She told me about every kiss, every lover, never knowing I kept all her words for lonely nights.

I thought he was coming in for an ordinary problem. Instead, he sat across from me, lowered his gaze, and began to tell me something he’d hidden from everyone for years.

My patients tell me their secrets and I nod as if mine weren’t worse. Today, for the first time, I’m going to tell you the truth about me.

I got out of the car on a deserted street, my heart racing. I didn’t know what the woman I’d been writing to for months looked like—only that tonight, at last, she would be mine.

When he came out of the shower and found him waiting in black lace, Bianca smiled: she knew exactly what was going to happen that night.

We kept crossing glances by the pool all afternoon. When I went up to get water and he came in behind me, I knew there was no turning back.

I had spent thirty years closing projects for the company. On my farewell trip, I never imagined the woman traveling beside me would be the one to say goodbye to me in a different way.

I went back to school that afternoon under the excuse of studying in the library, but neither of us was going to open a single book. We were there for them.

It was six in the morning and he was looking at me in the rearview mirror as if he already knew what I was going to let happen. This really happened, and I regret nothing.

That Monday the gym was almost empty. I only wanted to shower in peace, but I walked through the wrong door… and he was already inside, watching me without saying a word.

A car braked beside me and asked my price. I was thirty-seven, a lawyer, and for once I decided not to say no to the madness.

I crossed the complex to deliver a message and ended up surrounded by four older men who looked at me as if I were the main course of the afternoon.

Damián came every three days; Adrián showed up Friday on his motorbike. That week I found out just how far I could go when nobody was looking.

He was my best friend, my confidant. That night at the fair, between wine and laughter, his hand on my waist ignited something I had never felt for him.

I never get involved with clients, I told him. But his body was already pressed against mine and my own voice sounded like a lie as I closed the garage gate.

I served that house since I was a boy and watched as that woman’s fire-red mane brought the valley’s most powerful men to their knees, one by one, by day of the week.

No one at the party suspected a thing: to everyone, we were just friends. But that night Adrián drove toward the hill estate, and I knew we were done pretending.

I saw his name on the screen and knew I shouldn’t answer. But I did, and the moment I heard his voice I was again the woman I swore I’d never be.

I parked next to her car, not knowing that my free afternoon would end with her climbing into mine, in the darkest corner of the parking lot.

The phone rang and it was him, offering me a session that same afternoon. From his tone, I knew we weren’t going to talk only about massages.