Seduction

When I opened my eyes, her arm was resting on my chest and the makeshift bed still smelled like the night before. I was going to leave soon; I’d promised my husband.

She was the only woman at the club who charged to dominate men. Until a rich client sat beside her and, instead of stripping her, only wanted to listen to her until dawn.

I stopped at the traffic light out of curiosity. An hour later I was on my back, asking her to take it slow, discovering a side of me I'd spent years pretending didn't exist.

When I moved to the capital, I thought I was only looking for work. My roommate taught me something else: that men look at what they shouldn’t, and one gesture is enough to confirm it.

When she suggested that the loser take off a piece of clothing, I said yes without thinking. I never imagined what would come next—or that we’d end up naked.

It was the first time I saw her appear in a nightdress at three in the morning, barefoot and with that smile that asked permission without asking.

When she walked into the bar, my boyfriend raised his glass and smiled as if he knew everything. In fact, he’d known for months. That night, the secret ended.

He was almost forty, lived door to door, and one day invited me for a drink. That night I stopped being the girl on the landing and became his desire.

When she poured the fourth shot and held my gaze a second too long, I knew that night we were going to cross the line we’d been avoiding for months.

My wife pulled a brochure from her purse and told me we had a meeting that afternoon. I had no idea that saying yes meant giving up being the only man in her bed for fifteen days.

My ad was for men, always. But that afternoon, when I read her message, I knew I was about to break my own rule and complicate my life.

It was almost eleven when the elevator dropped me at the empty parking garage. I had no idea those keys would cost me so much, and so little, at the same time.

That afternoon I turned the telescope without expecting anything new, and I saw her: kneeling on the chair, oblivious to the fact that a stranger thirty meters away was watching in silence.

Every time my friend came through the door, she changed clothes. One afternoon I made up an excuse, drove around the block, and slipped in through the back patio in silence.

I sent my secretary home, turned up the heat, and left only my blazer over my sheer bra. I wanted Mariela to see everything I’d been craving for weeks.

Her wife was leaving on a trip the next day, and I was still sleeping on a mattress on the floor. When he rang the bell with his toolbox, I knew something was about to happen.

When she told me the total and I counted my bills, I knew I was four thousand short. I leaned on the counter and whispered a proposition in her ear.

I went down to the garden looking for her and found her behind the glass, seated in the chair, with her assistant kissing her eyelids as if I didn’t exist.

I asked for the room and turned off the lights so she could take care of me like never before. Until my hand found something between her legs I’d never imagined.

I kept my women’s clothes locked away, sure no one would ever see them. Until that man found the suitcase and asked me to put them on for him.