Seduction

I stepped out of the pool in my underwear and felt her watching me. I was no longer her friend’s son—I was a man, and she knew exactly what she wanted from me.

I turned off the laundry-room light and looked toward the picture window of C. It was quarter past three in the morning. The girl opposite had come back. And she hadn't come back alone.

Carmen thought she knew every corner of her home—until Marisol told her, in a low voice, everything that had happened while she was away.

That afternoon I couldn’t concentrate on the exam. My mother noticed. So did my grandmother. And when those two decide something, no book can stop them.

Five hundred euros to let them kick him where it hurt most. He accepted without thinking, convinced three women couldn’t hurt him that badly. He was wrong.

I looked in the mirror, bit my lip, and knew that photo would have consequences. It didn’t take three minutes for the key to turn in my lock.

I told her I wanted something stronger than her, much stronger. She wasn’t shocked. She smiled and said she knew a place where that was possible.

Adrián thought he was just going up to a friend’s place. He didn’t count on Lucas being awake in the living room, or on the need he’d spent all night holding back.

He climbed into my boat thinking he owned the river. By the time we touched land, he was ours: she was laughing beside me and he had no idea what was waiting for him.

I went back to the reunion for one unfinished high-school kiss. I never imagined that night, with the bottle spinning, would end with three of us in the same bed.

She woke in a bed that wasn’t hers, with Renata’s fingers around her wrist and sweat sticking her hair to her forehead. Renata asked nothing—she only kissed her temple.

For weeks I passed in front of them, pretending to be afraid. That afternoon I took off my bra behind a bush and decided to let all six men do whatever they wanted to me.

It started as an admirer’s email about my stories. It ended with me hiding her photos, aching to cross an ocean just to touch her once.

She always sat in the back, untouchable, until a kiss on the cheek cracked her armor. I never imagined the most reserved girl in class would end up trembling in my arms.

We’d spent years summering together, seeing each other topless without thinking anything of it. Until that first day at the beach, when her hand slipped inside my bikini and everything changed.

When she slid the latch shut and dropped her jacket on the chair, I knew we weren’t going to spend those hours on the narrow bunk sleeping.

When the door opened and she came in wearing that leather coat, I knew that women’s night was going to change something inside me I’d never be able to ignore again.

Drunk and heartbroken after losing my job, I said yes to her flirting. “Just five minutes in the bathroom,” she promised. I had no idea how far she meant to go.

She went down to reception just to ask about a trail, but she kept staring too long at the green eyes of the girl behind the desk. And the girl noticed.

I arrived in the city knowing no one, and that very afternoon a stranger offered me a slice of pizza. Neither of us knew where that gesture would lead.