Strangers

Every new city is a possibility. My name is Valeria, I travel alone, and I live a life very few people know. This is what happens when I turn off my phone.

The bus was packed and I could barely move. When I felt the first touch on my thigh, I thought it was an accident. But it wasn’t.

When I heard the corn vendor’s cart, I only thought about satisfying a craving. What I didn’t expect was for his night to end in my kitchen, looking at me like I was dessert.

I moved to an unfamiliar city, and the first man to enter my apartment was also the most attractive. He had a girlfriend, but that didn’t stop him.

I opened the hotel-room door, and there was Renata: just like her pictures, but with nerves no image could ever capture.

He barely remembers that night. Only the pain when he woke up and the certainty that something in him had changed forever.

I’d been burning up for an hour with Rodrigo not home. When I called the sex shop, I never imagined the clerk would show up at my door ten minutes later.

When Marcos told me about the man who bathed naked by the riverbank, I couldn’t get him out of my head. That night I went to see for myself.

Sofía had been wearing that mischievous look for weeks. When she suggested a stranger watch her touch herself on camera while I observed in silence, I said yes without hesitation.

There was something about the way he looked at me from the platform. It wasn’t just any look. I knew that if I went with him, I’d never be the same.

I dressed to impress no one, or so I thought. Two guards stopped me with a smile that said they knew exactly who I was.

I saw her alone in the café for weeks: voluptuous, pretty, with a body her clothes couldn’t hide. When she confessed she’d gone months without sex, I knew something was about to happen.

I had been preparing that day for months: the wig, the dress, the lubricant. I thought I was alone at the abandoned lookout. The guard disagreed.

He asked me for a light, and when I held out my lighter, his eyes dazzled me. Five minutes later, we were heading to his apartment, and I still had no idea what I’d gotten myself into.

The creature isn’t hunting you. It only watches you run and waits for you to run out of strength. It has known from the beginning how this ends.

I had been at the limit for a week. That Saturday night I put on my shortest dress, entered the club alone, and let desire take me all the way.

He entered the cave thinking of war. The seer awaited him with his queen’s face, her gown barely covering her body, and a promise in her eyes that was more than a vision.

When she came back from the bathroom without any panties on, I knew that night we were going to cross a line neither of us would want to erase.

When the trono passed in front of me, our eyes met for a second. It was enough to end that night in a way I never could have imagined.

He was the boss’s son: proper, shy, well-mannered. I never imagined what he did on Friday nights when he disappeared.