Strangers

We agreed to act like two strangers on the sand: she would have to seduce me with the whole world watching, and I would have to endure without giving myself away.

We arrived at the club after midnight, not really knowing what we were looking for. We knew when Mara got out of the water, looked at both of us, and smiled as if she already knew us.

When I opened the hotel room door, it was too late to back out: she was on the bed, and he didn’t stop when our eyes met.

After twenty-four years of marriage, Marina whispered that she only wanted to watch. Three hours later, I was watching another man drive her out of her mind.

“It’s going to be shopping with a happy ending,” she told me with that smile that wasn’t innocent. I never imagined we’d end up in a hedge maze with another couple.

I walked through the curtain convinced I was looking for a man. The hand that took mine in the darkness was soft, perfumed, and wouldn’t let go until everything changed.

The plan was perfect: in my friend’s costume, my wife would never know the stranger dancing with her among the masks was me.

We had arranged to be five that summer afternoon. At seven the phone rang, one of us wasn’t coming, and yet we still opened the door to two strangers.

The plan was just to have coffee and get to know each other. But the moment they took Lucía out for a drive, I knew that afternoon wasn’t going to end there.

The door was half open, and while I was spying on my friend with two strangers, a hand turned me by the waist. It was him. And he smiled at me as if we both already knew.

The rule was simple: just watch, stay in our underwear, and nothing more. It lasted exactly until she put my hand on her breast and asked me to squeeze.

We were alone on the beach until a man stopped at the shore to watch us. And instead of covering up, we decided to give him something to look at.

I’d been fantasizing about dogging for years, but I never imagined she’d be the one to lead me to the far end of that industrial estate, with a surprise waiting in the hedges.

I had given her my word: that night I would only watch. But when he kissed her against the wall of the room, I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay still in the chair.

Lucía never got her vacation goodbye, and one look at the flight attendant was enough to make her decide to collect it before they landed back home.

I agreed for his sake, not knowing that crossing that door would change my idea of pleasure. That night I stopped being only his.

They’d come looking for action and the club was dead. Until a shy couple showed up, not knowing what they’d walked into.

We wandered disguised as monks when the forest spat us out before an inn of generous flesh and bottomless wine; what happened inside could not be contained by penance.

I lowered my voice to tell her how an Austrian photographed me naked on the beach, never imagining that story would lead us both to live the same thing.

I opened the room door and the first thing I heard was a long moan and a bed thudding against the wall. We weren’t alone, and neither of us wanted to stop.