My Father’s Young Wife Dared Me That Night

The dinner at the restaurant had been an ambush. My father, Damián, was waiting for me with his new wife at a table for three, and I arrived with my backpack over my shoulder, my beard unkempt, and my boots still caked with mud from Chilean Patagonia.

Five months away, sleeping on dirt floors and sharing mate with strangers, and that was the first thing they showed me when I came home: a woman twenty-seven years younger than my father, with two implants he himself had given her before asking her to marry him.

—Tobías, this is Camila —he said, standing with the solemnity of a man introducing a new painting to a guest.

—Nice to meet you —I replied, and gave her the customary kisses. She barely let her cheek leave the air.

We ate through awkward silences. My father tried to ask me about the villages in the south, about the people I’d slept on the floor with for months, but Camila wouldn’t put her phone down and laughed to herself at every notification lighting up her screen.

—And what do you do? —I asked her, trying to include her in the conversation.

—I’m an influencer —she replied without looking up—. Fashion and lifestyle. Almost half a million followers.

—Wow. I had almost half a million mosquitoes last week.

Damián let out a short laugh. She didn’t.

When dessert arrived, Camila lifted her glass toward me with a smile that never reached her eyes.

—I hope you don’t make too much noise in the mornings. I get up early.

—Don’t worry. I come from a place where I got up early to go fetch water from the river. Your husband saves you that part.

Damián coughed into his napkin. Camila pressed her lips together and went back to her screen. That was how I knew it was going to be a very long week.

***

My father left for the conference the next morning. I helped him get his suitcase into the taxi at six, my body still wrecked by the time difference, and before he got into the car he grabbed my arm with his surgeon’s hand.

—Tobías, I’m asking you a favor. Be good to her. She’s my wife.

—I’ll try, Dad.

—Don’t try. Do it. I’m back on Sunday.

I watched him go and walked into a house that was no longer the house where I grew up. Camila had changed the furniture, the curtains, the smells. My mother’s picture was still hanging in the hallway, but it was crooked, as if no one had bothered to straighten it.

I spent the day sleeping. When I went down to the kitchen, almost at one in the morning, she was sitting on the counter with a glass in her hand and her gaze lost in a window overlooking the garden.

—I thought you never left your cave —she said without turning around.

—I thought you never left your screen.

She turned slowly. She was wearing a short ivory silk robe and nothing underneath that I could make out. The extractor hood’s light outlined her crossed thighs and the start of her collarbones.

Don’t look at her like that. She’s your father’s wife.

—Whisky? —she offered, lifting the bottle—. No ice, I suppose.

—Is this a truce?

—It’s a conversation. Don’t get dramatic.

I accepted the glass and sat across from her on one of the kitchen island’s tall stools. The silence stretched through a couple of drinks, thick, almost physical.

—You don’t like me —I said at last.

—Not at all.

—Why?

—Because you look at me like I’m one of your father’s trophies. And because you know I’m not one of your Patagonian peasant girls, so your savior-of-the-world act doesn’t work on me.

I laughed. I hadn’t expected her to be that blunt, or that precise.

—My father is fifty-two. You’re twenty-five. Anyone can do the math.

—My father died when I was fourteen —she replied, and her tone hardened—. Don’t come here explaining math to me. And by the way, I didn’t marry him for the money. Although I know perfectly well that’s what you’re thinking.

I lowered my gaze to the glass. She was right. That was exactly what I was thinking.

—Sorry —I muttered.

She shrugged and filled her glass again.

—I don’t forgive you. But I accept that you said it.

The whisky dwindled between short sentences and long silences. By two in the morning, she was no longer sitting on the counter but on the floor, her back against the drawers and her legs stretched out in front of me. Her robe had opened over her left thigh, and I was trying not to look. Failing.

—You know what was the first thing I thought when I saw you at the restaurant?

—I don’t want to know.

—That you looked like a stray dog.

—Thanks.

—And that you smelled like freedom.

I lifted my head. She wasn’t looking me in the eyes, but at my mouth.

—I’ve spent three years living with a man who bought me these tits —she said, bringing a hand to her cleavage with devastating ease—. You know what my life looks like from the inside, Tobías? Like a storefront window. And I’m the mannequin.

—Why are you telling me this?

—Because it’s one-thirty in the morning, because your father isn’t here, and because I expected you to be an insufferable asshole and it turns out you’re only half an asshole.

I swallowed.

—Camila…

—Don’t say anything yet. Just listen. Tomorrow we go back to hating each other, I promise. But tonight I want to talk to someone who won’t shut up out of fear of losing me.

I slid off the stool and sat on the floor in front of her, knees bent almost touching hers. The smell of perfume reached me clearly for the first time, mixed with alcohol and a note of clean skin that sank under my sternum.

—You shouldn’t be telling me this.

—I know.

—And I shouldn’t be listening.

—Neither should I.

She moved closer. Not much. Just a few centimeters, enough for her knee to brush mine through the silk.

—I bet you can’t even last two minutes —she murmured, and the line was almost a single-girl joke, but in her mouth, in that kitchen, at that hour, it sounded like a dare.

—Camila, stop.

—Stop?

—He’s your husband.

—I know who he is. That’s why I’m asking you.

I kissed her. I didn’t know who moved first, and I didn’t care. Her mouth tasted like whisky and something sweet I couldn’t identify. She seized the back of my neck with a force I hadn’t expected from fingers so slender, dug her nails into my scalp, and pulled my hair until she made me tilt my head. I bit her lower lip and she let out a short, rough moan that went straight down to my cock. I was already hard against the zipper of my pants, and she noticed when she pressed herself to me, because she smiled against my mouth.

—Slowly —she said against my lips—. This doesn’t get told afterward.

I opened her robe without taking it off. She was right about the breasts: they were my father’s work, I recognized them unwillingly, perfect, too perfect, and at the same time soft to the touch, alive, hers. I sucked one nipple until it stood hard between my teeth, and she arched her back against the drawers. I licked around it, slowly, then bit, and she hissed and yanked my hair up and down, not knowing whether she wanted more or less. I lowered my mouth to her cleavage and she threw her head back against the drawers with a dull thud neither of us wanted to hear.

—Don’t look at my face —she whispered—. I don’t want you taking that image with you.

—Then look at me.

And she did. With her eyes wide open, not blinking, while I pulled down her underwear with one clumsy, too-urgent hand. The black thong tangled around one ankle and I left it there. She spread her knees on the cold kitchen floor and the image burned itself into me: a woman who two hours earlier had called me a stray dog, opening herself for me over the white tiles, her shaved cunt gleaming in the extractor light and my mother’s picture two rooms away.

I touched her first with my fingers. She was wet in a way that confused me, almost scared me, because it meant she’d been thinking about this longer than she admitted. I ran my thumb over her clit, swollen and slick, and she closed her eyes for a second and opened them again, stubbornly. I slid two fingers in and she clenched around them, hot, throbbing walls. She confirmed it when she grabbed my wrist and guided it, not because I didn’t know what I was doing, but because she needed to mark who was in control. She moved my hand at the rhythm she wanted, deeper, faster, until she started panting with her mouth open against my shoulder.

—With your mouth —she panted—. Before anything else, with your mouth. I want to see if you know how.

I spread her legs wider and dropped to the floor between them. The first sweep of my tongue made her shudder all over, a spasm that traveled through her thighs. She was sweet and salty and tasted like something I hadn’t tasted in five months. I sucked her clit with my lips, slowly, then faster, and pushed my tongue inside before coming back up. She grabbed my hair with both hands and pressed my face against her pussy without ceremony, without asking permission, breathing hard through her nose.

—Like that, yes, like that, don’t stop, you son of a bitch, don’t stop.

I slid two fingers into her again while I kept sucking her, searching for that soft spot inside, and a few seconds later I felt her whole body close around me. She came with her mouth covered by her own forearm, biting the sleeve of the robe, her hips lifting into my face and her thighs squeezing my ears until I could hear my own pulse. When I let go of her, my mouth and chin were soaked and she was looking down at me, panting, cheeks red and eyes wet.

—Inside —she ordered—. Now. Right now.

I pulled my pants down without getting off the floor. My cock sprang hard against my stomach and she grabbed it before I could do anything, with a firm hand, and squeezed once, twice, as if measuring me. Then she leaned down and took the tip into her mouth. She closed her lips around it and went down slowly, looking at me while she did it, until I felt her at the back of her throat. She sucked three, four long times, with a wet sound that made me clench my teeth to keep from coming on the spot.

—Camila, stop —I said, and pulled her back by the hair—. If you keep going I’m going to cum.

—Then don’t cum —she replied with a crooked smile—. Not yet.

She straightened just enough to straddle me, legs around my waist, breasts pressed to my chest, forehead against my temple. She grabbed my cock again and slowly slid it into herself, centimeter by centimeter, lowering her weight onto me. When I was all the way inside, she let out a sound held tight between her teeth, biting her lip to keep from making noise in a house where there was no one to wake but where silence still mattered, mattered more, like a declaration.

At first we moved slowly. As if every centimeter were a negotiation. She dug her fingers into my shoulders, I held her by the waist, and I felt her rise and fall on me, controlling everything, her wet cunt swallowing me whole each time, while she whispered into my ear sentences that weren’t words, they were breaths, almost insults disguised as praise.

—What a cock you’ve got, bastard —she murmured, her voice breaking—. What a cock, fuck.

—You like it.

—I love it.

—Say it again.

—I love your cock. Fuck me. Fuck me already, for fuck’s sake.

I gripped her ass with both hands and started moving her faster over me, driving up from below, and she had to cover her mouth with her free hand because the moans started coming out on their own. I felt her clench around me inside, pulsing in waves, and still she kept saying things, filthy, clipped, through her teeth.

—I hate you —she said at one point, and laughed, and kissed me—. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.

—Me too.

I lifted her without withdrawing, hands under her thighs, and set her face down on the cold tiles, on all fours. She propped herself on her elbows and arched her back on her own, offering me her ass raised, her cunt open and dripping between her thighs. I grabbed her hips and shoved my cock into her in one thrust, all the way to the hilt, and she let out a guttural moan from deep in her chest.

—Like that —she panted against the floor—. Like that, harder, give me more.

I fucked her from behind, mercilessly, slamming my hips against her ass until the sound of the slaps started echoing through the whole kitchen. I grabbed her hair and pulled, and she lifted her head and arched her neck, and I looked down at her, fucking my father’s wife on the floor of the house where I grew up, with whisky spilled to one side and the silk robe turned to rags beneath us.

—I’m going to cum again —she warned, her mouth against the floor—. I’m going to cum, bastard, don’t stop, don’t stop.

I brought my hand around and found her clit with two fingers while I kept thrusting. She convulsed a few seconds later, her whole body trembling, and her pussy clamped around me with a force that bent my knees. She stifled the cry against her forearm. I held out a little longer, not out of merit but because I didn’t want it to end, and when I felt I couldn’t take any more I turned her over again, threw her onto her back on the floor, spread her legs and drove into her to the hilt while kissing her mouth, swallowing her breathing with mine.

When I came, I did it inside her, without thinking, my face buried in her neck, biting her shoulder so I wouldn’t roar, emptying myself into her in three or four long, clumsy thrusts. I held her tight against me, against the floor, against that kitchen I was never going to be able to step into in the same way again. I felt my spend spill out when I pulled my cock free, a hot thread that ran down her thigh to the tile.

We stayed like that, wrapped around each other, panting, for several minutes. The silk of her robe was rumpled beneath our bodies, stained with sweat and semen. She kissed my neck once, slowly, almost tenderly, and that hurt me more than everything before it.

—Get up —she said then, and her voice had gone cold again—. Go to your room.

—Camila…

—Tomorrow we go back to hating each other, remember? I told you that.

I got up. Pulled on my pants. Looked at her one more time, on the kitchen floor, robe open, thighs marked, gaze lost toward the window. She was crying without tears. I’d known her less than thirty hours and I already knew how to read her.

—Camila.

—Go.

I went up the stairs with my heart hammering in my chest. In the hallway I passed my mother’s picture, still crooked. I stopped. I turned it to face the wall, slowly, because I couldn’t bear to hold its gaze that night.

My father was coming back on Sunday. Four days left. Four days of pretending nothing had happened, of crossing paths at breakfast, of acting out the contempt that no longer fit inside our bodies. Four days without knowing whether we were going to do it again or without knowing how to stop doing it.

I went into my room. Locked the door for the first time since adolescence. Threw myself on the bed still dressed and stared at the ceiling, listening, two floors below, to the soft scrape of the stool against the counter when she finally got up off the floor.