That Night, My Mother and I Crossed the Forbidden Line

My mother and I had been alone for almost four years. Ever since my father left, she sank into work like someone climbing into a tunnel: full-time, without complaint, without looking back. I used to see her pass through the kitchen very early, drink coffee standing up, check her phone with the expression of someone who was already in the office before she got there, and leave before I was even fully awake. Weekends were the same. There was always something to do, some errand, some excuse not to stay still for too long.

It was a Saturday in late October. I was twenty, and she had just come back from an especially long week. I found her sitting on the sofa with her shoes still on, her bag tossed on the floor beside her, staring at the wall. Not the television: the wall. I thought something in her was slowly shutting down and nobody was seeing it.

—Want a drink? —I asked her.

She played hard to get, like always whenever I invited her to do something outside the routine. She said she was tired, that she didn’t drink during the week, that Saturday counted too. I kept persuading her, without rushing, without pushing too hard, until she finally agreed with that sigh of hers that means, “fine, I know I’m not getting out of this.”

I took out the bottle of tequila I’d been keeping for months. To keep from scaring her off, we started with something mixed, almost sweet, almost no alcohol. But that’s how it works, everyone knows it: the first one goes down slowly, the second comes on its own, and nobody notices the third until it’s already poured. My mother wasn’t much of a drinker. That made the effect hit sooner.

She relaxed. That sparkle appeared in her eyes that I’d almost never seen before. She started talking: about work, the neighbors, a coworker who gave her trouble, little things she would have kept to herself at another time. And then, without me even looking for it, my father came up.

—Some nights I miss not being alone —she said, looking at the glass—. Not him necessarily. Just having someone.

I put on music. Something calm, no lyrics, just in the background. I asked if she wanted to dance and she laughed as if it were a joke, but she got up.

My mother was of average height, the kind of body movies ignore but that has something real the rest doesn’t: wide hips, small firm breasts that stood out beneath her blouse, and that generous, round ass that had always said more about her than anything else. There was something in the way she moved, something unpretentious and uncalculated, that got under my clothes before I could stop it.

We danced with some distance at first. But tequila and music do their thing.

—Did Dad treat you well when you were together? —I asked, using a normal conversational tone, as if it were just any question.

I’m not really sure why I asked it that way. Maybe because I wanted to open a door without it seeming like what it was.

It took her a moment to answer.

—Your father had his ways of making me feel like I was still a woman. —She paused—. Not always, but he had them.

—What kind of ways?

She laughed, embarrassed, looking away.

—Andrés, I’m not telling you that.

—I’m twenty years old, Mom.

—Precisely because you’re twenty, I’m not telling you.

But she kept dancing. And I kept bringing her a little closer, almost without it showing. The music stayed slow. My hand slid down her back until it settled on the curve of her hip, and from there, very slowly, it slipped until it rested right on the upper part of her ass. It wasn’t a gesture I could disguise as anything else, but I did it slowly, as if there were some tacit agreement between us not to name what was happening. She let it stay there. Not a word, not a move to push my hand away.

—There are things you forget when it’s been a long time since anybody’s touched you —she said quietly, almost to herself.

—Like what?

A long pause.

—That you still want those things. Even when you tell yourself you don’t anymore.

There it was. What I had sensed without knowing how to name it.

I pulled her in a little tighter. She didn’t resist. She rested her forehead on my shoulder, very slowly, as if she were doing it without realizing it. My heart was beating faster than it should have been, and my dick was getting hard against the fabric of my pants. She had to be feeling it, pressed up against my hip like that, but she didn’t pull away. On the contrary: she settled her pubic area against the bulge, just a slight movement, as if she were checking what it was she felt. I slid my fingers from her hip to the lower part of her back, and from there I brought my whole hand down, open, until I grabbed one ass cheek over her skirt.

She didn’t move. She let out her breath slowly through her mouth and squeezed my shoulder with her hand.

I brought my other hand up to her breast, over the fabric, and squeezed it without any roughness but without pretending either. She tensed. Her breathing changed. The nipple hardened beneath her bra, and I rubbed it with my thumb in circles until I heard her let out a soft gasp. And when she lifted her face toward me, what I saw in her eyes was not rejection.

She kissed me first.

It was a short kiss, almost tentative, like she was checking whether it was real. Then she looked me in the eyes, bit her lip, and I kissed her again, and this time it wasn’t tentative. I slipped my tongue into her mouth and she sucked on it slowly, with delayed hunger, moaning softly against my teeth while I squeezed her ass with both hands and pressed her against my hard dick.

***

I took her to her bedroom by the hand. Neither of us said much. There was something in the silence that was more honest than any words. I sat on the edge of the bed and watched her while she stood in front of me. There was little light. Just the hallway lamp, coming in through the half-open door.

Something in that image was etched into me in a way I’m not really sure how to describe: my mother standing there, looking at me, her hair a little mussed from the dancing and her eyes no longer the eyes of every day. She was a woman. That was all. A woman who had gone years without fucking and who was about to let her son fuck her.

—Are you sure? —I asked her.

—No —she said—. But I also don’t want to regret not doing it.

I started slowly. I unbuttoned her blouse one button at a time, unhurried, giving her time to change her mind if she needed to. She let me do it, her eyes half-lidded and her breathing getting more visible by the second. When I opened her blouse and slid down her bra straps, her small white breasts sprang out, with pink nipples already hard and pointing toward me. I pulled her skirt down over her hips and she was left in her panties, simple cotton panties, with a wet stain darkening the fabric right at the center. She was soaking through before I even touched her.

—You’re drenched, Mom —I said quietly.

She turned red all the way to her neck. She looked down and then back up, and there was something in that gesture that felt like surrender.

—I’ve been like this for too long —she answered.

I hooked my fingers in her panties and pulled them down to her ankles. When she lifted her feet to slip out of them, she was completely naked in front of me, her breasts rising and falling with her breath, her soft belly, and between her legs an almost completely shaved cunt, with just a strip of dark hair at the top, the lips open and shining with moisture under the yellow hallway light.

I drew her toward me and ran my mouth along her neck. Her collarbones. The curve of her chest. She shivered when I reached her nipple and took it between my lips; I sucked it whole, tugging on it with my teeth, and I heard that sound from her, soft and wordless, telling me she was still okay, that she wanted me to keep going. I ran my tongue over the areola, bit her again, and with my other hand I pinched the other nipple until she let out a longer moan.

—Andrés —she whispered.

—Yeah?

—Don’t stop.

I didn’t stop.

I laid her back on the bed and trailed my mouth over her stomach, unhurried, learning the map of her body through her reactions. I kissed her navel, her hip, the inner part of her thigh. When I got lower, she spread her legs without me asking. I touched her with my fingers first, running them over the lips of her cunt, sliding on how wet she was, and I pushed one finger all the way in. A guttural moan slipped out of her and her whole belly trembled.

—God —she said—. My God.

I slid in a second finger and moved them inside her, looking for that swollen spot on the front wall, while my thumb found her swollen clit and rubbed it in circles. She started moving her hips against my hand, unable to help herself, her mouth open and her eyes closed.

When I lowered my head and took her with my mouth, she arched completely. She put one hand in my hair, not to push me away but to hold onto something. I sucked her clit slowly at first, teasing the tip out with my tongue, and then harder, pinning it between my lips while I kept fingering her. She tasted salty, thick, like the taste of a woman who had gone years without coming to the surface. I dragged my whole tongue over her cunt, from bottom to top, and pressed my mouth against her. She was moaning softly, holding back, like someone used to making no noise even when there was no reason anymore to keep quiet.

—Don’t hold back —I told her, pulling my mouth away for a second—. Nobody’s going to hear you. Scream if you want.

And she didn’t hold back.

I buried my tongue inside her, sucking up everything that leaked out, and went back to her clit to lick it fast, without mercy. She started saying broken things, shattered words, “like that,” “don’t stop,” “there,” “I’m gonna come.” She came with her whole body: her thighs clamping around my head, her hands pulling my hair, a long hoarse sound coming out of her like something that had been waiting a long time to get out. I kept licking her while she came, feeling her pulse against my mouth, until she gently pushed me away herself because she couldn’t take it anymore.

I held her until it was over, until the muscles in her body loosened one by one and her breathing went back to normal.

It took her a moment to speak again.

—It’s been a long time —she said simply—. A very long time since I came like that.

—I know.

***

I stripped standing beside the bed, never taking my eyes off her, and when I pulled down my pants and underwear she looked at my hard cock without the slightest pretense, her mouth slightly open. She propped herself up on one elbow, reached out a trembling hand, and grabbed me at the base. She squeezed me gently, ran her fist up and down a couple of times, then leaned in and took me into her mouth without warning.

I closed my eyes and let out a breath. Seeing her there, my mother, sucking me with her eyes closed and one hand moving up and down at the base, was almost too much. She took me all the way in, down to the hilt, choking a little when the tip hit her throat, and she kept going without pulling away. She stuck her tongue out underneath, coated me with long licks, sucked my balls one by one with her lips, and went back to my cock. Saliva dripped from the corner of her mouth, and I held her hair back to see her better.

—Like that, Mom —I told her—. Like that.

She moaned with my cock in her mouth when she heard me call her that, and she sucked me faster, hungrier, as if that word had unleashed her completely.

I pulled her away before it was too late and laid her back down again. I positioned myself over her and she looked me straight in the eyes. She didn’t look away. That was the most intense thing of all, I think: that she didn’t avoid my gaze. It was as if she wanted to be present in every second, without pretense and without distance.

I ran the tip of my cock along the lips of her cunt, up and down, soaking it with her, rubbing her clit with the head until she started begging softly.

—Put it in already —she said—. Please. Put it in.

I entered her slowly. I felt her open around me, tight, hot, wrapping me centimeter by centimeter. She closed her eyes and let out a long breath, and I stayed still for a moment, buried all the way in, not moving, just to feel how her cunt tightened around my cock.

—You’re inside me —she said, almost like she couldn’t believe it—. You’re inside me, Andrés.

Then we started moving.

There was no urgency. It was slow and continuous, deep thrusts, pulling almost all the way out and driving back in again until the hilt, while she held my face with both hands and wouldn’t let me stop looking at her. Her breasts moved with every thrust and I bent down to suck one nipple without stopping fucking her. She had that ability, which not everyone has, to be completely present. Not somewhere else. Not thinking about what would happen after. There, in that moment, with all her attention, her legs open and her cunt dripping around her son’s cock.

She talked to me. Not much, but she did.

—Like that —she would say sometimes. Or: —Yeah, there. Harder. Don’t stop. Fuck me harder, Andrés.

And I obeyed. I thrust faster, deeper, until the bed started hitting the wall and she gripped the sheets with her fists clenched.

At one point I turned her and she settled herself without me having to explain anything, getting on all fours, bracing her hands on the headboard and offering me the curve of her back and the weight of her hips. I looked at that round ass lifted toward me, with her swollen, shining cunt between her legs, and drove into her in one hard thrust. She screamed, long and without covering her mouth.

I held her by the hips and we kept going. I dug my fingers into the flesh of her ass, spread her open to watch myself going in and out, and gave her a soft slap on one cheek that pulled a new moan from her. She pushed back every time I pushed forward, and in that rhythm we found something that didn’t need a name to work. I brought one hand around to the front and found her clit with two fingers while I kept fucking her from behind, rubbing it in time with my thrusts.

—You’re driving me crazy —she said through clenched teeth—. You’re gonna make me come again.

—Good.

From where I was I could see the line of her back, the movement of her shoulders, the way she breathed with her mouth open and strands of hair fell across her face. There was something in that image, in seeing her like that, surrendering, with my cock going in and out of her, shameless, that I found more beautiful than I had expected.

She came again, squeezing my cock inside her with convulsing spasms, biting the pillow so she wouldn’t scream too much. I held on as best I could, breathing through my nose, still until the trembling passed.

I turned her over again so I could see her face. I spread her legs until they almost touched my shoulders and sank into her again, this time without holding back. She looked up at me from below, eyes glassy and mouth open, moaning with every thrust.

—Come inside me —she told me—. It doesn’t matter. Come inside me, my love.

That did me in. I pushed hard, two, three, four more times, and felt my orgasm rise from my balls and spill out in waves inside her. She squeezed me with her thighs, with her arms around my back, feeling me empty myself completely inside her, and she didn’t let me go until the last contraction had passed.

I collapsed beside her and the two of us lay there staring at the ceiling in silence for what must have been several minutes, with my semen slowly leaking between her legs onto the sheet.

Then she laughed. Softly, without irony, without bitterness.

—What are you laughing at? —I asked.

—At the fact that I don’t know what I’m supposed to say now.

—You don’t have to say anything.

—That doesn’t seem right either.

I turned toward her and looked at her. Her hair was a mess and her eyes were calmer than they had been in months. Calmer than they had been in a long time, if I thought about it.

—Are you okay? —I asked.

—I’m fine. —A pause—. I’m very fine, actually. And that’s what I don’t know how to handle.

I didn’t answer. I put a hand on her shoulder and she let it stay there. Outside, the night went on unchanged. The music we’d left on in the living room came faintly, almost imperceptibly, as if it were coming from very far away.

We didn’t talk about what had happened that night. Not that night, not on Sunday. There were things between us that had changed forever, and we both knew what they were without needing to name them. Some things work better that way: real, but without words on top of them, without the weight of defining them.

Sometimes I think that’s also a way of taking care of something.