The drink with my sister-in-law that crossed every line

I’ve known Renata since the day my wife introduced her to me at a family gathering, more than ten years ago now. Back then she was in her second year of architecture and still had that slightly childish habit of biting her pinkie when she ran out of words. I always treated her like a younger sister, with the automatic caution one learns when one gets married: the sister-in-law is neutral territory, ground you don’t step on.

Time turned her into someone more complicated. Renata graduated, opened a small studio with two colleagues, won a couple of awards, and bought an apartment downtown. At thirty-four she was a slim woman with short hair, a low voice, and a way of looking at people that made men nervous at gatherings. Only things didn’t go well with men. She got saddled with a married boyfriend, then a colleague who used her as a stopgap, then a Swiss architect who went back to Europe without a word.

Since she lived alone and didn’t get along with her mother, she spent a lot of time at my house. She’d come over on Sundays at midday with a cake from the Italian bakery on the corner and stay until night fell, playing with my kids in the yard, listening to my wife Daniela complain about the company where she worked. I’d join the after-lunch chatter, pour her coffee, make jokes. It was the same family atmosphere as always, no trick to it.

Until one day, with nothing particular happening, I started looking at her differently. It began as a stupid detail: one afternoon I noticed the sleeve of her blouse resting on the table, the exact fold of the fabric against her wrist, and my mouth went dry for a second. Then it was other things. The loose laugh when she told some story from the studio. The gesture of running her hand over the back of her neck when she got tired. The way she crossed her legs on the couch.

She’s your sister-in-law. Stop.

I stopped, but the following Sunday it started again.

***

The night everything broke was a rainy, cold Thursday in August. Daniela had gone south with the kids to spend the long weekend with her parents. I had stayed behind for a work deadline, shut in the study with two screens and a coffee going cold. Around nine the doorbell rang.

—Your wife left me this on Tuesday and I forgot to bring it back to you —Renata said from the street, with an envelope tucked under her arm and her hair wet—. It’s some invoices for your accountant. She said you needed them for tomorrow.

—Come in. It’s freezing.

She came in shaking the water off her raincoat. Underneath she was wearing a dark dress that clung to her waist, black stockings, and high heels. She’d come from a presentation, she explained. I was in pajamas, an old gray T-shirt and cotton pants. I remembered that the moment I saw her, but it was too late to go upstairs and change.

—Want something to drink? I’ve got an open Malbec.

—A glass. Then I’ll go.

We sat in the living room, she on the long sofa, me in the armchair across from her. We talked about Daniela’s job, the younger kid’s new school, a remodeling project I was budgeting. The second glass arrived without either of us asking for it. The third turned into a different conversation.

—And you? Seeing anyone? —I asked her.

She lowered her eyes. Moved her foot. Shook her head.

—I’m a little tired of trying, honestly.

—Renata, you’re beautiful. You’re smart. There has to be a man out there somewhere.

—The problem isn’t that they don’t show up. It’s that the ones who do are always the same. Married, liars, or cowards. Sometimes all three at once.

She laughed without humor. Something in that laugh hurt me, a mix of tenderness and anger, and I got up from the armchair and sat beside her on the sofa. I slipped an arm around her shoulders, the way I do when my kids cry over something silly and need a body nearby. She let herself fall against my chest. She smelled like citrus perfume and rain.

I don’t know how much time passed. Five minutes, ten. I felt her breathing against my collarbone, the light weight of her head, the fingers of her left hand resting on my knee. And I also felt, with brutal clarity, that my body had started responding to the closeness. At first it was a dull heat. Then a tension impossible to hide under the thin fabric of my pants.

Renata slowly straightened up. She lowered her gaze. Lifted it. Looked me in the eye.

—Forgive me —I said.

—Don’t say anything.

—I didn’t mean to…

—Don’t say anything.

There was a second in which neither of us breathed. Then I leaned in and kissed her. It was a short kiss, almost a brush, more a question than a statement. She pulled back an inch, looked at me again with her eyes wide open, and said in a low voice:

—Do you realize what you’re doing?

—I do.

—She’s the love of your life. She’s my sister.

—I know.

—So then?

I kissed her again, longer this time. I held her face in both hands. I felt her mouth tense first, then open, then give me back the kiss with an intensity that caught me off guard. One of her hands pressed into my neck. The other pushed at my chest as if she wanted to stop me and not at the same time.

—This is wrong —she murmured against my mouth.

—It’s wrong —I answered.

And we kept going.

***

I pulled the zipper down the back of her dress. I did it slowly, listening to every tooth of the zipper, waiting for either of us to say enough. We didn’t say it. The dress slid off her shoulders and bunched at her waist. Under it she wore a black lace bra, thin, almost transparent. I kissed her neck, her earlobe, the line of her jaw. She threw her head back against the sofa and let out a sigh that made my spine prickle.

She had a small, firm chest, with dark nipples very hard beneath the fabric. I slid the bra down with one finger. I ran my tongue over them, slowly, first one, then the other. I nipped them lightly. Renata lifted her pelvis against my leg without realizing it, seeking me out.

—Wait —she said suddenly, and pulled away.

I thought she was going to stop everything. But she stood up, took the dress off completely, slipped off her stockings with a slow movement, never taking her eyes off me. She was left in the black bra and a thong of the same lace. She was thin, almost no hips, with a small tattoo on her left side that I had never seen.

—If we’re doing this, we do it for real —she said.

She took my T-shirt off. She pulled my pants down to my ankles. She pushed me back onto the sofa with her open palm on my chest. She knelt between my legs and looked up at me, eyes narrowed, before lowering her head. What she did next I’m never going to forget. Her tongue was warm, her lips soft, with a patience I hadn’t expected. I held her by the short hair, carefully, to move it out of her face and be able to look at her.

—Renata —I said, and didn’t finish the sentence.

She straightened up. She looked at the hard bulge outlined in my underwear and smiled a little, with that low, sly mischief I had never seen at the family table. She slowly came up onto her knees and sat astride me. I took her bra off. I slid her thong to one side with two fingers and felt her, wet, open, and hot against my hand. The flesh of her cunt was slippery, swollen with desire. I caressed her slowly, first on the outside, then between the lips, parting them with two fingers to feel how she trembled.

Renata closed her eyes and took a deep breath, but then she grabbed my wrist.

—Lower —she whispered—. Don’t make me wait.

I slid in two fingers and felt her tighten around them, warm, wet, completely surrendered. Her hips started moving on their own, pushing against my hand. I watched her, dazed, seeing how her face loosened, how her mouth opened, how desire wiped away whatever was left of modesty. I pressed my thumb into her clit and she gave a short jolt, almost a broken moan, resting her forehead against mine.

—Like that, fuck —she murmured—. Like that.

—You’re soaked.

—And you’re hard as a rock.

The line made me let out a choked laugh, but it died at once when she grabbed my cock over my underwear, heavy and hot in her small hand. She yanked it out, and the cold air hit it all at once. Renata just stared at it, mouth slightly open, as if the violence of the body amused her. She leaned down and licked it from the base to the tip, with a flat, slow tongue, gathering saliva over the glans until it shone.

—Fuck —I said through clenched teeth.

—Do you like it when I suck it like this?

—Yes.

—Say it better.

—I like the way you suck my cock. Don’t stop.

That turned her on more. She lowered her head again and took me deeper, her cheek brushing my thigh, moving her mouth in and out with obscene precision. One hand massaged my balls; the other gripped my thigh to steady herself. I held her by the short hair, not pulling, just setting the rhythm, feeling the heat of her mouth strip away any defense I had left.

—Look at me —I asked.

She lifted her eyes while still sucking me. They were wet, black, shining with spit. That image finished undoing me.

—I can’t hold out much longer —I said.

Renata pulled away with a thread of saliva stretching between her mouth and my tip.

—Then fuck me —she said, with a firm voice—. Now.

I got to my feet awkwardly, yanked off her thong, and lifted her by the hips. She wrapped her legs around my waist, desperate, with her cunt open and red, throbbing between her thighs. I rubbed the tip against her entrance several times, feeling her get wetter, feeling how she opened for me on her own, impatient.

—Are you sure? —I asked, though the answer was already biting at my mouth.

—Yes. Quit fucking around and put it in.

I went in slowly at first, just the head, and she dug her nails into my shoulders. Then I pushed a little more and felt the tight ring of her insides closing around my cock, hot, slick, demanding in a way that stole my breath. When I was all the way in, Renata let out a low, long moan, the kind you can’t fake. She stayed still for a few seconds, breathing hard, adjusting to the invasion, and then she started moving herself, taking me little by little, setting the rhythm with her hips.

—Harder —she asked me, her face buried in my neck.

I drove her against the back of the sofa and started fucking her for real, with hard thrusts that made the wood creak beneath us. Her tits bounced against my chest, her cunt tightened around me with every stroke and I felt the sweat climbing up my back like a fever. I spread her legs a little wider, held her by the ass and lifted her slightly to get in deeper. She screamed my name, no attempt to hide it, and then she bit my shoulder hard, as if she wanted to leave a mark.

—Like that, like that, don’t stop —she said through her teeth—. You’re giving it to me so good, you son of a bitch.

Her mouth had gone red from biting it so much. I was lost by then, moving on pure instinct, plunging in and out of her wet heat with a violence that made me ashamed and aroused at the same time. Every time Renata’s ass slammed against my thighs I felt the impact run up through my pelvis and explode low in my belly. She scratched my back under my T-shirt, grabbed my hair, looked at me with a mix of challenge and need that drove me insane.

—I’m about to come —I told her, almost voiceless.

—Inside —she answered at once—. Come inside me.

That order made me lose the last of my control. I kept pounding into her a couple more times, each one deeper than the last, until my whole body jerked and I came inside her with a growl that ripped out of my chest. I felt the hot release shoot out in thick pulses, filling her cunt, spilling over in a brutal mix of relief and guilt. Renata trembled under me, wrapped me with her legs, held me against her as if she didn’t want a single drop to escape.

—That’s it —she panted—. So fucking good.

She didn’t pull away right away. She stayed hooked around my waist, breathing in gasps, her face hidden in my neck and her whole body still shaking from the orgasm. I held her with both hands on the small of her back, feeling my semen staying inside her, warm, and feeling her cunt still throbbing around the cock that was slowly softening. In the end she lowered her legs, looked straight at me, and smiled with a strange calm, almost sad.

***

Then came the silence. The one you fear.

Renata got up from the floor, gathered her clothes with a calm that surprised me, and went to the bathroom. She came back ten minutes later with her hair brushed, her bra on, and her face washed. I was still sitting on the sofa, in pajamas again, staring at a wine stain on the rug that would never come out.

—This can’t happen again —she said, standing in front of me.

—It won’t happen again —I answered.

—Swear it to me.

—I swear.

She kissed me on the forehead, like a sister. She picked up the envelope with the invoices she had left on the table ages ago. She put on her raincoat. Before opening the door, she turned around.

—Erase tonight.

—It’s already erased —I lied.

She closed the door slowly. I heard the elevator go down.

The truth is, it didn’t take three weeks before it happened again. This time it was at her apartment, on a Saturday afternoon, under the excuse of helping her hang some pictures. She opened the door in denim shorts and a worn T-shirt without a bra, and the moment she saw me she gave me that half smile of someone who already knows the ending. The second she locked the door, she grabbed my shirt and kissed me hungrily, like her body had been settling accounts all those days. We ended up against the hallway wall, my hands under her shirt, squeezing her small, hard tits, and her undoing my belt with fingers clumsy from urgency.

After that it happened at a hotel near her studio, one random noon, with just enough time and the blinds closed. She sucked my cock on her knees over the carpet while I slid my hand between her legs and made her moan softly so no one would notice. She climbed on top of me on the bed, dug her nails into my chest, and asked me to fuck her harder, dirtier, deeper, until we were both soaked with sweat and saliva, staring at the ceiling as if there were any answer up there. After that it happened in my house again, with Daniela asleep in the bedroom taking a nap, and Renata leaning against the kitchen counter, her thong pulled to one side while I slid two fingers into her and she covered her mouth so she wouldn’t make noise. Every time we promise ourselves it’s the last. Every time it’s a lie.

There’s something in this I can’t name. It isn’t just desire. It’s the feeling of doing something that ruins everything good I have, and still not being able to stop. Renata keeps looking for her man, keeps telling Daniela about the latest disappointment, keeps coming on Sundays with the Italian cake. And I keep setting the table, pouring the coffee, pretending I look at her like always. Until she lifts her eyes, two seconds longer than necessary, and the two of us know exactly when the next time will be.