The Promise We Broke on the Sofa

Andrés had been staring at the ceiling for half an hour when he decided it made no sense to keep pretending he was asleep.

He got up quietly, crossed the hallway in his socks, and went down to the living room. The streetlights came in through the slats in the blinds and drew pale bands across the parquet floor. He found the remote between the sofa cushions, turned on the television with the volume almost at zero, and settled back with his arms crossed over his chest.

It was 2:20 in the morning.

They had gone three weeks without talking about what had happened. Three weeks of normal breakfasts, of conversations about shopping and work, of looks that lasted exactly the right amount of time and not a second more. Andrés had even convinced himself he could live like that indefinitely. That it was best for both of them. That the promise would hold this time.

Then he heard footsteps on the stairs.

Claudia appeared in the living room doorway wearing a loose T-shirt, her hair gathered into a half-undone bun. She was forty-three and had that way of rubbing her eyes when she woke up that Andrés had known forever. She stopped when she saw him, and for a moment neither of them said anything.

—I couldn’t sleep —she said at last, as if she needed an explanation.

—Me neither.

Claudia hesitated for a second before coming in. She sat at the far end of the sofa and drew her feet up under her body, folded into herself. Andrés changed channels without paying attention to anything in particular. He found an old movie neither of them was going to follow and left it on.

For ten minutes they said nothing.

It was that kind of silence that isn’t uncomfortable, but quite the opposite: too comfortable, too familiar, with too much weight underneath it. Andrés was aware of every inch separating them. Forty, maybe fifty centimeters of fabric and broken promises. He fixed his eyes on the screen and tried to concentrate on the actors talking without him hearing them.

—Are you okay? —she asked at last.

—Yes. You?

—Yes.

They both knew it wasn’t true.

***

The first time had been three weeks earlier, on an ordinary Tuesday with nothing special to justify it. Andrés had come home late from work, Claudia was on the sofa with a book open on her lap, and something in the way she lifted her eyes when he walked through the door stopped him dead. It wasn’t a long or dramatic look. It was only a second. But in that second there was something the two of them recognized and neither of them knew how to ignore.

He didn’t remember who moved first. That didn’t matter anymore either. What he did remember in detail was the way she had pulled his trousers down right there on the sofa and sucked his cock with an urgency neither of them could explain afterward; and how he ended up fucking her on the low coffee table with her skirt hiked up to her hips and her panties hanging off one ankle, coming inside her before either of them had time to think about whether it was right or wrong.

What he also remembered was the immediate guilt afterward, the way they both pulled apart as if the air between them burned, and the promise Claudia made in a low voice while she got up from the sofa and wiped the cum from her thigh with a tissue:

—This can’t happen again. Never again.

He had said yes, of course, she was right. And he had meant it at that moment. He still meant it three weeks later, as he glanced at her from the corner of his eye at the other end of the sofa and noticed she had inched, almost imperceptibly, toward the middle.

Not much. Just enough for her thighs to be less than a handspan from his.

***

—What time do you have tomorrow? —Claudia asked without looking at him.

—At eight. Why?

She didn’t answer. She just kept staring at the screen for a few more seconds before resting her head against the sofa back and closing her eyes. Andrés watched her in profile: the line of her neck, the shadow cast by her jaw, the slow movement of her breathing. He had spent his whole life looking at that face. He knew when she was tense and when she wasn’t.

Right now she wasn’t asleep.

—Claudia —he said, using her name because at that moment he couldn’t think of any other way to begin.

She opened her eyes.

They said nothing else. It wasn’t necessary.

When Andrés reached out and brushed his fingers against hers on the cushion, it wasn’t an impulsive or accidental gesture. It was deliberate and slow, and they both knew it. Claudia looked at his hand over hers for a moment that seemed much longer than it really was. Then she interlaced her fingers with his.

The promise was broken without drama, without words, without either of them giving a final warning. It broke with that simple gesture, with those interlaced fingers on the sofa at two-thirty on a Thursday night.

Claudia turned toward him. Andrés didn’t move: he let her come closer, let her rest her hand on his cheek with the same calm a person uses to check whether something is real before believing their own eyes. The kiss was soft at first. Just lips, unhurried, like a question both of them already knew the answer to but still needed to ask.

Then she put a hand on the back of his neck and the kiss stopped being soft.

Andrés wrapped an arm around her and pulled her to him. Claudia let herself be drawn in without resistance, as if her body had been rehearsing that movement for weeks. When they broke apart to breathe, her eyes were half-lidded and her mouth slightly open, and Andrés thought there was no image in the world he knew better and that unsettled him more at the same time.

—We should stop —she said quietly.

But she didn’t move.

—I know —he said.

He didn’t move either.

Claudia gave a sound that was half laugh and half resignation, and kissed him again. This time without ambiguity, with her hand already searching for the hem of his T-shirt. Andrés undid her bun and her hair spilled loose over her shoulders. He slipped his hand under her shirt and found her bare breast, her warm, heavy tits filling his palm, the nipple already hard against the center of his hand. She let out a low moan inside the kiss and brought her own hand to the bulge Andrés already had straining against his pajama pants. She squeezed his cock through the fabric, measuring him, and Andrés felt a gasp escape him against her mouth. She smelled of shampoo and something else, something warm and specific that Andrés could only describe as the smell of their house, of his childhood, of something completely forbidden and at the same time completely his.

—We don’t fit here —she murmured against his mouth.

—I know.

—Then...

Andrés got up from the sofa and held out his hand. Claudia took it without hesitation and let him guide her toward the hallway, toward the stairs, toward the room that was the only place in the house with enough space for what they were about to do.

***

They closed the door. The room was dim, with only the streetlight coming in through the half-open blinds. Claudia sat on the edge of the bed and Andrés knelt in front of her. He ran his hands over her thighs calmly, without hurrying, watching her. She held his gaze for a few seconds before looking away.

—Are you okay? —he asked.

—Yes —she answered, and this time it was true.

Andrés took off her shirt carefully, sliding it upward. Claudia raised her arms and let it go without resistance. She had the body Andrés already knew from the first time and that would still always undo him: wide hips, full heavy breasts with dark nipples already hardened, pale skin with that slight mark on her side that she hated and that he simply saw as part of her. She wasn’t wearing anything under the pajama top except thin panties. Andrés spent a moment looking at her like that, sitting on the edge of the bed with her tits bare and her legs barely apart, and felt his cock go completely hard against the fabric of his trousers.

—Lie down —he said, his voice rougher than he intended.

He laid her down on the bed. She watched him while he took off his shirt and then his pajama pants, with an attention that was half taking stock and half pure enjoyment, making no attempt to hide either. When he pulled down his underwear too and his cock was freed, hard and pointing toward her, Claudia let out a short breath and bit her lower lip. Andrés saw her thighs tense for a moment and then relax again, opening wider than before, and he knew perfectly well what that gesture meant.

He climbed onto the bed and positioned himself over her. They kissed again, this time lying down, without the awkwardness of the sofa. Andrés traced her neck with his mouth, her shoulders, her collarbone. He went slowly down to her breasts and caught one nipple between his lips, sucking it calmly, teasing the dark aureole with his tongue. Claudia arched her back immediately and let out a low moan she tried to muffle with the back of her hand. He moved to the other breast, nibbled lightly, sucked harder, and she dug her fingers into his hair and pressed his head against her tit as if she needed more.

—God —she whispered—, don’t stop...

Andrés kept going down. He kissed her stomach, her hip bone, the inside of her thigh. When he hooked her panties with his fingers and pulled them down, Claudia lifted her hips without him having to ask. He opened her legs with his hands, slowly, and found her cunt already soaked, shining in the dim light, the lips swollen and parted on their own.

—You’re dripping —he murmured.

—Shut up —she answered, her voice trembling—, shut up and eat me out.

Andrés obeyed. He lay face-first between her thighs and ran his tongue all the way from bottom to top, tasting her slowly, feeling Claudia shiver all over at that first contact. He licked her again, this time pressing his tongue to her clit, and she let out a long moan cut short when she brought a hand to her mouth to muffle it. Andrés held her thighs open with his forearms and started really sucking her cunt, alternating the flat of his tongue with the tip, going in and out, up and down over her wet slit. Her taste filled his whole mouth and only made his cock harder.

—That’s it —Claudia gasped—, that’s it, keep going, fuck...

He slipped two fingers inside her. Her cunt swallowed them with no resistance, so wet they slid all the way in on their own. He curled them inward, searching for the spot he knew was there, and kept sucking her clit at the same time. Claudia started moving her hips against his face, rubbing herself shamelessly, with her heels dug into the mattress and her thighs trembling around his head. He heard her let out sounds that weren’t words, broken noises, gasps rising in volume even though she was trying to hold them in.

When he felt her come against his mouth, Andrés didn’t stop. He kept sucking, kept moving his fingers inside her, let the orgasm stretch out for as long as it could last. Claudia closed her legs around his head and writhed, arching her back off the mattress, one hand yanking at his hair and the other squeezing a breast.

—Stop, stop —she panted at last—, come here...

Andrés wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and climbed up her body, kissing her stomach on the way. She grabbed his face and kissed him with her mouth open, sucking his tongue, tasting herself on him without the slightest shame. Then she pushed his shoulder to make him turn over and put her on top.

—My turn now —she said.

Andrés let himself fall back. Claudia slid down, her loose hair falling over her breasts, until she was kneeling between his legs. She took his cock in one hand and looked at it for a moment, as if weighing it up, before running her tongue from the base to the tip in one long, slow motion. Andrés let out a grunt he couldn’t control. She looked up at him from below with half-closed eyes, that look he already knew and that made him almost come right there, and took him all the way into her mouth.

She started sucking his cock calmly, taking him deep, bobbing her head up and down, helping herself with her hand at the base. Andrés could feel the tip hitting the back of her throat every two or three thrusts, feel her gag slightly and then go back down without pulling away. She ran her tongue along his entire length, stopped to suck the head on its own, licked his balls with her mouth open before taking the whole cock back in. Saliva gleamed on her chin and lip and she made no move to wipe it away.

—Claudia —he gasped—, Claudia, stop or I’m going to come...

She let him go with a wet sound and wiped her lips with the back of her hand. Her hair was mussed, her mouth swollen, her eyes shining in the dim light.

—Not yet —she said—. Not yet.

She straddled him. Andrés put his hands on her hips and felt her lower, pressing the tip of his cock against her soaked cunt, rubbing it over her slit for a moment before settling it and sinking down slowly onto him. They faced each other, with the time they hadn’t had the first time. Andrés felt her body heat against his, the pressure of her legs around him, the sound of her breathing changing as she swallowed him whole, centimeter by centimeter. When she finally had him buried to the hilt, Claudia made a low sound that was not quite a moan and not quite silence: something in between, something private, something Andrés understood he would hear nowhere else in the world.

She started moving on top of him. They moved slowly at first, with her setting the pace, riding his cock with her hands on his chest and her head thrown back. Andrés grabbed her tits with both hands, squeezed them, propped himself up just enough to suck one nipple while still thrusting from below. The rhythm changed on its own after that, without either of them consciously deciding it. Claudia started riding faster, harder, the wet sound of their bodies slapping together filling the room over the distant cars.

—Fuck —she whispered—, fuck, you fuck me so well...

Andrés grabbed her by the waist and turned her without pulling out, laying her on her back again, with him on top. He put her legs over his shoulders and started fucking her in earnest, with long, deep thrusts that made her slide upward on the mattress. Claudia had her fingers buried in his back and every now and then opened her mouth and said something in such a low voice Andrés couldn’t make out the words, but he understood perfectly well what they meant. He watched her breasts bounce with every thrust, her mouth open, her neck stretched, and had to bite his lip not to come right then and there.

—Get on all fours —he told her in her ear.

Claudia obeyed without saying anything. Andrés pulled out just long enough for her to turn, and as soon as he saw her on all fours in front of him, ass in the air and cunt open and shining between her thighs, he grabbed her hips and slammed back in with one full thrust to the hilt. She let out a broken moan and buried her face in the pillow to muffle it.

He started pounding her like that, deep, with the sound of his hips hitting her ass setting the rhythm. He ran a hand over her arched back, grabbed her loose hair and tugged just a little, and felt her cunt tighten suddenly around his cock in response. He gave her ass a soft slap and Claudia pushed back against him, asking for more, her ass lifted and her knees spread as wide as the mattress would allow.

—Harder —she begged, her voice broken into the pillow—, harder, please...

Her first orgasm came like that, when Andrés had already been near the limit of his own control for a while. He felt her clench around his cock, heard her hold her breath and then let it out in a series of short, rapid exhales against the pillow, and had to make a real effort not to let go at the same time. Claudia trembled all over, her arms gave way, she collapsed face-first onto the mattress with her ass still pressed against his hips, her cunt pulsing around his cock in waves.

He waited, still inside her, holding on as best he could.

Claudia looked at him over her shoulder with half-open eyes.

—Don’t stop —she said.

He didn’t stop.

He turned her again onto her back and settled over her once more. Claudia wrapped her legs around his waist and pulled him toward her, squeezing him, and Andrés resumed thrusting now with no restraint at all, his cock sliding in and out of her soaked cunt to the hilt, again and again, the wet sound filling the whole room. The second orgasm took longer but hit harder: she buried her face in Andrés’s neck and locked her arms around his back with a force he hadn’t expected, and he felt her cunt clamp down in spasms around his cock as if she wanted to milk him for the last drop.

—Come inside me —Claudia panted in his ear—, come inside me, please, inside...

Only then did he allow himself to finish. With the last long, deep motions he drove his load into her, spurt after spurt, feeling the cum gush out in waves while Claudia held him tight with her legs and arms and with her whole body. He kept thrusting slowly for a few seconds more, emptying himself completely, until the pleasure faded into the thick silence of three in the morning.

For several minutes neither of them moved.

***

Andrés was the first to get up.

He put on his trousers in silence and went to the window. Claudia was still in bed, motionless, eyes open to the ceiling and cum still slowly leaking between her open thighs. The streetlights cast shifting shadows over the wall of the room. A car passed slowly along the empty street and its headlights swept the ceiling before disappearing.

He thought about his friends. About the same old conversations: who was with whom, who wanted to be with whom, the details told with varying degrees of accuracy depending on how much they had drunk. Nobody told anything like this. Nobody had anything like this. It was something that existed only here, in this room, in this city, between these two people.

We can’t tell anyone. It doesn’t exist for anyone but the two of us.

—Are you thinking? —Claudia asked from the bed.

—A little.

—About what?

Andrés took a while to answer. He kept looking at the empty street for a few more seconds, his hands resting on the sill.

—About how we promised it wouldn’t happen again —he said at last.

The silence that followed lasted exactly as long as it took Claudia to prop herself up on one elbow and look him in the face.

—I know —she said.

—And it happened.

—I know.

Andrés turned toward her. Claudia looked at him with that expression he had learned to read over the past few weeks: it wasn’t guilt exactly, nor was it resignation. It was something more complicated than both of those things together. Something without a clear name in either of the two languages she spoke.

—What do we do now? —he asked.

Claudia took time to answer. When she did, she spoke quietly but without hesitation:

—Sleep. Tomorrow we’ll see.

It was a non-answer and they both knew it. But Andrés nodded anyway, because at that moment it was the only possible thing. He moved away from the window, went back to bed, and lay down beside her. Claudia switched off the bedside lamp. In the dark, almost without thinking, he wrapped an arm around her waist.

She said nothing. She put her hand over his, and that was how they stayed, without speaking, while outside the city began to brighten slowly over the rooftops.

Andrés closed his eyes.

Tomorrow we’ll see.

He knew perfectly well what that meant.