The Summer I Desired My Brother’s Wife

The first thing I remember about that summer of 2010 is Aldo Brenner’s hands. Broad, pink hands, crossed with white lines of dry skin and old calluses. After that I remember Mara’s eyes, shining beneath the black fringe that fell over her face. I wish I could tell this only in images like that, scattered, out of order. But you can’t, so somewhere one has to be called the beginning.

Soon after my older brother, Mateo, married Soraya, they took me with them on a mountain retreat. The two of them liked the thin air at altitude, the cold rising from the lake at dawn, and the good exhaustion of long hikes through the brush. I hated all of it. But I knew it was important to Mateo to have me close.

Since the wedding, he was supposed to devote himself to his wife, and yet he still wanted me by his side. He felt responsible for me. I’m not and I won’t be like Dad, he would always say, like a vow. And then there was Soraya, who was beautiful, and I still hadn’t gotten over what I felt when I looked at her: that mute urge to slip my hand under her skirt, to find out what my brother’s wife’s cunt tasted like.

The three of us got into the car, crossed dusty hills for hours, and arrived at a strip of forest that looked as if it had been drawn in. It was the clearest sky I had ever seen, open from side to side, and it was copied whole in the huge lake. Between the forest and the water there was a clearing with half a dozen cabins arranged in a circle.

As soon as we shut the doors and got the bags out, Aldo Brenner came out to greet Mateo and Soraya. He didn’t even look at me. He was wearing a checkered shirt open over his chest, sleeves rolled up, and his clothes and skin were stained with oil from a generator that was struggling to start. He spoke decent Spanish, but rough, as if he were chewing it.

His skin, tanned by moisture and work, was almost fuchsia, like that of foreigners who get burned on the beach. But on him it wasn’t from vacation: it was the color of someone who hasn’t spent a single day of his life under a roof. He must have been in his forties, tall and broad-shouldered. His trimmed beard, already shot through with gray, climbed up his neck to his sideburns like an animal’s bristling fur.

Brenner’s wife was a young woman in her early thirties, blonde, small, and compact. It took a while to realize she was pregnant. No matter how hard I try, I can’t remember hearing her say a single word the whole week we were there.

Brenner and she showed us around the place. For me, who has always found nature unsympathetic, the breadth of the lake beneath the mass of the mountains took my breath away. As I thought about it, almost glad I’d made the trip, Soraya walked slowly, playing with the small silver ring she wore on her left hand. Maybe I only liked the place because she looked happy there.

Mateo, meanwhile, asked questions about the retreat and its owner. Brenner’s uncle —a foreigner, of course— had come years earlier as a missionary and had left him that mountain land in his will, where the retreat was built. There politicians, companies, and religious groups tightened their ties under the affectionate canopy of the trees.

Judging by the wooden chapels on the sides and by the number of Christs and Virgins in each cabin, Brenner was not a Protestant like his uncle. Or perhaps those signs were only decoration for the clients he expected. I never found out for sure.

When we were finishing settling in, someone knocked on the cabin door. It was a thin, dark girl, with black hair and a long fringe that covered half her gaze. I don’t remember at what point I learned her name was Mara, but it doesn’t matter: in my memory that name has belonged to her ever since I first saw her. She told us dinner was ready and left. I stood there watching how good her denim pants looked on her, how the line of her ass showed when she turned, and felt my cock harden without permission inside my jeans.

The dining room had a high ceiling and six empty tables. It looked as if nobody else was staying at the retreat. Mara served a soup and a plate of chickpeas. From the wall, a bleeding wooden Christ watched us eat.

Mateo talked in crackling, lively words, trying to win Brenner over with his wit. Brenner slurped the soup with his head bowed and, with each spoonful, lifted his eyes to Soraya. I tried to follow the conversation and hide that I was looking at Mara, who, after serving us all, had sat down beside Brenner on the opposite side of the table. But Soraya noticed —she notices those things— and smiled at me conspiratorially.

Who was Mara? I had a vague idea that Brenner had said at some point she was his adopted daughter. Even though they paid each other the slightest attention. Brenner looked at Soraya, and Mara looked at nothing.

***

That first night there was a full moon. I know because I couldn’t sleep in the cabin.

Mateo doesn’t know how to hold himself back when he’s with his wife. His eyes go to her body, and behind his eyes his hands, and more than once he forgets where he is or who’s nearby. Truth is, I don’t judge him. Soraya is tall and brown-haired; in her straight, soft hair the hazelnut scent of her perfume mixes with the salty taste of skin. She has narrow eyes, with long lashes that flutter coquettishly when she blinks.

She likes loose suits and dress slacks. But I had seen her in shorts and a blouse, in the easy comfort of Sundays at Mateo’s house, and I knew that under those jackets there were two firm breasts with dark nipples, and under those pants two strong, round, fleshy buttocks, with a tight cunt between them that by that hour was surely soaking wet, waiting for my brother’s cock. So I don’t blame Mateo for not being able to resist.

That first night I was awakened by the sound of two heavy breaths. Little by little, hers turned into a moan. He must have been touching her in the dark, though I don’t know exactly how. After a while I thought I heard Soraya whispering.

—Touch me all over… kiss them, kiss them… Don’t you want to give the nipples a little bite? Like that, between your lips… Oh, Mateo, Mateo. Suck them hard, love. Bite them for me. Yes… like that. Look how hard they get for you.

I heard Mateo growl softly, the wet smack of his mouth on her tits, and then the creak of the cot when he spread her legs. Soraya let out a long gasp, muffled into the pillow, and then came the unmistakable sound of fingers going in and out of a wet cunt.

—You’re soaked —Mateo whispered to her—. Look how you’re dripping, Soraya.

—It’s yours… everything’s yours… put it in me already, please.

First, trying to make as little noise as possible, I started to masturbate. I spat in my hand and ran it over my cock, imagining my sister-in-law’s cunt opening for my brother two meters from my bed. After a few seconds I felt guilty. I cleared my throat. They stopped for an instant and pretended to sleep. I threw on a thick jacket and left the cabin with my cock still hard against my belly, determined to let them finish.

I didn’t know whether I was happy for Mateo or hated his happiness. It seemed to me that the dawn air had grown murky with a smell of salt, like Soraya’s skin, or maybe like her wet cunt. That smell finally drove the last traces of sleep from my eyes.

Breathing steam in the cold, I began to walk to warm up and kill time before going back. It wasn’t that I wanted to go into the forest, but there was barely room to walk without venturing at least a little among the tight trees and their twists and turns.

When I’d been away from the cabins about fifteen minutes, I heard it. It was the same noise I had heard so many times at Mateo’s house. The same one I had wanted to hear a little earlier in the cabin. It was the sound of a man’s pelvis slamming against a woman’s buttocks. The wet, heavy thud, thud, thud of flesh against flesh. The rhythm was steady, like a metronome, and it made you think of a man thrusting with more force and depth than speed, driving his cock in to the root and pulling it almost all the way out before spearing it in again.

I didn’t know what I expected to find. Maybe I expected to see Soraya. Maybe I thought my brother and his wife had left the cabin, or that the sound was reaching me from far away, or that I was simply imagining it. Whatever it was, I was moving toward the sound, hard as a log, with my cock already escaping my pants.

The brush scratched the backs of my hands as I passed. The cold air scraped my lungs and mosquitoes were starting to gather around me. At some point I no longer wanted to keep going and retraced my steps. But I got lost.

While I was looking for the path, something struck my eye. They were, unmistakably, Brenner’s hands, less than four meters away. They clung tightly to the thin ridges of a hip, his fingers sunk into the skin until it blanched. The rest of the woman was hidden from me by the branches of the tree I had crouched behind, but I could see out of the corner of my eye, between the leaves, the brutal sway of a small, dark ass every time he slammed into her.

Brenner didn’t penetrate the woman moving back and forth like a dog. No: he pulled her hip away to take his member out and then drew her toward him to shove it into her again, over and over, with a calm that was more frightening than haste. Every time he yanked her against him, she let out a short, muffled whimper, as if the air were being punched out of her gut. Brenner’s cock came out shining, soaked in her juices, and sank back in until the man’s balls slapped against the girl’s cunt.

It wasn’t my brother, so there was no guilt to carry. I pulled out my cock and started stroking it slowly, pinching the head with my thumb and forefinger on each downstroke, feeling it throb. If only I could see the woman’s face, I thought. Brenner slid one hand to the nape of her neck and pushed her down toward the ground, forcing her to arch her back even more. He gave her a dry, loud slap on the ass, and another, and another.

—Tighten up, bitch —he growled—. Tighten that cunt for me. Like that. Let me feel how it sucks my cock when I go in.

The girl moaned under her breath, an animal sound, and Brenner let out a thick laugh. He slammed into her five, six times in a row, deep, and suddenly stopped. He pulled out his shiny, dripping cock and shook it a couple of times in the air, breathing hard through his nose.

—I’m going to come.

The girl said nothing. She slowly turned around, knelt before him on the damp earth, and took his cock into her mouth halfway. I saw her cheeks hollow as she sucked, her tongue circling the head, a thread of saliva running from her chin to wet her throat. Just as he had used her hips as he pleased, he took her by the nape with both hands and imposed a rhythm on her, shoving his cock down her throat. The poor thing coughed a little, drool spilling from the corners of her mouth, her eyes glazed. He didn’t let her go: he pinned her there, against his pelvis, while her body jerked with the retching.

—Swallow it all for me —Brenner panted—. You know how, you fucking bitch. Like that, like that… with your tongue…

Then Brenner yanked his cock out all at once, grabbed it in his fist, and came on the face… of Mara. Thick, white jets splashed over her forehead, over the black fringe, over her squeezed-shut eyelids and over her parted lips. A final thread hung from her chin until it dripped onto her chest. She stayed still, kneeling, letting him empty everything on her as if she were an altar.

I stood motionless behind the tree, my hand still on my sex and a disgust rising from my stomach mixed with the orgasm I felt coming and couldn’t stop. I bit my lip and came silently over the leaves, shuddering all over, watching another man’s semen run down that woman’s face and mine soak the moss at my feet. Mara didn’t cry. She wiped herself with the back of her wrist, unhurriedly, like someone repeating a gesture she’d done a thousand times, then licked the knuckle afterward with an almost indifferent slowness, and looked for a moment toward the trees. Toward me. I swear her eyes, under the fringe matted with semen, fixed right where I was hidden.

I don’t know whether she saw me. I’ll never know. Brenner pulled up his pants and walked off toward the chapels without saying a word to her, and she stayed alone, still kneeling, in that moonlit clearing, with the cum drying on her face. I backed away as best I could, tripping over roots, with my pants still half up and my wet cock slapping my thigh, and by a miracle I found the path back.

***

When I got back to the cabin, Mateo and Soraya were asleep in each other’s arms, at peace, oblivious to everything. The sheet had slipped down Soraya’s waist and one bare breast was peeking out, white and heavy, the nipple still reddened from all the biting. I forced my eyes away. I got into my icy bed and stared at the wooden ceiling until dawn. Soraya’s silver ring gleamed on the bedside table, where she had left it before lying down. I couldn’t stop looking at it.

We spent six more days at that retreat. We walked by the lake, ate under the gaze of the wooden Christs, listened to Mateo tell his jokes and to Brenner laugh with his animal laugh. The blonde, pregnant wife kept saying nothing. Soraya kept playing with her ring and smiling at me with that complicity that made me feel, at once, cherished and miserable.

And Mara kept serving meals. Every time she came into the dining room I looked down, my heart in my throat, hoping she wouldn’t remember, or praying she would. Only once, as she picked up my plate, did she lean very close to my ear and whisper, in a voice I hadn’t heard before:

—The mountain sees everything, boy. Even what you think you hide.

Then she straightened up and went on as if nothing had happened, with her fringe falling over her eyes. That same night, the penultimate one, I found her waiting for me at the back of my cabin. She didn’t say a word. She grabbed my wrist, dragged me against the log wall, yanked my pants down, and crouched in front of me. She took my cock into her mouth without preamble, to the hilt, looking up at me with those black eyes that already knew my weakness. She sucked slowly, her tongue wrapping around my head, letting saliva run down her chin and drip onto my balls. She squeezed my balls with one hand, with the other she opened her pants and slipped her fingers between her legs; I heard the wet sound of her cunt and wanted to go insane.

—Shut up —she whispered when I moaned—. And come fast. Your brother can’t hear you.

She took my cock again, now faster, sucking with hollowed cheeks, letting me feel the back of her throat every time I pushed. I grabbed her hair with both hands, pushed aside her fringe, and fucked her mouth the way Brenner had fucked her cunt in the forest, with deep, silent thrusts. She didn’t pull away. She took it all, her eyes full of water, swallowing saliva, until I felt the orgasm climbing up from my balls like a whip crack. When I tried to warn her I barely managed a growl; she pressed me harder against her face and swallowed my seed in full, spurt after spurt, without letting go, without letting a drop escape. Then she licked my head clean, stood up, wiped the corner of her mouth with her thumb, and looked at me.

—Now we’re the same —she said—. Now you’ve got me inside you too.

And she left, adjusting her pants, with the same calm stride she’d had in the dining room. We never spoke again. On the last day we put the bags in the car, Brenner shook Mateo’s hand, Soraya put on her ring, and we drove back across the dusty hills in the opposite direction.

From that summer I was left with the scattered images I mentioned at the beginning. Aldo Brenner’s pink hands. Mara’s eyes beneath her fringe, soaked with another man’s semen. Soraya’s ring turning between her fingers. And the certainty, which has stayed with me ever since, that the darkest desire is not the one we feel, but the one we discover while spying on what we believed was everyone else’s silence.