Thirty-Two Degrees in My Stepmother’s Shade

Mateo arrived on a Thursday with a huge suitcase, a backpack over his shoulder, and the face of a twenty-year-old who has been moved to another country by a decision he did not make himself. The flight had been long, the city felt foreign to him, and his father greeted him at the airport with the same brief, awkward hug with which you greet a distant acquaintance, not a son you haven’t seen in years.

In the car, on the way home, Ricardo asked about the flight, about Mateo’s mother, and whether he had eaten anything. Correct, spaced-out questions that Mateo answered with equal propriety, and both of them looked out the window with that silent relief of people who have already done their social part in something difficult.

The apartment was spacious and well located, in one of the city’s better buildings, on the fourteenth floor with twenty-four-hour concierge service and an elevator that made no noise. It wasn’t a mansion and didn’t pretend to be one, but it had the solid, concrete feel of spaces inhabited by someone who earns well and knows how to spend it: living room with a home cinema, fully equipped kitchen, the little Tomás’s room decorated with a criterion that clearly had not been his father’s.

Ricardo showed him everything with the efficiency of a real estate agent: the living room, the kitchen, the study he was not to enter without warning, his little brother’s room, and, at the end, almost as an administrative detail, the guest room that would be his. View of the city, private bathroom, neutral furniture. Functional and without personality, as befits a guest room. Mateo set the suitcase on the floor and said nothing, but that word, guest, settled somewhere inside him that he preferred not to inspect right away.

—Breakfast is at seven-thirty —Ricardo said—. I leave at eight. I have a meeting.

He always had a meeting.

That was when Marcela appeared.

Mateo heard her before he saw her: light footsteps in the hallway and a voice calling Tomás with that just-right mix of authority and tenderness young mothers have. When she rounded the corner with the child on her hip, Mateo instantly understood several things he had only intuited before. Why his father had married her. Why, in photos of company events he had found online, Ricardo’s partners looked at him with that particular mix of envy and respect. And why the world distributed its gifts with an unfairness that was sometimes hard to accept gracefully.

Marcela was thirty and had the kind of beauty that needs no introduction or effort. Tall, with long, straight black hair that framed a face of clean features and skin that seemed never to have known neglect. Honey-colored eyes, too light for a face like that, the kind you look back at to confirm they’re real. And the body, which neither her house clothes nor the child on her hip could hide: generous, firm breasts beneath a thin cotton blouse, hips that asserted themselves with the same naturalness with which the sun rises, long legs ending in simple sandals. A fully formed woman from a young age, one of those who do not improve with the years because there was never anywhere left to improve.

—Welcome —she said, and extended her free hand with a smile that was sincere without being calculated—. This is your home.

Mateo shook her hand, felt the warmth of her fingers, and said thank you very much with a composure that cost him more than he would have liked to admit. Then he looked at the child. Tomás had just turned two, had his mother’s black hair and big, dark eyes that assessed him with the unfiltered seriousness of the very young before a stranger. Mateo pulled a face. Tomás looked at him a second longer and buried his face in Marcela’s neck.

—He’ll warm up —she said, laughing.

Well, the old man’s got taste, Mateo thought when he saw her for the first time. And he immediately felt a little miserable for having thought it.

***

Ricardo had met Marcela three years earlier at his own company, an appliance importer where he was CEO and she had joined the sales department with a university degree, good references, and that combination of intelligence and presence that, without meaning to, straightens people’s posture when she walks into a room.

Ricardo, who had spent years getting what he wanted with the same methodical approach with which he ran his businesses, had begun flirting with her through expensive details and measured attention, the projection of a solidity that at that moment was still not entirely false.

Marcela, for her part, had reached twenty-eight with a romantic history that was basically the same disappointment in different wrappers. Handsome men, charming men, men her own age, who without exception ended up being some variation of the same thing: freeloaders, irresponsible, incapable of committing to anything that wasn’t their own belly button. She had loved intensely and been let down with the same intensity, and somewhere between the last boyfriend and Ricardo’s arrival she made a decision she never said out loud but that her behavior made clear. She had already tried the immature men of her generation. Maybe a change in perspective was needed.

Ricardo was not the man of her dreams, and she knew that from the start with that honesty toward herself that was one of her strongest traits. He was fifty-five when they started dating, had an energy that was no longer that of a young man, and a way of moving through the world that was orderly but not exactly warm. And yet he had things her former boyfriends, for all their looks, had never had: he showed up when he said he would, solved problems without drama, made a woman feel protected in a way she hadn’t known she missed until she had it.

When, after a year, Ricardo proposed with a ring that cost what she earned in six months, Marcela said yes thinking about the future. Not just hers. The children she wanted, that son she already imagined with almost physical clarity, that child who deserved everything she had not had: stability, security, a school where nothing would need to be worried about.

She knew about Mateo from the beginning. That Ricardo’s son from his first marriage, who lived with his mother in a neighboring country, would eventually come to study at university with them. Far from unsettling her, it had seemed like a good sign: Ricardo recognizing that financial responsibility, even if the emotional one was something else, said something about him. Or so she thought then.

Little Tomás arrived eight months after the wedding. Healthy, beautiful, with his mother’s exact features and a smile that appeared early and stayed forever. Ricardo looked at him with the genuine pride of a man before his heir, and for a few weeks Marcela allowed herself to think she had chosen well. That the kind, attentive version of Ricardo, the one she met first, was the real one, and the other one temporary.

It wasn’t.

Something changed so slowly it was hard to pinpoint the exact moment. As if for Ricardo she had stopped being a woman the instant she became a mother. Their nights together grew farther apart without explanation. The details disappeared. Late arrivals became routine, and the cheap perfumes that came home with him, perfumes that were definitely not his, confirmed what she preferred not to confirm. Marcela was not naive. She was very intelligent, and that intelligence sometimes weighed on her, because it did not let her ignore the obvious.

But Tomás slept in a room decorated in the best neighborhood in the city, had a private pediatrician, and a life she had designed down to the millimeter before he even existed. And that, she repeated on the nights when Ricardo didn’t come home or came home without looking at her, was worth what it cost.

***

Mateo took exactly two days to understand the dynamic of that apartment.

His father was a peripheral presence: he came home late, left early, talked about business on the phone during dinner the few times he showed up, and looked at Marcela with the same functional expression he used for the doorman. He loved Tomás, that was obvious, carried him around with a tenderness that stood in complete contrast to the way he treated the rest of the world. With Mateo he was correct, attentive in practical matters, punctual with money for expenses. But there was something in the way he treated him that Mateo couldn’t name until the third night, when he realized it: his father treated him exactly like a guest. With due courtesy and just enough distance. As if he were someone passing through who would at some point collect his suitcase and leave, and the apartment’s real life would continue without him.

Marcela noticed it before Mateo said anything. She saw it in Ricardo’s small gestures: the study locked even though Mateo had never shown the slightest interest in going in, the way he divided up the household chores without including him, as if his presence were temporary. One night, after Ricardo was already asleep, she found Mateo in the kitchen making himself a sandwich with that discretion of someone who doesn’t want to be a bother in someone else’s home, and something about that image hurt her in a way she hadn’t expected.

She put a hand on his shoulder for a moment.

—Mateo. This is your home too.

He looked at her. He nodded with a smile more grateful than the sentence required. Marcela went to bed thinking about that gesture and feeling angrier at Ricardo than she had in a long time.

With Tomás, on the other hand, Mateo was something else. The child had adopted him with the absolute speed and determination of a two-year-old, and Mateo returned it with a naturalness Marcela found endearing. He picked him up, lay on the floor to play with his things with a patience many adults wouldn’t have had, made faces until he got that baby laugh impossible not to catch. Sometimes she found them in the living room, Tomás climbing on top of Mateo as if he were available furniture, the two of them watching cartoons with the same concentration, and she thought Mateo was going to be a good big brother. He already was.

With her, Mateo discovered from day one a kind of ease he hadn’t expected. They were ten years apart, but shared references with a fluidity that was disarming: the same series, some music, the same way of finding amusement in small things. Marcela had the gift of making people comfortable without seeming to try, and Mateo, who had arrived predisposed to feel out of place, found in her something that made the situation not only bearable, but genuinely good.

They went out together almost every day. Shopping malls, university visits, the cinema when Tomás allowed it. Mateo pushed the child’s stroller without being asked, carried bags, held doors open. Not out of calculation, but because that was how his mother had raised him, with that basic and firm education that sometimes is the only thing a single mother can guarantee. Marcela noticed and appreciated it without saying so.

***

Mateo tried not to look at her too much. He really did try, with varying results. There were moments when the effort was simply not enough: at the cinema, when the light from the screen illuminated her profile and that neckline; at the mall, when she bent down to pick something up for Tomás and her clothes clung in ways he preferred not to register so precisely. Marcela was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen up close, lived in the same house, made breakfast in pajamas, and sometimes looked at him with those light eyes and smiled as if she had no idea of the effect she produced.

He was not a boy with bad intentions. He was, plain and simple, a twenty-year-old boy in a situation no twenty-year-old boy is designed to handle calmly. In his own country he had left Carolina, his first serious girlfriend, with whom he had almost gone all the way without quite getting there. The moment had been cruel: six days before traveling, Carolina had sucked him off for the first time, awkward and brief, finishing him with her hand because she was afraid he’d come in her mouth. Mateo, who had built certain expectations from years of videos where things worked rather differently, had found the outcome unsatisfying, although he said nothing because it wasn’t the time. She had also sucked his breasts, which had been notably better. That was the extent of his experience with real women, and it was a great deal less than a situation like this demanded if he was to keep his composure.

At night, in his room overlooking the city, Mateo processed all of it in the only way available to a boy in his situation: he started off thinking about Carolina and inevitably ended up somewhere else, and then he fell asleep with that concrete mixture of relief and mild guilt that is the emotional signature of twenty years old. The universe, he concluded before closing his eyes, has a particularly cruel sense of humor.

***

It was on a Sunday at dinner that Ricardo showed up looking like a man bringing an announcement, not a question.

—I bought an apartment on the coast —he said, pouring himself wine without offering any—. Three hours from here. Ocean view, new building, good area.

Marcela looked at him.

—When?

—This week. It’s an investment. And a place for the weekends, once it’s ready.

Mateo listened without commenting. Tomás was demanding attention from his chair with the renewed energy of someone who had just woken up from a nap.

—There are still things to install —Ricardo went on—. The kitchen, the air conditioning, the new furniture. It’ll take a few days. I want you two to go next week and stay there while everything gets organized. I’ll go on weekends; during the week I have work.

—For how many days? —Marcela asked.

—As many as needed. Two weeks, maybe a little more. The workers will be there. Someone has to supervise.

What he didn’t say, but Marcela understood perfectly, was that that someone had to be anyone but him. Because he had more important things. He always did.

Mateo said nothing. He looked down at his plate and then at Marcela, who held his gaze for a second with an expression that said what she couldn’t say out loud: I know, and I’m sorry, and it isn’t fair.

***

The coastal apartment was, indeed, beautiful. Direct ocean view, a small terrace, floor-to-ceiling windows that turned the sea into something that looked painted. Ricardo spared no expense when the taste was for himself, that was undeniable. Three bedrooms: the master, with en suite bathroom and the best view. Tomás’s room, small and still undecorated, where Marcela would improvise something with what she had on hand. And the third, the guest room, for Mateo. Again. Always the guest room.

Marcela noticed it. She noticed that Ricardo hadn’t hesitated even for a second in assigning the rooms, that he had considered no other option, that the word guest was still what defined Mateo’s place in any property of his father’s. That night, while unpacking, she decided that at least in that apartment, during those weeks, Mateo was not going to feel that way if she could help it.

Otherwise, the place was a half-finished floor, with a makeshift kitchen of microwave and small fridge, and a humid, constant heat coming off the sea and seeping through every window with democratic, relentless persistence. Thirty-two degrees with humidity that made it feel like thirty-seven, a temperature that changed everything: the mood, the clothes, the distance one kept between one’s own body and another’s.

The WiFi wasn’t set up. Cable television, either. The provider had informed them, with the equanimity of someone delivering bad news that wasn’t theirs, that in twelve business days the connections for the new residential area would be ready. Twelve days in which the only available entertainment was the noise of the workers installing the kitchen, the debates over the color of the walls in Tomás’s room, and the sea, which was beautiful but after the first day was simply the permanent backdrop to everything.

Marcela organized the rooms, set routines with Tomás, coordinated the workers with an efficiency that would have surprised Ricardo had he been there to see it. Mateo helped where he could, carried Tomás when she needed her hands free, went down to the promenade to get ice or whatever else was needed without anyone asking him to.

The heat changed everything, and Marcela in particular in ways Mateo would have preferred not to change so much, or more, depending on the time of day and how much control he had over his own thoughts. In the city, Marcela dressed with the discretion of a married woman in an environment where appearances matter. On the coast, with thirty-two degrees clinging to the skin and no meetings to attend, she dressed with the simple logic of survival: shorts that ended considerably higher than Mateo would have preferred, thin-strapped tops that did things with that neckline he tried not to notice too often and with results that worsened as the days went by. When Tomás took his nap and the workers stopped, she would stretch out on the terrace overlooking the sea in the bare minimum needed not to be technically in a bikini, and Mateo found reasons to be in the living room, which had a window onto the terrace, with a frequency he himself recognized as not entirely casual and that nonetheless he couldn’t manage to change.

Goodbye to shopping malls, universities, and cinemas. The days were for listening to drills, discussing finishes, and going out the three of them to the promenade to find somewhere to have lunch and somewhere to have dinner, with Tomás in the stroller and Ricardo’s card with a daily limit that was enough but not excessive. The nights, when the boy slept, were the two of them alone in the half-finished apartment, with a deck of UNO cards as their only form of entertainment.

***

Mateo always won. With a regularity Marcela found somewhere between irritating and amusing, he piled up victories without celebrating too much or rubbing anything in her face. He had earned two weeks without washing his own clothes, which was the first bet, and had gotten her to promise to talk to Ricardo about the television for his room, the most immediate object of desire in the city apartment and one his father considered unnecessary given the home cinema in the living room.

The third night, Ricardo called at eight. Marcela listened with the face of someone receiving exactly what she expected. Early meeting the next day. He couldn’t make it that night. He’d see whether he could stop by tomorrow, though probably not. She hung up, looked at the phone for a moment, and set it on the table.

Tomás had been asleep since seven-thirty. The apartment was quiet and the sea sounded outside with the kind of constancy that after three days was simply the silence of that place. Mateo was on the sofa with a book he had brought in his backpack.

—Want to play? —Marcela said.

Mateo lifted the book.

—I already beat you all day.

—Then let’s make it more interesting —she said. She sat down on the floor in front of him, crossing her legs, the tank top tightening with the movement. Mateo made the usual effort with his eyes—. The chores are done. The TV is done. Let’s bet on something else. Something you’d actually care about.

Marcela looked at him, waiting, genuinely curious.

Mateo gathered his courage. He said it with that half-smile of someone ready to make it a joke if things got awkward.

—Clothes. That would interest me.

Marcela wasn’t offended. She wasn’t scandalized. She looked at him for a moment with those honey-colored eyes and a quick, pragmatic thought crossed her mind: he was a twenty-year-old boy, not a predator. They had been bored for three days and had nine more ahead of them. Her husband wasn’t coming home. Tomás was asleep. And she had been invisible for months to the only man who should have seen her.

A little mischief. Nothing more than that.

—Deal —she said, and began dealing the cards.

They played the first game with an almost innocent lightness. They laughed, interrupted each other with little jabs, and tension had the courtesy of hiding behind the game’s rhythm. But the air in the room had already changed. Marcela noticed it in details she didn’t want to exaggerate: the way Mateo arranged the cards between his fingers, the way every time she leaned in he blinked more slowly, as if he needed time to reset himself inside.

The first garment to fall was Mateo’s T-shirt. He lost the round on a poorly played card and took it off without arguing, leaving it on the back of the sofa. Marcela, who had not expected the boy’s body to be so worked, looked at him for just a second too long: broad shoulders, clean chest, abdomen marked by a definition still youthful, that mix of slight softness and fresh muscle you get in people who exercise without obsession. He wasn’t fully made yet, not yet, but there was enough there for a woman to look and think things it was not convenient to think.

—You cheat with your face —he said, trying to joke.

—I don’t need to cheat —she replied, smiling with a confidence that made his stomach tickle.

The second round dragged on longer. Tomás stirred in his sleep and Marcela went to check on him, confirmed he was still deeply asleep, came back to the living room with her hair a little mussed, her top clinging more to her body because of the heat, and the neckline more obvious than it had been half an hour earlier. Mateo followed her with his eyes involuntarily. He hated himself a little for doing it. Not enough.

She won. Mateo stayed looking at her in silence while Marcela leaned back slightly on one hand, enjoying the victory with a slow smile.

—Pants —she said.

He gave a short laugh.

—I’m not that easy.

—We’ll see.

Mateo took off his jeans and was left in boxer briefs, his erection still only barely suggested by the fabric, a concession from the body that wasn’t even trying to hide it completely. Marcela saw it. She really saw it, and felt a sharp pull low in her belly that surprised her completely. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen a desirable young man, but it was the first in a long time that desire had presented itself to her without detours, without automatic guilt, as something alive and concrete.

And that was worse.

—You’re getting red —she said.

—It’s hot.

—Sure.

They played another round. Then another. And another. The house, with the child asleep and the sea crashing in the dark, narrowed around them as if the rest of the world were somewhere else. The warm light of the floor lamp made Marcela’s skin look more golden, her neck longer, her mouth wetter. Mateo was no longer pretending very well not to look at her. Nor was she making much effort to appear indifferent.

Marcela’s blouse was next to go. She lost on a card she hadn’t calculated in time and stood up with a fake complaint.

—That’s not fair. You’ve got beginner’s luck.

—That doesn’t exist.

—It exists to explain when someone wins a lot —she said, and took off her blouse with a calm that finished scrambling his brain.

Under the dim light, she wore a thin cream bra that supported big, round breasts, full and firm, with the edge of the lace tracing itself over her pale skin. Mateo swallowed. Marcela noticed, of course, and the corner of her mouth lifted slightly.

—Keep looking at me like that and you’re going to lose —she murmured.

—I’m trying not to.

—Well, it’s failing pretty badly.

There was something dangerously easy in the way they spoke. As if they had both moved slightly out of the right place and were testing the weight of that lack of distance without fully admitting it. The next garment to fall was Marcela’s shorts. She did it with a quick gesture, without fully standing, ending up in her underwear in front of him: small cotton panties, thin fabric, leaving little to the imagination and stuck to her cunt by the heat in a way Mateo registered with humiliating clarity.

—Fuck —he blurted, barely a whisper.

Marcela arched a brow.

—Did you lose or are you praying?

Mateo burst out laughing, but the laugh came out broken, nervous, too tense to be real. He watched her cross her legs, saw the fabric of the panties stretch over her mound, and suddenly the whole room seemed to breathe differently. The air was charged, dense, as if the house itself knew something was about to break.

Marcela set the cards aside.

—Okay. I think that’s enough for today.

He nodded, but didn’t move. She didn’t either.

The silence that settled between them was not awkward. It was worse: it was exact.

—Mateo —she said at last, softly.

He looked up.

Marcela had a new expression on her face, something that was not only desire or only curiosity. It was exhaustion. It was hunger. It was the kind of decision a woman makes when she has spent too long being the only one holding everything together and suddenly finds in front of her someone who looks at her as if she were still alive.

—If this seems like a bad idea to you, tell me now.

Mateo let out a dry, incredulous laugh.

—Bad idea? I’ve spent three days thinking about kissing you.

The honesty burst out of him all at once, brutal and clumsy, and the moment he heard himself he felt the delayed panic of someone who has just crossed a line with no return. Marcela didn’t step back. On the contrary: she leaned a little toward him, resting one elbow on her knee, her gaze fixed on his mouth.

—And what exactly have you imagined?

Mateo went silent for a second, swallowing the impulse to say something clever that would save him. He wasn’t lucky.

—You with less clothes —he said, and then, lower—. You touching me.

Marcela closed her eyes for an instant, as if that answer had given her exactly what she needed. When she opened them, the brightness in them was direct, clean, without games.

—Then come here.

Mateo got up so fast he nearly tipped the chair with his knee. Marcela also stood, ending up very close, just a few centimeters shorter than him, enough for him to feel her breath on his chin. Neither spoke. He looked at her mouth, then her breasts, then her eyes again, and she smiled with a patience that was pure poison.

—Kiss me, then —she said.

He kissed her like his life depended on it. It was a clumsy collision at first, teeth brushing, breathing unsteady, his hand searching for a place on her waist before daring to squeeze it. Marcela responded at once, opening with a ease that made his whole body loosen. Her mouth was warm, wet, with a faint taste of red wine and toothpaste, and Mateo felt the kiss climbing through his chest like a current. She grabbed the back of his neck, pulled him closer, slipped her tongue in without restraint, and the boy let out a brief moan she swallowed with a smile against his lips.

Mateo’s hands moved down to her hips. He felt the round curve of her ass through the thin fabric of her pants, the firmness of a woman not used to falling apart at the first touch. Marcela pushed him back a little until he hit the edge of the sofa and then settled between his legs, pressing her body to his with a decisiveness that made him tremble. The pressure of her breasts against Mateo’s bare chest, her nipples hard beneath the bra, the rub of her hot cunt against the erection still trapped in his boxer briefs, everything happened at once and with such brutal intensity that Mateo expelled air through his nose as if he’d been struck.

—Fuck —he muttered, no longer hiding anything.

—That’s it —Marcela said against his mouth—. That’s how I want you.

She unfastened his boxer briefs with quick, expert fingers, without losing the rhythm of the kiss except to lower her head and bite gently along his jaw. Mateo felt the cool air on his cock and almost buckled. Marcela’s hand closed around him immediately, firm, warm, her thumb tracing the frenulum in a way that sent a sharp jolt up his spine.

—Jesus —Mateo said, voice broken—. Jesus, Marcela.

She laughed softly.

—Do you like it?

—Yes —he blurted, too fast—. Yes, fuck.

Marcela jerked him slowly at first, as if testing him, watching how he responded. Mateo had his head thrown back, eyes squeezed shut, hands gripping the sofa so he wouldn’t lose control. She felt the pulsing hardness beneath her palm, the smooth, hot skin, and that utterly sincere male reaction lit her up more than she would have liked to admit. She loved the contrast: the age, the still-fresh strength, the way his desire was almost naive in how visible it was.

—Look at me —she ordered.

Mateo obeyed. His eyes were shining, his mouth half-open, his neck taut.

—Like that —she whispered—. I want to see you when you come.

The words shot through him like an electric current. Marcela’s hand quickened slightly, enough to drive him to the edge within seconds. Mateo slipped a hand between them, clumsily feeling for the edge of her panties, wanting to touch her for real at last. Marcela allowed it, and he found her cunt wet, hot, slippery, swollen with desire. The fabric was obscenely damp. He rubbed her with his fingers through the small cotton barrier, and she gave a moan deeper than he had expected.

—Don’t touch me like that if you’re not going to keep going —she said, breathing hard.

—I’m going to keep going.

Marcela undid her bra with a skill that had nothing innocent about it and bared her breasts. They were even larger up close, with dark, erect nipples that Mateo stared at for a second before leaning down and taking one in his mouth with almost reverent eagerness. She threw her head back, resting a hand in his hair, and the boy sucked with fervor, alternating tongue and suction, feeling the nipple harden even more between his lips. Marcela’s moan was low, contained, but enough to make Mateo’s ego swell at the same instant his cock throbbed violently.

Marcela pulled off the T-shirt he still had on, pushed him back onto the sofa, and knelt in front of him with a naturalness that admitted no argument. The sight of her there, between his legs, black hair falling over her shoulders and mouth wet, was so brutal Mateo let out a nearly childish “fuck.” Marcela barely smiled and took his cock again, this time to bring it straight to her mouth.

The wet heat of her tongue around the head made him arch his back. Marcela sucked him with calm precision, unhurried but not excessively gentle, taking the length little by little until she could fit it, cheeks hollowing, jaw opening to accommodate him. Mateo put a hand on her head, not pushing, more like bracing himself. He didn’t want to be clumsy or rough, but it was impossible not to lose part of himself in that sensation of being worked over by a woman like her.

—Fuck, Marcela… like that…

She looked up for an instant, mouth full, and that gesture destroyed him more than anything else. A thread of saliva slipped from the corner of her mouth as she moved up and down on his cock, and Mateo felt he was about to come just from watching her. He didn’t let himself. Not yet. Marcela pulled back with a wet sound, wiped her lower lip with her thumb, and looked at him as if measuring his hunger.

—You got very quiet all of a sudden.

—Because if I talk, I’ll come.

—Then don’t talk.

She kissed him again, pushed him back until he lay on the sofa, and straddled him. The rub of her sex through the thin fabric of her panties against Mateo’s naked cock was almost unbearable. She moved just a little, slowly, searching for the exact spot, and the boy groaned with a desperation he no longer tried to hide. Marcela’s hands went to his shoulders, holding him still while she began grinding against him with a measured, wet back-and-forth that grew more urgent by the second.

—You’re rock hard —she said, breathing unevenly.

—So are you.

Marcela gave a muffled laugh.

—You already knew that.

She yanked her panties down and revealed a shiny cunt, shaved and open with arousal. Mateo looked at it with almost reverent fascination. Seeing her like that, open for him, with that warm smell of sex and fine sweat, made him lose the thread of every coherent thought. Marcela took his cock and guided it to her entrance, rubbing the head against herself first, coating it with her own wetness, then aligning it with slow precision that made a broken moan escape Mateo.

—Like this? —she asked, though she knew perfectly well.

—Yes —he said, trembling—. Yes, fuck, please.

Marcela sank down on him all at once, swallowing him whole in a single motion with a deep gasp that mixed with Mateo’s in a single savage impact. The pressure was so intense that both of them froze for a second, breathing as if they had just come out of the water. She had her eyes closed, mouth open, hands clenched on Mateo’s chest, and he felt the cunt tighten around his cock with a heat so tight it almost darkened his vision.

Then she started moving.

At first slowly, lifting just enough to come back down, setting the rhythm with her hips. Then harder. The sofa creaked under the weight of both of them, and the whole living room filled with wet sounds, ragged breaths, and the rhythmic slap of skin against skin. Mateo held her by the hips, feeling the firm flesh under his hands, the round ass shifting to the beat of each thrust. Marcela was searching for the angle that would make her moan more, and when she found it she let out a long, nearly broken sound that made Mateo clench his teeth.

—Like that, like that… don’t stop —she said, her voice already muffled.

—I’m not going to stop.

—Harder.

He obeyed. He lifted her a little and drove her down with a more brutal rhythm, going deeper, hearing the obscene sound of their bodies each time they collided. Marcela braced one hand on the wall behind the sofa to steady herself and with the other brought two fingers to her clit, rubbing herself with fast, precise, shameless movements. Mateo watched her touch herself on top of him and felt control going completely to hell.

—I’m going to make you come —he said, almost voiceless.

Marcela opened her eyes and looked at him with a mix of surprise and pleasure that made her even more beautiful.

—Do it.

He fucked into her with ever-wilder urgency. The heat, the accumulated hunger, the risk of Tomás waking up down the hall, everything mixed into a current so intense it erased the rest of the world. Marcela began to moan louder, biting her lower lip to keep from losing all composure, but it was too late. The tension in her cunt became almost unbearable and Mateo felt her tremble on top of him before the orgasm ripped through her violently.

—Ah, fuck… yes… like that… —Marcela panted, clutching at him as she came around his cock in deep, warm spasms.

Her body tightened in a way that made him lose his mind. Mateo held on for a couple more thrusts, watching Marcela’s face fall apart between pleasure and need, and then he came with a brutal shudder, burying himself one last time while his load climbed up his cock and burst inside her in hot pulses. He let out a hoarse, almost animal groan and stayed motionless while the semen kept spilling, feeling Marcela’s wetness closing around him, holding him, slowly milking him.

When at last both of them began to recover their breath, she stayed seated on him a little longer, breathing against his neck, skin slick with sweat, hair stuck to her temples. Mateo wrapped his arms around her, still stunned, not knowing whether he had done something glorious or a monumental stupidity.

Marcela lifted her head and kissed him again, this time more slowly, with a tenderness that nearly disarmed him more than everything before it.

—Don’t say anything —she murmured.

He nodded, still with his breathing trembling.

—Okay.

—No —she said, smiling faintly—. It’s not okay. But right now I don’t care either.

He helped her get to her feet. She adjusted her panties with a quick gesture, then stood still, looking at him. There was a new gleam in her eyes, something satisfied and dangerous, but also a small shadow of awareness neither of them wanted to name. Tomás was still asleep. Ricardo would not come home. The sea kept sounding outside as if nothing had happened.

Marcela touched his cheek with two fingers.

—Tomorrow we keep playing —she said.

Mateo smiled, still disoriented.

—If you’re willing to lose like that every time, sure.

She let out a low laugh, picked up the blouse from the floor, and put it back on without hurrying. Then she turned off the lamp. And although the apartment went back to seeming the same as before, with its unfinished walls, its heat, and its silence, for neither of them was it the same anymore.