What Happened in My Mother’s Bedroom

It had been almost two years since I’d last set foot in my mother’s apartment. The distance, work, the usual excuses. When she called to tell me she’d be alone for the weekend, because my stepfather was traveling south, I was surprised to hear my own voice agreeing before I’d really thought it through.

I arrived on a Friday night with a small backpack and the strange feeling that I was doing something I shouldn’t. My mother was named Adriana, like a saint, but she had never had anything saintly about her. At forty-nine, she still walked as if she knew people were looking at her. Wide hips, generous breasts, that way of tilting her head when she spoke that used to drive my father’s friends crazy when we were still a whole family.

She opened the door with her hair still damp from the shower and a dark blue robe tied loosely. She smelled of soap and something else, a sweet perfume I didn’t remember.

“Come in, my love. I made you something for dinner.”

We ate in the kitchen, both of us barefoot, talking about stupid things. I told her about work, she told me about Pilates classes. Every so often she adjusted the robe over her legs, but not too much. I tried not to look, though it was impossible not to notice how the fabric parted just a little when she crossed and uncrossed her thighs, the round edge of her breasts breathing beneath the loose knot, the way her lips moistened when she tasted the wine and kept looking at me over the rim of the glass.

“Do you want to watch a movie? I downloaded one on the tablet. It was in theaters and I couldn’t see it.”

“Sure.”

“Let’s go to my room, the sofa in the living room is broken.”

Let’s go to my room. I repeated it to myself three times while I washed my hands. As if words could mean something different each time.

The room was dim, with only one lamp on beside the nightstand. My mother settled against the headboard, the tablet propped on a pillow. I lay down on the other side, leaving a prudent space between us that lasted exactly fifteen minutes.

The movie was one of those romantic comedies with slightly steamy scenes. In the first one, two nearly naked leads on top of a kitchen table, my mother laughed nervously.

“What vulgar things they show now.”

“Mom, this is nothing. You should see the series.”

“I don’t like series. They put me to sleep.”

She shifted again. The knot of her robe loosened a little. She didn’t fix it. The fabric opened enough for me to see the start of her thighs, the curve of one knee, the warm skin the robe couldn’t quite cover when she moved. I swallowed like an idiot.

“Do you mind if I take it off? I’m hot.”

“No, of course not.”

She stayed in a white cotton T-shirt and a short pair of shorts that were clearly for sleeping. She wasn’t wearing a bra under the T-shirt. I knew because the first thing I did was look, and I thought it showed too much. Her nipples pressed hard against the fabric, two firm points that hit my eyes and left my mouth dry.

She looked at me looking at her, but said nothing. She only arched one eyebrow, amused, and went back to the screen.

“What?” she asked after a while, without taking her eyes off the tablet.

“Nothing.”

“Mateo.”

“What?”

“I know that face of yours.”

I sat up against the headboard, my hands clasped in my lap to hide the obvious. She paused the movie. For the first time all night she looked straight at me.

“Do I turn you on?”

“Mom, please.”

“It’s a question. Do I turn you on?”

I didn’t know what to answer. I got up with the excuse of going to the bathroom and closed the door behind me. I splashed my face with icy water and braced myself against the sink, my heart pounding against my sternum. I stared at a guy in the mirror I no longer quite recognized, with a hard-on straining my pants like evidence.

When I went back to the room, she was sitting on the edge of the bed, barefoot, with her T-shirt pulled up to just below her breasts. She’d fixed it while I was gone, that’s what I understood. One hand rested on her thigh, the other held the fabric, revealing her soft belly, her navel, her clean skin, and the dark line between her legs disappearing beneath the shorts.

“Don’t get nervous,” she said softly. “Close the door.”

I closed it.

“Come here.”

I walked the two steps that separated me from her. My mother reached out and grabbed my belt, slowly, as if giving me time to stop her. I didn’t stop her. She pulled me toward her and kissed me. A kiss with no rehearsal, mouth open from the start, tongue inside before I fully understood what was happening. Her hand clenched my buckle, another climbed my back and dug her fingers into my nape, guiding me as if she knew exactly where to touch to make me burn harder.

“I’ve been thinking about this for a long time,” she whispered against my ear. “You too. I know it.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me yes.”

“Yes.”

She pulled my T-shirt off. She undid my belt with practical fingers. When she took off her white cotton shirt, it was hard to breathe. Her breasts were exactly as I had imagined them a thousand times without permission: round, heavy, with large dark nipples already hard. She took them in both hands, lifted them slightly, as if offering them to me, and when she looked down at my bulge, she smiled with unbearable calm.

“Do you like them?”

“A lot.”

“Touch them.”

I touched them. They had a warm firmness, soft skin that gave under my fingers and slowly returned to shape. I stroked them with both hands, pinched the nipples between thumb and forefinger, and she let out a short, wet moan, opening her legs wider on the bed. Then I leaned down and kissed the tips of them, one, then the other, running my tongue over them until her whole body shivered. When I barely bit the left nipple, she grabbed my hair and gave a low laugh, a laugh I had never heard from her before, a woman’s laugh and not a mother’s.

“Like that, you son of a bitch,” she murmured, and the curse hit my cock dead on.

She pushed me onto the bed and climbed on top of me. She ran her tongue over my body, stopping at my neck, my chest, my waist. I felt her warm saliva sliding down my sternum, her lips sucking on my skin, the tip of her tongue at my navel. When she got lower, she lifted her face and looked at me steadily, without blinking, while she took hold of me with both hands. She lowered her head and took me into her mouth slowly, first the tip, then more, until her lips closed around me and she started sucking with a precision that made my back arch. The feeling of her tongue and her saliva tore a groan from me I couldn’t control.

“Quietly,” she asked, laughing. “The neighbors.”

“I don’t care.”

“Neither do I, but still.”

She kept working me like that, up and down, one hand at the base and her mouth tightening more and more, while I gripped her hair and felt my legs go weak. She only stopped to lick the head, to run her tongue under the glans, to suck me again with hunger. I stroked her back, followed the curve of her ribs, dug my fingers into her waist when she moved. When I started trembling, she lifted her face, her mouth shining.

“Not yet.”

She lay back and pulled me toward her. I took off her shorts and stared at her for a long moment, all of her. My mother, my real mother, spread open on her own bed, waiting for me. Her pussy was barely shaved, already wet, with pink lips gleaming under the light. I slid my fingers through her cleft and she let out a rough sigh.

“Come here,” she repeated.

I went in slowly, looking her in the eyes. The opening was hot and slick, tightening around me little by little as I advanced. When I reached the deepest point, she closed her eyelids and let out a long sigh that seemed to come from very deep inside. I stayed still for a moment, feeling her, feeling the tight heat of being inside her, the tremor of her legs around my waist, until she dug her heels into my back.

“Move.”

I moved. I started slowly, then harder, then the way she asked me to, her voice broken. My mother grabbed my nape, pulled my head down to kiss me, said things in my ear nobody had ever said to me, direct words, filthy words, words that sounded different in her mouth.

“Give it to me good, Mateo.”

“Yes, Mom.”

“That’s it, like that, my pretty boy, like that.”

The bed creaked beneath us. Every thrust made her hips crash into mine, and I felt the sharp impact of her flesh around my cock, the hot friction rising up to my chest. She spread her legs wider and let me see her touching herself between us, two fingers inside her cunt while I fucked her, slick with her own wetness to match each entry. When her back tightened and her mouth opened soundlessly, I knew she was coming. She had a brief spasm, a tight contraction that almost knocked me off balance, and she stayed trembling beneath me, her face flushed, her lips raw from the kisses.

I held out as best I could.

“Come inside,” she asked. “Come inside, my love.”

I came inside. I filled her while she hugged me tightly, feeling myself empty into her in pulses, one after another, until I was completely spent. I stayed on top of her for a long while, both of us breathing hard, my forehead pressed to hers. The smell of sex was starting to fill the room, thick, mixed with the sweet perfume of her skin and the sweat running down our necks.

“You’re crazy,” I told her.

“I’ve been crazy for years.”

***

We stayed silent for a while, with the lamp light reflected on the ceiling. She stroked my hair like she used to when I was little, but her hand was not the same, it could no longer be the same. She kissed my temple.

“I have to ask you something,” she said softly.

“Anything you want.”

“I’ve never done it from behind.”

I looked at her without understanding, or understanding too much. Her thighs were still open, her wet pussy shining between them, and the way she looked at me made it clear she wasn’t joking.

“Your father never wanted it. And after that there was nobody else. I want to do it. Tonight.”

“Mom.”

“If it hurts, we stop. You promise.”

“I promise.”

She turned over and propped herself on her elbows, her face hidden in the pillow. I kissed her back, her shoulders, her waist, slowly moving down her vertebrae to the round curve of her ass. I took an oil from the nightstand, coconut oil she herself had used that morning, and prepared her slowly, patiently, first one hand spreading her buttocks, then two fingers carefully entering the tight flesh, sliding little by little while she breathed deeply and clutched the sheet. I softened her, widened her, rubbed in more oil, listening as she went from tension to gasping, until she stopped closing and started pushing back, wanting more.

Going in was slow. Centimeter by centimeter, stopping each time her breathing changed, resuming when she squeezed my hand to tell me to keep going. The tip gave way, then half, then the rest, with a wet, hot resistance that made me close my eyes for a second. When I was all the way inside, we both went still, as if waiting for our bodies to understand what we were doing. She let out a long moan, muffled into the pillow, and shuddered from head to toe.

“Slowly,” she asked.

“Yes.”

I moved slowly. Then faster. Then the way she wanted, no longer asking in a low voice but seriously, her face against the pillow and her free hand finding its way between her legs. I watched her push back against me, tense her ass to take me better, open herself just enough for my thrusts to shake her whole body. It was a heat different from before, tighter, more intimate in a way I couldn’t name, and every blow sounded wet, heavy, dirty, exactly like I had imagined without wanting to for years.

“Don’t come inside,” she asked. “I want to taste it.”

“Here?”

“In my mouth. Warn me.”

I warned her. She turned around, got on her knees in front of me, and opened her mouth without taking her eyes off me. She took me again, first with her tongue, then with her throat, while I held her nape and felt the pulse beating under her skin. Her hand slid over my thigh, over my stomach, while her mouth made me lose my mind. I watched her face as I came, without blinking, both of us breathing as if we’d been running. When I was done she stayed like that for a second, lips closed, and then she swallowed.

“Thank you,” she said, laughing softly. “It’s been years since I gave myself a treat.”

“Don’t thank me.”

“Yes. I am thanking you.”

I lay on my back and she settled on top of me, her head against my chest. I stroked her back until her breathing evened out. I fell asleep listening to her sleep.

***

I woke up before sunrise. For a second I thought I’d dreamed it, but there she was, naked, one leg over mine and her mouth slightly open. I watched her sleep for a long while. Then I dressed in silence, left her a short note in the kitchen — “call me” — and went down the stairs trying not to make a sound. When I started the car I still didn’t know what would happen on Monday, or the week after. I only knew that the following weekend, my stepfather was traveling again.