What I Learned from My Mother and My Grandmother

We’re three generations of women who look far too much alike. My grandmother Alicia wears her hair short and dyed reddish brown, and she has the green eyes she passed on to me. Fifty-four years old, a body honed by the gym three times a week, and a way of walking into places that makes mature men stop whatever they were doing. My mother Elena is thirty-seven: blonde, slim, light-eyed, shy when she speaks but impossible to ignore when she walks. I’m eighteen and the most discreet of the three: straight brown hair, a small frame, average height. I’m not the kind who stops traffic.

My father left us four months before that trip. He went off with another woman. Elena took weeks to get out of bed. Alicia was the one who pulled us out of the hole: first with words and then with the idea of staying in Córdoba. A friend of hers, an entrepreneur and widow, had a property in the hills that stood empty in summer. Alicia arranged everything.

Elena took a while to be convinced. I was the one who pushed hardest: I showed her the photos, talked to her about the river, the silence, the clean air. In the end she agreed. We traveled by coach so we wouldn’t miss the landscape, with Alicia complaining about the discomfort for the first two hours and going quiet as soon as the countryside began to open up.

We took a taxi from the terminal. Dirt roads that never seemed to end. When the estancia appeared among the trees — stone, wood, hills, the sound of water nearby — the three of us fell silent at the same time.

The first day was for settling in and breathing. That night, by the lit hearth, we talked about unimportant things, which was exactly what we needed.

***

The next day I got up before them. I stepped out onto the veranda and ran into a man standing at the entrance.

He was the kind who intimidates without opening his mouth: very tall, shaved head, dark skin weathered by outdoor labor. I would have put him between fifty and sixty, though it was hard to tell precisely. A Scottish plaid flannel shirt, worn jeans, abrupt, sure movements. I asked him to come back when the others woke up.

His name was Ramiro. He was the estate’s maintenance man, hired by the owner so guests would have whatever they needed. The first thing he did was find the axe and chop firewood. He was surly, spoke little, almost awkward to have around in silence. He did tell us, though, that a big storm was moving in. In that area and at that time of year, he said, they were violent.

We went out walking in the afternoon. We found a pine forest and climbed to a hill with a view over the valley. On the way back, the wind started to shift and the sky closed in fast. We invited Ramiro to have something hot before the rain came down hard.

While we were drinking, I noticed him watching. All three of us. With that particular look men get when they’re not used to having women around, or at least women like us. Alicia got him talking, as always: she had that knack for making anyone open up. Ramiro gradually relaxed. He said he’d worked at the estate for years alongside another man who lived with him in the shed out back.

They hammered on the door hard before Alicia could ask anything else.

It was Horacio. Broad-shouldered, taller than Ramiro, gray hair and deep wrinkles that put him in his late sixties. He had a dark, direct gaze that landed on each of us in turn and did not hurry. We let him in. Elena poured him coffee.

We talked late into the night. The storm raged outside. The alcohol disappeared from the bottles at a pace none of us commented on aloud. At ten o’clock we went to bed.

***

I woke after two. The dining room light was on.

It was Alicia, seated by the hearth in a white nightgown with blue underwear visible beneath it. I was wearing a black tank top and panties. She motioned for me to sit down. I went to the kitchen to get some warm milk.

When I came back, lightning lit up the veranda. I saw two figures by the window. Alicia said it must have been the trees. I nodded, but I knew what I had seen.

The next morning the rain was still falling. Ramiro and Horacio showed up early to fix a leak on the veranda. Elena invited them to have some rum she’d found in the sideboard. Soon the four of them were drinking and talking while they worked. I decided to stay in my room. The last time I drank I ended up vomiting all night.

It was the silence that caught my attention. Before that there had been voices and laughter. Suddenly, nothing.

I stepped out into the hallway.

In the mirror at the end I saw Alicia. She was kissing Horacio. He had one hand shoved all the way up under her skirt, moving slowly, and from the way she arched her hips I knew he was working her cunt with his fingers right there, standing up, against the doorway.

I froze. I couldn’t have moved even if I’d wanted to.

I heard noises from the bathroom. I was about to go back to my room when I saw, also in the mirror’s reflection, Ramiro heading in that direction. I locked myself in mine just in time.

I peered through the crack in the door.

Ramiro opened the bathroom door. He went in and left it ajar.

—Please, get out —I heard Elena say. Her voice was low but unmistakable.

—I didn’t come all the way here for nothing —he replied—. All morning you’ve been talking about things that got me harder than you intended. You know perfectly well what you were doing with that mouth of yours, Elena.

Silence. Then sounds that were not protest. I heard fabric rubbing against fabric, a short gasp, and Ramiro’s rough voice murmuring something I couldn’t make out.

I moved to get a better view. Elena had her arms around his neck. He was pressing her body against his, one hand at the nape of her neck, the other sliding slowly downward until it slipped into her pants. I saw Ramiro’s arm sink in and my mother open her legs wider to let him in. Elena closed her eyes and tipped her head back when the man’s fingers found what they were looking for.

—You’re soaked —he told her, biting her neck—. Don’t tell me you didn’t want this.

Elena didn’t answer with words. She reached for his fly with both hands and opened it. When Ramiro’s cock came out into the air, even from where I was spying I could see the size: thick, dark, veined, curved upward by the erection. My mother took it in one hand and it didn’t fit entirely in her palm. She started stroking him slowly, up and down, her eyes fixed on the man’s face.

I felt something I didn’t want to feel: a warm current in my belly that had nothing to do with disgust. My nipples hardened against the tank top and I noticed my panties were getting wet just from watching.

***

They came out of the bathroom together, caressing each other, and went to the dining room. Alicia and Horacio were no longer pretending anything. He had my grandmother’s sweater pulled up to her clavicles and Alicia’s breasts were bare, heavy and hanging, with dark erect nipples that he took into his mouth one at a time. Alicia had his hand inside his pants and from the movement of his wrist I knew she was jerking him off right there, standing against the table.

Elena did not reproach them. Her attention was on Ramiro, who was running a slow, sure hand over her jeans, and with the other was squeezing one of her breasts under her T-shirt.

I stayed in the hallway. I was seeing something I shouldn’t have seen. And I couldn’t leave. Without realizing it, my own hand had slipped inside my panties. I was wet. Very wet.

When they noticed me, Ramiro was the one who spoke:

—Come here —he said—. There’s nothing to be afraid of here.

Elena turned. She tried to straighten her clothes. Ramiro held her gently.

—Let her come —he told her—. Doesn’t looking at your mom turn you on? Seems to me it does. She’s got her hand where it should be.

Heat rushed to my face. I didn’t take my hand away.

I walked into the dining room. I stood in the middle of the room. I don’t know what I expected to happen, but I went up to Ramiro and kissed him on the mouth.

It was the first time I had kissed a man his age. It wasn’t like I’d expected. It was much better. He shoved his tongue all the way in, hungry, knowing exactly how to handle me. He sucked my lower lip and bit it slowly before letting it go.

***

My experience with boys my age was limited: some awkwardness and a lot of good will. Ramiro knew exactly what he was doing. He took my wrist and brought my hand to him. I felt the size of what he was hiding under his jeans: a hard, thick rod, throbbing against the fabric. My stomach flipped.

—Squeeze it —he whispered in my ear—. I want you to know what you’re going to fuck.

I did as he said. I squeezed him through his clothes and found the tip with my fingers. I heard the low growl in his throat.

I glanced at Alicia: Horacio had stripped off her sweater and now had her bent over the back of the sofa, with her skirt hiked to her waist and no underwear on. Her panties were lying on the rug. He spread her ass cheeks with both hands and slid his cock all the way along the slit, not entering yet, rubbing against my grandmother’s wet cunt while she pushed her hips back, begging. Elena, a few feet away, had lifted up her T-shirt and was pinching one nipple with her free hand while watching what was happening on the sofa.

Ramiro led me to my room and closed the door.

—We’ll be better off here —he said—. Your mother gets nervous if she sees you, and neither of you will be able to enjoy yourselves properly.

He was right about the first part. I wasn’t entirely convinced about the second: I liked watching.

He pulled my tank top over my head in one movement. He stood staring at my tits —small, firm, with nipples so hard they hurt— and lowered his mouth to suck them. He bit one and then the other, alternating, with a long suction that I felt go straight down to my clit. My legs trembled.

He pushed me onto the bed, spread my legs and tore my panties off with a yank that snapped the elastic. He knelt, looked at my cunt up close — open, pink, shining from how wet it was — and blew warm air over it before touching me. I lifted my hips, searching for him.

He started with a flat tongue, licking me from bottom to top, all the way through, from ass to clit, with measured slowness. Then he focused on my clit, sucking it with his lips and teasing it with the tip of his tongue. At the same time he slipped in two thick fingers and curled them upward, searching for that spot inside I didn’t even know existed. When he found it, I cried out into the pillow.

—Don’t be quiet —he said, lifting his mouth for a second—. I want to hear you.

He plunged his face back down. He sucked my clit and fingered me in and out, curling every time, while with his other hand he opened me wider so he’d have full access. I clutched his shoulders and started moving against his mouth without shame, riding his face. I didn’t last long. When I came for the first time that night, my legs clamped around his head and my whole body trembling, I begged him to fuck me.

—Please —I said, my voice breaking—. Put it in me now.

He got up. Took off his shirt, then his jeans, then his briefs. His cock sprang free, hard, pointing at the ceiling, bigger up close than it had seemed through the fabric. I stared at it. It was the first time in my life I had seen one that size in the flesh.

What followed was deliberately slow. He lay down on top of me, ran the tip along the lips of my cunt, up and down, soaking himself in my wetness, without going in. He brushed against me without entering, played with the edges, stopped exactly when I needed him not to. He began to slip in just the head and pull out, in and out, two centimeters and out, and I writhed under him and dug my nails into his back.

—Please —I repeated—, please, put it all in me.

—Not yet.

I started touching myself out of desperation and he stopped my hand.

—Time —he said.

He turned me over. Put me face down. He began tracing my back with his mouth, my flanks, my ass cheeks. He spread my ass with his hands and ran his tongue over that too, without warning, one long lick from my cunt to the other hole. I arched against the bed with a moan I didn’t recognize as mine. The bastard was pacing things however he liked and I couldn’t do a thing about it.

He licked my ass with the tip of his tongue, in circles, while he slid three fingers into me from the front and worked them at a slow, deep rhythm. I began to come a second time, against his fingers, against his tongue, pushing back uncontrollably.

When I thought I couldn’t take any more, he lifted me off the bed and carried me back to the living room, still naked, with my legs trembling and my cunt streaming down the insides of my thighs.

***

What I saw when I got there stopped me in the doorway.

Horacio had Alicia and Elena kneeling in front of him, both naked. He had made them kiss each other — my mother and my grandmother, mouth to mouth, tongues inside — and alternated his own cock between the two mouths. He shoved it into Alicia until it hit the back of her throat, pulled it out glistening with saliva, and handed it to Elena, who took it in her hand and sucked it with a devotion I had never seen my mother show for anything. Then he made them both lick at the same time, one on each side, sucking his shaft and balls, their tongues meeting over the man’s hard, throbbing flesh.

There wasn’t a trace of inhibition left in any of them. They intertwined with a naturalness that was dizzying to watch. Alicia bent down and sucked his balls whole, taking them into her mouth one by one, while Elena worked the tip with her tongue. Horacio had a hand on each of their necks and guided them firmly.

Ramiro positioned himself behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist. He pulled me tight against him. I felt his hard cock pressing into my lower back, leaving a trail of moisture. With one hand he squeezed one breast and with the other he found my clit. He wanted me to see everything before we continued.

I watched Horacio position the two of them on the rug, one on top of the other, their bodies rubbing, Alicia on top and Elena underneath. The women’s cunts were pressed together, rubbing against one another under my grandmother’s weight on my mother. In one motion, Horacio entered Alicia hard from behind and started thrusting. With every stroke, Alicia’s pubis ground against Elena’s, and the two of them moaned in unison. My grandmother pulled Elena’s hands toward her own body. My mother responded without hesitation: she squeezed her tits, sought her mouth from below, shoved her fingers into her mouth so she could suck them.

Horacio did not stop. He drove his cock all the way into Alicia with each thrust, pulling out to the tip and pushing back in with a wet sound that could be heard over the moans. Then he pulled out abruptly, switched holes and drove it into Elena, without pause, while Alicia shifted upward so my mother could lick her open, dripping cunt on her face. Elena obeyed: she stuck out her tongue and began to suck her own mother while Horacio fucked her from behind.

I should have felt disgust. I felt exactly the opposite. Ramiro was working my clit with two fingers and I pressed against his hand without taking my eyes off them.

Ramiro whispered in my ear to stop thinking. That thought was the only possible mistake at that moment.

He was right.

***

The first time Ramiro penetrated me was from behind, not how I expected. He put me on my knees on the bed, chest against the sheets and ass lifted. He stood behind me and ran the tip along my cunt first, soaking it in my wetness, and then lifted it to the other hole. He pushed slowly. The initial pain was sharp and I clutched the sheets with closed fists. He told me to breathe. To open little by little.

—Take a deep breath —he said, hands firm on my hips—. Relax. I’ll tell you when.

He worked it in little by little, centimeter by centimeter, stopping when I tensed. He ran one hand down my back so I’d relax and with the fingers of the other he found my clit from the front and rubbed it in circles. Little by little, the burning eased and something else replaced it.

I did.

When he had it all the way inside —I felt him deep, very deep, squeezing me in a way I had never felt before— he started moving. First with short thrusts, almost shy for his size. Then longer ones. Each push tore a new moan from me.

What came after the pain was something I still had no name for: a deep sensation that kept growing until I could no longer separate discomfort from pleasure. He slipped two fingers into my cunt at the same time as he drove into me from behind, and I felt both things at once, full on both sides, no space, no air. I started moving with him. Finding the rhythm. Pushing back when he pushed forward.

—That’s it —I heard him say—, that’s it, good girl.

I came a third time, with my face against the pillow and his fingers buried in my cunt while he finished fucking my ass in harder and harder strokes. I felt when he was about to come: he got faster, rougher, squeezed my hips hard. He pulled out at the last moment and came over my back, a thick, hot jet I felt land between my shoulder blades.

When he was done and lay down beside me, I became aware of where I was and with whom. I sat up in bed. Warm semen was running down my back and I didn’t wipe it off. The sounds coming from the living room left no doubt about what was still happening there: overlapping moans, Horacio’s deep voice giving orders, the wet, rhythmic sound of skin against skin.

—Rest a moment —he told me—. You’re not done yet.

A few minutes later I went into the living room. Naked, without covering myself with anything.

***

Elena was riding Ramiro on the sofa when I arrived —he had come back before I did—. She was doing it with an intensity I had never known in her: straddling him, hands braced on his chest, hips rising and falling with his whole cock inside her. Her tits shook with every movement and she grabbed one herself and brought it to her mouth to suck on it while she kept moving. Ramiro squeezed her ass with both hands and helped her drop with more weight.

Alicia, off to the side, watched them with one hand between her own legs and half-closed eyes. She was naked too, seated in an armchair, legs spread wide and three fingers moving slowly inside her cunt. She was rubbing her clit with the thumb of the same hand. When she saw me come in, she did not stop touching herself. She held my gaze.

I sat near Horacio. We looked at each other. He had his cock hard again, shining with saliva and slick, resting against his belly. He came closer slowly, as if he knew I didn’t need to be led anywhere this time.

He laid me on my back on the rug. He spread my legs with his knees and settled between them. He ran the tip over my cunt, already wide open and wet from everything that had happened before, and with a single thrust he drove all of himself in. I screamed. He was thicker than Ramiro and filled me in a way that stole my breath for a second.

My fingers found my clit while he made a path for himself with deep, sustained thrusts. Each push shook my whole body. This time I wasn’t going to be left wanting. I touched myself with two fingers, in quick circles, while he drove into me over and over with brutal rhythm.

—Look at her —I heard Alicia say from the sofa, her voice hoarse—. Look how he’s fucking you, baby.

I looked. She was coming too, shaking over her own fingers, never taking her eyes off me.

Just a few inches away, my mother and I were moaning at the same time. Two women of the same blood, in the same state, with two men who had entered our lives by a storm’s coincidence. Elena was on the verge of coming on Ramiro: I saw her face, eyes squeezed shut, mouth open, whole body trembling as she let herself sink all the way down. I came at the same time, with Horacio inside me, squeezing him with spasming cunt contractions I couldn’t control.

Horacio did not stop. When I finished, he turned me over, put me on all fours and drove into me from behind again, this time in my cunt, using the position to sink deeper. He grabbed my hair with one hand and made me lift my head. He made me watch Ramiro and Elena, now side by side on the sofa, still fucking. He made me watch Alicia move toward the sofa and arrange herself so Ramiro could slip a hand into her while he kept fucking Elena.

Horacio came inside me with a long growl, and I felt the hot jet drive deep. He pulled out and I was left dripping down my thighs.

At that moment I didn’t think of anything. I only felt.

***

The days that followed were an extension of that first night. The storm passed the next day, but no one suggested that Ramiro and Horacio go back to the shed. The fiction that they were only the caretakers was buried with the rain.

We ate together. We went walking. We came back. No one put a name to what we were.

One day they pressed me against a tree at the edge of the forest. Ramiro hiked my skirt to my waist, ripped off my panties and fucked me standing up, with one of my legs wrapped around his hip and the tree bark scratching my back. Horacio watched from a few meters away while he jerked himself off slowly, waiting his turn. When Ramiro pulled out, Horacio took his place without a word and drove into me right there, against the same tree, until he came over the grass.

Another day it was in the river, with the water up to our waists. Alicia and Elena got into the water naked with me. The two men took turns: one held me against his chest, my legs floating open around his hips, while the other entered my mother or my grandmother a few meters away. Then they switched. I saw Horacio fucking Alicia against a rock on the bank while Ramiro filled my cunt and sucked my tits out of the water. I saw my mother come with one of the two women’s mouths —hers or mine, I don’t even know anymore— on her clit.

There was everything: hands, mouths, bodies taking turns without anyone scheduling it. One night the three of us ended up kneeling on the rug in front of the hearth, mouths on both cocks at the same time, passing them from one to the other, sucking whatever was needed. Another night, while Horacio was fucking Elena from behind, Alicia and I kissed for the first time, without planning it, her hand between my legs and mine between hers. There were moments when I no longer knew who was with whom or which body my own was responding to.

Alicia was the first to talk about it, as always she was first at everything. One afternoon, while I was looking over the valley from the veranda, she sat down beside me.

—What you lived through these days isn’t the usual thing —she said—. But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. It means you’re free.

I asked her if she felt that way.

—I’m older than you —she replied—. I know desire doesn’t always choose well. But it knows exactly what it’s doing.

Elena never talked about it. I think she preferred not to name it so she could keep doing it.

***

On the last day, before the taxi came to pick us up, Alicia told the two of them she would call them. That when we could, we’d come back.

I didn’t say anything. But I didn’t protest either.

Ever since that week, boys my age seem like something else to me. Not better, not worse. Just different, as if they’re speaking a language I’ve already started leaving behind.

Alicia was right about that: desire knows what it’s doing. Even if sometimes it chooses the most complicated thing.

We went back to the estancia three months later. Ramiro was at the entrance when we arrived, just like the first time. This time none of the three of us pretended to be surprised. We got out our bags, went in, and before the taxi had even finished turning around in the forecourt, I already had his mouth on mine and Horacio’s hand slipping under my skirt.