That Night at the Chalet We Swapped Partners for the First Time

The summer on the coast had made us addicted to the beach. We’d come from another country, one much more closed off, and for us it was almost a revelation to see women sunbathing topless as if nothing at all. We talked about it every afternoon, stretched out on the sand, speaking in low voices so no one could hear us. From that topic we always moved on to the other one, the one that had been circling around us for months: finding another couple to try a swap with.

We’re both shy. My wife, Daniela, has a body that stops traffic, and even so she struggles horribly to put on a bikini in front of strangers. That she was embarrassed didn’t mean the liberal world didn’t attract us. Quite the opposite. The more forbidden it sounded, the more we turned it over in bed, whispering fantasies to each other that later we were embarrassed to admit to in daylight.

I started browsing those contact sites where people advertise themselves without masks. It wasn’t the first time: through one of them, months earlier, we had met the guy we had our first threesome with. This time I found the ad of a couple who lived in our same town. I hesitated because of discretion; one thing is someone passing through, another is running into the baker, but curiosity won out. I wrote to them.

They replied quickly. In two or three emails we already had their number, and that same night the four of us were introducing ourselves by text. Apparently they liked us. They were older than us: he was forty-one, she forty-five. Daniela, meanwhile, had just turned twenty-six, and I was a couple of years older than her. That age difference, far from putting us off, turned us on.

The days before were a delicious torture. Every message from them set our imagination on fire. They were direct without being crude, explaining what they liked, what they were looking for, what they would never do. That frankness reassured us. Daniela reread the conversation in bed, me pressed against her back, and I could feel her breathing speed up when she got to certain parts.

—What if I freeze up? —she asked me one night—. What if I get there and I can’t do it?

—Then you don’t do anything —I told her—. No one’s going to force you. We’ll go, we’ll see, and if you don’t feel like it, we’ll have a glass of wine and go home.

That was enough for her. But we both knew we would go all the way.

We exchanged a profile photo and the suggestion of meeting up. They had a house on the outskirts, by the sea, and they invited us for Friday at ten at night.

Before accepting, we talked it through slowly. Daniela was biting her nails, and I was pacing around the living room.

—What if we don’t like them in person? —she asked.

—Then we’ll have a drink, chat, and leave —I said, though inside I was hoping that wouldn’t be the case.

We said yes.

***

On Friday we arrived on time. The house was a beautiful chalet, with a white facade and the murmur of the sea behind it. He opened the door. I’ll call him Ernesto. He was a short man, not quite five foot three, in an ironed shirt and immaculate dress trousers, the kind that look like office clothes even in summer. He shook our hands with almost excessive courtesy and showed us into the living room.

—Pilar is on her way —he said when we asked about his wife—. She had to step out for a moment. Shall I get you something to drink while we wait?

We accepted a wine and the three of us sat down to make polite small talk. Where we were from, how long we’d been in Spain, what had brought us here. Daniela answered in monosyllables, squeezing my knee under the table. Half an hour later the door opened and Pilar came in.

She was a blonde woman, big, with enormous breasts and a way of moving that filled the room. She was dressed with a formality that didn’t fit the situation. She looks like a headmistress, I thought, and had to hide my smile. She greeted us with two kisses, apologized for being late and, without beating around the bush, proposed what we were all expecting.

—It’s a perfect night. Fancy the pool?

We went out into the garden. The pool was lit from within, a rectangle of blue water trembling against the darkness of the sea beyond. Still shy, we began taking off our clothes: I stayed in my boxer briefs, Daniela in a thong and bra, both black, as if we’d coordinated.

—You go in with nothing on here —Ernesto said, and stripped without ceremony.

I froze for a second. But seeing the two of them naked, so calm, I did the same. Daniela took longer. She stood with her back turned, slowly unhooked her bra, pulled down her thong while looking me in the eyes as if asking permission. I held her gaze and nodded. She got into the water almost running, to hide beneath the surface.

***

The water was warm. I hugged her from behind, feeling her slowly relax against my chest. Ernesto and Pilar were doing the same on their side of the pool. We talked for a while sitting on the steps, water at our waists, until Pilar said it without drama, as if suggesting we change the subject.

—Shall we switch?

We’d come determined. There was no speech, no last-minute hesitation. Pilar came over to me: a white, voluptuous woman with breasts I could barely get my arms around. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Daniela beside Ernesto, who was already fondling her breasts with both hands. My wife has beautiful ones, firm, perfect at twenty-six, and seeing them in another man’s hands tightened something in my stomach that wasn’t jealousy. It was exactly the opposite.

Because what really turned me on wasn’t Pilar. It was looking at Daniela. I watched her over the other woman’s shoulder while kissing her neck, and I discovered that every time she sighed, I answered without meaning to.

I started sucking Pilar’s breasts while brushing her sex with my fingers. It was carefully tended, surprisingly firm for her age. We kissed for a long time, hungrily, her tangling her fingers in my hair. On the other side, Daniela had brought her hands down over Ernesto’s body. She was jerking him with both hands, him seated on the edge of the pool, her standing in the water, pumping slowly up and down. I confess I couldn’t stop watching.

Pilar had the sure hands of someone who knows what she wants. She pushed me against the pool edge, sat astride my thigh and kissed me, biting my lip. I never took my eyes off Daniela, who by then had lost all her shyness. The timidity with which she had stepped into the water had evaporated. Her head was thrown back and her eyes were closed, surrendered to what Ernesto’s hands were doing to her.

Seeing her like that, letting go in front of a stranger, aroused me more than anything Pilar could have done to me. It was like discovering another woman inside my own, one that only appeared in these circumstances and drove me crazy.

Pilar took my hand.

—Let’s go upstairs —she said softly, against my ear.

Daniela stayed below, on her knees in front of Ernesto, and I went upstairs after Pilar to a room that smelled of clean sheets. I laid her on the bed and spread her legs. I tasted her without rushing, listening to her moan louder and louder, while in the background the sounds of my wife reached me from downstairs. That mix, what I had in front of me and what I imagined, had me on the edge.

***

A while later they came up. What followed was a tangle of bodies in one bed. Daniela got on all fours right beside us, and Ernesto entered her from behind. I had Pilar with her legs over my shoulders, opening her up, driving into her while she moaned without restraint. I reached out and touched my wife at the same time: she was so aroused she could barely handle herself.

Daniela turned around, climbed on top of Ernesto and rode him with a looseness I had never seen in her, until he came. I finished with Pilar open beneath me, giving her everything I had left, both of us soaked, out of breath.

We lay there for a moment in silence, the four of us, staring at the ceiling. Then we cleaned up and went back down to the living room as if nothing had happened, like four friends who had known each other all their lives.

***

Pilar brought out ice and a bottle. Ernesto told stories about the area, the neighbors, the endless summer. The glasses kept emptying and, little by little, the conversation charged back up with electricity. Pilar brushed my leg under the table. Daniela’s cheeks were flushed and she laughed at everything.

Things were heating up again; all four of us could feel it. But I had to drive back and I’d already had more to drink than I should. Daniela and I looked at each other and understood the same thing without speaking: it was time to go, even if neither of us wanted to.

We said goodbye with the faint promise of doing it again.

On the way home, with the windows down and the sea on one side, we couldn’t believe what we had just done. It felt strange, as if for a few hours we had been different people.

—Did you like it? —I asked her at a traffic light.

Daniela took a while to answer. She was looking out the window with a half-smile.

—More than I thought —she said at last—. And that scares me a little.

I understood her perfectly. We kept talking about them for days, going over every detail, but in the end we never met again. Not out of regret, but because some things happen at exactly the right moment and forcing them ruins them. That night was our first swap, and that’s enough for us to always remember it with a knowing smile when we go back to that same beach.