The Empty Cove Where a Stranger Watched Us

It was one of those late-September afternoons when summer is already saying goodbye without quite leaving. The days were getting shorter, there were fewer cars on the coastal road, and the light had that low golden color that only appears when the sun starts to tire. It was still hot, but a gentle heat, without August’s humid fury. On the beach there was a calm that was almost heavy.

Lucía and I liked that cove precisely for that reason. It was small, tucked between two rocky arms, with sand covered in little pebbles that discouraged almost everyone. You had to leave the car up top and go down a narrow, stony path, and that was enough for the average family of towels and umbrellas to choose somewhere else. In August it turned into an oven because there was never any wind. But in September, and even more on a Tuesday afternoon, it was our little secret.

The two of us were lying on our towels, enjoying the last rays. We loved staying until the very end, until we saw the sun sink right into the horizon. Lucía was fascinated by that exact instant when the last flashes skim low over the sea and stain everything copper.

There was still quite a while to go before that. That’s why she was still lying on her back, sunbathing with the laziness of someone who has nowhere to be. Before closing her eyes she had asked me, as so many other times, if it bothered me if she took off the top of her bikini. As if my opinion were going to change anything. I think she asked just to tease me. She knows perfectly well how much I love her breasts. She says they’re small. To me they’re perfect.

I, on the other hand, have no patience for simply sitting still. I get bored after five minutes. I need to do something, look at something, move something. So I was half propped up, leaning on my forearms, scanning the landscape in search of anything to keep my mind occupied. It wasn’t a comfortable position, but I preferred the strain in my shoulders to the tedium of staring at a blue sky with not a single cloud.

The beach offered nothing. It was empty. The sea wasn’t much help either: smooth as a sheet, without a wave to fantasize about the surfer I could have been in another life. So I turned my head toward Lucía.

There she was, with her eyes closed, so still she seemed asleep. She has that enviable ability to switch off anywhere, at any hour. I envy her deeply.

I decided the best thing I could do was slowly run my eyes over her. I started with her feet, the nails painted a deep red. Then up her legs, firm and long, the legs of someone who runs three times a week without fail. The turquoise triangle of the bikini, still tied at her hips. The flat stomach rising and falling with her breathing. And her breasts uncovered, warm under the sun.

That’s where I stopped.

And, as always when I pause to look at them, I felt the urge to reach out and touch one. I held back so I wouldn’t wake her. But the combination of what I was seeing and what I was imagining was already doing its work, and I started to feel my erection growing inside my swimsuit.

I don’t know what sixth sense she has. Without opening her eyes, without hardly changing position, Lucía stretched out her arm, undid the knot of my swimsuit with two fingers, and slipped her hand inside. She began to stroke me gently, almost absentmindedly, like someone stroking a sleeping cat’s head, until she got me hard. Then she took me in her whole hand and started to masturbate me slowly. To make it easier for her, and to feel it better, I pulled my swimsuit down a little, sliding it to just below my groin.

It was right at that moment that I saw him.

First came the dog: a brown mutt darting along the shore chasing nothing, happy. And then I saw the owner. He was standing a few meters from us, his feet in the water up to his ankles, completely still, watching the scene. I looked at him. He looked at me. For a second we held each other’s gaze, and then his eyes drifted to Lucía, who was still lying there, calm, oblivious to everything, playing with my cock as if nothing were happening.

I thought about the times we’d talked about this in bed, in the dark, in the low voice of confessions. How many times we had fantasized about doing it in a public place, about the possibility of someone seeing us. And I thought: why not. Why not turn the fantasy into something real, here, now, in this cove that was ours.

I shifted a little onto my left side and stretched my right hand toward her hip. I pulled at the first tie of the bikini and loosened it. How many times had I asked her whether she’d dare, and how many times had she answered me with that crooked smile that promised so much. That afternoon I was going to find out if it was true. I reached a little farther and undid the other tie.

Lucía smiled without opening her eyes. She bent her knees and opened her legs a little, helping me, letting me slip the fabric away easily.

I looked at the man. He was still there, standing stock-still, barely blinking, with the water licking his ankles. I felt strangely generous. I wanted him to see her all the way. I took the bikini off completely and ran the tip of my fingers over her sex. She was wet and hot, and I noticed how she grew wetter with every caress.

Then Lucía opened her eyes. She looked at me and smiled. I smiled back and, with a nod of my head, pointed toward the shore, toward our silent guest. She lifted her head slightly, saw him, and the reaction was instant and automatic: she brought her legs together to cover herself, a sudden flush rising up her neck.

—Relax —I told her softly, without taking my hand from her cunt—. It’s what we always wanted, right?

I looked at her calmly and, very slowly, invited her to open her legs again. She did it with a little nervousness, holding her breath, keeping an eye on the stranger from the corner of her eye. She opened them little by little, like butterflies open their wings before taking off. Knees bent, heels almost brushing the sand, her whole sex exposed to the golden afternoon light and to the eyes of a stranger.

I leaned in and kissed her. She kissed me back and gave me a small bite on the lower lip, a signal I know well: she was enjoying it, she was willing, she had decided to surrender to this without restraint. So had I. I wanted an adventure, to step onto new ground, to finally do the thing we’d talked about so much.

—He’s looking at me —she whispered against my mouth, and it wasn’t a complaint. It was something else.

—Let him look —I answered—. That’s why he came.

Our companion was still in front of us, now with his swimsuit down and his cock in his hand. He stroked himself slowly, without hurry, setting the same pace with which I was exploring Lucía’s body. The dog had wandered off to sniff the rocks, indifferent to everything, and for a moment it was just the three of us and the sound of the water.

I kissed her again, but this time the kiss was different, dense, charged with an urgency that allowed no pauses. We wanted to merge, to erase the distance between our two bodies. I kissed her more hungrily, with that almost animal need that appears when everything else disappears.

I moved down her neck leaving a trail of kisses. I stopped at her breasts, licked them, nibbled them carefully, feeling her skin rise with gooseflesh. I kept going down, dragging my tongue along the center of her stomach. I paused briefly at her navel, only because I knew it was lower that I wanted to go and I enjoyed making her wait.

And in the end I got there. I buried my mouth in her sex and gave myself over completely. I heard the sounds escaping her, less and less restrained, and that fed me, made me want to devour her whole. I lifted my gaze for a moment and saw her panting with her head thrown back. She wasn’t looking at me. She was focused on what she was feeling, but her eyes were searching for the man on the shore, and she was stroking one breast while she let me do it.

Then she looked at me. It was a look asking permission, suggesting something without words. I nodded without taking my mouth off her. Lucía stopped touching herself and, with a gesture of her hand, motioned for the stranger to come closer.

He finished taking off his swimsuit and walked across the sand with an erection that had been asking for relief for quite a while. He knelt beside us. Lucía took his cock and started to masturbate him, without stopping moaning, splitting her attention between her hand and my tongue.

***

I turned her over and positioned her on all fours on the towels. I spread her legs a little and entered her from behind. He slid in smoothly, very smoothly, she was drenched. I began to thrust into her with a firmer and firmer rhythm, holding her by the hips, enjoying the slap of her ass against my pelvis, the wet sound that filled the cove’s silence.

Our guest knelt in front of her, his cock at the height of her mouth. Lucía took it without hesitation and started to suck it, and with every thrust I gave her from behind I made her sink a little deeper, until she nearly gagged. The three of us moved in a shared rhythm, fitting together, as if we’d rehearsed it a thousand times and this wasn’t the first.

I could feel Lucía building. I know her. I recognize the trembling that runs through her thighs right before, the way her back tenses. And when she started to come, with a long moan she no longer even tried to hide, I let go inside her, emptying myself in a couple of deep thrusts. Almost at the same time, our stranger came too, with a hoarse grunt, in a strange communion of three bodies that minutes earlier didn’t even know each other.

***

After that came silence. That strange, new silence that follows the irreparable. The man gave us a half-smile, almost shy for everything that had just happened, picked up his swimsuit, and whistled for the dog. We watched him walk away along the shore until he rounded the rock and disappeared. There were no names, no phone numbers, no promises. No need.

Lucía curled up against my chest, still breathing hard, her skin covered in sand and salt. We stayed like that, looking at the sea, saying nothing for a good while.

—See? —she murmured at last, with a lazy smile—. I told you that someday I’d dare.

The sun was finally beginning to touch the horizon. The last rays slipped low over the water and stained everything copper, just the way she liked. We made it in time to see it. And as the light faded over the empty cove, I thought that some fantasies are better left in your head, but this one, for sure, wasn’t one of them.