The Game We Agreed to in That Bar Got Out of Hand

Diego looked at me over the rim of his glass and smiled in that tilted way of his that always tipped me off that trouble was coming. We had spent almost an hour at a table at the back of the bar talking about attraction, about looks, about what he called “the theory of desire.” I knew the theory was already falling short for him.

“It would be nice to move on to practice,” he said, leaning back in his chair.

“Practice?” I asked, though I already suspected.

“You unbutton a couple of buttons, hike your skirt up a little, and go to the bar alone to order something. I’ll stay here, keeping an eye on you. If anything makes you uncomfortable, you give me a signal and I’ll show up. I’ll take your arm and introduce you as my girlfriend.”

He said it with the same casualness as someone ordering another wine. I stared at him, feeling the blood rise to my face.

“Seriously?”

“It’s just a game, Marina. To see how people react. You won’t do anything you don’t want to do.”

I bit my lip. Diego wasn’t my boyfriend; we weren’t even officially dating yet: there had been an old flirtation between us that we had never quite finished sorting out. The idea made me uneasy and, at the same time, I felt that itch in my stomach that always comes before bad decisions.

“All right,” I said, because sometimes saying “yes” is the only way to prove to yourself you’re not a coward. “I’ll do it.”

I unbuttoned two buttons on my blouse before thinking too much about it. The line of my bra was just barely visible, along with a slit of cleavage that showed the swell of my tits. Then, under the table, I hiked my skirt up two fingers. When I stood up, the fabric fell quite a bit above my knee, so much that if I crossed my legs the wrong way, my underwear would show.

“You look good,” Diego murmured, his gaze fixed between my thighs.

I didn’t answer him. I walked to the bar as if I’d been practicing that stroll for centuries, even though I’d never done it before. I felt eyes on my shoulders, on my legs, on my cleavage, on my ass. I sat on a high stool and crossed my legs. The skirt rode up even higher.

“A cosmopolitan, please,” I told the bartender, trying not to let my voice betray me.

***

The first one came over before the cocktail arrived. Gray T-shirt, direct smile, about my age.

“Sorry, I didn’t quite catch what you ordered. What are you having?”

“A cosmopolitan,” I said.

“Sounds good. Do you like strong cocktails or something milder?”

I laughed despite myself. It was a textbook opener, but the question came with a look that made it clear he wasn’t talking about drinks.

“Depends on the company,” I said, and I felt ridiculous and powerful at the same time.

While he ordered the same as me, I noticed something on my other side. A second guy, older, shirt open at the throat, had sat down on the neighboring stool. He had an accent I couldn’t place.

“What a lovely night, don’t you think?” he said. “Sorry if I’m being blunt, but I couldn’t resist saying something to you. You radiate a special kind of light.”

“Thank you,” I murmured, feeling an uncomfortable warmth at the back of my neck.

“I don’t know where that light comes from. Maybe from your green eyes. Or your smile. Or that neckline that’s driving me crazy.”

I wanted to look at Diego, but I couldn’t. I was pinned between two men looking at me as if I were the last glass of water in the desert.

The first one raised his glass.

“Shall we toast?”

“And I can’t toast too?” the second protested.

“Let’s all toast,” I said, with a smile that wasn’t mine.

We clinked glasses. I took a long sip. I felt the first man’s hand settle on my shoulder while the second man’s arm went around my waist and pressed me against his side until I could feel the hard bulge of his cock against my hip through his pants. It happened almost at the same time, and for a second I couldn’t breathe.

“Wait,” I said, trying to pull away gently. “This is too fast for me.”

The second one didn’t let go all the way. He held me by the waist with polite, almost paternal firmness, and looked at me with that intensity that freezes you in place.

“I knew you’d come to me, pretty girl. With that wet cunt you’ve got written all over your face.”

***

Diego finally showed up. I grabbed his arm as if it were a rope in a current.

“Hi, baby,” I said, too loud. “I’ve made two friends. What if we go sit at a quieter table?”

“Sure,” Diego replied, with no surprise, no urgency.

I walked close to him to an empty table. And the two guys followed behind us. They sat down before I had time to breathe. The first, on my right, pressed his thigh against mine and immediately laid his hand on my knee, as if it belonged there. The second, on my left, settled in so close that his fingers brushed my back as if by accident, sliding up under my blouse to my bare skin.

“I’ll get the drinks,” the second announced, though he didn’t stand up right away: first he slid two fingers along the waistband of my skirt. “Want me to order you something, Diego?”

“A beer.”

I looked at him, not understanding. A beer? Seriously?, I thought. Diego leaned in behind my stool and placed both hands on my shoulders. His thumbs began pressing the base of my neck, slow, professional, as if he’d been doing it for years.

“Easy, Marina. Relax.”

The massage was the only real thing for a few seconds. I closed my eyes. But then I felt the first man’s fingers slide up my spine under my blouse, unhook my bra with a dry snap, and come back around to weigh one of my tits in his palm. His thumb found my nipple and started rubbing it slowly, pinching it between his index and middle fingers until it hardened like a stone. The second man’s hand, which had returned without bringing any drinks, settled on my naked thigh and moved under my skirt without asking permission, fingers spread, searching for warmth between my legs.

“Diego,” I whispered, “this isn’t…”

“You can say stop whenever you want,” he answered, right by my ear. “You only have to say it. Everything stops. You decide.”

***

What came after arrived in waves. Waves I didn’t understand myself. The first man’s fingers slipped into the cup of my unhooked bra and squeezed my tits again and again, pinching my nipples until a moan escaped me and got stuck in my throat. The second man traced a circle on my thigh and climbed a centimeter, two, three, until the pad of his middle finger found the soaked fabric of my panties and pressed right over my clit. He stayed there, moving in tiny circles, feeling the wetness seep through the cotton.

“She’s dripping,” he told the first one in a low voice, as if I couldn’t hear him. “Soaked. She’s dying to have us fuck her.”

“Show me,” the other answered.

The second man pushed the fabric of my panties aside and sank his whole finger into my cunt. I arched on the stool. I was so wet that it slid in to the knuckles without resistance, and at once he added a second finger and began pumping them inside me with a slow, filthy rhythm while his thumb kept rubbing my clit. The first man had lifted my blouse enough for his mouth to reach me: he bent down and sucked on one nipple, biting it with his teeth, slurping it with his hot tongue, never letting go of the other breast he kept squeezing with his hand.

Diego was still attending to my neck and shoulders. His fingers went down my neckline, brushed the first man aside for a second and caressed my free tit, pinching my nipple between his index finger and thumb. I felt his breath on my ear, and something else: the tip of his tongue tracing my earlobe, his chin resting on my shoulder, and at the nape of my neck the pressure of his hard cock against the back of my head.

My body trembled in one direction and my head in another. I felt fear, yes. But I also felt a current I didn’t want to name running from my thigh to my lower belly, a heavy throb in my cunt around the stranger’s fingers. And worst of all: I felt curiosity. I wanted to know what it would be like to have him inside me. I wanted to know whether the other one would fuck my mouth at the same time. I wanted to know whether Diego would pull out his cock and put it in my hand.

“Diego, where is this going?” I asked without opening my eyes, my voice broken by a moan I couldn’t swallow.

“We’re in a public place,” he replied. “Hang on a little longer.”

The second man’s fingers quickened inside me, in and out with a wet sound that rose above the music. His thumb punished my clit in tight circles. The first one sucked my tits in turn, leaving my nipples shiny with saliva and my areola marked by his teeth. I felt my lower belly clench, my cunt beginning to close around the fingers of that stranger, and that I was going to come in three seconds if nobody stopped anything.

A long moan slipped out before I could hold it back. I opened my eyes.

“Stop,” I said, softly.

No one moved. The fingers stayed inside. The mouth kept sucking.

“Say it louder, Marina,” Diego murmured. “If it’s what you really want.”

I swallowed. The second man was looking straight at me, lips parted, with two fingers buried to the hilt in my cunt and his thumb still pressed against my clit, as if waiting for my permission for something he was already doing.

“Stop!” I screamed.

The entire bar turned to look. The four hands withdrew at once, like a spring snapping back. The second man pulled his fingers out of my cunt and, very slowly, brought them to his mouth. He sucked them one by one, looking at me, tasting my arousal in front of me. I stood up. The chair scraped across the floor with a shriek. I felt wetness run along the inner sides of my thighs.

“I’m sorry,” I said, not knowing who I was apologizing to. “I can’t keep doing this.”

***

I went out into the cold street with Diego behind me. With my bra unhooked under my blouse, with my soaked panties stuck to my cunt, with my nipples still hard and burning from the bites. I didn’t look at him for two blocks. I walked so fast my legs hurt.

“How did you let that happen?” I blurted at last, without slowing down. “How did you let them touch me like that?”

“I told you you could stop whenever you wanted,” he replied, calm. “And you did stop.”

“You knew I was scared.”

“I knew you were hesitating. That’s not the same thing.”

I stopped. I looked at him, breathing hard.

“Imagine if you’d liked it and wanted to keep going,” he added. “What am I supposed to be? Everyone’s desire’s doorman? If I decided for you, I’d be treating you like a child.”

I wanted to hit him. I also wanted him to hold me. I also wanted to kneel right there, pull his cock out of his pants, and take it into my mouth until it hit the back of my throat. The third option bothered me most.

“Don’t ever put me in a situation like that again without warning me in so many words,” my voice sounded firmer than I expected. “I’m not an experiment.”

“I know. Sorry.”

We walked in silence to the entrance of my building. I leaned against the door. My leg was still trembling, and my cunt was pulsing with a heavy throbbing that wouldn’t go away.

“Did you see what happened?” Diego asked. “You unbuttoned two buttons, hiked your skirt up two fingers, and this happened. That’s information. Useful information.”

“Useful for what?”

“So you know the effect you have. And so you can decide what you want to do with it.”

I lowered my gaze. I was angry and embarrassed and, underneath, there was something I didn’t want to touch yet: the memory of the tremor in my thigh, the two fingers plunging into my soaked cunt, the mouth sucking my tits in the middle of the bar, my own voice saying the word stop with a delay of three seconds too long.

“Diego,” I said, “do me a favor. Tonight, write down what happened. I’m going to do the same.”

“And then?”

“Then we compare.”

He smiled at me in that same way as before. I hated him a little. I wanted him a little. I went upstairs, took off the short skirt and the blouse with the two undone buttons, let my bra fall to the floor, and looked at myself in the mirror: my nipples marked and red, my panties dark with moisture all through the crotch. I pulled them down my thighs to my ankles, and felt a sticky thread stretch between the fabric and my cunt.

I sat down in front of the notebook with my legs open and began to write with the same hand that a couple of hours earlier had held a glass of an overpriced cosmopolitan. I wrote about the fingers on my neck. About the fingers on my thigh. About the fingers on my waist. About the mouth on my tits. About the two fingers buried to the knuckles in my cunt in front of thirty strangers.

And then I set down the pen, turned off the light, and slid my own hand down. I found my swollen, slippery clit at the first touch. I started rubbing it in circles, with two fingers, at the same rhythm the stranger had used on me. With the other hand I squeezed one breast, pinched my nipple until it hurt. I shoved three fingers into my cunt, all the way in, and pulled them out dripping. I imagined the second one riding me from the front, the first one fucking my mouth, Diego watching from a chair without touching himself. I imagined the four hands on me again and this time I didn’t say stop.

I came biting my lip so I wouldn’t wake the neighbor, with my fingers buried to the wrist and the imaginary cum of three men running through me. When I was done, I was still trembling. I went back to the notebook with my right hand still shining and wrote one last line before sleeping: next time I won’t say stop.