The Mekong Cruise That Gave Me My Desire Back

My name is Valeria, and at fifty-eight I thought I had already closed the chapter on surprises. I was wrong. After that first cruise on the Douro — the one that taught me desire doesn’t care about calendars or surnames — I took a whole year away from the publishing house I had run for three decades. The team kept the imprint going; I, for the first time since I was twenty-three, kept myself going.

That Douro brochure was the first thread. Then came others: a sailboat through the Adriatic, a week in a country house in the French Provence where there were eight adults and none of us needed explanations. I discovered there was an entire discreet travel circuit for people who wanted to touch again without asking anyone’s permission. Open couples, curious women, widowers who didn’t want to keep being widowers in every sense.

The next destination imposed itself on me like a fixed idea: the Mekong. That long, brown river that cuts through half of Southeast Asia, with temples that have sweated humidity among the roots of the trees for centuries. I found an adult cruise, seven nights between Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, with stops in floating villages and visits to Angkor at dawn. The brochure spoke of “intimate experiences,” “authentic connections,” “adult atmosphere.” The code was transparent to anyone who knew how to read it.

I boarded in March, when the air feels heavy as a wet rag. The boat was a floating three-deck hotel, dark wood and ceiling fans everywhere. My suite had a private balcony over the water, a bathtub facing the glass, and a huge bed dressed in linen sheets.

At the welcome dinner, under paper lanterns and Khmer zither music, they introduced us. Soren, forty-four, a Danish archaeologist settled in Cambodia, was the “specialist guide” accompanying the cruise to give the talks about Angkor. Tanned skin, dark hair with premature gray, a white linen shirt that seemed to exist only to frame his shoulders. Ingrid and Matías, a Scandinavian couple of fifty-two and forty-seven, polyamorous for more than a decade. “We always travel with our eyes open,” she told me in impeccable Spanish. William, a sixty-year-old retired British architect, widowed for two years, still with that air of not quite knowing what to do with the nights. Somaly, a fifty-five-year-old Cambodian businesswoman from Phnom Penh, generous curves and a way of looking that didn’t bother pretending not to. And Paloma and Andrés, from Madrid, forty-six and fifty-two, veterans of this kind of travel.

The first night was for getting acquainted. White wine on the upper deck, the boat moored facing the lights of Siem Reap, the dark river licking the hull. Soren sat down beside me.

—You’re different, Valeria —he said in slow, correct Spanish—. There are women who come here running from something. You’ve come looking.

—And how can you tell the difference?

—In the shoulders. The ones who run have them up around their ears. Yours are loose.

I laughed and let him refill my glass.

***

At dawn the next day we visited Angkor Wat. The group went in among the first, when the stones were still cool with dew and the bas-reliefs looked freshly carved. The apsaras danced on the walls, with firm breasts and hips tilted in a gesture that had been repeating itself for nine hundred years. No one has ever carved an apsara at fifty-eight, I thought, not really knowing why. And I also thought that perhaps that was part of what I had come to change, at least in my head.

We returned to the boat at lunchtime. In the afternoon, while we cruised toward the first floating village, I got into the upper-deck pool. Ingrid and Matías were already inside, leaning against the edge, laughing about something.

—Come on —she said, patting the water beside her.

I went over. They both looked at me with that calm people have who aren’t going to invent anything that isn’t already decided between them.

—We have a rule —Matías said, squinting against the sun with his clear eyes—. We never pressure. But we never stop asking either.

—That’s a good rule.

Ingrid ran one finger along my collarbone, tracing the line of my swimsuit. It wasn’t an impatient touch. It was a question spoken in a language I’d been waiting a long time to learn. Beneath the water, Matías’s hand brushed my hip and kept going down, slipping inside my swimsuit. Two fingers found me between my lips and found me already wet, and it wasn’t from the river.

—Tonight? —she asked, while his hand kept moving slowly under the water.

—Tonight —I answered, biting my lip so I wouldn’t moan in the pool.

Matías gave a quiet laugh and kissed my shoulder, right where the strap had left a white line. He pulled his fingers out, brought them to his mouth, and sucked them without taking his eyes off me. My whole skin prickled right there. All afternoon, on the walks through the village and at the onboard snack, every time I crossed paths with either of them, my cunt tightened on its own, as if it had already started.

***

The following night, the boat organized a “dinner under the stars” on the upper-deck terrace. The menu was Khmer, the glasses were tall, the music was soft. When we finished eating, someone switched off the main lights and there were only the lanterns and the moon reflected on the Mekong.

Soren held out his hand to me.

—Come.

The eight of us withdrew to the back terrace, the one reserved for our group. Wide divans, cushions, a light curtain swaying in the river breeze. No one was in a hurry.

Ingrid was the first to come close. She took my face in both hands and kissed me slowly, mouth open, letting me taste the wine we had just shared. Her tongue entered my mouth without asking permission, searching for mine, and I sucked it as if it were a little cock. Matías sat down behind me, rested his hands on my hips, and pulled my dress down off my shoulders. The fabric fell to my waist. I didn’t feel exposed. For the first time in a long while, I felt truly seen.

—You’re beautiful —Ingrid said, and she didn’t say it like a canned phrase. She grabbed one breast with her open hand and lowered her mouth to the other, sucking my nipple until it burst into a hard point—. And those tits, fucking hell.

Somaly came closer from the other side. She knelt in front of the divan and put her hands on my knees, parting them with a patience that was almost reverential. She hauled my dress up to my waist and yanked my panties off with a sharp tug. She stayed looking at my cunt, open before her, for a long second, like someone taking the time to bless a meal. William, on the divan opposite, already had Paloma straddling him, his cock buried to the hilt, and Andrés was kissing Soren on the neck while unbuttoning his shirt one button at a time and searching for his fly with the other hand.

There was no urgency. There were different rules.

Ingrid kept kissing my mouth while Matías, behind me, unfastened my bra and covered my breasts with his palms, hot and dry. He pinched my nipples until they were hard and purple, tugging them like someone tuning an instrument, and then brought one hand down over my belly until he planted it flat over my pubis. With his middle finger he spread my cunt lips and found my clit, circling it with just the right pressure that made me open my legs wider on my own.

Somaly parted me even more and brought her face close. Her tongue found me with a precision that made me arch my back against Matías’s chest. She didn’t go fast. She went deep. She sucked my clit whole into her mouth, let it go, lowered her tongue to the entrance of my cunt and pushed it in like a small, hungry cock, then came back up. After a while of that, she slid in two fingers and curved them upward, searching for that spot inside me that at my age I already knew very well where it was.

—Five minutes like this —she murmured without taking her fingers out—. Then we’ll see.

The five minutes stretched. Matías’s hands stayed on my breasts, and his cock, already hard, pressed against my back through his trousers. Ingrid had pulled back just enough to look, and watched me with a small smile that undid me more than any caress. She took one hand to her cunt and started touching herself openly in front of me, her fingers shining with her own wetness. When I came the first time, it was a long shudder, without warning, starting in my hips and climbing up to my jaw. I cried out against Ingrid’s mouth and Somaly did not move: she let me finish against her tongue, sucking me slowly as I came, swallowing what came out of me without turning her face away.

After that we switched. Matías lay back on the divan, his cock hard against his belly, thick, the tip already wet. He pulled me toward him and I took his cock in my hand and positioned it between my cunt lips, rubbing it first against my clit, enjoying having him waiting. I slid down onto him centimeter by centimeter, with a slowness that was, in itself, a second orgasm, deeper, heavier. I felt him reach all the way inside, pushing against a place that hadn’t been touched in years. Ingrid positioned herself in front, standing on the divan, and offered me her cunt at mouth level. I ate her out without hesitation, tongue flat, and she grabbed my hair while I rocked myself on Matías. Somaly, behind me, ran open hands over my back up to the base of my neck, and every so often she bent down to lick my ass, prying my cheeks apart with her thumbs.

—Like that —Matías said in a very low voice, thrusting from below, gripping my hips to drive himself deeper—. Like that, Valeria, there’s no rush. Ride me all the way, sweetheart, like that.

On the divan opposite, Paloma had laid herself face down and Andrés was fucking her from behind, one hand planted in the middle of her back and the other clenched on her hip, entering her with dry thrusts that made her ass tremble. William was kissing Soren, and then Somaly, and then whoever else crossed his path, his hard cock dripping between his legs. No one belonged to anyone. No one was out of place.

Ingrid came in my mouth with a short, hoarse shudder, grabbing my head against her cunt. When she came down, she knelt behind me, over the back of the divan, and nipped my shoulder with her teeth barely grazing the skin. She slid one hand between my shoulder blades and then lower, until she reached where Matías was going in and out of me. She slid her middle finger into my ass, slowly, wet with Somaly’s saliva, and left it there, still, while I kept riding. She brought the other hand to my mouth, two fingers on my tongue, and she kissed Matías over my shoulder without pulling them away, letting the three of us share the same saliva. It was the most intimate gesture of the night.

I came again, with my eyes closed and Ingrid’s fingers in my mouth and another finger in my ass and Matías inside my cunt pounding me from below, and I knew it wouldn’t be the last.

At some point Soren came up behind me with his cock already hard, long, curved, and rested his forehead against the back of my neck, asking permission. I gave it by turning back to find his mouth. Ingrid, still behind, ran her fingers down his cock to slick it with the wetness I’d been leaving on the divan and settled the tip against my ass. He entered slowly, carefully, a centimeter, wait, another centimeter, letting my body adapt to the two presences at once. When he was all the way in, he stayed still for a second, breathing into the back of my neck, and I felt the two cocks, separated only by a thin wall of flesh, pulsing at their own rhythms. Matías in front, Soren behind, and Ingrid’s face right above me, looking at me with a tenderness I hadn’t expected in a scene like that.

They started moving alternately, one going in as the other came out, and I stopped thinking. I only breathed between thrusts, mouth open, letting saliva drip down my chin. Ingrid bent down and licked it off me. Somaly found one of my tits and sucked it hard, biting the nipple, and with the other hand she worked my clit at a rhythm that matched the two cocks inside me.

I don’t remember how long it lasted. I do remember Matías’s low voice telling me to breathe, to squeeze his cock with my cunt, to milk him dry. I do remember Soren coming in my ass with a short, deep groan, and feeling the hot spurt fill me from within, and following him as he pulled out carefully, leaving a thick thread dripping down my thigh. I do remember that afterward, with Matías still hard inside me, I came a third time, clenching his cock in spasms that he matched by thrusting from below until he emptied himself inside me with a long growl. I do remember that at some point I knelt on the divan with Somaly beneath me and found her cunt with my mouth, licking it open, pushing my whole tongue inside until her silence broke and she came on my face, soaking me to the chin. I do remember Paloma, later, handing me a glass of cold water without saying a word, with the wide smile of a conspirator and thighs shining with someone else’s semen.

In the end we were all piled up together, the divan covered in disordered cushions, naked bodies intertwined, semen drying on skin, the curtain still moving in the air. Someone put on very soft music. The Mekong kept flowing below, silent, indifferent to everything.

***

The following days were variations. In Kampong Cham, a shared siesta in William’s suite: he and Somaly first, she riding him with her huge tits bouncing on his face, him gripping them like someone hanging on to a buoy. Me watching at first, my hand between my legs, and then letting myself be watched when William, still hard after coming once in Somaly’s cunt, called me to the center of the bed and took me from behind while she ate my mouth and squeezed my nipples. He ended up coming between my butt cheeks, and Somaly bent down to clean me with her tongue without making a fuss, like someone clearing a plate.

At a landing stage near Prek Kdam, on an afternoon of dense rain when Ingrid and Paloma spent two hours with me in my bathtub. It was slow and meticulous, soap and hot water and mouths everywhere. Paloma pried my legs open beneath the water and sucked my clit until I trembled against the tiles. Ingrid sat behind me on the edge, her tits against my back and her hands on my breasts, and whispered in my ear that I should eat her out later. When we got out, the three of us lay naked on the linen sheets and I spent an hour with my face between one woman’s thighs and the other’s, alternating, learning the difference between the way each of them came. Ingrid silent and long, Paloma loud and short. I finally understood why women my age had been, for so long, the great poorly guarded secret of other people’s desire.

The last night, with the boat already moored in Phnom Penh, we gathered in my suite. Eight bodies on the king-size bed that had been made for two, with the balcony door open and the hot air coming in like a heavy hand. That night they asked for my center and I took it without shame. They laid me on my back with my legs open and my hands over my head, and they divided me among the mouths and cocks of the group as if I were the main course at a long dinner. Somaly and Paloma took care of my mouth and breasts, taking turns slipping tongues between my lips and sucking my nipples until they were swollen and sore. Matías and Andrés took turns between my legs, one fucking my cunt while the other shoved his cock into my mouth from the side, and then they switched. I swallowed Andrés’s first load, thick and salty, without spilling a drop. The second they left inside my cunt and Somaly bent down to lick me so it wouldn’t be wasted. Soren, to one side, held my neck with a broad palm so my head wouldn’t fall back, and every so often let himself be sucked while I had someone else inside me. Ingrid, lying to the side, held one of my hands as if we were crossing a real river. With her other hand she touched herself, and when she came she squeezed my hand so hard she left the marks of her nails.

I lost count of how many times I came. I also lost count of how much other people’s semen was on me by the time we all finally collapsed, sweaty and sticky, breathing through our mouths. Someone handed me a wet towel and wiped my face slowly, with an almost maternal care.

The return to Siem Reap was in silence. Not an uncomfortable silence. The silence of people who had shared something that doesn’t need to be spoken about.

At the airport, before we parted, Ingrid took both my hands.

—What river comes next? —she asked.

I laughed. I thought of the Danube, the Yangtze, the Amazon. Of all the rivers I still had left.

—The one that calls me first —I said.

I went back to Madrid with my skin still remembering things. The publishing house could keep waiting. At last, I had a calendar of my own.