The Photo I Sent My Coworkers

The question came out of my mouth before my brain had finished forming it.

—Would you like your coworkers to see me naked?

Marcos set the remote on the sofa armrest and looked at me with that expression that mixes bewilderment with something darker, something I recognize because I’ve seen it before. We’d been married six years and I still knew when I had just lit something in him.

—Depends —he said slowly.

—Depends on what?

—On whether you want them to as well.

That was exactly what I needed to hear. I got up, went to the bedroom, and came back with the laptop open.

—Sit here —I said, patting the cushion beside me.

***

What I’m going to tell started two months earlier, when the company where I work as marketing director decided to put together a charity calendar. Twelve volunteer employees, twelve months, twelve photographs to raise funds for a local association. Nothing explicit, of course: props, big lettering, positions calculated to the millimeter. Art, not pornography. The photographer was Claudia, a freelancer who had worked with us on several campaigns and had a way of making you feel completely at ease in front of the camera, as if wearing clothes were the strange thing.

I got December. The final session, the last photograph in the calendar.

That afternoon in Claudia’s studio was one of the most liberating of my adult life. There’s something about taking off your clothes in front of someone who looks at you with professional eyes, without hunger or judgment, that gives you back a version of yourself you didn’t know you had. The result was clean, elegant: me seated on an antique trunk, with a string of Christmas lights crossing my torso shoulder to shoulder, my breasts partially covered by the glowing cable. Nothing that couldn’t hang in a gallery.

But when we finished, when Claudia was reviewing the photos on the screen and I was getting dressed again, the idea came to me.

—How much would you charge for one more session? —I asked her—. Something completely different. For private use.

Claudia looked at me with one eyebrow raised and a smile that wasn’t surprise, but the smile of someone who has heard far stranger requests.

—Tell me —she said.

I told her I wanted a session with the tiniest scrap of clothing, no adornments, nothing to disguise my body. That I needed images of myself open, shameless, every curve exposed like a calculated provocation. Claudia listened and nodded slowly, as if she were already imagining the framing.

—I can do that —she said—. But if you want it to turn out well, you’ll have to stay naked and still for a long time.

—I can handle whatever it takes.

The private session was exactly that: endurance, heat, skin bristling under the light, the air cold on my nipples and on my mound, the sensation of displaying myself without any kind of excuse. Claudia placed me standing, from behind, from the side, from the front. She parted my legs just enough for the camera to catch the dark edge of my shaved sex and the pink swelling of my lips; she made me raise my arms to stretch my torso and emphasize my breasts, separating them slightly with her gloved hands so the shape would be perfect in the image. She didn’t touch me with desire, but with precision, and that made everything more intense. Every time she told me to turn or tilt, I felt my pussy tense, my nipples harden more, my breathing grow shallow.

—Like that —she said—. Don’t close your legs. I want to see the center. There.

I obeyed, already wet from embarrassment and exposure alone, feeling the air lick my vulva and the muscle between my thighs start to throb with a need that still had no name.

The result was clean, elegant, yes, but also indecent in a very measured way: me seated on an antique trunk, with a string of Christmas lights crossing my torso shoulder to shoulder, my breasts high and round, the nipples dark and hard, the triangle of my pussy fully visible between my open legs, one hand resting on my thigh as if trying too late to cover what was already in plain sight for anyone looking hungrily. Nothing that couldn’t hang in a gallery. Nothing that couldn’t drive a man mad.

But when we finished, when Claudia was reviewing the photos on the screen and I was getting dressed again, the idea came to me.

—How much would you charge for one more session? —I asked her—. Something completely different. For private use.

Claudia looked at me with one eyebrow raised and a smile that wasn’t surprise, but the smile of someone who has heard far stranger requests.

—Tell me —she said.

***

At the company we manage an international email directory. Hundreds of addresses, across four continents. I knew very well which ones belonged to men who had been throwing me looks for months, making veiled comments in virtual meetings, sending me messages that brushed the line without ever quite crossing it. I had observed them for weeks and selected them carefully: nine, from four different countries, all with one thing in common. All of them eager, but none of them reckless.

From an email account I created specifically for this —without my name, without any traces that could connect it to me in a quick search—I sent them a message with an attached photograph and very specific instructions.

The photograph was the result of the private session with Claudia.

She had photographed me from the front and from behind, completely naked, with a grid of colors superimposed in editing. Each area had a point value assigned to it: the mouth, two hundred points; the nipples, fifty each; the pubis, one hundred; the buttocks, one hundred total. The message accompanying the image was direct: choose an area, tell me before Friday, and the one who guesses the place I had marked in advance wins the prize.

—What prize? —Marcos asked when we reached that part, and I noticed his voice was slightly lower than usual.

—We decide that together —I said, and placed my hand on his thigh without taking my eyes off the screen.

Marcos swallowed. Under my fingers I felt the blunt throb of his erection beginning to push against his lounge pants. A naked image of me, one well-placed provocation, was enough to make him hard with an almost insulting speed.

—I’d teach any of those bastards —he said through clenched jaws— that if they look at you, they shouldn’t then complain about what happens inside them.

I smiled. I pushed my breasts out a little, and he stared at my mouth, then my tits, then the cleft between my legs still visible on the screen.

—Keep going —I told him.

***

We spent the next hour reading the replies. I had saved them all unopened, waiting for this moment.

The first was from Rodrigo, in the Buenos Aires office. Two lines: “Mouth. No hesitation. Though it’s going to cost me my focus in every meeting we have from now on.” Marcos laughed. It was a short, tense laugh, not exactly discomfort.

—Son of a bitch —he muttered, but his cock was already outlined under the fabric of his pants, and the hand he braced on the sofa betrayed him more than his words.

The second was from Fabián, in Berlin. Longer, more descriptive. He talked about the curve of my back, about how the light in the photograph cast a shadow exactly at the small of my waist. He chose the buttocks. Marcos stopped laughing.

—Keep going —I said.

I opened the emails one by one. Some were brief and direct; others more elaborate, as if the author had taken time to write something worth reading. They had all followed the rules. They had all chosen. And the more we read, the more the atmosphere on the sofa changed: Marcos was no longer sitting upright but leaned back, with a visible tension I knew perfectly well and that had nothing to do with discomfort.

There was something strangely intimate about reading them together. Each email was someone else’s gaze projected onto my body, and seeing them through Marcos’s eyes turned them into something different from what they had been when I received them alone.

—Which one did you choose? —he asked when we finished the eighth.

—The ninth first.

The ninth was from Daniel, from headquarters. I had known him for four years, we crossed paths on cross-functional projects, and there had always been something unnamed between us that neither of us had wanted to name. His email was different from the rest. He didn’t choose any part of my body. He said: “This isn’t a game to me. If there’s a real prize, I want to know exactly what the rules are.”

Marcos read the message twice.

—He knows what he wants —he said.

—Yes.

—And you? Do you know what you want?

I looked at him. We’d been married six years, and there were things we had talked about in the dark, between rumpled sheets, that we had never taken beyond words. Fantasies that lived comfortably in the realm of the imagined because neither of us had wanted, until that night, to cross that line.

—I think I do —I said.

Marcos set the laptop aside, grabbed me by the waist, and pulled me onto his lap. I felt his hard cock against my pussy through my clothes, a firm pressure that drew an immediate sigh from me. We kissed hungrily, mouths open, tongue against tongue, and the salt of his breath tasted like decision. He squeezed my hips and I slid over him, rubbing slowly, letting the friction warm me from the inside. He lifted my T-shirt from behind and slipped his hands under my bra, cupping my tits with an impatience that no longer pretended to be calm. His thumbs brushed my nipples and a moan escaped me.

—That’s it —he murmured against my mouth—. I want to see you this hot when the time comes.

I unbuttoned his pants and slid my hand inside, freeing his cock to really feel its weight and hardness, the warm skin, the damp tip. Marcos hissed through his teeth when I stroked him up and down, and in that simple gesture there was already enough for both of us to know the conversation was going to end, inevitably, between open legs and sweat.

***

What came after took three weeks to organize. Not because it was complicated, but because I wanted to do it right, without rushing and without improvising. I spoke first with Claudia: she was an essential part of the plan, and she accepted with the same professionalism with which she had handled everything else. Then I wrote to Daniel. We met in a neutral café at midday, no beating around the bush, and I explained exactly what it was about and what the conditions were. The conditions were simple: what happened that night would be between the three of us, plus Marcos, who would be present from the beginning. No expectations afterward. No ambiguity about what it was and what it wasn’t.

Daniel listened without interrupting even once. In the end he said yes.

***

On the agreed night, Claudia arrived first at the apartment with her portable lighting kit. Marcos had prepared the room: clean sheets, a floor lamp in the corner casting a warm, diffused light, the temperature just right. There was a bottle of wine on the table, but none of the four of us drank much. It wasn’t a night for blurring the edges.

Daniel arrived on time, with that calm way of moving that had always caught my attention, as if the world couldn’t shift him from his own rhythm. He and Marcos greeted each other with a handshake that lasted exactly as long as it should: not so brief as to seem hostile, not so long as to feel forced. They were both adults. They both knew perfectly well why they were there.

I stood in the center of the room and looked at them both.

—We start when you want —I said.

Daniel came over first. He took my chin and kissed me with obscene slowness, as if he wanted to taste me before truly touching me. His mouth tasted clean, and when he parted his lips against mine I felt the brush of his tongue, firm, sliding in without asking permission. Marcos moved behind me and undid my dress with quick fingers. The fabric fell to the floor and I was left naked between the two men, my skin suddenly exposed, my throat, my breasts, my stomach, my pussy wet with anticipation.

Claudia snapped the camera. The click sounded like a spark.

Daniel gently pushed me onto the bed. I lay back and he opened my legs with both hands, looking at my cunt with an almost reverent concentration. Marcos kissed my neck while Daniel lowered his head between my thighs. I felt the first lick on my opening, slow, parting my lips, licking from top to bottom until he found my clit. I arched instantly. Marcos held my hips so I wouldn’t move too much and bit one nipple with his mouth just enough to make me moan louder.

—Look at her —Daniel said, without lifting his head—. She’s soaked.

Marcos gave a low laugh, broken by desire.

—Of course she is.

Daniel ate my pussy properly, opening me wider with his fingers, going so deep that he made me lose my breathing rhythm. My hands were in the sheets, gripping whatever I could, while Marcos spread my legs all the way and licked my thighs, my mound, my entrance, alternating the pressure of his tongue with short sucks on my clit that tore increasingly ragged gasps from me.

—I want to hear her come —Marcos said, and his voice came out rough, unmasked.

Daniel lifted his head for just a second and looked at me with his mouth shining with my own wetness.

—Then don’t hold on so tight —he said.

I came like that, with both of them taking care of me as if my pleasure were the exact center of the room. My thighs shook, my stomach clenched, and the wave rose in me with delicious violence that left me breathless. Claudia kept shooting from the side of the bed, capturing my open face, my parted mouth, my fingers dug into the sheets, the brutal way my legs opened without control.

After that there were fewer words and more skin.

Marcos took off his clothes and asked me to get on top of him. I straddled him, guiding his cock to the still-sensitive entrance of my cunt. I sank down slowly, feeling myself opened, filled with a thick pressure that made me close my eyes and throw my head back. Daniel positioned himself behind me and held my hips to help me lower all the way. I felt his fingers marking my buttocks while Marcos pushed from below, long, deep, and I was caught between two rhythms, two bodies, two different ways of using me.

—That’s it —Marcos said, squeezing my waist—. I want to feel all of you.

Daniel brushed my hair away from my neck and spoke in my ear while he fingered me from behind, searching for my most sensitive spot, pushing patiently until he made me moan again. The mix of his voice and Marcos’s, one in front and one behind, made me tremble again before I could recover from the first orgasm. They took turns with me without haste and without awkwardness: one made me come while the other kissed my lips, one let me breathe while the other slipped a hand back between my thighs, one held my nape while the other filled my mouth with cock.

I remember the wet sound of the thrusts, skin slapping against skin, the bed creaking under the three bodies. I remember Claudia saying my name so I would look at the camera, so I would open my legs a little more, so I wouldn’t hide anything. I remember obeying, letting myself be seen with my mouth full, my nipples hard, my cunt shining with arousal and saliva. I remember Marcos’s face when he saw me like that: there was no jealousy, only a fierce excitement, almost proud, as if another man’s desire did nothing but underline what was already his and, at the same time, what he was willing to share.

At one point Daniel pulled away, turned me over onto my back, and put me face down. Marcos lifted my hips and entered again, this time from behind, opening me with a depth that made me scream into the pillow. Daniel spread my ass with one hand and rubbed against me on the outside, slow, insistent, until my ass was completely wet and sensitive. There was no pause, no perfect order: only bodies moving, hands, mouths, breaths, my overflowing sex, tits hitting the sheets when I arched, pleasure rising and falling like an electric current.

—Like that, fuck —Marcos said, and for the first time that night he sounded completely broken—. Like that, babe.

I came again while I was face down, with Marcos inside me and Daniel touching me from outside, and then I went back onto my back because I wanted to see their faces. I wanted to look at them when the end came. Daniel knelt between my legs and held my jaw while he fucked my mouth with his hard, heavy cock, sliding over my tongue. Marcos spread my legs and watched as it went in and out of my mouth, as saliva dripped down my chin, as I breathed through my nose while he kept pushing deeper. Then Marcos touched himself while he kissed my stomach, and his cum splashed my belly and pubis in hot streams that Claudia captured in a burst of photos.

Daniel let out a low groan and came into a condom with a restrained growl, his hand clenched in my nape. I stayed still, soaked, open, still trembling from the force of what had just happened.

***

The next morning, Claudia sent us a selection of twenty photographs. We saved them in an encrypted folder that we only open when the two of us agree we want to remember. We haven’t shared them with anyone. They weren’t for anyone else.

Daniel and I still work together. There are virtual meetings, shared projects, emails copied to ten people. Everything exactly as before, with the only difference being that now, when his name appears in my inbox, Marcos sometimes writes to me from work with a single message: “Is it him?” And I answer yes. And exactly four minutes later he replies with something that has nothing to do with work.

Six years married.

We still haven’t finished getting to know each other.