The Threesome Lucía Proposed Before Our Wedding

My name is Tomás, and I have a twin brother, Bruno. We shared an apartment near the University of Valencia, two bedrooms and a living room that was always a mess, when Lucía replied to the ad for the third flatmate. She showed up one October afternoon with a suitcase and a smile that disarmed both of us at once.

Bruno saw her get out of the taxi from the window and said what I was thinking.

—She’s going to be trouble.

—She’s going to be our roommate —I corrected him—. Behave yourself.

He didn’t listen to me, of course. Neither of us behaved. For weeks it was a silent war of coffee offered, convenient favors, of who accompanied her to the supermarket. Lucía noticed and found it amusing. She had this habit of biting her lip when something made her laugh, and at our expense she found a lot of things funny.

I won, although I like to think she did. One night, after Bruno fell asleep on the sofa in front of a movie, Lucía followed me into the kitchen for a glass of water and stayed leaning against the counter, looking at me.

—You two are impossible —she said—. But at least you’re worse at pretending.

—I’m not pretending anything.

I moved closer and kissed her. She didn’t pull away. On the contrary, she grabbed my T-shirt collar and pulled me toward her until the counter dug into her back and she didn’t care anymore. That night we never went back to our rooms separately.

***

What we had was fast and honest from the start. Lucía wasn’t a woman of half measures. The first time she undressed in front of me, she did it shamelessly, looking me in the eyes, waiting to see what face I’d make. She liked control. She liked deciding when, how, and how much, and that certainty of hers drove me crazy.

Bruno took losing better than I’d expected. He remained his usual self, jokey and brazen, though sometimes I caught him looking at her a second too long. Lucía caught him too. And she didn’t seem to mind.

Almost two years passed. I finished my degree with a few stumbles, she finished hers without a single one, and Bruno made his way by setting up a small motorcycle repair shop that did better than any of us would have bet. The three of us were still in the apartment, with no pretensions left of anything, just habit and affection.

It was Lucía who said it first. One summer night, the three glasses just right, her bare feet on my legs on the sofa.

—Can I tell you a fantasy without you getting mad?

—I’m not going to get mad.

—Your brother.

I fell silent. Not from anger, but because the idea caught me being less surprised than I should have been.

—I’ve been thinking about it for a while —she went on, playing with the rim of the glass—. I don’t want your brother. I want you. But I’m dying to know what it feels like to be with both of you at once. And if it’s going to be with someone, I’d rather it be with someone I trust. Does what I’m saying make sense?

It made perfect sense. It took me a few days to digest it, talk it through, make sure it wasn’t one of those traps that destroy couples. It wasn’t. It was pure curiosity, spoken out loud by a woman who wasn’t afraid of her own desires. And, to my surprise, the idea of seeing her with Bruno didn’t make me jealous. It turned me on.

***

We brought it up together, one Sunday afternoon, with the naturalness of people suggesting a trip. Bruno left his coffee halfway to his mouth.

—Are you kidding me?

—No —said Lucía—. And if the answer is no, that’s fine. But I wanted you to hear it from me, not from him.

The answer was not no.

The first time, the three of us were awkward. Too many hands, too many nervous laughs, nobody quite knowing where to put themselves. But Lucía took charge, as always, and divided us up as if she knew exactly what she wanted from each of us. She reserved my mouth, slow kisses, words in my ear. She used Bruno for the other part, for rhythm and force, looking at me the whole time, checking that I was still there, that I was still hers.

That look was the most erotic thing about the night. The way she bit her lip while my brother thrust into her and still didn’t let go of my hand. When she came, she did it with her eyes locked on mine, and I knew that this hadn’t broken us. It had bound us together in a strange way I wouldn’t know how to explain.

After that, the three of us stopped being an experiment and became something that belonged to us. Not always, by no means. But every now and then, when she felt like it, Bruno would join in, and the next morning the three of us would have breakfast as if nothing had happened, because for us it no longer was anything out of the ordinary.

***

The next step came on a Friday, also Lucía’s idea. A friend from the workshop had told Bruno about a private club on the outskirts, a discreet place you could only enter by invitation and mask. A place for couples and curious people, where what happened inside stayed inside.

—I want to go —she said—. Just to look, if you want. But I want to see it.

We got the invitation. The night we’d agreed on, we put on our masks before going in, three black blindfolds that barely left the eyes visible, and suddenly we were other people. Anonymity does strange things. Lucía walked differently, looser, aware that nobody knew her name.

The bar was dimly lit, with low music and people talking like anywhere else, except for what could be sensed in the rooms at the back. We ordered two drinks to ease the tension. Bruno pointed to a secluded area with a discreet sign.

—There’s a demonstration room. If someone wants to, they let people watch.

Lucía said nothing. She just grabbed my hand and pulled me that way.

***

The room was small, an enormous bed in the center and a row of shadowed openings from which you could watch without being seen. That night there was a threesome on the bed: one man and two women, all three with their faces covered like ours, all three surrendering without a trace of shame to what they were doing.

Lucía pressed herself against the glass. I felt her whole body tense as she watched one of the women on her knees, the man behind her setting a slow rhythm, the second woman kissing the first on the mouth as if she wanted to steal her breath.

—God —she whispered—. I can’t stop watching.

I stood behind her and wrapped my arms around her waist. I could feel her breathing, how she squeezed her thighs together. Bruno took up position on her other side, not touching her yet, waiting. Lucía settled the question for both of us: she took my hand and guided it under her dress, and with the other she reached for my brother’s.

On the other side of the glass, the scene grew more intense. The two women had changed position, one sitting on the man’s face, the other riding him, both of them wrapped around each other, moaning in a way that could barely be heard through the glass. Lucía was trembling against me.

—I want to go to one of the private rooms —she said in a broken voice—. Now. The three of us.

***

The private room had a door that locked from the inside and a bed with nobody watching. As soon as we went in, Lucía stopped being a spectator and became the protagonist of her own scene.

She took off her dress without ceremony and lay down in the center, still wearing the mask, and looked at the two of us with an authority that admitted no argument.

—I want both of you at once —she said—. And every time I say so, you switch. I want to lose count of who’s who.

And that’s what we did. I started, slowly, wanting to stretch out every second, while she took Bruno in her mouth. Then she gave the order and we switched, and switched again, until we truly lost count, until the anonymity of the masks made only her moans matter, setting the tempo.

She came more than once, each time harder, clutching the sheets, repeating for us not to stop. And when at last the two of us emptied ourselves, she remained sprawled between us, laughing under her breath, satisfied like a cat in the sun.

—This —she said, still breathless— has to happen again.

***

We repeated it. And a few months later, when I asked her to marry me, she said yes before I’d finished the sentence.

The bachelor party was, of course, at the club. Just the two of us that time, because Bruno was away with a racing team, but our friends there had prepared a surprise for us. They took us to the big room, blindfolded us, and left us kneeling on the bed, with no idea what was coming.

I felt a mouth running over me without warning, and from Lucía’s sigh I knew they were doing the same to her. We didn’t know who, we didn’t know how many, and that uncertainty made everything more intense. One caress gave way to another, one mouth to the next, and the two of us lost all sense of time completely.

When they finally removed our blindfolds, we looked into each other’s eyes, tousled and breathless, and laughed like two kids who’d pulled an enormous prank. We got married the following week.

That night taught me something about myself that took me a while to admit out loud: that I was completely in love with Lucía and that, at the same time, I needed everything else. The masks, the rooms, the shared curiosity. She knew it better than I did. That’s why, I suppose, all of it was her idea from the very beginning.

And that’s why, years later, we still go back to the club whenever routine starts to press in. Different mask, same smile, the same bitten lip that one day, in the kitchen of a student apartment, drove my brother and me crazy at the same time.