What Happened in the Cove at Sunset

The cove was empty when we came down the path. Carla had insisted on that secluded spot ever since she saw the photos hung up at the hostel reception, and the path between the rocks proved her right: a strip of sand hidden between cliffs, no vendors, no umbrellas, nobody. Just the sun slowly sinking over the horizon and the sound of the water slipping into the caves.

We spread our towels near the shore, where the sand stayed cool. Carla took off the top of her bikini as soon as we arrived and lay down on her stomach with a book she wasn't reading. I pretended to read mine, but I'd spent forty minutes watching sweat run down her back to the curve of her lower spine.

—If you keep looking at me like that, there won't be any need for night to fall —she said without lifting her eyes.

—I'm not looking at you.

—You're an awful liar, Rodrigo.

She rolled onto her back, tits out, and narrowed her eyes at the sky. That small smile that had made me nervous from day one.

The two girls appeared from the west side, walking barefoot over the sand with a couple of canvas bags and a bottle of white wine. One was tall, with copper-colored hair twisted up in a messy bun, wearing a tiny black bikini. The other came a step behind, shorter, brown-cheeked, in a thin dress the wind stuck to her legs.

—Hi —said the one with the bun when she reached us—. Do you mind if we stay around here? We came looking for the same thing as you.

Carla pushed herself up on her elbows, shameless as anything, and smiled at them.

—Not at all. The cove belongs to whoever finds it.

—I'm Lucía. And she's Sofía.

Sofía raised a hand in a shy little gesture. She had light eyes and a sideways look that never quite fully committed.

They laid their towels three meters from ours. Lucía took off her bikini without a second thought, top first, then bottom, and lay on her back with a sigh of pleasure. Sofía hesitated for a few seconds, looked at Carla, looked at the water, and kept her dress on.

—Wine? —Lucía offered, lifting the bottle—. It's chilled.

We crossed the two meters that separated us with a couple of plastic cups we'd brought in the cooler. Sofía poured, spilled a little on the sand, and laughed softly. Lucía looked at me a second longer than necessary when I bent down to take mine.

Carla noticed. Carla always noticed.

We talked about the village, the heat, a bar you had to go to if you passed by the square. We'd been in the area for three days, and Lucía had lived there since April; Sofía was spending a week with her. They said they were friends from university, without clarifying much more. Carla asked specific questions that sounded innocent and weren't: what kind of things they did when Sofía came to visit, whether they often came down to that cove, whether they'd ever run into other couples there.

Lucía answered everything with a smile that kept warming up by the minute.

—Sometimes we run into people. Sometimes we talk. Sometimes we don't just stick to talking.

The sun was right above the water. The light hit our faces hard, orange, sharp, and we all squinted. Carla rested her hand on my thigh. Her fingers were cold from the glass.

—What did you do in the cove with those other couples, Lucía? —she asked, and her voice had changed. Lower. Slower.

—Whatever we felt like —Lucía said.

Sofía lowered her gaze to the glass and bit her lip.

I felt a heat in the back of my neck that had nothing to do with the sun. Carla squeezed my thigh a little higher than the knee. I didn't say anything. I didn't know what to say.

—Rodrigo is a real voyeur —Carla said, looking at me but speaking to them—. He gets more turned on by watching than by touching. Would you mind if we gave him something to watch?

Lucía set the glass down in the sand. Her smile widened.

Sofía finally lifted her eyes from the glass and looked straight at me. There was no shyness left, just curiosity.

—Not me —said Lucía.

—Not me either —said Sofía softly.

***

Carla got up from the towel and took off the bottom of her bikini slowly. She stood naked, sun-gilded skin and that little tattoo she had on her hip, a fine line that curled around the bone. She walked the three meters to Lucía's towel and knelt beside her.

—Can I? —she asked.

Lucía didn't answer with words. She pushed herself up on her elbows, parted her legs a little, and stared straight at her.

Carla leaned in and kissed the inside of her thigh. Slowly. Without touching anything else.

I stayed seated on the towel, glass in hand, not knowing what to do with the other one. I had it resting on my knee. I couldn't look at anything else. Sofía was beside me, crouched on her haunches, eyes fixed on the same thing I was watching.

Carla moved her mouth slowly up the inner side of Lucía's thigh. She reached the place where the thigh ended and the wet cunt began, and stayed there for two seconds, breathing against her skin. Lucía let out a rough sound, her fingers clenching in the towel. Carla ran her tongue over the lips of her cunt first with the tip, then wide and firm, soaking her all the way from top to bottom, and Lucía's reaction was immediate: a muffled moan, her back arching, her knees opening wider to make room.

Carla never did anything in a hurry. She opened her cunt wider with her fingers, slipping two into the hot flesh while her tongue kept working outside, licking the clit with slow, precise movements, no embellishment. Lucía was breathing in gasps and grabbed Carla by the hair when her mouth closed fully over her. She sucked, pressed, let go, sucked again, and the sound was obscene even over the waves: wet lips, saliva, breath, that filthy little smack of a tongue looking for the place where a woman shakes the most.

Sofía beside me swallowed. I heard her.

Carla ate like she always does: no theatrics, no hurry, with her tongue flat and broad first, then with the tip, then with her lips around the clit. I knew that sequence. I'd felt it a hundred times. Seeing it from the outside was something else, something that made me realize I'd had my swim trunks tight for ten minutes and hadn't dared move.

Sofía turned her head toward me.

—Are you okay? —she whispered.

—Yeah.

—You don't have to watch if you don't want to.

—It's just... I do want to.

She laughed, very softly.

—Me too.

Lucía started breathing faster. She ran her hand through Carla's hair and pushed her gently, setting the rhythm. Carla sped up. Lucía closed her eyes, opened her mouth, said something we couldn't hear. Then Carla slipped two fingers inside her, slowly at first, with her thumb pressed down against the clitoral hood, and Lucía twisted on the towel with a long moan, the kind that no longer even tries to hide anything. She was making her wet inside and out, working her whole body, and the motion of Carla's hand sounded filthy, very filthy, as if she were biting open a ripe fruit.

When Lucía came, she did it slowly, with a tremor that climbed from her thighs to her shoulders. Carla didn't stop until Lucía tugged at her hair a little and said, “wait, wait.” Then she lifted her head and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

She looked at me. Her lips were shining, her chin wet, her skin salty, and her eyes too wide to seem calm.

—Come here, Rodrigo —she said.

I didn't move. I wanted to go. I wanted to stay where I was. I wanted both verbs at once.

Sofía rested a hand on my knee.

—Shall we? —she said.

***

We walked over to the other towel together. Lucía made room for us, still breathing hard. Sofía took off her dress over her head slowly, without any drama, the way someone takes off their shirt before getting into the shower. She wasn't wearing anything underneath. Her body was paler than Lucía's, her swimsuit marks still visible, a constellation of freckles on her shoulders.

I sat between the two of them, at the edge of the towel, my feet still in the sand. Carla came over and kissed me without asking. She tasted of Lucía's cunt: salty, acidic, alive.

—Good? —she asked when she pulled away.

—Good.

—Lie down.

I lay down. Carla slowly pulled my swim trunks down. Sofía and Lucía watched us from the side, leaning against each other. Carla wrapped her hand around me and looked down at me with that little smile I already knew.

—They want to try —she said—. Is that okay with you?

—Yes.

Lucía went first. She leaned down, and the first tongue I felt wasn't Carla's. It was different: broader, hotter, without the familiarity of my girlfriend's movements. It moved along the full length, from bottom to top, and stayed for a while at the tip, sucking me eagerly, drawing the skin into her mouth before letting it go with a wet sound. Sofía leaned in after her, carefully, and licked along the other side, one hand on my thigh to steady herself. The two tongues met in the middle and laughed against my skin, and the cold air of the night beginning to fall made me clench my fists in the sand.

Carla sat astride me, looking into my face, not taking me yet. She had both hands on my chest and moved her pelvis very slowly, letting me touch her with the tip without going in. Her cunt brushed against me, hot and slick, and she took her time rubbing it, marking my entrance, wetting me with her own juice until I was taut and shaking.

—Look at Sofía —she told me.

Sofía lifted her head from where she was. Lucía kissed her on the cheek and then on the mouth, and Sofía closed her eyes, and that shyness of hers dropped to the ground all at once. They kissed like two people who had wanted to kiss each other for a long time and this wasn't the first time.

—See? —said Carla.

—I see it.

—You just keep watching.

She sank down. Slowly. She took me all the way in with a small sound that came up from the bottom of her throat. I lifted my hands and grabbed her hips, but I didn't move her. I let her move herself. I felt her tight, hot, opening and closing around me with each rise and fall, and the friction of her wet cunt against my pelvis made me let out a sharp breath.

Beside us, Lucía had lain back and Sofía was between her legs, repeating what Carla had done to her minutes before. Lucía guided her with a hand on the back of her neck, slowly, whispering things I couldn't quite understand but that the two of them seemed to understand perfectly. Sofía licked first carefully, then hungrier, parting her lips properly, searching for the clit with insistence, and Lucía twisted and told her to keep going, like that, don't stop, while her thighs trembled.

Carla picked up speed on top of me. The light was no longer orange; it was violet. The cove had fallen into darkness and the bodies could only be made out by the reflection of the moon rising over the water.

—I want you to come inside me —she told me.

—Are you sure?

—Sure.

I came with her on top of me, gripping her hips hard, catching out of the corner of my eye the way Sofía was making Lucía moan with her tongue. Carla leaned over me and kissed me while my legs were still trembling. I felt her go still for a second, buried to the hilt, and then she let out a long, satisfied sigh, feeling the hot spill spreading inside her. She moved one last time, slowly, to squeeze out every last drop, and then she collapsed on my chest.

***

Afterward, the four of us in silence. The waves, far away. Lucía passed the bottle of wine, nearly empty by then, and each of us took a sip standing up, without glasses, watching one another. Sofía had put her dress back on and Carla was still naked. I'd half pulled my swim trunks back up.

—We're coming back tomorrow —said Lucía—. At this same time, if you feel like it.

Carla looked at me.

—What do you say?

I thought for a moment. I thought about the walk back to the hostel, the shower, what Carla and I would talk about when we got there. I thought about Sofía looking at me sideways in the cove, with the wine glass in her hand and curiosity draped over her shoulders like a towel.

—Tomorrow —I said.

We went up the path the four of us together. Sofía was last. When we got to the fork where the paths split, Carla turned to me and gave me a long kiss, leaning against a rock still warm from the day's sun.

I told you you were going to like watching, her eyes said.

I didn't answer.

But I squeezed her hand until we reached the hostel, and I didn't let go all night.