I Dressed as a Woman in the Woods and He Caught Me

I like dressing as a woman. It’s not just the clothes: it’s what the clothes awaken in me. The lace brushing my skin, the cool weight of the short skirt on my thighs, the tingle of the stockings as I pull them up slowly, centimeter by centimeter. In those minutes I stop being who I am the rest of the day and become Lucía. I walk differently, I breathe differently. I want to be looked at as a woman. I want to be desired as a woman. And, deep down, I want someone to take me like a woman.

That’s why I chose that spot. An old pine grove high on a cliff, far from the village, where the forest suddenly opened out toward the sea. I had driven there along a dirt road and walked a little farther, until I reached a clearing I knew from other times. No one ever passed through there. Or so I wanted to believe.

I had everything in a backpack: the short wine-colored dress, the garter stockings, a black lingerie set I had spent ages deciding whether to buy, and low heels so I wouldn’t break an ankle among the roots. I laid everything out on a flat rock and started undressing under the afternoon sun.

The September air raised goosebumps on my skin. I dressed slowly, like a ritual, feeling how each garment transformed me. First the panties, then the stockings, fastening each one to the garter with slightly clumsy fingers. The bra. The dress, sliding over my body with a sigh of fabric. I liked doing it out in the open. I liked the risk of being seen, the wind stroking the backs of my knees, the light seeping through the branches and drawing shadows over my skin.

I felt desirable. Provocative. For once, whole.

I leaned against a thick pine, took out a little hand mirror, and started painting my lips a deep red. I looked at myself: my hair falling to one side, my cheekbones flushed by the cold, my mouth shining. This is me, I thought. This is Lucía.

And then I heard it.

A crackle among the dry leaves behind me.

I froze, lipstick halfway to my mouth. It wasn’t an animal. Animals don’t stop in mid-step. This was someone walking carefully, someone who had gone still when they realized I had heard them.

I turned slowly.

He was there, about ten meters away, leaning one shoulder against another tree. A tall man in his thirties, wearing a light jacket and with his hands in his pockets. I don’t know how long he had been watching. Long enough, I guessed, because he didn’t seem surprised by anything he saw. His eyes moved over every curve, every detail of my clothes, every part of me I had chosen to show.

He said nothing. Neither did I.

The logical thing would have been to cover up, grab the backpack, and run. But I didn’t move. I didn’t want to move. Feeling those eyes on me was exactly what I had come to the woods for, even if I had never admitted it out loud.

He pushed away from the tree and came closer, unhurried, measuring each step. When he reached me he smelled of tobacco and something clean, like soap. He looked into my eyes for a second, as if asking for permission he never put into words.

—You don’t have to say anything —he murmured—. Just stay like that.

I swallowed and gave the tiniest nod.

His hand went straight to my waist. He turned me firmly, without roughness, until I was facing the trunk. I placed my palms on the rough bark. I felt his body press against mine from behind, his chest against my shoulder blades, his hot breath sliding over my neck.

—I’d been watching you for a while —he said softly, almost in my ear—. I thought you were alone.

—So did I —I answered, and my own voice sounded strange to me, higher, more surrendered.

His free hand slid down my side, followed the curve of my hip, and slipped beneath the hem of my skirt. He lifted it slowly, bunching the fabric against my skin, until the back of my thighs wrapped in stockings was exposed.

I moaned. Quietly, but clearly. A sound I couldn’t hold back.

—I like that —he whispered.

He stroked me first over the lace, with his whole palm, feeling the shape of my body beneath the thin fabric. Then he moved the garment aside, not taking it off entirely, and his fingers touched me without barriers, damp from his own mouth, hot, sure.

—Do you like it like this? —he asked.

I didn’t answer with words. I arched my back and pushed back, offering myself, and that was all the answer he needed.

He yanked the garment down until it hung around my knees. I was panting against the trunk, my nails dug into the bark, my legs trembling inside the stockings. I heard him fumble in his pocket, tear open a wrapper, get ready. I silently thanked him for that care.

—Easy —he said—. Slowly.

And even so, when he entered me, he did it all at once, deep, firm, making his way inside me. I bit my lip to keep from crying out. He noticed and put his hand over my mouth, not to silence me completely, but to hold the sound between his fingers.

The first thrusts were slow, letting me get used to the burn. Then the rhythm became deeper, more determined. He drove me against the tree as if he wanted to fuse me with the wood. I let him. I opened for him. I gave myself over without restraint, my cheek pressed to the bark and the red of my lips already smeared from the friction.

It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened to me in the woods. It was only the second. But this time, I knew right away, I wanted more.

***

His hands gripped my hips and set a rhythm that didn’t ask my permission. Deeper and harder every time. I felt his sweaty chest against my back, his ragged breathing mixing with the distant murmur of the sea crashing against the rocks down below.

—You’re beautiful like this —he murmured in a hoarse voice, his lips against my nape—. Dressed up, desired, hidden in the woods for me.

The words went all through me. I could only moan, face against the trunk, stockings pulled down, the dress bunched at my waist, feeling more like Lucía than ever before.

He lifted one of my legs, setting my foot on a protruding root, and the angle changed. The thrust went deeper, fuller. My thighs trembled. I no longer knew whether what I felt was pure pleasure or the exact edge where pleasure starts to hurt, and I didn’t want him to stop on either side.

—Do you like being taken like this? —he asked in my ear—. Being desired exactly as you are?

—Yes —I panted—. More.

He slipped two fingers between my lips and made me suck them, and that gesture, that sweet little humiliation, was what finally broke me. I came without him touching me any more than that, shaking all over, my mouth full, my mind blank, my eyes shut against the bark. The whole forest seemed to spin around me.

He didn’t stop. He kept going, deeper, wilder, chasing his own finish with long thrusts that shook me against the tree. I felt him tense, hold his breath, and then one last long, deep push as a low groan slipped from his throat. He stayed inside me for a moment, still, vibrating, before slowly easing off.

We stayed like that for a few seconds, his forehead against my shoulder, both our ragged breaths mingling with the wind. Then he pulled away gently, not with the roughness I had feared. He released my hip and took a step back.

—Thank you —he said, and he sounded sincere.

I turned around at last. His shirt was plastered to his chest and he wore a crooked smile, almost shy for someone who had been holding me against a tree minutes before. He straightened his clothes, ran a hand through his hair, and looked at me one last time, top to bottom, as if storing the image away.

—I don’t usually come this way —he added—. I’m glad I did today.

—Me too —I answered, and it was true.

He disappeared among the pines the way he had come, without looking back, and the sound of his footsteps faded until only the sea remained. I stayed leaning against the trunk, catching my breath, my body still trembling with every beat of my heart. The dress wrinkled, the stockings fallen, my makeup a disaster.

I put myself back together slowly, the same way I had dressed: like a ritual. I pulled the stockings up again, smoothed my skirt, picked up the little mirror from among the leaves. I repainted my lips looking at myself in the reflection, and the woman who looked back at me was tousled and radiant.

While I packed the clothes into the backpack, I promised myself I would come back. Not for him; I would probably never see him again, and that was fine. I would come back for this: for the woods, for the risk, for the feeling of being, even if only for a stolen while among the trees and the sea, exactly who I wanted to be.