That Stranger on the Bus Wouldn’t Look Away

Renata was fifty-two and had a figure the mirror had slowly taught her to accept. Wide hips, a waist still defined, shapely legs that still made heads turn in the street. She wore her hair at neck length, dyed a warm brown, and her skin was the golden shade of toasted almonds. A short, full-bodied woman, the kind no straight-cut dress could ever quite disguise. Big tits, still firm beneath her bra, with dark, wide nipples that hardened at the slightest draft, and a pussy with thick lips that still grew wet just imagining someone’s tongue running over it.

Her husband, Esteban, hadn’t looked at her that way in years. After twenty-seven years of marriage, the nights were comfortable silence and the days were coffee shared at the same hour. No passion, no urgency. She had learned not to ask him for anything and to save her desire for bath time, a trashy novel, a stray fantasy before falling asleep. She masturbated in the shower with the showerhead between her legs, letting the hot stream pound her clitoris until she had to bite her forearm to keep from screaming. Sometimes she slipped two fingers into her pussy while squeezing one tit with her other hand, imagining a hungry mouth sucking her nipple, a hard cock thrusting in and out of her again and again. And always, always, when she finished, that mixture of pleasure and rage at having to come alone.

That October Sunday, however, Renata dressed as if she were going to meet someone. A tight black skirt ending two fingers above her knee. Smoke-colored stockings held up by a lace garter belt she had bought the previous winter and had never dared to wear. A black button-down blouse with a lower neckline than she usually wore. Black lace panties, so thin that as soon as she put them on, she felt the seam caressing the lips of her pussy. Sensible heels, perfume behind her ears and on her wrists, and one extra drop between her breasts.

“I’m going to my sister’s,” she told Esteban, who barely looked up from his newspaper.

It wasn’t entirely a lie. She would go later. First she wanted to walk, to feel herself being watched, to occupy the street.

The neighborhood was unusually empty. Maybe there was soccer on television, or perhaps it was the rain that had been forecast but still hadn’t fallen. The sidewalks belonged to her. Every step gave her back the feeling of being a whole body, not a mother or a wife or the cashier at the family shop. Just Renata. A body with a pussy, an ass, tits, and hunger.

The bus stop was deserted. When the bus pulled up, two minutes late as always, she saw that it was nearly empty too. The driver murmured a tired greeting. She paid and sat near the back, where the seats faced one another in pairs with a narrow central aisle between them. She chose a side, crossed her legs, and adjusted her skirt.

Through the window she could see the low buildings, the closed awnings, a bakery just opening. She took out her phone to distract herself and, without meaning to, caught herself looking at her reflection in the dark screen, checking that her lipstick was still intact.

***

Two stops later, the bus braked again. A single passenger got on. A man.

She took him in without looking at him directly. Older than she was. In his early sixties. Gray hair combed back, a short beard of the same color, a tobacco-colored coat. He carried a bag of bread and a folded newspaper under his arm. He walked toward the back with the calm steadiness of someone in no hurry. When he reached the facing seats, he chose the one directly in front of Renata.

“Would you mind passing these to the driver?” he asked, in a deep voice that sounded younger than his face.

“Not at all.”

The gesture was minimal. He placed the coins in her open palm. His fingers brushed her skin for an instant too long, warm fingertips pressing almost unintentionally. Renata felt heat climb her neck, and lower down, a wet stab between her legs. She passed the coins up front, received the change, and turned to hand it back.

As she turned, her skirt rode up. Barely a couple of inches. Enough for the garter clasp and the black lace at the top of the stocking to show on the upper part of her thigh.

The man, his hand extended to receive the coins, didn’t move his eyes toward them. He kept them fixed where the skirt’s fabric had folded back. Renata saw him. Saw him looking. And for a tenth of a second, instead of pulling her skirt down immediately, she met his gaze.

He didn’t look away either. He gave the faintest smile, one corner of his mustache lifting.

She adjusted the fabric slowly, without hurry, like someone putting away a box without quite closing it.

“Thank you,” the man said.

“You’re welcome.”

***

The bus continued along its route. The stops went by empty. Nobody got on, nobody got off. There was only the hum of the engine and the faint squeak of a poorly fastened strap against the glass.

The man, sitting opposite her, had opened his newspaper. Or pretended to. Every two pages, he raised his eyes over the paper and looked at her. Renata, with her head turned toward the window, felt the weight of that gaze on her legs, on the curve of her thigh, on her cleavage. She felt her nipples pressing tight against her bra, felt her pussy beginning to throb little by little, with a slow, hot pulse.

Her breathing trembled. Not from fear. From something else.

She thought about closing her knees more tightly. She thought about changing seats. She thought about all the things a respectable fifty-two-year-old woman ought to think about. And she did none of them.

She did the opposite.

She leaned back against the seat, let her weight fall slightly backward, and uncrossed her legs. Slowly. Her thighs remained together, but her skirt climbed again, this time of its own accord, revealing another inch of stocking and a glint of the garter’s metal clasp against her skin.

The newspaper lowered two inches. The man’s eyes settled on the opening. He looked at her without pretending otherwise, with the calm boldness of someone who knew she wasn’t going to protest.

Renata bit her lower lip.

Let him look. Let him look all he wants. Let him get hard thinking about me.

The thought ran through her with a clarity she hadn’t felt in years. A hot current between her legs, a new beat in her chest, her nipples hardening against her bra until they hurt. She felt a drop of wetness beginning to soak the fabric of her panties, felt her pussy opening inside, asking for something, anything. It was ridiculous. It was a bus ride on a Sunday morning. And yet she was wetter than she had been in years.

***

The man set the newspaper on the seat beside him. He wasn’t pretending anymore. He propped his elbow on the armrest, his hand near his face, and looked at her as if he wanted to memorize her. His gaze dropped to her legs, rose to her cleavage, then returned to her eyes. Renata felt naked with her clothes on. It was the first time in a long while.

Under her skirt, without lifting it, she rested her hand on her thigh. Her fingers brushed the lace of the garter belt. They moved up a little. Down a little. It was a gesture anyone could mistake for a nervous tic, for smoothing the fabric. But they both knew what it was.

The man swallowed. Renata saw it. Saw his Adam’s apple rise and fall. Saw how, without taking his eyes from hers, he adjusted the crotch of his trousers with his hand. Something had awakened there. Something obvious. His cock showed thickly through the fabric, pulling to one side, and he arranged it with the edge of his hand as if positioning a restless animal.

A low gasp escaped Renata. She couldn’t help it. Seeing a hard cock beneath a man’s trousers, hard because of her, after so many years, was a lash. She felt herself grow even wetter. A delicious, obscene warmth soaked her underwear up to the garter belt. She ran her tongue over her lip, and the man noticed.

And yet it was happening. A bus ride, a look, the brush of coins—they were giving back everything she had gone so many years without feeling.

***

She glanced at the driver. He had his back to them, focused on the nonexistent traffic, the radio tuned to a station playing old boleros. The aisle remained empty. If there were cameras on the bus, she couldn’t see them.

Renata leaned forward slightly, just enough for the neckline of her blouse to fall another inch. The man looked. Of course he looked. His eyes stayed fixed where the skin dipped between her breasts, that deep cleft she sometimes caressed in the shower while imagining another mouth there.

She lifted her hand and slowly undid the second button of her blouse. Then the third. The lace edge of her bra became visible, along with the full curve of a tit squeezed by the cup, its nipple outlined, dark and thick, pushing against the fabric.

He drew a deep breath, almost a moan. His hand moved over his trousers again, now more openly. He wasn’t adjusting himself anymore: he was squeezing. Tracing the rigid shape outlined beneath the fabric, long and thick; the head of his cock showed against the seam. Renata followed the movement with her eyes and felt her mouth water. She imagined herself on her knees in the bus aisle, lowering his zipper with her teeth, pulling out his cock and taking all of it into her mouth, down to her throat.

Renata spread her knees. A few inches. Enough for the light coming through the window to pass through her skirt and reveal, in the black triangle of her panties, a darker, wetter shadow. A round, shining stain that kept growing.

A sigh escaped her. Small. Barely audible over the engine.

***

She slipped her hand beneath her skirt. She didn’t take it out. She simply slid it along the inside of her thigh, over the stocking, to the edge of the garter belt. And from there, a little higher. To the already soaked fabric of her panties.

She touched herself through them. One finger, then two. A light pressure on her clitoris that made her clench her teeth. She closed her eyes for an instant, then opened them again because she didn’t want to miss his face. She moved her fingers in small circles over the fabric, feeling her pussy throb beneath it, feeling her lips swell, feeling her wetness run between her buttocks.

The man’s mouth hung open. A bead of sweat shone at his temple. Without pretending anymore, without the slightest care, he had slipped his hand into his trouser pocket and was moving it slowly against his member, holding himself back. His face flushed by degrees. She imagined what his cock must be like in there, how he was rubbing the glans against the pocket lining, how it must already be dripping pre-cum onto the fabric.

Renata lowered her other hand to her cleavage. She slipped her fingers beneath her blouse, beneath her bra. She pulled out an entire tit, lifting it onto the cup, with her nipple hard and bare beneath the open blouse. She pinched it between thumb and forefinger, twisting it slowly, feeling every tug send an electric shock to her pussy that joined the one rising from below. The man let out an audible gasp when he saw the dark nipple peeking between the lace. He pulled his hand from his pocket and, with two fingers, lowered his trouser zipper.

She was a stranger to herself. She was a woman doing things Renata had never imagined. She was a loose slut at nine in the morning. And she was in ecstasy.

***

The bus rounded a corner. Inertia pushed her sideways and her skirt rode up even farther, leaving almost the edge of her panties in view. She didn’t pull it down. She let it. The man bit his lip and, with his zipper already open, slipped his hand inside his underwear and pulled himself out. There, in the seat opposite her, on an empty bus, he took his cock out into the open. Thick, long, its purple, shining head already crowned with a fat drop of semen. He closed his fist around it and began to masturbate slowly, without taking his eyes off her, moving the foreskin back and forth with an almost solemn slowness.

Renata’s breath caught. No one had ever exposed himself to her like that; no stranger had ever pulled his cock out for her. She felt shame and ferocious hunger at the same time. She licked her lips. She wanted to cross the aisle, kneel between his legs, and take that entire cock into her mouth, suck him until she choked, feel the head press against her palate, lick him with her tongue circling his glans until he came all over her face.

Instead, she moved the fabric of her panties aside and slid her fingers inside the lace. She found her skin, found the heat, found the wetness that now soaked part of her thigh. The lips of her pussy opened, swollen and slippery. She began moving in slow circles over her clitoris, barely taking her eyes off him, barely blinking. She lowered two fingers, slipped in one first and then the second, pushing them all the way in, and felt her pussy close around them, squeezing. She pulled them out gleaming with wetness and brought them back up to her clitoris, smearing everything, playing in circles, tightening, loosening.

The man clenched his jaw. He sped up his hand on his cock. She could see his fist rising and falling over the swollen shaft, the muscles in his arm tightening, his breathing turning into short, hoarse gasps. She imagined he had gone years, perhaps, without witnessing anything like this. Maybe never. Maybe only in the dreams he allowed himself after dinner. And now an unknown woman, on a deserted bus at nine on a Sunday morning, was opening her legs and masturbating in front of him with two fingers inside her pussy.

Renata felt herself nearing the edge. Too quickly. She sped up her fingers a little, eased off, sped up again, playing with the tension. She pulled her fingers from her pussy and brought them to her mouth without taking her eyes off him. She sucked them slowly, one first and then the other, tasting herself. A low, guttural moan escaped the man. His cock jerked in his hand. She lowered her fingers again, now wet with saliva and pussy juice, and continued pounding her clitoris with a more urgent rhythm.

She didn’t want to finish yet. She didn’t want to finish there. But her body no longer obeyed her.

***

But the bus didn’t wait.

The speaker announced the next stop. Market Square. The square full of old churches and pigeons. Renata opened her eyes fully. Three seconds to decide.

She pressed her fingers hard against her clitoris, one last brutal circle, and the orgasm split her in half. A blind spasm that rose from her pussy to her chest, making her clamp her thighs together and crush her hand against herself, forcing a muffled moan from her that she had to bite back against her lip. Her pussy contracted around nothing, throbbing, soaking her hand and panties and the upper part of her thigh even more. Across from her, the man released a hoarse grunt, and she saw the first jets of semen spurt between his fingers, thick and white, falling onto his hand, onto his dark trousers, one even landing farther away on the floor of the bus. They came at the same time, looking at each other, without touching, two yards apart.

She pulled out her hand. She licked one finger discreetly, one last gesture for him. She pulled down her skirt with a precise movement. She tucked her tit back into her bra. She buttoned the blouse she had opened. She rose from the seat with her legs still trembling, smoothed the fabric, and adjusted the strap of her handbag over her shoulder.

The man looked at her imploringly, his cock still out, shining with semen, his hand stained. His mouth hung open, his eyes reddened. He didn’t dare ask. Didn’t dare request anything of her.

She leaned toward him as she passed. In a very low voice, beside his ear, she said:

“Thank you for looking. And for letting me see you.”

And she got off.

***

The bus pulled away. Renata walked across the square with her back straight and a tingling between her legs that wasn’t going to fade anytime soon. Her legs trembled a little. Her panties were soaked, clinging to her still-sensitive pussy. With every step, she felt her swollen lips brushing against each other and sending a small echo of the orgasm through her. Her pulse was racing.

She stopped beneath the awning of a closed pharmacy and laughed. A low, astonished laugh, almost embarrassed. Where had all of that come from? Who was this woman who had awakened inside her during a fourteen-minute ride? A woman who had made herself come in public, who had watched a stranger come with his cock out and had enjoyed it, who had wanted more.

She thought of Esteban, his newspaper, his silences. Not with anger. With a new clarity. She wasn’t going to leave him. She wasn’t going to make a scene. But something had changed, and she wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.

She had liked being watched. She had liked watching him watch her. She had liked seeing his cock hard because of her, seeing him come because of her. She had liked the minimal danger, the new electricity, discovering that inside her was a body that still knew how to ask and receive, a pussy that still knew how to grow wet enough to soak through her clothes.

She decided, as a newer, fuller bus approached the stop, that she wouldn’t go to her sister’s that Sunday. She would sit in a café overlooking the street, her panties still wet and clinging to her throbbing pussy. She would order something sweet and a cortado. And she would dress the same way again, some other ordinary morning, to take another empty bus. And next time, perhaps, she would cross the aisle.