The Night We Left the Door Ajar

In other stories, I’ve already told how I met Mateo and how we ended up tangled in something neither of us knew how to name. This one is different. It’s short, but it’s the one I remember coming back to most, because it was the night I discovered how much I liked being watched.

At the time, his girlfriend was still living in Spain, and although that should have stopped me, it didn’t. Some of his friends already knew about us. They knew without anyone telling them in words, from the way we sought each other out whenever we thought no one was watching. Sometimes we went out together, the three or four of us, for drinks or to some party, and I felt like part of a secret everyone carried with a smile.

There were five of us at first that night. Mateo, me, a couple who were friends of his, and a guy I barely knew, Sergio. We’d arranged to meet at a bar a couple of blocks from his apartment, one of those places with low lighting and music loud enough that you had to lean close to the other person’s ear to talk. Places like that always loosen me up. Knees brushing beneath the table, the excuse of leaning closer to listen, a hand lingering a second too long on a thigh.

“Another round?” Mateo asked, already wearing that look I knew far too well.

“One more and we’ll go,” I said, although none of us had any intention of going to bed.

The couple said goodbye outside the bar. They had to get up early, they said, or maybe they’d simply read the mood and understood that we were after something else. So there were three of us in the end: Mateo, Sergio, and me, walking down the empty street with that loose laughter alcohol leaves you with when it’s still too early to regret anything.

We stopped at a store and bought something else to keep drinking at the apartment. Sergio insisted on paying, the way men do when they aren’t quite sure what role they’re supposed to play on a night like that. I watched him from the corner of my eye. He was quiet, attentive, with a way of looking at me that wasn’t quite brazen but wasn’t innocent either.

***

Mateo’s apartment was small and cozy, with a single lamp lit in the living room and a blanket tossed over the couch. We put on a movie none of the three of us was going to watch. All three of us sat on the same sofa, me in the middle, Mateo on my right and Sergio at the far end, leaving an polite distance between us that wasn’t going to last.

The problem with Mateo and me was that we could never be close without touching. It started as always, with his hand resting on my knee, moving slowly upward while we pretended to pay attention to the screen. I tried to hold myself back. I really did, out of respect for Sergio, who was sitting right there beside us drinking his beer as if he didn’t notice a thing.

But alcohol and desire are a bad combination when it comes to prudence. At some point I turned my face toward Mateo and we kissed. It was a slow kiss at first, the kind that tests how far you can go, and then it stopped being slow. His fingers tangled in my hair, my hand found his leg, and the movie became a murmur in the background that no longer meant anything.

We shouldn’t, there’s someone else here. The thought crossed my mind and, instead of stopping me, turned me on.

“Do you mind if we leave you alone for a while?” Mateo asked Sergio, his voice rougher than he intended.

Sergio got up with a crooked smile and said it was no problem, that he was going for another beer. I watched him walk toward the kitchen, and for a second I wondered what he was thinking, what he imagined while we disappeared down the hallway.

***

We went into the bedroom and the darkness swallowed us. We were so focused on each other that neither of us noticed the door hadn’t been properly closed, a narrow crack through which the light from the living room filtered.

We started taking off our clothes both unhurriedly and hurriedly, that contradiction that exists only when you want someone badly. I kissed his neck, biting slowly just below his ear, where I knew his skin would break out in goose bumps. I pressed my breasts against his so he could feel my hard nipples through the last garment I had on, and he answered by taking me by the hips, pulling me against his body with a firmness that left me breathless.

I knelt in front of him. There was something about that position I liked more than anything else, the sense of control that comes from being on your knees when you’re actually the one in charge. I heard him hold his breath, felt him reach for support on my shoulder, and for a moment the world narrowed to his voice breaking into a low moan that made me hotter than any caress.

When I stood up and turned my head, I saw him. The door had opened a little farther, and Sergio was there in the hallway, watching. Mateo had his back to the door, so he hadn’t noticed a thing. Only I knew. My gaze met Sergio’s in the half-light, and instead of being frightened, instead of covering myself, I winked at him. A silent invitation: stay, watch.

I kissed Mateo with a new urgency and whispered in his ear to lie back, that I wanted to ride him. I gently pushed him onto the bed and climbed on top of him, holding his gaze as I slid over his body until I felt him completely inside me. I lowered my weight slowly, all the way down, and let out a long sigh I didn’t pretend for anyone’s sake.

He took me by the waist and began setting the pace from below. He watched my breasts move with every thrust, then lifted himself slightly to reach them with his mouth, kissing them and barely biting. As he did, I kept turning my face toward the crack in the door, where Sergio was still watching every movement. Knowing I was being watched, feeling those eyes fixed on my back while Mateo filled me again and again, was too much. My first orgasm caught up with me like that, watching a stranger watch me, my body trembling in a way it hadn’t trembled in a long time.

***

When Mateo pulled his mouth away from my breast and opened his eyes, he discovered Sergio in the doorway. He didn’t startle. On the contrary. Something in his expression changed, a spark of pride, of wanting to show what he could do now that he had an audience.

“Get on all fours,” he whispered in my ear. “Facing the door.”

I obeyed without thinking. I positioned myself so Sergio had a full view, my hips raised, my face turned so I wouldn’t miss the details of his reaction. Mateo spread me open with his hands and entered me in a single thrust that tore a moan from me I couldn’t control. He began moving hard, deep, without pause, and I begged him for more between gasps, not caring that the other man heard every word.

He pulled my hair and slapped me, the sound echoing through the room. He knew how much I liked that, and Sergio’s presence aroused him as much as it did me. He thrust into me with an intensity I’d never known in him, as if every stroke were a declaration aimed at the man watching us from the shadows. He made me moan like never before, loudly, shamelessly, letting my voice fill the entire apartment.

From the corner of my eye I could see that Sergio wasn’t pretending anymore. He had opened his pants and was stroking himself slowly, hypnotized by the show we were giving him. That image, of someone getting aroused simply by watching me, pushed me toward the edge once more. My second orgasm left my arms too weak to support me, my face buried in the sheets, my entire body vibrating.

***

Mateo was close; I could tell from the way his breathing was becoming irregular. And judging by what I could see, Sergio wasn’t far behind either.

“Do you want to see something in particular?” Mateo asked him, almost breathless, speaking to him for the first time.

Sergio took a second to answer, as if he couldn’t believe he had permission to ask.

“I want to see her when you come. On her face, or on her breasts. Wherever she wants.”

I liked that he let me choose. I knelt in front of Mateo, side-on to the door so Sergio would have the best possible angle, and took him into my mouth again. I worked slowly, looking toward the hallway from time to time, enjoying the power of being the center of two gazes at once. When I felt Mateo was about to come, I pulled away just slightly, and after a few more strokes I felt the heat spill over my skin. I closed my eyes and smiled.

Sergio lasted only a few seconds longer. I heard him release a muffled moan from his corner, and then silence, that thick silence that remains when desire suddenly dies down and awareness returns of what has just happened.

A few minutes later, the three of us went back out to the living room, dressed again, with that friendly awkwardness that follows. Sergio said he had to leave, that it had gotten late. We walked him to the door amid half-hearted laughter and glances promising not to say anything.

Too bad, I thought as I watched him go down the stairs. We were going to invite him to stay. Maybe next time he wouldn’t settle for watching from the hallway.