The Woman Who Watched Me in Front of the Painting

Ingrid repeats it whenever she gets the chance: that I don’t look like the same woman when I’m wearing my office uniform. At work I’m rigorous, dry, even authoritarian in appearance. Outside of it I transform into someone relaxed, flirtatious, and, what surprises her most, with an obvious taste for showing myself off.

—When we were just roommates, I never would have imagined you liked showing your body off so much —she told me one afternoon, after taking a picture of me on a terrace, wearing a skirt that was higher than prudence allowed.

She didn’t say it reproachfully. She said it with that half smile I already knew, the smile of someone who has discovered a secret and enjoys keeping it.

Lucía, my roommate for the past three years, also knows my quirks well. She has an artistic background; she draws and paints at a level that seems to me to belong to another world. She was the one who told me about the exhibition.

—There’s a gallery downtown with copies of a painter who was in Vienna at the beginning of the century —she explained while we were having dinner—. Does The Kiss, by Klimt, ring a bell?

—Of course it does.

—Well, there are copies of Klimt and Schiele, mostly. And a couple of other artists. You have to go. —She lowered her voice, amused—. And since I know you, I already know which one you’re going to prefer above all the others. You’ll tell me whether I guessed right.

***

It piqued my curiosity so much that, as soon as I had a free morning, I went straight to the gallery. There was hardly anyone there, as is usually the case in places like that. The paintings had a clearly erotic theme, very striking, some of them bordering on the explicit. I moved slowly from one to the next, stopping at each, feeling the heat rise up my neck and travel straight down between my legs. More than one canvas showed open cunts, erect cocks, mouths devouring each other. I noticed my panties growing wet as soon as I passed the third painting.

And then I came to it.

Three naked female bodies, a goldfish, waves of gold, flashes that seemed to move beneath the light. I don’t know how long I stood there in front of that image. I lost all sense of the place, of time, of myself. I was completely lost in it, fascinated, when I felt a hand settle with extreme gentleness on my left hip.

The contact brought me abruptly back to reality. I knew at once that it was a woman’s hand: the weight, the delicacy, the way it rested without squeezing. Before I could turn my head, I heard a voice barely louder than a whisper beside my ear.

—I’ve been standing here beside you for a while, watching you. This painting fascinates me too. I would have sold my soul to be the girl looking back, the one showing her body without shame while someone gazes at her.

If the painting had surprised me, the person surprised me even more. When I turned around, I recognized Adela, Lucía’s aunt. I had seen her only once, a few weeks earlier, in a situation neither of us had ever mentioned. She gave me two kisses as though we were old acquaintances.

—With you, everything is a coincidence —she said, without quite letting go of my waist—. Knowing your home, you sharing an apartment with my niece, running into each other here, right in front of this painting, both of us hypnotized by the same thing. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t like to be that woman, the one who posed so that a stranger could look at her and who smiles, delighted that he does.

All I could do was nod. It was exactly what I felt. Something in the way she spoke, so directly, without apology, disarmed me.

—It’s exactly what I want too —she added—. To be that protagonist. To have my ass, my tits, my cunt looked at. Without asking permission, without lowering my eyes.

She said it so softly that only I heard her, and I felt my stomach clench and my panties stick to my sex, soaked through.

***

I thought it was a good time for lunch and suggested calling Lucía so she could join us. The three of us ate on a terrace, and that was where Adela undressed, though only with words.

She confessed to her niece, more than to me, that she led a double life. To the world she was an impeccable, restrained woman, the sort who watched every gesture because of the position she held. In private she allowed herself every pleasure her body asked for: men, women, threesomes, fucking in places where she might get caught, coming while watching herself in the mirror with two fingers buried deep inside. That was precisely what she had been doing the day I caught her in my own apartment a few weeks earlier.

—You reacted with an elegance I hadn’t expected —she told me, looking at me over the rim of her glass—. You didn’t lose your composure. I appreciated that.

—Neither did you —I replied—. I watched you through the peephole in the door. I saw you get dressed without hurrying, choosing your clothes carefully before leaving. So calmly that it left me speechless. And I also saw you wipe your fingers with a handkerchief before pulling your panties back up. I know perfectly well what you’d been doing.

Adela let out a low laugh and looked at me as though I had just climbed several rungs in her estimation.

Lucía listened with a crooked smile, amused to see her aunt and her roommate recognize themselves in each other like that, without beating around the bush. When the subject of the exhibition came up, she raised a hand.

—Wait. Since we’re confessing things, I’m going to add something. —She took out a napkin and discreetly wrote on it, covering it with her palm—. The two of you tell me which was your favorite painting.

—The Goldfish —Adela and I said at the same time.

Lucía turned the napkin around. She had written the same title.

—I know you far too well —she said, looking at me—. I knew which one you would choose before you even went in.

Then I did something I hadn’t expected even of myself. I ran my hands down my hips, under my skirt, and slid my underwear down until I took it off beneath the table. They were soaked, hot, the cotton stained dark between the legs. I handed them to Lucía discreetly, but where Adela could see.

—Here. You’ve earned them.

Lucía squeezed them in her fist for a second, and I saw her eyes widen when she felt the moisture. Adela bit her lower lip and lowered her gaze to my thighs, as if calculating what lay just beneath the skirt now that there was no fabric in the way.

They both looked at me, then looked at each other, and smiled in surprise. Adela and I began commenting on how much we would have enjoyed posing for that painting, being the woman who lets herself be watched, fucked, touched in front of a stranger with a paintbrush. Lucía didn’t answer. She simply remained thoughtful and silent, the napkin—and my panties—still between her fingers.

***

It was a radiant day. The sun poured through the terrace windows, and Lucía suggested spending the rest of the afternoon at the beach.

—Do you mind if I come with you? —Adela asked.

—Of course not. Come along —we both said at once.

Lucía paid, and we went home to change. Between the two of us, we lent her all the beach clothes she needed: she preferred a bikini to a one-piece, a light dress, and even a handbag. She took off her designer clothes in Lucía’s room with the naturalness of someone who had nothing to hide. I caught a glimpse of her from the hallway: firm, round tits, with dark, pronounced nipples; a completely shaved cunt, prominent lips, her sex open and visible between her thighs with not a single hair covering it. She didn’t look away when she noticed me watching her. On the contrary, she turned her hips slightly so I could see her better and smiled. Then she asked us for a minute in the bathroom to remove her makeup. When she came out, without makeup and with her hair tied back, she looked like another woman. Younger. More real. More fuckable, I thought before I could stop myself.

***

When we reached the sand, Lucía and I did what we always did: we ran into the water while Adela stayed on the lounge chair, arranging our things.

—Auntie, do we have to wait for digestion? —Lucía called from the shore, laughing—. Like you used to tell me when I was little.

The reply was a burst of laughter that reached us over the waves.

When we came back, dripping wet and with our skin prickling from the cold water, Adela was already lying facedown on the towel.

—Marina, would you mind putting sunscreen on me? —she said, barely turning her head—. I wouldn’t want to get burned at my age.

Lucía gave me a gesture I understood instantly. It meant something like “put the lotion on her slowly.” Lotion, massage, time. All three. And something more, something her eyes said with absolute clarity: make her come here, on the sand, in front of everyone.

Adela settled herself: facedown, arms extended, legs slightly apart, her bikini still fully on. I began with her neck and shoulders, spreading the oil with my palms. Her skin was firm, surprisingly firm for a woman at least twenty years older than me.

—For your back, you’d better untie the top —I suggested.

—All right. In fact, I’ll just take it off.

She undid her top herself and set it aside. As she did, I noticed she didn’t have a single tan line, her tan even all over her body. I said nothing. I continued spreading the lotion over her back, feeling her breathing grow slower beneath my hands.

When I reached the small of her back, I pulled the bottom of her bikini down a little without asking and spread lotion over her hips.

—Would you mind tucking the fabric in? —I asked her quietly.

—Yes, do it —she replied without hesitation.

I rubbed lotion over her buttocks, trying to reach as far beneath the fabric as possible. Her ass was round and tight, with the firmness of someone who had worked at it for years. I slid my oily fingers along the cleft and felt her squeeze her thighs for an instant. But then she shifted restlessly, pinching at her bikini, uncomfortable.

—Lucía —she said, turning slightly toward her niece—, would you mind if I took it all the way off? It bothers me tucked in like that.

—Auntie —Lucía replied, watching her with one eyebrow raised—, you don’t have a tan line anywhere. Your whole body is equally tanned. You’ll have to explain that one.

—The pool at home —Adela answered with studied calm—. I don’t use the diving board much, but the loungers are very useful. As you can see.

She pulled the bikini down to her ankles with a lazy gesture, took it off, and left it folded on the towel. She was completely naked, facedown, her oiled ass shining beneath the sun, her legs barely parted, hinting at the shadow of her shaved cunt.

***

—Come on, Marina, keep going before I burn.

I resumed the massage downward. Her calves, her thighs, slowly, letting the heat of the sun and the heat of my hands mingle. She has enviable firmness all over her body, I thought. I moved up the inner sides of her thighs, opening them slightly with the pressure of my fingers, and felt her respond to every movement with restrained tension.

I covered every inch of skin with deliberate slowness. I didn’t want to leave a single millimeter unprotected, I told her, almost jokingly, and she gave a low, guttural laugh that had nothing to do with the sun. Beneath my palms I could feel her whole body responding, her breathing breaking into pauses that grew shorter and shorter.

I opened her legs a little farther and ran my oily fingers along the insides of her thighs, moving higher and higher until the edge of my hand grazed the lips of her cunt. She was soaked. Not with water or lotion. Soaked with hot, thick fluid that gleamed between her thighs as though she had just pulled my fingers out of herself.

—Keep going —she whispered, her mouth pressed to the towel—. Don’t stop now. Please.

I slowly ran my middle finger along her slit, from top to bottom, feeling her lips open as I pushed with my fingertip. She was swollen and hot, her hard clitoris peeking out beneath the skin. I rubbed that spot with two fingers in small circles, while with my other hand I pretended to keep applying lotion to her hips for the benefit of anyone watching from a distance.

—Oh, God —she moaned softly, biting the towel—. Oh, fuck, yes, like that, don’t stop, like that.

I slid my finger downward and plunged it into her cunt. She was so wet that it went all the way in without resistance, and I felt her walls tighten around my finger, pulsing and contracting. I inserted a second finger, then a third. I fucked her slowly with my hand, moving my wrist discreetly back and forth, my palm resting on her pubic mound so that from the outside it looked like nothing more than another massage. Her ass moved in rhythm, arching against my fingers, seeking to take them deeper.

—Harder —she whispered—. Fuck me harder, please. Make me come now.

I sped up. I drove three fingers into her all the way, pulling them almost completely out before plunging them back in up to the knuckles, while my thumb pressed against her clitoris every time I thrust. Muffled moans escaped against the towel’s fabric, her thighs trembled, and I could feel her cunt tightening more and more around my fingers.

What came next was a matter of patience and finding the exact spot. In hardly any time, her body shook in a discreet but brutal convulsion: her cunt closed around my fingers in rhythmic spasms, spilling hot fluid that ran over my palm and down my wrist. A long, dull moan escaped her, swallowed by the towel. She lay still for a moment, her face buried in the fabric, while I slowly withdrew my dripping fingers and stroked her ass with my other hand to disguise what I was doing. Then she turned her head slightly toward me.

—Forgive the vulgarity —she murmured, her eyes half-closed and a languid smile on her face—. But I came like a cat in heat. You shoved your hand all the way inside me and made me come in three minutes like a slut.

I brought my fingers to my nose, pretending nothing was happening, and inhaled the scent of cunt mixed with coconut. Then, as naturally as could be, I wiped them on the towel as though it were nothing.

Lucía, a couple of yards away, was staring out at the sea, pretending she hadn’t seen anything. But I knew her. And I knew, from the way she pressed her lips together to keep from smiling and the way she had one hand inside her swimsuit, squeezing her cunt through the fabric, that she had seen everything. That all three of us knew exactly what had just happened amid the lotion, the sun, and the complicit gaze of someone who enjoyed watching just as much as being fucked.

And I also knew, as I screwed the cap back onto the sunscreen bottle with fingers that still smelled of cunt and coconut, that this story had a second part. And that next time I wasn’t going to settle for making her come with my hand.