What Happened When I Took Those Photos of My Wife

I’m Mateo, I’m thirty-eight years old, with the solid build of someone who stopped going to the gym a long time ago but can still hold his own, dark skin, and a full beard. I’m telling you this because context matters: I need you to understand who this happened to.

My wife is called Lorena. She’s a brunette, five foot three, with hair that falls halfway down her back and a way of moving as if she has no idea what effect she has on people. She has those sculpted legs from so much running and an ass her own friends point out in every photo, always with jokes. Lorena wears tight clothes almost without realizing it, and when she gets in the mood for a miniskirt, any little slip leaves her on the edge of scandal. She swears she doesn’t notice. I think she does.

What I’m going to tell you started with a trip to the coast. A long weekend, just the two of us, a small hotel in Punta Brava, a beach town we always went to whenever we could escape the city. The night before we left, Lorena showed me three new bikinis. She took them out of the drawer with a smile I hadn’t seen before, as if she were telling me half a secret.

—Which one do you like? —she asked.

—The red one —I said without hesitation.

—Mmm —she answered, and put all three away without saying anything else.

She was hiding something from me. I knew it then, and I confirmed it later.

The first few days at the beach went by like any normal trip. Walks along the shore, long lunches, naps with the window open. I was crazy about her every night, and every night I fucked her with the same old need, nothing different happening. The different thing came on the last day.

That morning we went into a beach club with a pool, bar, and umbrellas rented by the hour. We each went to our changing room to get dressed. I came out first and sat down on some low loungers set to the side of the women’s changing room, so the view I had was of the backs of the women coming out. I was scrolling through my phone without paying attention when I looked up.

And there she was.

Lorena came out of the changing room with her back to me, without seeing me. She was wearing a bikini I had never seen in my life: a pink thong, with seams at the sides that cheated the fabric and drove it deep between her cheeks. Every step she took was an invitation. I felt heat at the nape of my neck and, at the same time, a confused flash of anger: she had never shown me that bikini at home.

—Hey —I whistled softly.

She turned her head with a smile I knew and didn’t know. It was hers, but with something else in it, a touch of insolence that didn’t come from her body but from knowing exactly what she was doing.

—Bitch —I said as I walked up to her.

—Whyyyyy bitch? —she answered, drawing out the last a, and laughed.

I took her hand and we walked toward the bar area. I didn’t let go the whole way. I could feel the stares as if they had weight: the men on the sun loungers, the bartender who wiped glasses and looked twice, the group of guys in the pool who nudged each other. And instead of the fury I had expected to feel, I felt something else. Something tightening in my chest and spilling downward, toward a heat that was no longer confusion.

***

The club bar had wooden swings hanging from the ceiling instead of stools. Lorena sat on one and swayed gently, with her feet barely touching the sand. The motion lifted her hips and buried the bikini even deeper between her cheeks. Without realizing it, I pulled out my phone.

—Are you going to take pictures of me? —she asked, without looking at me.

—Yeah.

She didn’t object. On the contrary. She changed position, leaned forward, adjusted her hair. She let herself be looked at shamelessly through the screen, and when I lifted my eyes from the phone I noticed that two men at the bar had stopped talking to watch her. She noticed too. I know because when I aimed the camera again, she spread her legs a little wider on the swing.

This wasn’t my wife. Or it was, but it was a version of her I had never seen.

We did something like a photo session. We moved to the pool area. There we found a corner where the light looked beautiful on the tiles and where, by chance, there were more people around. Lorena leaned against the pool edge, bent forward with her back to me, and arched her body in a way she had never shown me. I took one shot from below, another with her opening her cheeks a little with one hand, another looking over her shoulder with her tongue between her teeth. When I lowered the camera I was hard, and I was sure half the men at the club were too.

—Too much? —she asked.

—Too much —I answered.

She smiled and got into the water.

***

That afternoon, while we were packing to go back, she asked me to transfer the photos to her phone. We looked at them together, sitting on the bed, with the curtains half closed and the fan turning overhead. They were daring photos. More than daring. If I had seen them on a friend’s phone, I would have thought it was a soft model, not the woman I’d been sleeping with for eight years.

—Mateo —she said softly—, would it bother you if I posted some?

I felt the jealousy before anything else. A blunt punch in the stomach. I thought about my friends from the office, about my cousin Federico, about the guys from Thursday soccer. I thought about all the men who had looked at her on the beach and who might now look at her again, without the excuse of a swimsuit. I also thought that this was exactly what she was asking me for, and that the request had a name and a shape. She was putting something in my hands that had been silent for a long time.

—Which ones were you going to post? —I asked.

—Some.

—No —I said—. Show me which ones.

She showed me. They were the most explicit ones. The swing shot with the bikini buried deep, the one at the pool edge with her cheeks just separated, the one with her shoulder bitten. She wasn’t testing the water. She was going all in.

—Post them —I said, and I made a pissed-off face, and a second later I laughed. She laughed with me. I was laughing nervously. She was laughing because she knew perfectly well what she had just gotten away with.

She posted the photos that same night, once we were back in the city, on her social media profile. The likes started rolling in right away. I watched familiar names appear on the list. I watched a coworker leave her a fire emoji and then delete it. I watched my best friend, Esteban, send her a private message: “Quiet vacation, huh?” Lorena read the message out loud to me, laughing, while I finished a beer in the kitchen not knowing what to do with my hands.

***

That night, after dinner, I couldn’t hold back anymore. I pinned her against the kitchen counter before she finished washing the last glass. I hiked up her dress and yanked her underwear down in one pull. She was already soaked, as if she had been waiting for me while thinking about something else all night.

—Baby —she gasped—, weren’t you mad about the photos?

—No.

—Don’t you get jealous that other people see me?

—Yeah —I told her in her ear, while I opened her from behind—. I do. But it turns me on too. Knowing other people look at you wanting you turns me on like never before.

I went into her hard. She gripped the edge of the counter and arched her back as if inviting me deeper. With every thrust I lifted her a little off the floor, and every time her feet came back down, she stuck her ass out more, spread her legs more, as if she were trying to make me get all the way in, not just my cock.

—Would you like me to be your little whore? —she said through clenched teeth.

I stopped for a second. The question had been hidden for years.

—Do you want to be? —I answered.

—When I was little I wanted to dance on a pole —she said. She was looking at the wall, not at me—. I wanted to have the confidence to do it. I don’t like ugly old men. I just wanted them to look at me. I’m rough, I’m not sexy.

—Today at the pool you were sexy.

—Today I was someone else.

—Today you were you, Lorena. You just hadn’t allowed yourself to be.

I pushed into her deeper. She let out a long, rough moan, different from the others. It was the first time I had ever heard her make a sound like that.

—Do you like having your ass looked at? —I asked.

—Mhhhhh —she answered, and didn’t need to say anything more.

—Want me to fuck you somewhere else?

—No —she said quickly, almost angry—. Only you. I’m your little whore.

And she spread her legs wider. As if the word “yours” had set her free instead of tying her down.

We came almost at the same time, with the counter squeaking against the wall and the cat’s bowl falling to the floor with the impact. I didn’t laugh. Neither did she. We stayed wrapped around each other, her still bent over the marble, me pressed against her back, both of us sweating, both of us thinking the same thing.

***

Later, in bed, with the lights off and the fan turning, Lorena asked me if what she felt was strange.

—What thing? —I said.

—This. Being looked at. You wanting me to be looked at. Me wanting you to want that.

—It’s not strange.

—Are you sure?

—Sure.

She stayed silent for a long while. Then she said, almost in a whisper:

—Next time I want you to take me somewhere where I know they’ll look at me. Not by chance. On purpose.

I didn’t answer then. I pretended to be asleep. But I was already thinking about what place that would be.

We’re new at this. Open sexuality was never a topic for us, not even a joke over a meal with wine. And yet there we were, a couple of eight years, suddenly discovering that we had been carrying a drawer full of half-secret things on the nightstand. I’m the one who wants to move forward more. She goes slower, measuring each step, but each step is longer than the last. She didn’t give me the promise that this was only the beginning that night. I gave it to myself, watching her sleep face down, with her back bare and the sheet tangled around one leg, thinking that next time it wouldn’t be by accident on some beach. Next time we’d plan it together.