What No One in That Café in Rome Was Supposed to Hear

Rome woke wrapped in low clouds and that dry October cold that makes every breath taste of old stone and wet leaves. From the window of our room in a small hotel in Trastevere, the city’s domes and rooftops stood out against a gray sky that, far from disappointing me, seemed like the perfect backdrop for our first week of honeymoon.

We’d been married for three days. Three days in which we’d barely left the bed of our own free will.

Adrián chose dark trousers, a shirt, and a turtleneck sweater for going out, with no other ambition than comfort. I, on the other hand, put on a burgundy wool dress over black stockings, knee-high boots, and a fitted coat that reached my thighs. I gathered my hair into a low bun and put on the long earrings he’d given me the day before.

—You ought to be illegal —he said from the bathroom doorway as I finished putting on my lipstick.

I didn’t answer, but in the mirror I could see the way he looked at me. He came up behind me and gripped my hips, pressing himself against my ass with a cock that was already starting to harden visibly against the fabric of his pants. He bit the nape of my neck over the high collar of the dress.

—If we don’t leave now, I’m going to fuck you against the sink and we won’t even make it to the square —he murmured.

—You promised to show me Rome —I said, though I spread my legs a little without even realizing it.

He laughed against my ear and gave my ass a soft slap before letting me go.

The hotel dining room smelled of espresso and freshly baked bread. We breakfasted slowly, unhurried, with that lazy, complicit slowness of newlyweds who still can’t quite believe what’s just happened to them. The table was small, and our knees soon found each other beneath the tablecloth.

Adrián drank his coffee while looking at me over the rim of the cup. That kind of gaze that stays on you a minute after he’s already looked away.

—Shall we go see the city? —he asked.

—You promised to show it to me —I reminded him.

—I promised you a lot of things.

I bit into the cornetto and didn’t answer.

***

We left the hotel after ten. October air greeted us with that icy bite you appreciate when you’re wearing a good coat and that hurts when you’re not. We were, and besides, we’d been pressed together from the very first step.

Adrián walked with one arm around my waist, tugging me close to his side whenever the wind picked up. We crossed the Tiber on Ponte Sisto and made our way into Campo de' Fiori, which at that hour still smelled of fresh vegetables and the oil from the market stalls.

Rome has that strange quality of making you feel small and eternal at the same time. Every corner is a layer over another layer over another one. We walked for almost two hours with no fixed destination, getting lost in narrow streets where the ancient cobblestones softened the sound of our footsteps and ochre façades filtered a soft, diffused light.

On Via dei Coronari, Adrián stopped me at least four times to take pictures of me on his phone.

—Turn around. No, not like that. Look over there.

I posed between laughter and exasperation, leaning against stone doorways or looking into closed shop windows, while he stepped away a few paces and studied me with that concentration he reserved for things that truly mattered to him.

—Can I keep walking now?

—Wait. One more.

In Piazza Navona we sat for a moment on the edge of the fountain. The cold of the marble was noticeable through my coat, but Adrián wrapped both arms around me from behind and rested his chin on my shoulder. He slid one hand inside my coat, found the hem of my dress, and squeezed my thigh over the stocking, right where the elastic was biting into my skin.

—Are you happy? —he asked softly.

—Yes —I replied.

It was the shortest and truest answer I’d given in a long time.

His fingers moved a centimeter higher, brushing the bare flesh on the inside of my thigh. I closed my eyes for a second. Then I moved his hand away with a smile that fooled no one.

—Not in the street.

—In the street, yes —he said—, but later.

After one in the afternoon, the cold began to win the battle. The river’s damp had worked its way into my bones without my noticing, and my feet, after two hours on the cobblestones, were beginning to complain in silence.

It was when we turned a corner near the Pantheon that the smell stopped us dead.

Freshly ground coffee. Hot butter. The unmistakable aroma of something baking behind a slightly open door. A small place with fogged-up windows and a dark green awning over the entrance was letting that smell escape through the crack like a perfectly laid trap.

—I need to go in there —I said.

Adrián didn’t argue.

***

The interior welcomed us with a blast of hot air and that low, friendly hum of lunch-hour places full of people: conversations in Italian, the clink of dishes, the espresso machine hissing steam. The ceiling was low, the walls covered with framed black-and-white photos, and the tiled floor had spent decades telling the stories of wet shoes.

We were lucky. There was a free table at the back, by the wall, small and round, with barely enough room for the cups and our elbows.

We took off our coats and hung them on a wooden rack by the wall. Without the wool between us and the room, the heat wrapped around us at once. We ordered two hot chocolates and a pair of cookies.

For a while we simply sat there, regaining our warmth while looking out through the fogged window. People passed outside hunched against the wind. We were inside, our feet intertwined beneath the table without either of us having consciously decided it.

I told him my impressions of the morning. He listened, nodding, the cup in his hands. We looked like two ordinary tourists. We looked like two people on a textbook honeymoon.

But then I looked up and caught him.

He wasn’t listening to me. He was looking at my mouth.

He watched the way my lips caught the thick chocolate from the rim of the cup. He watched the tip of my tongue brush the corner to clean away a drop that threatened to escape. His eyes had nothing touristy about them.

—You missed everything I just told you —I said.

—Completely —he admitted without shame.

—What were you thinking about?

He set the cup on the saucer carefully. He leaned forward, reducing the distance between us to something ridiculous, and spoke in a very low voice. Low enough that only I could hear him over the noise in the place.

—I was thinking that ever since breakfast you’ve been crossing your legs that way, and that it’s taking a brutal effort not to put my hand under the table, shove your panties aside, and check how soaked your cunt is right now. I was thinking about how I want you to use that mouth when we leave here. How well you suck me off and how badly I want to cum against the back of your throat.

Heat rose through my chest before I could do anything to stop it. I shifted in the chair, feeling the friction of the stockings against the boots, my pulse hammering in my throat, and a very specific, humiliating wetness growing between my thighs.

—You said the reward was tonight —I reminded him, tracing the edge of the cup with my finger to buy time.

—I still don’t understand why it has to be tonight —he replied—. Rome is the oldest city in the world. Something this urgent shouldn’t have to wait.

I laughed despite myself.

—We’re in a restaurant full of people.

—I know.

His eyes never left mine.

—There’s a bathroom at the end of that hallway —he said—. I saw it when we came in.

Pause.

—Will you come with me?

It wasn’t an order. With him, they never were. It was a question with the answer hanging in the air between us, waiting for me to choose whether to take it or let it fall.

The problem was that my body had made the decision before my head had finished processing the question. I could feel my nipples hard against my bra, pressing through the wool of the dress, and my panties already visibly damp against the swollen lips of my cunt.

I stood up slowly. I felt the friction of my stockings against the inside of my boots, the weight of the bun at the nape of my neck, my pulse speeding up even more.

—Five minutes —I said softly—. And behave yourself.

He smiled crookedly.

—I make no promises.

***

We left our coats hanging and the half-finished cups on the table. A couple of coats and a couple of cups of chocolate are the best sign of occupancy there is in a restaurant. No one would take our table for at least ten minutes.

I walked behind him through the narrow hallway that smelled of spices and lemon detergent. The murmur of the café faded behind us. A small brass plaque indicated the restrooms at the end, next to the kitchen door.

Adrián pushed the men’s bathroom door open carefully, just enough to peek in. Then he looked at me and nodded.

We went in.

The space was small and immaculate. Two wall-mounted urinals, a white ceramic sink, and a single stall at the back with a dark green painted wooden door. The tiled floor was the same as in the dining room and smelled of rosemary soap and clean disinfectant.

We slipped into the stall. Adrián shut the bolt.

The click of metal echoed in the bathroom’s silence as if it were the only sound in the world.

I stood between his body and the wall, my back a few inches from the cold tile. The space was so tight that every movement was a brush, and every brush was a small fire.

—Hi —he said, very softly.

—Hi —I replied.

I rose onto my toes and kissed him before he’d finished smiling.

The kiss was nothing like the ones at breakfast. It was urgent and clumsy and tasted of chocolate and coffee and three days of honeymoon condensed into a single point of pressure. His tongue came into my mouth as if it had been waiting for hours, and I sucked on it with a desperation I hadn’t thought myself capable of. His hands found my hips beneath the coat I wasn’t wearing, searching for the fabric of my dress, sliding up my thighs to the edge of my stockings.

I felt him swallow when his fingers found the end of the fabric and the beginning of my skin. They kept going upward, until they found the soaked fabric of my panties.

—Fuck —he whispered against my mouth—. You’re dripping.

He pulled the fabric aside with two fingers and ran the pad of his finger along the length of my cunt, from bottom to top, very slowly, until he found my clit. A gasp escaped me, and I muffled it against his neck.

—Shhh —he said.

His fingers started moving in small circles over the swollen little bud, with that insulting precision he’d spent the last three days perfecting. I was trying not to move my hips and it was impossible: my pelvis sought his hand by instinct, pushing against his knuckles.

He slid two fingers inside me without warning.

The wet sound they made forced me to squeeze my eyes shut. I was so wet that his fingers went all the way in with a single thrust, and I could feel my cunt closing around them as if it had been waiting for them all day.

—You got this fucking wet from what I said out there —he murmured in my ear as he pulled them out and pushed them back in—. Two sentences.

—Shut up —I told him, and my hands went for the button on his pants.

I fumbled the fly open and pulled his cock out from inside his boxer briefs. It was already hard as stone, thick, the tip shiny with a fat bead of precome. I closed my hand around it and squeezed, and he let out a breath against my neck.

He rested his forehead against mine, breathing into my mouth, not moving much.

—I told you —he murmured—. Rome doesn’t wait.

I smiled despite my racing pulse.

—Close your mouth and—

The squeal of the main bathroom door cut us off short.

We froze. Pressed against each other, not breathing, listening to the footsteps of someone who had just come into the bathroom. Me with my husband’s cock in my hand and his two fingers still buried in my cunt.

The sound of shoes on tile. The sink water. The hand dryer humming.

Neither of us moved a millimeter.

My heart was beating so hard I was convinced it could be heard from outside the stall. Adrián kept his hands still, his eyes fixed on mine, not looking away. But very slowly, while the stranger was washing his hands, he curled his fingers inside me and pushed upward, searching for that exact spot that made me lose my mind.

I bit my lip hard enough to hurt.

The footsteps came closer.

They stopped in front of the neighboring stall.

The bolt on the next door shut with the same metallic click as ours.

Adrián let out a very slow breath through his nose. I buried my face in his neck so I wouldn’t laugh out loud.

We were in the bathroom of a Roman café, newly married, with the bolt on and our clothes half on, while a complete stranger twenty centimeters from us settled unhurriedly into the stall next door.

What happened next had been planned by neither of us.

But the risk that that stranger might hear us, that ridiculously thin wooden wall that was the only thing separating us from him, made everything become ten times more intense. That kind of intensity you can’t manufacture. It appears on its own or it doesn’t appear at all.

Adrián looked at me with a silent question, his cock still throbbing in my hand.

I nodded.

He guided me with both hands, soundlessly, until he had me kneeling in front of him. The tiled floor was cold even through the stockings, but I didn’t care. His cock was at mouth level, thick and red, veins standing out, the head glossy. I ran my tongue the full length of it, bottom to top, tasting the salt of the precome, then took it all the way into my mouth in one go.

I heard him bite his knuckle so he wouldn’t moan.

I started sucking him slowly, very slowly, without making the slightest sound. I kept my lips tight around the shaft every time I went up, and used my tongue against the underside of the head when I reached the top. I knew exactly how he liked it. I’d spent three days refreshing my memory.

He held my bun with one hand, not forcing, just keeping time with the rhythm. When I looked up at him from below, with his cock buried to the hilt in my mouth, I saw on his face an expression I’d never seen before: half devotion, half threat. As if he were about to split me in two.

On the other side of the wall came the unmistakable sound of toilet paper rolling on its holder.

I took his cock out of my mouth and ran a broad lick over his balls, one first, then the other, then took him back in until I felt the tip hit the back of my throat. A silent gag shook my chest. Tears sprang to my eyes. Saliva escaped from the corners of my mouth and ran down my chin to the neckline of my dress.

Adrián tugged my bun upward, soft but firm, until I had to let go of him.

—Stand up —he mouthed.

I obeyed. My knees were trembling.

He turned me against the wall with both hands on my hips, silently, and lifted my dress up over my ass. I heard, more than felt, the way he pushed my panties aside with one finger. Then the brush of his hot head against the lips of my cunt, searching for the entrance, sliding through the wetness I’d made myself.

He entered me in one thrust.

I had to bite the back of my hand until I left the mark of my teeth on it so I wouldn’t scream. The moan that escaped me was barely a breath, but he was so close to me that he heard it and covered my mouth with his palm.

—Shhh —he said, almost soundlessly, against my ear—. Make a noise and he’ll hear us.

He started fucking me like that, one hand over my mouth and the other on my hip, holding me against the stall wall. Short thrusts at first, almost restrained, measured to the millimeter so the tiles wouldn’t vibrate, so the bolt wouldn’t rattle, so the sound of our bodies colliding would be reduced to the barest, muffled, secret splashing.

I could feel every centimeter of his cock going in and out, the brutal friction, the head hitting deeper and deeper each time, and that impossible sense of fullness only he could give me. My hands splayed against the cold tile. His chest pressed to my back over the sweater. His broken breathing against my neck.

On the other side of the partition, the stranger coughed once and unfolded what sounded like a newspaper.

The idea that he was there, so close, completely unaware that a woman thirty centimeters from his head was being fucked against the wall, set something off inside me. I pushed my ass back to receive each thrust, seeking more depth, more angle, more of everything.

—Whore —Adrián whispered in my ear, in that low, broken voice he saved for these moments—. Look how much you like getting fucked where they can hear us. Look how tight your cunt is.

I closed my eyes hard.

His thrusts grew longer, deeper, more rhythmic. The hand over my mouth loosened just enough to slide down my neck, slip beneath my dress, and cup one breast inside my bra. He pinched my nipple between thumb and forefinger, and that perfect little pain made me clamp down around him with my whole body.

I felt a low, almost inaudible growl escape him.

The other hand moved down, found my clit again, and started rubbing it in tight circles to the same rhythm as his hips. I was already so close I was shaking all over. Every thrust pushed me a little farther over the edge. The combination of his fingers, his cock, and the absurd danger of doing this there, in a Roman café bathroom, with a stranger a meter from us, had me seconds from coming.

—I’m going —I mouthed, moving only my lips.

—Hold on —he whispered—. Together.

I couldn’t. I came before he did, biting into the sleeve of his sweater, my whole body shaking in small, silent convulsions, clenching around his cock in tight, furious waves while he kept thrusting into me, his breathing getting more and more ragged.

I felt, in the middle of the orgasm, how he sank all the way in one last time, held still for an instant, and then came inside me in hot spasms that filled me completely. A muffled groan escaped him against my shoulder, swallowed by the wool of the dress, but it was a real groan, and for a second I thought we’d been caught.

On the other side of the partition, the stranger turned a page of the newspaper.

We stayed like that for long, long seconds, him still inside me, his come slowly seeping down the inner side of my thigh, between skin and stocking elastic. His forehead resting on the back of my neck. My cheek against the cold tile. The two of us listening to each other’s breathing and the total absence of any other sound in the bathroom.

When he finally pulled out of me, I felt the emptiness like a small mourning.

He turned me around carefully, still not speaking. He lowered my dress. He fixed my bun as best he could with two fingers. He took a paper handkerchief from the pocket of his pants and, crouching down without the slightest shame, slowly wiped me between the legs, drying what was running down the insides of my thighs and along the edge of my stockings.

I looked down at him with trembling hands braced against the partition.

He tucked the handkerchief into the inside pocket of his sweater, put his cock back inside his pants, and pulled up the fly.

We stared at each other with a silent conspirators’ smile.

The noise from the café came muted from the hallway, mixed with the distant murmur of conversations in Italian and the occasional clink of dishes. The world kept spinning on the other side of that green wooden door, utterly unaware of what had just happened inside.

That thought, the contrast between the crowded café and the charged silence of our stall, was the last coherent thing I thought for quite a while.

We didn’t leave that bathroom for five minutes.

***

When we got back to the table, the chocolate was still lukewarm and the coats were still hanging exactly where we’d left them. The waiter passed by us without looking, balancing a tray with the ease that only years of practice give you.

We sat down. We ordered two more coffees.

I could still feel, against the seat, the muted pulse of my swollen cunt, and a warm dampness between my legs that no pocket handkerchief was going to solve entirely. Every time I shifted in the chair, the seam of my panties rubbed against a spot that was already far too sensitive, and a small jolt ran up my spine.

Adrián looked at me over the table with that expression of calm satisfaction I’d already learned to recognize in the three days we’d been married.

—Shall we continue the sightseeing? —he asked.

—Yes —I said—. Though I think I’ve already seen the most interesting part of the day.

He gave a soft laugh.

—Night hasn’t even started yet —he said, and ran his thumb over my lower lip to wipe away an imaginary drop of chocolate—. That was the appetizer.

Outside, Rome was still the same. The cold, the wet cobblestones, the gray October light filtering between the rooftops. Inside, two steaming cups of coffee and two people who’d been married for three days and had just added one more story to the many those old walls held.

Rome accumulates layers. It always has.

Ours was small, ridiculous, and entirely ours.