What They Saw on the Beach Changed the Way We Loved

Bahía Concha beach was packed when we arrived after eleven. Tobías hated the heat—he always said so, always complained about the sand sticking to his feet—but that morning he didn’t protest. I knew why. It wasn’t the sea, it wasn’t the cold beers in the cooler, it wasn’t the reggae playing from a speaker thirty meters away. It was everything else.

We spread the blanket behind a palm tree, close enough to the water to hear the waves, far enough not to have to share an umbrella with anyone. He took off his shirt and stayed in his black swim trunks. I slipped off my chiffon dress and emerged in a red bikini, the one with the thin straps, the one I knew he loved.

—Do you want me to put oil on you? —he asked.

—Start with my back.

I lay on my stomach and felt his hands slide over my skin. It wasn’t a massage, it was a map. His fingers ran down my shoulder blades, spread over the curve of my waist, lingered on the arc of my hips, and every time they brushed the edge of my panties, they left a thread of electricity in my crotch. He didn’t press hard, but with that slow intent that made me arch my back just slightly, offering more. The oil gleamed on my skin and he spread it with his palms, warming my buttocks, the small of my back, the tops of my thighs. Every time his thumb passed over the bikini elastic, he paused for a second, as if hesitating. He wasn’t hesitating. He was looking.

—Who are you looking at? —I asked without lifting my head.

—The blonde under the yellow umbrella.

—Describe her.

Tobías laughed softly, still surprised, after all this time, that I would ask him that. He settled beside me and described the blonde in surgical detail: short hair, freckled shoulders, a small tattoo on her right shoulder blade, firm breasts that showed even through the one-piece swimsuit. The blonde was talking to an older man who was almost certainly not her partner.

—And now? —he said.

—The redhead in the low chair.

—No tattoos, very pale skin, she’s putting sunscreen on her legs and taking her time. She likes being watched.

It had been our game since that first summer. Tobías watched; I listened. Then I watched; he asked. We had never touched anyone else, never seriously talked about doing it. Pleasure came before that, more subtly. Pleasure was knowing the other person’s desire existed, that we could name it out loud, that it came back to me every time he finished looking.

—There’s a guy —I said after a while.

—Where?

—Two o’clock. White shirt open, blue shorts. He’s reading something on his phone and, every five minutes, he looks up and watches me.

Tobías propped himself up slightly and turned his head discreetly.

—He’s watching you, yes. And he’s not the only one.

—Who else?

—The couple under the green canopy. Both of them.

Tingling ran through my body. The couple under the green canopy were a dark-skinned woman in her mid-thirties, wearing a tiny black bikini, and a man who could have been her husband or her lover or a brother a little too close. They were sitting very close together, whispering to each other, and every so often one of them would turn their face toward us.

—What are they going to think? —I asked, amused.

—What they’re thinking now.

I sat up. I put my hands behind my back and slowly untied my bra. It wasn’t a planned decision; it was the natural consequence of knowing we were being watched. The fabric fell onto the blanket and my breasts were in the sun for the first time on a public beach. Size ninety, natural, two tiny moles on the left nipple. I felt the heat of the sun and the heat of the gazes as if they were the same thing.

Tobías said nothing. He stayed quiet, looking at me and then at the people looking at me. He was a voyeur of voyeurs, and that turned him on more than anything else.

—How do they see me? —I asked.

—As if you were the only woman on the beach.

—Liar.

—As if they wanted to be me.

I believed that one.

***

We went down to the water after the second beer. The sand was burning and I ran the last few meters, laughing, until I was waist-deep. The sea was warm on the surface and cold a few inches down, as if there were two different seas stacked one over the other. Tobías followed me and dove headfirst. When he came back up, his hair was plastered to his forehead and he had that look I knew far too well.

—Come here —he said.

I moved closer. He wrapped an arm around my waist and lifted me just enough for my legs to wind around his. My breasts pressed against his chest. I felt them harden against him and knew he felt it too. The water brushing between our bodies was another caress, a warm edge sliding down my belly and soaking my crotch. His hand slipped beneath my bikini, parted the fabric with two fingers, and found my sex already hot, already slick, already claiming everything. He rubbed my clit slowly, in short circles, while I dug my nails into his shoulders so I wouldn’t lose my balance.

—They’re still watching us —he murmured.

—Who?

—The couple under the green canopy. Now they’re standing. She has a camera in her hand, but she isn’t pointing it at us. She’s just looking.

—Does that bother you?

—I love it.

I kissed him. I kissed him deeply, tongue and all, without trying to hide it, letting the water rock us. My hands slid down his back and I slipped my hand inside his trunks. His cock was hard, heavy, the skin taut and hot even under the water. I stroked him from base to tip, feeling him grow in my palm, feeling him shudder when I squeezed the base. He groaned into my mouth and bit my lip softly, as if he wanted to silence me and provoke me at the same time.

—There’s a kid ten meters away —I warned him.

—He’s playing with a bucket. He’s not looking at us.

—There’s an old lady with a hat.

—She’s reading.

—There’s…

—Look to your left.

I turned my head very slowly, pretending I was looking for the shore. About fifteen meters away, in the water, was the woman from the green canopy. Alone, without the man who’d been with her before. The water reached her ribs, her arms were crossed under her breasts—which were also outlined through the black bikini—and she was looking straight at us. Not with embarrassment, not with scandal. With pure curiosity, and with something else too.

Tobías took advantage of my distraction and pushed two fingers deeper. I almost slipped.

I clung to his neck and spread my legs wider. The water covered me, yes, but it didn’t hide the way he was taking me apart. He kept looking at her while he touched me, and that mixture lit me up like gasoline: his fingers inside me, his other hand holding my ass, the woman watching without looking away, the sea sucking and releasing our bodies in its rhythm.

—Don’t look at her so much —he whispered in my ear—. She’s going to come over.

—Let her come.

She didn’t come. She stayed there, watching, until she herself slipped a hand beneath the water, in a gesture only we understood. Then she turned and swam back to her canopy, unhurried, as if she had all the time in the world.

—Was that…? —I began.

—It was —said Tobías.

***

I let go with one hand and pulled down his trunks. His cock came out hard against my belly. I grabbed it under the water, squeezed it, stroked it. The head was shiny, already wet with pre-cum, and I traced it with my thumb while he groaned against my neck, a low, rough sound only I could hear over the roar of the waves. I ran my hand under his balls, heavy and taut, and went back to the shaft, pumping him slowly, feeling every pulse, every twitch in the skin.

—Not here —he said, without conviction.

—Yes here.

I climbed onto him. I wrapped my legs around his waist and held onto his shoulders. The water covered us to the shoulders and no one could see what was happening underneath. They could only see me moving against him, they could see my face, they could imagine the rest. Imagining was enough. Imagining was, in fact, the hottest thing of all.

I pulled my bikini bottom aside and guided him in. The tip brushed my entrance, wet, open, impatient, and then went in all at once, smooth, slow, deep. I sucked in air through my teeth. He filled me all the way, to that exact point where heat turns into sweet pain, and I stayed still for a second to feel him open me, feel my body tighten around him. Then I started moving on top, small, controlled, letting him out just a little and taking him back in. The water helped and hindered at the same time, sliding us, brushing our thighs, pushing his hips against mine.

I closed my eyes. I opened them. The woman from the green canopy was watching us from the shore, now dry, with a white towel over her shoulders and her nipples outlined through the fabric.

—She’s watching —I told him.

—I know.

Tobías held me by the thighs and started moving slowly. He entered and left me with brutal precision, without hurry, driving all the way in every time, brushing the exact spot that made my stomach tense and my mouth open wider. I clung to him, one hand on the back of his neck and the other buried between his shoulders, while he fucked me head-on, in the simplest and dirtiest position, as if he were marking territory in front of everyone. The waves did part of the work, pushing us against him and pulling us away. I let myself go. My breasts bounced lightly against his chest, my lips sought his and lost him, my eyes kept returning to the shore, where the woman was no longer alone: now the man was there too. Both of them were watching.

—Does that bother you? —I asked him.

—Ask me whether it would bother me if she came into the water and came over here.

—Would it bother you?

—No.

He wasn’t serious. He was serious. It didn’t matter. The truth of that moment was this: two bodies in the sea, a couple on the shore, a sun beating straight down on everyone, and the certainty that this, exactly this, was the closest I had ever come to freedom.

—Tobi —I whispered—, I’m about to come.

—Now.

He held me tighter by the hips and changed the angle just slightly, driving deeper. I arched against him, head thrown back, throat open, and felt the orgasm rise like a wave of heat from my cunt to my chest. I came with a hard tremor, clenching around him with my legs, moaning into his shoulder so I wouldn’t scream. He kept thrusting two, three more times, holding on just before pulling out, then he stepped back a little and masturbated with quick, firm strokes, looking over my shoulder toward the shore. I felt him tense, heard a growl, and spill his load outside, into the water, while his fingers closed around his cock until he emptied it completely. The sea took everything in seconds.

The next wave pushed us toward the shore and we had to brace ourselves not to fall.

We stayed wrapped in each other’s arms for a long while, breathing. The couple under the green canopy was no longer on the shore. They had gone back to their loungers and were talking as if nothing had happened, though the woman held my gaze one more time when we got out of the water. She lifted a beer in my direction, like a silent toast. I nodded.

—Are we going to see her again? —asked Tobías as we dried off.

—The beach is free —I said.

That was our way of saying yes without saying it. It was our way of asking, in advance, for a next time when maybe yes, maybe she would go into the water, maybe the man from the green canopy would join her, maybe. For now, that maybe was more than enough.

We gathered the blanket when the sun began to sink. We walked along the shore, picked up a couple of shells and a shiny black stone that he tucked into the pocket of his trunks. In the parking lot, before getting into the car, Tobías kissed me for a long time, the salt still on our lips.

—You know what the best part was? —he said.

—What?

—That I didn’t care that they saw us. I cared that they saw us and wanted to see us again.

I nodded. I got into the car with my legs still trembling a little, my body full of salt and sun, and with the certainty that that beach, that couple, that woman from the green canopy, were going to show up again in my head that night, when he made love to me in the hotel bed, slowly, looking into my eyes, as if the whole beach were watching.