Love, in Spanish Read online

  “So,” she says breathlessly, and I can feel her pulse quickening beneath my lips. I run my hand over the slope of her ass and give it a hard squeeze as I press myself against her. “Do I have to ask how it went?”

  “I will tell you all about it,” I murmur, “later. But you’re wearing that dress and making me drunken lemonade on this hot day, and I’m afraid I’ll have to deal with you first.”

  I bring my lips to the space behind her ear where her newest tattoo is. It says, in Spanish, Love, in Spanish is you, something I said to Vera back in La Alberca when I was first falling for her. It remains true to this day. I run the tip of my tongue over the words, and she shudders beneath me. She can never resist that, though she never seems to resist anything.

  I love that about her.

  I grab hold of the zipper at the back of her dress and slowly start pulling it down until her breasts are free. I cup them, my mouth grazing her nipples that pucker beneath me. I take my time, wanting to enjoy every minute with them in this bright light, this cool kitchen, this hot city.

  She moans as I run my tongue around in deliberate circles, and she starts to run her fingers through my hair, tugging on it gently. It ignites nerves that shoot directly to my cock but I’m already hard as steel and straining against my pants.

  With one smooth motion I pick her up and place her over my shoulder, caveman-style. She lets out a little laugh, playfully kicking her toes against my stomach and pounding her fists against my back. “Put me down, you bad man,” she says in mock distress.

  I give her an exaggerated grunt and then drop her on the couch. She doesn’t have time to adjust herself; I’m on her in a second, pulling the dress over her head and discarding it on the coffee table. I stare down at her body lying against the cushions, pale and soft and all for me, and grab hold of her calves, yanking her toward me until her ass and hips are propped up against the armrest, her legs dangling over the sides.

  “Get naked,” she commands me, but I only give her a half-smile. I’ll get naked, after I’m done with the first course. She always comes first. That is the rule, even though she broke it last night with those irresistible lips of hers.

  I get down on my knees and pull her hips even closer toward me, her pussy is bare, wet and waiting. It’s beautiful. I trail my lips and tongue from the inside of her knee—something that solicits a breathy groan from her—and up the silky path of her inner thighs. She arches her back, pushing herself into my mouth greedily.

  She tastes good—like her, like the ocean and youth—and I take my time running my tongue around her clit, up and down the curves before plunging it inside her.

  “Mateo,” she says between groans. “Oh god, don’t stop.”

  I grin and pull away from her, doing just the opposite. “Speak to me in Spanish, my Estrella, and I’ll continue.”

  I watch her close her eyes and arch her neck. “Fuck me with your mouth, harder, deeper,” she says in broken Spanish. It’s the sexiest thing I have ever heard. Her Spanish lessons are really paying off.

  Naturally, I comply, my fingers joining in so that she’s coming hard within seconds. She cries out, as if the orgasm has taken her by surprise, and I can feel her quivers racing beneath my lips and around my fingers.

  I straighten up and stare down at her spent body as I unbutton my shirt. “Now, I’ll get naked.”

  I swiftly remove it and my pants until it’s just me and my erection in front of her. She lifts her head, eying my body appreciatively, the hunger reappearing and ready for more. She’s insatiable.

  “Turn around,” I tell her, and she immediately responds by getting on her hands and knees on the couch, her ripe, round ass facing me. She moves forward to make room, and I get right behind her, one leg on the floor, bracing my weight, the other on the couch. I wrap one hand around her waist and relish the sight of it, my long, bronzed fingers standing out against the creamy white of her skin.

  I knead at her waist, her ass, the soft slope of her thighs, taking my time, building the anticipation for both of us. When she starts to shift, her patience wearing thin, I bring my fingers up through her slickness, lightly pressing on her clit for a moment then taking my hand away. She’s wanting it, her back arched, ass pressed toward me, begging for it, but it’s now my game we are playing. In my game, it is not all about the goal. A silly analogy for a football player, perhaps, but when it comes to sex it is the truth.

  I take her wetness and use it to lubricate my hand as I stroke myself. I bring my fist up and down my cock and close my eyes, carefully stoking the fire inside me. I can hear her whimper, wanting to see, to be involved. It’s all part of the journey.

  Finally, when I’m getting too close to orgasm for my own good, I start teasing the crack of her ass with the tip, and the slight pressure makes her moan.

  “God, Mateo, please.”

  I smile to myself. “That sounds like English.”

  “Por favor,” she begs, her accent perfect.

  I press it against her, feeling her spread for me, but I don’t push in yet. Teasing is just too much fun.

  “Por favor, Mateo,” she cries out in frustration. “Dios mio.”

  She calls me her God.

  “Si, Estrella,” I tell her, and with one swift motion, I push inside of her. She feels like heat and honey, and as I drive myself in deep, I feel my breath and heartbeat catch in the back of my throat. The headiness swarms around me, begging for more, as I thrust harder, faster. My balls smack her ass—in my delirium it sounds like angels—and the need to come inside her, to plant my seed deep, takes over.

  My grip on her hips tightens, and I hold on as I pound her again and again. She cries out, swept away by the same frenzy. The couch rattles loudly against the wall, and when my thrusts become more powerful, it starts to move along the floor, inch by inch. I have never wanted to fuck her so hard, so intensely, than I do in this moment, as if biological urges and frivolous desire were melded into one driving life force.

  I feel as if I am nailing her to some place—perhaps this world, this moment, and I want nothing more than to be so deep that I leave some permanent reminder of myself. She is mine, all mine; she is mine now and forever, this beautiful, soft, wet woman of my dreams and my heart, and I am going to fuck her until she’s screaming my name.

  It doesn’t take long. She lets out this low, guttural moan that builds to a crescendo, and as she throbs around me, squeezing my cock with her lengthy shudders, I let go. I come hard, and for a long time my face is contorted, my nonsensical cries hissing out of my mouth in short bursts of painful euphoria.

  When I am finally milked dry, I pull out and collapse on the couch beside her, pulling her up against my chest. We are both breathing hard but I still kiss the top of her neck and hold her close to me so our sweat mingles and mixes, and our limbs wrap around each other. I am outside of her but we are still one.

  The clock on the wall ticks away and we lie here for twenty minutes, not saying anything, just breathing, just being. I don’t know why she sometimes turns me into such a Neanderthal, but when it ends in such away, I don’t see either of us complaining about it.

  Eventually she lifts her head and looks up at me with hazel eyes that are both exhausted and bright. “So,” she says, nestling her hands into my chest, “now that we’ve got the fucking-your-brains-out out of the way, will you tell me about your day? Or are you holding that information hostage for more sexual encounters? Because as eager as I am for anything that involves your cock, my cooch is a bit sore from that pounding.”

  “Cooch?” I ask, puzzled but smiling at the sound of the word on my lips.

  She shrugs. “Coño.”

  I shake my head slightly. “I am not sure I like this cooch. It sounds like a cartoon character, a name far too silly for something as serious as your pussy.”

  She grins at me and her face lights up like a sparkler. “I have a serious pussy?”

  “Well, let’s just say I take your pussy very seriously,” I
say. I run my thumb over her lips and then say, “Today went very well. Pedro, the owner, and Antonio, they want me to take over Diego’s position in January. They want me to be the coach.”

  Her eyes widen into shining pools. “Are you serious?”

  “As serious as your pussy.”

  “Mateo,” she exclaims, pushing herself up. “They want you to be coach? What about that other guy, the English dude?”

  “Warren? They aren’t too sure about him. They want a Spaniard and a former teammate to have the job. Diego is leaving to coach Argentina in the new year so I am to be his replacement. I will have all this time to learn and see if I can do the job.”

  “Of course you can do the job,” Vera says, though the only time she’s seen me play was in Las Palabras, where I failed miserably thanks to my knee, and a few old Atlético games that someone uploaded onto YouTube. “You can do anything.”

  I cock my head, considering that. “I don’t know,” I say unsurely. “I am a bit rusty. I have never coached. I don’t know how to lead.”

  She is staring at me like I could never let her down. I’m not sure if I like it. “Oh, Mateo. You have no idea, do you?”

  “What?”

  “You don’t know how to lead,” she repeats, mocking it. “In Las Palabras, you were always the leader. Everyone gravitated toward you because they recognized that. Do you not remember your own presentation about creating your own destiny? That’s what you do, Mateo. You create. You lead. Everyone else follows.”

  “I follow you,” I tell her, kissing the tip of her nose.

  “You follow my coño,” she says.

  I place my hands on either side of her face and hold her as I stare deep into her eyes. “I follow every part of you, everywhere. You go before me, Vera. You always will.”

  As she sometimes does when I’m being especially honest, she looks away shyly. It’s cute, like she can’t believe that I could feel the way that I do about her. But sometimes, most times, I just want her to believe it, to own it.

  “Anyway,” she says, quickly skirting over what I said, “you do have what it takes, Mateo. I think this could be the best thing that could happen to you. You’ll be a part of what you love again, in it as much as you can be. But it’s not about what I think.”

  “It is about what you think.”

  “It’s about what you think,” she says. “So what did you tell them?”

  I lay my head back against the couch cushions and stare at the ceiling. “They are giving me until Friday to think about it.”

  “Good,” she says. “By then you’ll know what you want, if not sooner.”

  But the thing is, all I really want is her.

  Somehow, the night seems to be hotter than the day. The air is thick and sweltering, like simmering soup, as Vera and I walk hand in hand to my parents’ front door. They have no air-conditioning inside and I’m already chastising myself for wearing a suit, but even pushing forty, it’s hard not to dress up for your parents. My mother had instilled it in me at a young age, to always look nice for her, if not for my father, and it’s something I do now for Carmen, my stepmother.

  We stand on the front steps and I squeeze Vera’s hand appreciatively. We have dinner at their house usually once a month, on whatever day my sister Lucia can fit into her social calendar. Vera gets along very well with my parents, especially now that she’s picked up a bit of Spanish and can converse more with my non-English speaking father. Originally she was going to try teaching him English but my father has the patience of a cat, and that never amounted to anything.

  Carmen opens the door with a bright smile on her face, the smell of anchovies and basil wafting in from behind her. She’s quite a bit younger than my father, but no matter her age, she seems to give off this air of vitality. I think she keeps my father young. She definitely keeps the old grump on his toes.

  “Mateo,” she cries out, and pulls me into a hard embrace. She smells like sage and earth, and her large earrings rattle as she pulls away, holding me at arm’s length while she looks me over, as if I am just a boy and not a man. I don’t mind.

  She sweeps her eyes to Vera and takes her in like a cool glass of water. It helps that Vera is dressed in a metallic silver shift dress, the kind you’d see in a futuristic version of the 1960s.

  “Vera,” she says, “you look beautiful. Your dress, you’re really becoming quite stylish.”

  Vera waves away the compliment as pink stains the apples of her cheeks. “Blame it on Spain,” she says with a smile. It’s true though, shopping in the winding alleyways of Madrid with her friend Claudia has become one of her favorite activities, and every day her own sense of style and well-being seems to blossom.

  I am aware that I am beaming at Vera proudly when Carmen pinches my cheek quickly and says in Spanish, “You’re still as smitten as the first time. That makes me happy, Mateo.”

  Vera shoots me an inquisitive glance but I only press my hand into her lower back and usher her inside the house.

  There is a fan in every room, their constant whirring competing with the sultry sounds of Ella Fitzgerald on the record player. My father is sitting in the living room with a glass of wine beside an open bottle, leaning back in his chair, eyes closed.

  “Ignore him,” Carmen says, gesturing for us to sit down while she places two extra glasses beside the bottle. “He’s pretending to be asleep. He’s mad at me because I wouldn’t let him put extra anchovies into the sauce.”

  Sure enough, the moment she turns and heads back into the kitchen, my father opens one eye in a rather comedic gesture.

  “Don’t worry, she’s gone,” Vera says in Spanish as I pour ourselves some wine.

  My father smirks at her appreciatively and my chest feels warm. I never have any doubts when it comes to our relationship, but I know most people do. It’s tiring to have to explain why I’m with her, why she’s with me, why I left my wife, how I could do such a thing.

  With my parents though, they never judged me. They understood in some ways that life doesn’t always hand you things in a neat package. It dollops them out here and there in messy, confusing splatters, and when you see something amazing, you better drop what you’re doing and hold on with two hands. They know why I held on to Vera when I came across her and why I still haven’t let go. They know that true love only comes by once, or twice, if you’re really lucky.

  My father was one of the especially lucky ones. He lost the love of his life—my mother—and though it took ten years, he finally found Carmen. He never gave up hope or faith that he would find someone else for him.

  We are joined by Lucia, who has come straight from her new job at one of the television stations. She’s lively and talkative, and drinks most of the wine, but I can’t help but retreat into myself, lost in thought. Times like this, with my family, trick me into thinking the path Vera and I have chosen is an easy one. It makes me crave the warmth of a house, of a future, of my own flesh and blood.

  I stare across the table at Vera as she brushes a wayward strand of hair behind her ear, her other hand tucked under her chin, her smile and kind eyes focused on Lucia as she describes her day to us with crazy hand gestures. I’m not getting any younger, but neither is Vera. I’m not with her just for the moment, she is not just a passing fancy. I want Vera by my side for the rest of my life.

  It’s scary to think about. Not the commitment. You would think that after one marriage and a bitter divorce, I would have sworn off the whole concept of marriage. But my situation with Isabel never tainted the institution for me. It’s something I still believe in. If anything, I believe more in getting it right.

  I want to get it right with Vera. It’s a luxury I rarely let myself think about because there are so many unknowns, so many variables. That is what is so scary about it. What does Vera want? She’s only twenty-four—she hasn’t once mentioned marriage or children, or even talked about that far into the future. It’s probably those reasons why she feels so temporary sometimes.r />
  But I don’t want that anymore. I want her here, with me, permanently. I don’t want there to be any fears over whether she’ll be around, allowed to stay in the country or otherwise. I don’t want any doubts when I think about my future. I want to know she’ll be there with me with that same infectious laugh that makes my heart sing, her view of the world that challenges mine and makes me face toward the light.

  All that aside though, all my needs and my wants and the things I dare dream about, is the fact that I don’t want to scare her off. I don’t want to push anything on her that she may not be open to. Sometimes she feels like she’s on a different path than mine. I want to make sure this is something she wants on her own.

  She catches me watching her, and a wash of understanding slides over her eyes. I think for a moment that perhaps this is her, wanting it, but then I realize she is not a mind reader.

  “Mateo got some interesting news today,” she says, as if I was prompting her.

  I feel the eyes of everyone on me. I raise my brows at Vera. It’s true that I was going to tell them about Atlético’s offer, but now it seems trivial compared to my previous thoughts. Even though it’s the chance to reclaim my career, to work for passion, that only solidifies what I want.

  I clear my throat. “Well, I had a meeting with the owner and general manager of Atlético today.”

  Everyone snaps to attention. I hadn’t mentioned to them the previous times I met with them in case it turned out to be nothing, so this is a bit out of the blue. It explains how Lucia’s groomed eyebrows seem halfway up her forehead.

  “What about?” Carmen asks, her tone high and hesitant.

  I shrug casually. “They asked me if I would become coach in January to replace Diego. He’s going to Argentina. I have until Friday to decide.”

  They are stunned. More stunned than when I first told them I was getting a divorce. Finally my father says, “Took the fools long enough.”