The key that stayed on the eleventh bedside table

The key that stayed on the eleventh bedside table

Come closer. You don’t need to say anything yet. Just listen. I have a snoring voice from both rehearsing this on the head and the air conditioning on the eleventh floor keeps whistling as if I wanted to rat out. I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, barefoot, with the hotel robe ajar and the phone leaning against the collarbone, exactly as if you were the one on the other side of this confession. Maybe you are. Maybe I just need to count it out loud so that I stop burning inside.

It all started last Thursday, when the flight back to Madrid was cancelled by a storm that swept the coast and turned the airport of Valencia into an anthill of resigned suitcases and faces. I had two days of congress, my head full of figures and his back gripped with smiling in corridors. Instead of fighting for a last minute hotel in the center, I stayed where I was: the same discreet place near the port, room 1107, white sheets, overlooking a sea that that night looked like lead. I asked for a bottle of dry white to the room service, I took off my heels and thought that at least I would have silence.

I didn't.

At 11 o’clock I heard the door next door. 1109. A soft suitcase blow, the beep of the magnetic key, man steps. Nothing extraordinary. The extraordinary came half an hour later, when the corridor was calm and I, half dizzy by the wine and tiredness, sent a message to the wrong number. I wanted to write to my sister: «I am trapped in Valencia, the flight has fallen, give me encouragement». Instead I sent it to a contact who had kept it weeks ago without a full name, just a «A. of the elevator – congress». I didn’t even remember the face well. I just had coincided twice in the lobby and had held the door with an education that had made me nervous.

The message came out. Three points. Almost immediate answer:

«The one with the grey dress on the second day? I am Adrian. I am in the 1109. If you want, I will bring coffee to the machine in the hallway and bring it to you. No compromise. Only coffee and the storm.»

I stared at the screen as if I had opened my robe himself. My heart was hitting me in the throat. I answered yes before thinking too much about it. Five minutes later they knocked on the door with two clean knuckles.

Adrián had his shirt swirled, his dark hair still damp from the rain of the transfer and a smile from those who expect nothing and that's why he gets it all. He came in alone to the threshold. He spread me a glass of terrible coffee machine and stayed there, respecting the frame as if it were a sacred border. We talked about the storm, the absurd congress, how much we both hated buffet breakfasts. The conversation lengthened. I leaned on the frame. He did not cross. Until I said, very short, almost to not scare myself:

"If you want, you can come in. I really want you to come in.

I looked him in the eye when I said it. He nodded only once, slowly, like signing an invisible contract.

"Only if you ask me again," he muttered.

• Stay here, I want this.

The click sounded louder than the distant thunder.

We did not throw ourselves over each other like in cheap movies. First he took the glass off my hands and left it on the table. Then he touched my wrist with two fingers, asking without words if I could climb up. I nodded. His buds climbed up the inside of the forearm, slowly, tracing the way of the vein to the elbow, and from there to the hollow of the shoulder. He shook my mouth. He noticed it and smiled without mocking.

• Tell me if I stop.

• Don't stop.

He kissed me then. It wasn’t a test kiss; it was a kiss from him who had been holding himself in a narrow hallway. His mouth tasted like bad coffee and wet rain coat. I bit his lower lip unintentionally and he let go of a low sound, almost a polite grunt, which came straight between my legs. My hands found his chest under his shirt, buttons that resisted and then gave in. The skin underneath was hot, with a fine hair that made me close my eyes. He opened my hotel robe with deliberate slowness, as if every inch of cloth deserved a pause. Below he only wore the silk nightgown that I use to sleep when I travel: black, simple, no exaggerated laces. Still, when he saw it, Adrian breathed through my nose and leaned his forehead against mine.

"Hostia," he said, very much. "You are... real.

I laughed a little, nervous.

—The last thing they said to me in a hotel room was ‘pass the letter from the minibar’.

"Well, I don't want the minibar," he replied. "I want you to tell me what you like to be done when you're away from home and feel a little lost.

I told him. With clear words, without ornaments. That I liked to be touched slowly at first and then mercilessly. That I liked to hear a man’s voice near my ear as I opened my legs. That I liked the contrast between the courtesy of the day and the consensual rudeness of the night. He listened and at the same time I was lowering the strips of the nightgown. When the silk fell to the waist, he stood looking at my breasts with a attention that made me arch my back. He kissed my neck, clavicle, the top edge of the nipple. The tongue was warm and precise. He sucked softly first, then with more hunger, and I had to hold on to his shoulders to not bend my knees.

"In bed," I asked. "I want to see you on top."

We lay down. The sheets smelled like industrial lavender and on promise. Adrian took off his shirt completely and I took advantage of it to run through his chest with his mouth: the right nipple, the sternum line, the beginning of his abdomen. He stood still for a second, letting me explore, and then he turned me carefully to leave me on his back. He knelt between my open thighs and looked me in the eyes again.

• Can I put this down for you?

I touched the silk that still covered my hips.

Take it off, and look at me while you're doing it.

He did. The nightgown was made a mess by the pillow. I was naked in front of an almost unknown and, far from feeling exposed, I felt chosen. Adrian bowed and kissed my belly, the hip bone, the inside of my thigh. When his mouth finally reached the center, I was already so wet that the first touch of tongue ripped out a groan that embarrassed me for a second. He did not stop. He licked slowly, from the bottom up, opening my thumbs to get better to the clitoris. He gave small circles, then flattened his tongue and pushed, then sucked with a rhythm that forced me to sink my fingers in his hair.

"There... slow down... no, like this, fuck, like this," I guided him, shamelessly now.

He obeyed and at the same time improvised. He stuck a finger, then two, curving them inwards while the tongue did not abandon the exact point. I began to move hips against his face, looking for more pressure. The orgasm came to me suddenly, without elegant warning: a tremor that broke from the lower belly and left my mouth open in a choked cry against the pillow. Adrian did not turn his head away until I pushed him gently, hypersensitive.

He climbed to my height, his mouth was bright and his eyes were dark.

"Shall we continue?" he asked.

"If we don't keep going, I'll die," I answered, and I opened his belt with clumsy hands in a hurry.

His cock jumped free, thick, already hard at all, his head lustrous. I surrounded him with my hand and noticed how his abdomen was strained. I incorporated just enough to take the tip to my mouth. I tasted clean skin and a contained desire. I sucked slowly, lowering everything I could, using his hand for what could not fit. Adrián released a long "fuck" and picked my hair with one hand to see. He didn't push; he let me set the pace. When I noticed that his breathing was speeding up, I pulled aside and fell back again.

I want you to feel whole.

He opened the purse he had left on the bedside table — foresight, respect — and put on the condom with an efficiency that warmed me even more. He stood between my legs, looked at me one last time and pushed me. The entrance was slow, deep, exactly the thickness I needed that night. I twined against his shoulder. He stopped halfway, letting me get used to it, and then began to move with long, controlled onslaughts. Every time I touched bottom I climbed my knees a little bit more, opening me completely.

"Heavier," I asked after a while.

• Tell me again.

• Fuck me harder, Adrian. Don't treat me like I'm gonna break up.

He smiled at my mouth and obeyed. The rhythm changed: deeper, drier, the sound of skin against skin filling the room along with the rain against the glass. He held my wrists above my head for a moment, not with cheap control force but with that of someone who wants me to feel that I can hold on. I arched my back and he took advantage to lower his mouth to a chest and bite the nipple with the exact point of sweet pain. The second orgasm came up to me more slowly, like a tide, and when it broke I pressed around him with so much force that he cursed between teeth and had to stop a second to not come.

We turned around. I strung around, still shaking, and guided him inside again. From above I could look at him: the tight jaw, my hands on my hips, my eyes fixed at the point where our bodies joined together. I swayed slowly at the beginning, then faster, looking for the angle the clitoris rubbed on me with each down. Adrian would climb up my hips to find me. At one point he drew me forward, chest against chest, and spoke to me in the ear as he fucked me from below:

"You feel amazing. So hot. So wet. I could stay here until it stopped raining and one more day.

That phrase disassembled me. I shouted his name when I ran for the third time, gripped his neck, and he followed me seconds later, sunk to the bottom, the rigid body under mine, a severe and long groan that vibrated me in the chest.

Then we became entangled, sweaty, the robe and the nightgown on the floor as evidence of a sweet crime. He took care of the condom, returned to bed and drew me against his side. I drew silly circles on his chest as the air conditioning dried our skin.

"I didn't think this would happen," I confessed.

"I didn't either. But when I saw your message... I knew that if you opened the door for me I wouldn't be able to pretend indifference.

We talked low. Work. Why we were both traveling alone more than we wanted. Of an ex of her who hated hotels and of an ex of mine who only knew how to fuck with the light off. We laughed. Then the silence became thick again and I slid my hand down, finding him already half awake. He looked at me with a glance.

• Another one?

• If you want.

But this time tell me exactly how.

I told him to put me on all fours near the edge of the bed. To fuck me slowly at first and then without compassion. To talk to me dirty if it was natural, because it lit me. To hold my hair just a little bit, just to feel the tension. Adrián nodded, put on another condom and accommodated me as I had asked. The first attack from behind pulled the air out of me. He bowed on my back and kissed my shoulder as I began to move.

"So open... looking at you like that, with your ass up high, asking me..." his voice was a hot thread against my ear.

"Go on," I said.

One hand in my hip, the other tangled softly in my hair, pulling the right thing so that I would lift my face up to the headboard. Each onslaught pushed me a little forward and I pushed back to receive it all. The sound was obscene and beautiful. At one point he reached my hand in front and rubbed my clitoris with two wet fingers, at the same rate as his hips. I couldn’t stand it. I ran with a sob that escaped me whole, my knees loose, and he held me by the waist so that I wouldn’t collapse as I continued to fuck through the contractions. When he ran, he did it with his forehead glued to my back, a “joder, yes” choked against my skin, the whole body shaking.

We showered together later, in the narrow cabin of the hotel, laughing when the soap slipped out of our hands. He washed my hair with a tenderness that contrasted deliciously with the minutes before. I soaped his back and bit his shoulder without leaving a mark. We went out wrapped in new towels. We asked for fruit in the room service at 3 in the morning because we both had an absurd hunger. We ate strawberries and cheese on the bed, naked again, talking about books and cities and how weird it is to find someone who listens to you while it touches you.

At dawn the storm had passed. The sea looked silver grey. Adrian dressed slowly. I looked at him from the bed, still smelling of him and sex and hotel.

"I can leave you my real number," he said. "Not that of Congress.

"Give it to me," I replied.

We exchanged it. At the door he stopped, came back over his steps and kissed me one last time, long, with a taste of machine coffee and possibility.

"If you ever send a message to the wrong number again," he whispered, "be sure it's mine.

He left. I kept the key to his room on the bedside table — he had left it behind when he went to the bathroom and I didn't return it entirely on purpose — and with his body marked for hours that I didn't think he deserved.

And now I'm telling it to you. With my robe open, your voice low and your legs still a little loose when I remember it. I don't know if what I want is for you to forgive me for how much I enjoyed it or for you to move to this very bed and make me shut up with your mouth. Maybe both. Maybe I just needed someone to hear it full: bad coffee, the "come in again", the orgasms that left my throat scratched, the laughter in the shower, the key that still shines next to the alarm clock.

If you're there, on the other side of this thread of voice, answer me only with one thing. Tell me if you want me to come down and open up. Or tell me to tell you again, slow down, touching every detail until the air conditioning is not enough to cool us down.

I, meanwhile, leave the phone aside, lie down and close my eyes. I still smell him on the pillow. I still feel the echo of his fingers. And I confess, without ornaments, that if they knocked on the door right now with two clean knuckles... I would say yes. Higher. Clearer. With the sheets already made a mess and the storm, this time, only inside me.

Stay a while longer. Don’t turn off the light yet. There’s more to tell you if you let me: how my thighs were shaking when I went to the bathroom afterwards, how I looked at the empty hallway waiting to hear the key’s beep again, how I wrote and deleted three messages before I dared to send one that said “the 1107 is still open for a while”. He didn’t answer right away. When he did, it was almost daylight and his text was brief: “Below in ten. If you change your mind, don’t open it.” I opened. Of course I opened. And this time there was no coffee. Only he pushed me gently against the hall wall just crossed the threshold, kissing me as if the hotel clock time was stealing minutes. He lifted a thigh, put his hand under the robe and found me ready again. Two fingers inside, the palm against the clitoris, the mouth on my neck. I ran up, biting his shoulder to not alert the entire corridor. Then I took him to bed for the third time and slowly rode him, looking him in the face, saying thank you without saying the word, only with the body. He held my hips and let me command until we both lost the thread and there was only the movement and the heat and the name of the other saying as a plea.

When he really left, already with the high sun, he left me a breakfast treat on the bedside table and a note written on the hotel pad: «The next storm, let me know before landing.» I still have that paper. I carry it in the inside pocket of the agenda. Sometimes I take it out in boring meetings and it warms my face.

And this, all this, I confess to you because I need it to exist outside of my head. Because the body remembers better when someone else holds the story. Because I like the idea that you listen to me breathe on the other side while I play slowly, reliving every onslaught, every "yes" I gave, every chill.

If you want, next night I tell you what happened when we met again in Madrid, three weeks later, in another hotel with another room number. But that... that would be another confession. And today I just wanted to leave this one: Valencia, the wrong message, the one with the key that I never fully returned.

Come on, or stay tuned, no matter what, as long as I can say it in my ear, I'll keep the door open.

End of tonight's confession, though, if you press the phone a little more against your ear, you might still hear the rain, and my voice asking, once again, not to stop.