The key to the eleventh

The key to the eleventh

The lobby smelled like rain caught in coats and coffee that no one was going to drink. Marta said goodbye to the rest of the team with a manual smile, the same one she used at meetings when she was lying about deadlines. Her husband had written three messages to her: the last one asked if she would arrive before midnight. She read it at the revolving door and did not respond.

He went up to the elevator alone. In the mirror, the make-up did not completely hide the tiredness; underneath, something more restless, almost young. On the sixth floor the doors opened and he entered. He was not an absolute stranger: they had crossed into the press room, they had shared a warm coffee and a joke about the traffic. His name was Andrew. He was wearing a loose tie and his voice was low, as if the night required them not to lift it.

"Have you stayed too?" she asked, and the question sounded more intimate than I intended.

"The eleven o'clock train didn't wait. And the eleventh has a minibar.

They laughed without wanting the laughter to go out. The elevator was going up slowly. Martha noticed the heat from her body to a palm, the clean smell of hotel soap and skin that she had sweated a little under the jacket. When the doors opened in the eleventh, none moved immediately. It was she who took the step: she went out, turned and looked at him head-on.

"If you're not in a hurry, you could come up for a moment, just a moment, and only if you want.

He held his gaze. “There was no hurry in his eyes, but a cold, almost courteous clarity.

"I want to. And I know what you're saying. Tell me you're serious.

"I mean it, you can leave whenever you want, so can I.

He nodded. He followed her down the carpeted corridor, where the lamps barely lit the door numbers. Martha opened with the card; inside, the room smelled of ironed sheets and the city filtered by the glass. He left the bag on the table, took off his shoes. Silence was not uncomfortable: it was dense, like a curtain.

Andrew closed with the latch. He did not touch it yet. He approached her slowly, offered her water from the bottle of the minibar, and she drank a sip that wet her lips.

"I am married," he said, not as an apology, but as a fact that there was no hiding.

"I know. And yet I'm here because you asked me to. If you ever stop wanting it, we stop it.

She nodded. Then she did kiss him: an initial kiss contained, of exploration, which opened up when he held his neck gently and she clung to the flap of his jacket. The guilt came immediately, a bitter heat in the chest, but did not stop it; he accompanied her, like a shadow watching from the edge of the bed.

Martha dropped her blouse; Andrew unbuttoned his button-to-button shirt. The headlight was low, amber, and he drew the contour of his shoulders, the curve of his chest, the dark hair of his chest. When he laid her on his back, she opened her legs with a deliberate gesture, inviting him, and murmured a clear "yes" when his mouth went down his neck to the nipple.

The tongue of Andrew was patient. He surrounded the nipple, sucked it with just pressure, while a hand lowered it down his belly to the elastic of the panties. Martha arched her back. He asked again, brushing his ear:

• Shall I go on?

"Yes. I want you to touch me. I want to notice you.

Her fingers slipped under the cloth, found the moisture already evident. She caressed her with her thumb in slow circles over the clitoris, without rushing to conquer, only to hear her breathing slit. Martha opened her knees more, led him a little further down, and he introduced two fingers carefully, curving them inward until he found the point where a low moaned, drowned against his own wrist.

"So... slowly," she asked. "You don't have to run.

She did not run. She fucked her with her fingers until she trembled and squeezed the sheets, until the orgasm went up her legs like a hot tide and left her gasping, with wet eyes of something that was not just pleasure. The guilt then returned, sharp: the watch of the mobile phone, her husband’s name on the screen off, the life she was waiting for on the other side of the city. She looked back and did not deny it; she held her in silence while Andrew kissed her inner thigh and waited.

When he caught his breath, he drew him up. He lowered his pants, freed him from his underpants. His cock was hard, thick, and she surrounded him with her hand, going up and down his skin with a deliberate rhythm, looking him in the eyes.

"I want you to be inside, with a condom, and I want you to look at me while you're at it.

He nodded, looked in his jacket, put it on. He placed it between his legs. The tip rubbed his soaked entry; Martha lifted her hip and received it inch by inch, feeling the stretch, the slow filling that tore off a long sigh. When it was completely inside, they stood still for a second, face to face, sweating barely, and she caressed his jaw.

• Move.

She began with deep attacks and measurements. The mattress gnashed at a deaf rhythm. Martha entangled her legs in her waist, tightened it deeper, and each crush returned an exact friction against her clitoris. The hotel filtered distant sirens; inside, only her breaths and the wet blow of skin against her skin. He held a wrist against her pillow, not with brute force, but with a pressure that she accepted by bowing her head and offering her neck. She groaned without theatricality, loose words—more, there, do not stop—and he responded with the body, accelerating only when she asked for it with her nails on her back.

The second wave caught her in surprise: a sharper orgasm, which closed her throat and made her bite her shoulder to not scream. Andres followed her shortly afterwards, burying herself to the bottom, the stiff body, a severe groan against her hair. She collapsed to her side, still attached to her for a moment, and then withdrew carefully, removed her condom and wrapped it in a handkerchief before throwing it away.

They lay in the darkness. Martha looked at the ceiling. The sweat cooled in her temples. There were no proclamations or promises; only the smell of sex and air conditioning, and the certainty of having crossed a line that could not be blurred with a shower.

"I'm not going to ask you to tell me that you don't regret it," murmured Andrew, with his back to the window.

"I will not. I regret it and have loved it. Both at once. That's what there is.

He did not try to comfort her. He passed her a clean towel. She cleaned herself between her legs with practical gestures, put on her underwear, skirt, blouse. The watch marked one and twelve. He turned on his mobile phone: the husband’s message was still there, waiting for a nice lie. He wrote that dinner had been extended and that he took a taxi. He sent. The confirmation beep sounded like a little more betrayal.

Andres fastened his shirt. “At the door, they stopped.”

"If we meet tomorrow in the living room...

"We will be educated," she said. "And it will not happen again. Not with you. Not here.

It was not cruelty; it was a limit put out loud, the only act of honesty that he had left that night. He bowed his head, understanding, and went out first into the hallway. Martha waited a whole minute, looking at the broken bed, the glass with the rest of the water, the eleventh key on the bedside table. Then he went out, closed and went down the service stairs so he wouldn’t risk sharing the elevator.

In the street, the rain had stopped. The taxi smelled of a cheap air freshener. While the driver was taking the Gran Vía almost empty, Marta leaned her forehead in the cold glass and let the city return her own reflection: a thirty-seven-year-old woman, married, with her body still sensitive and conscience awake. She did not forgive herself. Nor did she invent an epic. She only kept the secret as she kept a key that no longer opened a good door, and when she got home she showered in silence, got into bed next to her and pretended, with absolute professionalism, that the eleventh floor had never existed.