The Whisper of your voice

I still remember the first time I saw Vera. She was with a group of friends on the other side of the room. Beautiful, sensual, with a magnetism that blew my mind.

I approached her because the guys insisted, pushing me in front of her. Tomorrow we celebrate fifteen years of marriage. After my career, it was the best decision I ever made.

We didn't have children. There was always something else that came first: the new house, the car, the trips. Vera loves to travel. We wanted to be one of those couples who fill their lives with work, parties, and sex. We talked little, fucked a lot. And it worked.

She's still just as fucking beautiful. Erotic. She has that poison that disarms me. I get hard when I see her coming out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, her hair dripping over her shoulders, when she walks around in her underwear choosing what to wear. We're not kids anymore, we're in our forties, but seeing her still turns me on just as much.

Although I notice that her desire isn't the same anymore. We don't fuck like we used to. Not as often, nor with the same enthusiasm. Gone are those nights in front of the TV when she would kneel between my legs and suck me off until I was breathless. Now we have more work than sex.

This morning I hardly exchanged a word with her. Just a quick hello before she left for the dentist's office. I had a meeting with the senator to plan the campaign. Agendas, polls, speeches. That's my world: advising politicians, designing strategies, talking to the press. And, when necessary, covering up the shit that shouldn't come to light.

I work with guys who spend their lives talking about values, family, morals. And I'm the one who writes their speeches while they sleep with anyone who smiles at them.

Jenkins, for example. A congressman, fervently Catholic in public. A month ago, he called me at midnight, desperate because he had been photographed entering a hotel with a young woman who could have been his daughter. He asked me to save him. And I did. I solved his problem with a couple of phone calls.

Or Liam, the senator's campaign manager. Another political dinosaur who thinks everything can be solved with a smile and an envelope full of cash. Over lunch, he told me, in great detail, how he fucks the party assistant in the committee bathroom. He looked at me as if he expected me to applaud him.

But I didn't applaud him. I don't give a damn about macho reproductive pretensions. I don't need to hide lovers or find a new ass every week. Vera is enough for me, even though I sometimes feel her drifting away.

It must be that time wears everything down. That there's nothing new left to discover. When things settle down, they start to rot. And you no longer know if it's still love or just habit. Still, it hurt. Still, it made me angry, still, I felt like an idiot. Lucas, the eternal seducer, showed them to me. He also went from bed to bed, from woman to woman. My childhood "friend," one of those you see once every five years at a reunion, but they still hug you as if you ate with them every Friday.

The photos sent in a WhatsApp message:

"Bro, is that your wife?" Son of a bitch, as if I didn't know. They were of her, in a hotel lobby, with a guy. A younger guy. In one, she was laughing; in another, he was whispering something in her ear; and in the last one, he was touching her ass.

"I came with my girlfriend. That's Vera. I slipped the receptionist some cash and he told me they come every Tuesday and Friday."

I was in the middle of a meeting watching my wife, my spouse, walk into a hotel with another man. And then I understood everything: why we weren't having sex like we used to, why she left the clinic early on Tuesdays: to go to yoga, according to her.

And Fridays suited her because they were the senator's sacred days for putting together the week's strategies.

"Spencer, do we need to add anything else?" Liam asked me, bringing me back to reality.

"No, that's it."

"Everything okay?"

"Yes, everything's fine. I have another meeting in twenty minutes. Are we done?"

I wanted to get the hell out of there. Get into an office, break something, get the humiliation out of my system. Instead, I sat there remembering the first time we fucked.

We were 25 years old, with thousands of plans and desires. She told me she was about to graduate from dental school, and I couldn't stop looking at her. We were having coffee on a random corner downtown.

"You're not listening to me, Spencer," she said, smiling, because she knew what was going on inside me.

"Yes, I'm listening," I replied. "But when I do, I imagine you naked."

I confessed without thinking, I couldn't take it anymore. A month of dates, of kisses on the mouth, of groping at her doorstep. Because at that moment I believed she was the woman of my life, that we were going to get married, grow old together, and I didn't want to screw it up. So I waited.

At the hotel, my whole body was throbbing, burning with anticipation. Those open, wet kisses, my member rubbing against her leg, the low sounds she made. And the feeling that we were starting something that would last forever. It drove me crazy.

"I want to fuck you," I murmured as I kissed her neck.

Vera already had her shirt open, one breast exposed, and her skirt up around her waist. When I heard her moan, my desperation mixed with my horniness. That wasn't me, I thought, I calculated, I didn't let myself get carried away. But she changed my mind. I think she realized she was killing me, because the next thing I felt was her fingers slipping into my underwear. My brain went blank.

Her caresses made me even harder, she melted me. It was almost hellish, insane.

I held back for a moment and then got down on my knees to pull down her panties.

"What are you doing?" she asked, dying of embarrassment. She stared at me with her eyes fixed on me.

"It's pink, it's beautiful, Vera. Just like you."

I licked it slowly, then as if it were ice cream. She bit her lip and had to hold my head because her body was convulsing. It was delicious. Torture, fuel that went straight to my member to make it explode into pieces.

We did it on the table, we didn't even make it to the bed. She sat down and I was between her legs. I looked at her and she was beautiful, kissing me passionately, as if she had loved me all her life.

I don't remember how many times I fucked her that night, I couldn't stop. Vera would move or settle down on the bed and I was ready again. She gave herself with everything she had and everything she was.

And I gave her the same, for 15 years.

I made a living pulling rabbits out of a hat, solving problems, devising strategies, and now I had to find one to put up with it or send my marriage to hell.