Ashley Martin stepped into the bathroom, hesitated, then pulled her gold-lettered LSU t-shirt over her head. She slipped off her panties, catching a glimpse of her pale, curvy form in the mirror. Too fat, her stepmom would say. She turned on the faucet, adjusting the temperature twice before letting the water run into the open drain. She stepped in, scooted her ass forward, and lay back, her freshly manicured feet pressed high against the tiled wall of the tub enclosure. Barcelona tomorrow. Freedom, supposedly. Yet her stomach knotted at the thought of leaving her parents' house—that beautiful gilded cage with its dinner table silences and the endless bouts of conflict with her stepmom.
"I know you're masturbating in there!" comes Barbara's ratty voice from behind the door. "You've been in there for over an hour! Hot water is expensive!"
"Only if the bitch would just die," Ashley mused behind closed eyes before adjusting the water to a trickle. She could see Barbara collapsing mid-tirade, a clutch at the chest, a slow, drowsy topple into catatonia. She listened for Barbara's retreating footsteps, then sighed out, deflating her lungs in relief. She settles back, falling once more into the fantasy of being violated, fucked against a brick wall by a faceless man, his fingers digging into her wrists, her screams muffled by his calloused palm as he forced himself inside of her.
On her first morning in Barcelona, jet-lagged and dizzy, Ashley experiences déjà vu when her exchange mom, Claire, pounds on the bathroom door. "¡Tres minutos, no más!" she shouts, her accent thick but the message clear: water doesn't flow as freely here as it does in Louisiana.
The water swirling down the drain carried a faint pink tinge. Ashley's period had arrived at the perfect time for her first day abroad. She rummaged through her suitcase for the box of Tampax tampons that Barbara had insisted on reminding her about three separate times. She jerked on a pair of jeans, ran her recently manicured fingertips through her bleached-blonde hair, dabbed concealer under her puffed eyelids, and stumbled her way down the narrow stairs. Claire stood in the dining area, beaming. ¡Ven! There is someone special waiting to meet you!"
Claire's fingers wrap around Ashley's wrist as she pulls her through the archway. In the sitting room, a twenty-something man unfolds from the sofa—all height and pressed linen and white teeth against burnished copper skin. His gaze finds Ashley's witch-hazel eyes and holds. "This," Claire announces with unmistakable pride, "is Julio. Our city's brightest star in the bullring."
"I must leave now before the market closes. I'll let the two of you get better acquainted." The door closes with a finality that makes Ashley's throat tighten. Julio's gaze traces the contours of her curvy figure with such deliberate slowness that she feels both violated and seen, making her pulse quicken. She remembered Barbara's warnings about European men, and when he steps toward her, she backs against the wall, whispering, "I can't—I started my period this morning." But even as her body betrays her with a flush of heat, he smiles, a predator's smile that should terrify her but instead makes her breath catch. "This is not a problem for me," he says, and before she can decide if she wants to push him away or pull him closer, his hands are at her waistband, her hips lifting slightly to help him as he tugs down—then yanks her jeans and panties to her ankles.
His fingers find the cotton thread, and with one swift motion, he extracts the tampon, flinging it across the room. Ashley gasps, her body straining against the wall. When he lowers his head between her thighs, she feels the warm weight of his tongue against her intimate flesh. Then he looks up, his mouth glistening crimson in the half-light. "In the bullring," he murmurs, "we learn not to fear what others find frightening."
Julio helps Ashley free herself from the denim tangled at her ankles, then smooths his rough palms over the top surface of her smooth feet, her burgundy-painted toenails catching the low light and gleaming. He slides his hands upward along her outer thighs, his fingers finding the buttons of her yellow blouse and unbuttoning them skillfully. He then spins her around confidently and unhooks her bra with a flick that speaks of experience.
Pressed against the cool wall tiles, Ashley now stands completely barefoot naked in the half-light of the sitting room, in a totally unfamiliar house. Julio's hands continue spinning her around and mapping her body like a country he's determined to claim—lingering at the jasmine tattoo inked above her dark pubic hair, then lifting his hands to cup below the weight of her pale, double-D breasts, his thumbs orbiting her large areolas with deliberate precision.
The hard metal of Julio's belt buckle clicks against the tile floor as his trousers fall. He stands before her, bottomless and a man on a mission. Ashley's breath catches at the sight of him. He presses her against the wall, one hand splayed across her lower back, guiding himself to her doorway. Her cheek flattens against the cool plaster, eyes fluttering closed as her body yields to his swift penetration and persistent rhythm. The steady sounds of his bronze, muscular torso slapping against her white, jostling ass-cheeks echo through the empty parlor as Ashley braces herself, her pretty toes pressing tight against the floor with each of Julio's deliberate, forward thrusts. Still, her mind starts to wander about the prospect of Claire returning.
Spent, Julio guides Ashley to the sofa. She settles against his lap, her skin cooling in the late-evening air, his dark, warm skin beneath her pale, bare thighs. The hours dissolve as words flow between them—her voice rising and falling as she describes the suffocating ritual of sorority rushes and Barbara's midnight door-pounding. Julio traces the curve of Ashley's shoulder while describing the moment of truth in the arena, in broken English, how the crowd falls silent before the charge, and how the bright arterial spray across the sand feels like a baptism.
The door swings open without warning. Claire bustles in with paper bags clutched to her chest and market scents trailing behind her. Her wide, coffee-colored eyes slide over their bare bodies on the sofa without pause or judgment. She deposits her purchases on the dining table with a soft thud, chattering all the while—"El mercado, so crowded today, ¡Dios mío!"—as if finding her exchange student naked with a matador were as unremarkable an event as rain in April.
Ashley scrambles for her clothes, her cheeks flushed red, but Julio moves with the leisurely grace of a man who is accustomed to being observed. He retrieves his linen trousers from the tile floor, slips them on without zipping, then pauses at the doorway. And with the same practiced elegance he must use to salute the crowd in the arena before a kill, he tilts his torso toward Ashley and Claire, then vanishes below a streetlamp.
For days, Ashley avoided Claire's eyes over breakfast, instead studying the tile patterns. But alone in her room, her fingers flew across the keyboard to her best friend, Laura, back at LSU: "Met a REAL Spanish bullfighter. Yes, we did EVERYTHING! We fucked!" Two days later, Ashley finds herself pressed against strangers in the Plaza de Toros, her iPhone raised high to capture Julio's blood-soaked triumph. Her face splits into a broad grin as she gives a big thumbs-up that would absolutely infuriate her stepmom back home.
