“A las cinco de la tarde,” like Lorca wrote.
“Everything else was death, and only death, at five in the afternoon.”

I knew she was a murderer.

And yet I waited for five o’clock with a mixture of anguish and sick excitement.
Time refused to move. The clock hands looked nailed to the wall.
I went back to Cutting Edge’s photos, zoomed in like a lunatic on hands, breasts, legs, the shine of stockings, toe rings, ankle chains…
It was turning into madness.

I bought roses. Red. God knows why. I felt like a total idiot holding them.

I arrived fifteen minutes early. Her Seville residence was a late-19th-century villa on the outskirts, hectares of manicured park, riding arena, stables.
I rang the gate. A camera studied me for ten long seconds before the mechanism clicked.
I walked along the little tree-lined path with a certain sense of anguish. I was breaking into a mobster’s hideout to flirt with his wife.
People have had their balls cut off and stuffed down their throats for less.

The maid—a hostile-looking creole—opened the door, told me Rita was “getting ready,” and pointed toward the stables.
“The lady will join you there.”

So there I stood like an idiot with my stupid roses, watching horses graze for half an hour, wondering what the fuck I was doing with my life.

Then she was suddenly beside me, leaning on the fence. I hadn’t even heard her arrive.

She eyed the bouquet with half a sneer.
“First the patisserie, now roses… will it be heart-shaped chocolates for Valentine’s?”

She turned and walked into the stable.
“Come on. What are you waiting for?”

Hay, leather, horse shit. She looked perfectly at home, talking to the animals, feeding them sugar cubes.
The groom—a gaunt South American—took off his hat and stood at attention.
“Get lost,” she snapped. He vanished.

She lectured me on the superiority of Spanish bloodstock.
“I prefer riding stallions.” Wink.
First almost-kind gesture she’d ever given me.

“I feel like riding.”

“Which one would you like to see me on?”

“The strongest. The biggest bastard of the lot.”

She laughed, genuinely amused. “Want to test me?”

I nodded.

“Then help me put on the Mexican spurs.”

“Never seen them in my life.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll teach you. Put those stupid roses down.”

She plonked her dirty boot on my thigh without ceremony. Mud smeared the new trousers.
“You’re ruining them.”

“So?” She ground the sole harder. “I paid for them. Wouldn’t be fun if they were old.”

The spur was a vicious star wheel with razor points. I almost cut my fingers just handling it.
Fastening them was torture. She kept barking:
“Pull harder. Wrong hole. Tighter. Not like that.”
Every mistake earned a sharp flick of her crop across my knuckles.

Finally one spur was on. She switched feet, deliberately soiling the other thigh, smiling like a demon.
Same ordeal. In the end she snatched the straps.
“There’s a trick. Watch.”
Two seconds. Done.

“Could’ve told me earlier.”

“Why? Watching you struggle was delicious.”

She chose a huge black thoroughbred, muscles rippling under glossy hide.

“Help me mount.”

I cupped my hands like in cowboy movies.

“I’d prefer you on all fours.”

“No fucking way.”

“Do it for me.”

“No.”

She tapped my shoulder with the crop. “Down.”

I looked around. Nobody. I dropped to hands and knees.
She was tall, solid, almost eighty kilos of muscle and cruelty. She stepped up slowly, letting her weight settle, cracking my spine.
“Let me ruin the jacket too. The one Vittorio had tailor-made for you is horrible.”

Then she vaulted into the saddle and dug the spurs in.
The stallion exploded forward before I could stand.

She rode at full speed, like a savage. Pure Colombian jungle savage.

She galloped away flat out, disappeared into the park for a while, came back finally. Smug. She was panting a little, shirt half-unbuttoned, breasts heaving, hair loose in the wind.
Movie stuff.

“The horse is bleeding there.” I said, pointing.

“Poor baby,” she mocked, and spurred again. “I like to dig in.”

“Pointless cruelty.”

“Taking advantage of the weak is in our nature. Everyone does it.”

“Not me.”

“Of course you have. You beat weaker kids at school, tortured animals, kicked a dog when you were bored…”

Didn’t remember. But maybe I had.

“You felt a dark, cruel pleasure.”

“Perhaps. I forbade myself to enjoy others’ pain.”

“How noble. How stupid. Why deny yourself a source of pleasure?”

“There are limits…”

“In pleasure and pain the only limits are the ones you set yourself.”

“Even if it harms others?”

“Especially then. The strong have the right to use the weak. It’s dogma.”

“Dogma of what faith?”

She just smiled.

She made the beast pirouette, sidestep, dance. One living creature of pure power.

“Riding is a cult for dominance.”

Another brutal spurring, another leap, another perfect dressage figure.

I was staring like a greedy child, devouring her with my gaze.
Every rise and fall in the saddle made her breasts bounce under the half-open shirt, nipples hard against the fabric.
Her ass in those skin-tight jodhpurs—round, powerful, merciless—clenched and released with each thrust of the spurs, muscles rippling like the stallion beneath her.
Sweat darkened the cloth between her thighs, tracing the outline of everything I wasn’t supposed to want.

She caught me.
Of course she did.
Understood perfectly well that I didn’t give a damn about her skill as a horsewoman.
I wasn’t watching the ride.
I was watching her body command it—violent, graceful, untouchable.
And hating myself for how much I wanted her.

Party over.

She dismounted in a single fluid motion and walked toward me, face dark.

“Get out.”

“What do you mean get out?”

She turned her back. I grabbed her arm. She yanked free.

“Don’t you dare touch me.”

Rage hit me like a wave.
I blocked her path inside the stable.

“Tell me why.”

For the first time she looked surprised. She realised I wasn’t like the others. Not yet broken.

“You’re just like the rest. Disappointingly average.”

“And you think you’re special? You’re just putting on a show. Like every other woman.”

She turned to leave. I spun her around. Pure hate in her eyes.

“This is the only thing you pigs want,” she said, tapping her crotch with the crop.

“Shirt half-open, trousers strained to the limit—then you’re shocked when I look? What the fuck do you want from me?”

She grabbed the roses, hurled them to the ground, and crushed under her boot, staring me dead in the eye. “Not chocolates and red roses, clown.”

“Stupid bitch.”

She slapped me. I didn’t flinch. Offered the other cheek.

She lashed the crop across my face. Burning line of fire.

I snapped.

I caught her wrist mid-swing, twisted it behind her back, slammed her face-down into the hay.
I wanted to hurt her.
I pinned her, yanked her belt open, dragged the jodhpurs and panties down.
Pure unstoppable animals rage.

“Pleasure is a duty… the strong have the right to take the weak, right?” I hissed in her ear.

She went rigid. Stopped fighting. Then the shaking began: convulsing, drooling, eyes rolled back.
Right to the edge of an epileptic seizure.
Then the sound: the desperate, heartbreaking wail of a little girl, wrenched from deep within the woman.

I rolled her over. Visions slammed into me: childhood horror, abuse, unbearable reality.

I let go. I felt ashamed for myself and deeply sorry for her.

She came out of it slowly, curled into a ball, sobbing like a child.

Something broke.

She collapsed at last and let herself go in tears between my arms.
We stayed entwined a while, in silence, trying to erase the chill, void and abandonment that gnawed us both.
I don’t recall if my mouth sought hers, or hers sought mine; perhaps both.
We found ourselves — unthinkably — making love
as I had wished:
slowly,
deeply,
with infinite tenderness.

It was like sliding into a cloud,
sinking into a mild lake,
drifting in the dawn-pink sky,
pulsing in the same celestial body, while blood and life coursed; strangers to the anguished winter of death—and finally, to explode in a thousand cosmic shards. In the deep, infinite space of her desperate child-eyes.

In the shards, a universe remembers it was once whole.

We lay side by side afterward. Truce. A semblance of serenity.

She looked fragile, lost.

“Do you think people can love each other?” she whispered.

“Not an expert.”

“To be loved, desired, adored… I never get enough.”

“Like Linares adoration?”

She nodded.

“And you?”

“A furious desire to possess him. Only mine.”

“He’s dead now.”

“That’s what he wanted. I granted his wish.”

“That’s… love?”

“Euthanasia is an act of love.”

“And Aquesolo?”

She nodded again.

“Cuadrado?”

“He disgusted me. A slimy worm. Devout Catholic who took the Lodge’s money then betrayed us. So we gave him the treatment his Nazarene got, only upside-down, crown of thorns and all.”

Shivers of uneasiness down my spine.

“Convenient way to silence people who knew too much…” I insinuated.

She pulled away, dressed mechanically.

“I don’t want to talk anymore. Leave.”

Cold voice back. The lady had returned.

She tossed me her torn panties with an insolent smile.

“Here. Something to remember me by until next time.”

“When will that be?”

“When I feel like it.”