Ashleigh's Encore

I can feel you watching me.

Hanging out the washing on the drier, I have to admit, has become much more interesting of late. For one thing, I've started choosing my wardrobe more carefully. Today's ensemble includes black hipster jeans and a tight, slightly see through black top over my small, bra-less breasts, finished off with a sheer whale-tail thong, breaking the waves where the jeans ride low to reveal the smooth curve of my butt. No shoes: it's summer. But I painted my nails fuchsia pink, to go with my knickers. I'm guessing you're a man who likes the details.

Look, it surprises me every bit as much as it surprises you. I thought I'd feel violated, angry, vindictive to be the object of your - what - your affections? And I did, at first.

There I was in the garden yesterday, hanging out the washing, then leaning over to stroke the cat, my low-cut vest top, I recall, falling forwards and away from my skin, but not so I'd noticed or care. It's my garden after all. Who could see?

Not so I noticed or cared, that is, until the slightest of movements at your curtain and I knew.

I just knew. You were watching me.

And suddenly I became aware of the cool morning air on my pale little breasts and how my nipples were as stiff as tiny stones. From the upstairs back window of your part of our semi-detached houses you just about had to be able to see them standing proud, perfectly placed, as you are, to stare right down my top.

My cheekbones suddenly flaring, I rushed back inside, pressing the vest top up against my skin almost unconsciously, not daring to look up, save for the quickest of glimpses at your window as I darted out of view: a fleck of light reflecting off of the rim of your glasses, I've since surmised, was my only reward at that time.

I have to admit, I shuddered inside, with revulsion. I was shaking quite hard. I had to have a drink of whisky. In fact I had two. Then I went out, got in my car, rode to town, had some lunch, drank some wine, bought some clothes, got the ingredients for my husband's supper, and pretended like nothing had happened.

That was then. This is now. It's amazing what you can get used to with just a little notice.

I didn't tell Ben, of course. He's no Neanderthal, but it would have creeped him out to think of you up there, jerking off, perhaps, certainly getting hard at the sight of his bored - oh, so very, very bored - young, clever hottie of a wife, stuck here in the suburbs of leafy nowhere thanks to his 'promotion'. The 'promotion' that, for me, feels more like a demotion, since we moved house, towns, lives. I seem to have lost everything, save for him. My friends, the chats, those long mornings sipping tea by the Thames. Other people. Real people. Now it's a ten-minute drive through Legoland Stepford just to make it to a main road and ride through more lego to the dead, lonely nothingness of town.

And then that evening, as I lay there, Ben on top, doing his best, but clearly going through the motions somewhat, wheezing his way to an orgasm and, with any luck, a flutter of enjoyment from me, just enough to assuage his own guilt so he could then nip back downstairs to the real love of his life and finish some work on a file of something before the next day's endeavour. (I wish I could say he's down there looking at porn, chatting online to some tart, or whatever, but he's not. He's just working. It almost makes me sad.) As I lay there, him moving smoothly inside of me, showing appropriate sensitivity, i.e., not too roughly, just saving a bit of pseudo-urgency for the end, so to speak. Anything to make it feel realer than it actually is. As I lay there, waiting for something to happen, I suddenly became aware that you could probably hear us through the walls.

You could, I corrected myself, probably hear me.

After all, the bed creaks a little, even during these muted midweek numbers. And we hear you sometimes as well, or rather your music. Not having sex, obviously. Bach, Ben says, always J. S. Bach. You are the writer - the great thinker, we're told in the hushed tones of other neighbours - at home in his semi, listening to Bach, thinking great thoughts. Nursing an erection and coveting another man's wife. So if we can hear you, I remember clearly thinking, then you can hear us too. More to the point, you can hear me.

You can hear me right now.

The realisation was like switching my body over to a higher voltage. Suddenly, I pulsed with adrenaline. Blood rushing everywhere at once. My heart raced. My slumbering nipples awoke, becoming truly hard, just like this morning in the garden. My clit, I could feel it, getting larger, peeping out to nudge the grind of Ben's groin. And most of all my pussy, suddenly responding to Ben's sucking, fingering, humping. It felt good, so good all of a sudden, that I moaned and a thin trail of hot, warm juice leaked out of me and down through my cheeks, Over my tight little hole and onto the expensive, freshly laundered sheets below. The freshly laundered sheets.

Now I'll have to do the laundry again.

I took charge, making Ben roll onto his back and then rearing up on top of him. "Ashleigh...?" he began, but he stopped talking, thank God, as I kissed him hard, bending down to do so as I rolled my hips, centering his cute and plump little cock, ready to go to town. His hands pressed up against my tight little tits, his palms taking the burn of the tips, and then I leant upright again, squeezing my nipples myself much, much harder, till they hurt, and starting to ride him truly hard.

I concentrated on my voice, just for you, my admirer. An aria for the thinker next door.

Locked in a rhythm that had Ben gasping from the off, I began with some tentative grace notes. An mmmmmmmmm-mmmm sliding down, rather sweetly at the end. Then repeated, elongated and elaborated. Then a sigh. And now a faster, more urgent rhythm, an uhh-huh, uhh-huh, oh yes, uhh-huh kind of rhythm, a cliché, I know, but effective. Not least in getting Ben ready, his balls now tight, I discovered, as I leant back and reached below my butt to caress them with my finger tips, encouraging them to fill his cock stiff with come and then explode hard within me. But not just for me.

And then I made that sound I cannot help but make when it all comes together, as the aria moves to its climax and the player really connects with her audience: like a cellist in one of the Bach solo suites, her audience rapt with attention at every ounce of emotion and concentration she wrings out of the bow and the strings. That deep moan, you must have heard it before now - perhaps on those long afternoons in the middle of those long, dead days when I'm really down and bored and nothing else will do to make it go away... that moan that comes from inside of me, deep down in my core. My solo music.

It's been a while.

All I could feel is the rhythm and the tension and your mind imagining my hard little body as I bounce up and down, locking in, getting close, getting close, mmmmammmmm, mmmmammmmm, mmmmammmmm, mmmma -

- and then - and then -

oh God I'm coming, oh shit, oh shit oh shit of shit, oh God, mmmmmmmmm ooooooo yes, yes, yes...

Ben came at once, too, thanks to me holding his tight little balls and then touching his asshole with the tip of one perfectly manicured nail at just the right moment to please me. (It's like pressing a button: he's most thoughtful when he's at his most thoughtless.)

But I wasn't connecting with him, just to you as I felt the hard throb down inside me and he spurted midway up inside my pussy. The strokes of my orgasm echo off my inner walls. Bells in a small Italian chapel. I am thinking of you and wondering if you hear me and if, perhaps, you feel something too.

When Ben started work later on I stripped and remade the bed. Then I popped down to the cellar and put the sheets on to wash. But not to dry. They'll need to be aired, I said quietly to myself, smiling. I then ran back up the stairs to the bedroom to choose my clothes for the morning. I put on my pyjamas, cuddled the cat, and just lay there, alive, my body still quietly singing, and wondering if I'll ever get to sleep.

And now, here we are.

I stand up with the deep red sheet, stretching on tiptoe to reach the high line, knowing my breasts will arc up in response, their tips pushing against the thin material, pushing through a little, showing you their stiffness and my mounting excitement. Perhaps you think it's the cold morning air again. I expect you know better than that.

And I know my top is riding up too, exposing the lower portions of my slim, graceful back, while my buttocks bunch below, forming cleavage of their own at the top of my jeans. Can you just about see down the crack at the back, showing off my pert little ass, and the line of the hot pink thong, running down deeper below: a dotted line waiting for fingers to join up the dots?

The jeans don't quite ride low enough, of course, for you to see just how wet the main body of the thong is by now.

Sheet pinned up, I rest between movements. I relax, turn my face to the warm sun above, hear the birds, feel my body purr delightedly. The power. The grace of the moment.

And then I look straight at your window. Not a challenge, not a rebuke. An admission, perhaps. An admission of needs, yours and mine. All our needs. An admission that we are truly alive.

I lie back in the wet, unmown grass, staring up at the blue, cloudless sky. Cold dew seeping in through my clothes to my skin. I start to join the dots.

Encore, encore.