There's a woman who lives next door, she's been there for five or six years. I met her at a party there, a couple of years ago, and close up her face was extraordinary. She has rich brown eyes and olive skin, a light smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, and her hair is long and auburn and lustrous. When I first saw her she was at a sixth form college, and because they wore uniform I didn't look twice other than to smile and say hello, but now she's shed that skin, and I see her in figure hugging jeans and nice looking tops. She's around twenty two, twenty three, and I'm approaching thirty.
She lives with her parents, and when they go away for the weekend I hear her humping whoever she's brought home. She does a peculiar high pitched yelping when she's coming and it always turns me on.
It's July and it's sunny and hot, and with all the windows open wide I've been irritated all morning by the noise of her nephew and niece playing out in a little blue paddling pool. I'm trying to write, but the screams and the laughter keep interfering with my concentration, so in the end I hit the sofa for some TV. There isn't much on; Columbo, Sunday Kitchen, the weekly politics show, but I hear the kids and the brother and his wife saying their goodbyes, and them going with her parents following on in their own car.
The place is suddenly still, and quiet, the woman's little noises still there but all muffled by the dividing wall. I get up and begin the process of settling to my writing, so first I make coffee. I make a ritual of setting myself at the table, in front of the window so I can look out onto the garden. The trees at the back are shimmering with the heat. I start typing, slowly, as though my fingers have forgotten where the keys are, and gradually I establish a little rhythm, pausing here and there to light a cigarette or take a sip of coffee.
As I write, subconsciously I listen to her movements, footsteps on the stairs, drawers opening and closing in one of the bedrooms, a tap being run. Then back downstairs and there's the tinkle of ice cubes and I hear her go out into the garden. I can't see her because of the fence, but I hear her padding feet as she moves furniture around. I wonder can she hear my fingers, tapping at the keyboard. She's closer now. Her sounds are closer, and I feel distracted, self-conscious. I've done maybe two paragraphs. I go upstairs to use the toilet and pee at the side of the bowl so it's quiet.
I'm at the top of the stairs and I pause. I was going down, but I don't. I go into the back bedroom and, standing a little way back from the window I look out through the blinds.
She's on a sun lounger beside the pool, sitting while she applies sun cream. She's wearing a bikini, a little black one with a beige coloured floral pattern. Her breasts are cupped so I see her cleavage, her nipples slightly visible where they're pushing at the fabric in the bikini top. She's wearing sunglasses and her hair is tied back into a ponytail. She often sunbathes but I've never really dared to look. Her skin has a lovely golden sheen, intensified where she's smoothed in lotion.
It occurs to me that I shouldn't be looking now, but I can't peel my eyes away. I shake my head and turn away but her image stays there, in my minds eye, and although I want to go back downstairs and get on with my work I'm drawn back to the window for a second look.
With her hair that way I see that she has a slender neck. Her body is divine, and I admire the way she moves as she's rubbing in the last of the cream, using her fingers to apply it around her toes. Leaning forward her breasts are exposed down inside the top and I have tantalising glimpses of her big brown nipples.
She places a packet of cigarettes and a lighter on her belly and I see a little wobble, a cute belly button and a barely discernible trail of hairs, blonde against her tan skin, leading down inside her bikini bottoms. She settles back in the lounger to bask and puts her feet up. She has long shapely legs and wonderful flowing curves, through her thighs, through her hips, around her chest and her breasts, her shoulders and her neck. I am transfixed.
She exudes sexuality and I feel a hint of arousal. Every so often she rises from the middle to run her fingers through her hair, a goddess in cool sunglasses. I feel safe in the shade, standing back inside the bedroom a little way, looking out through the narrow slats, but I can't help wondering, can she see me? Her sunglasses are directed my way, her body in line with mine so her feet are pointing at me, but I don't think she can see in, and I'm silent. I study her movements and I can detect no hint of embarrassment or awareness of me coming from her, so I allow myself to continue looking.
I watch another minute and start to get cross with myself. I'm about to go when she sits forward and lights a cigarette. She puckers her glossy looking lips as she smokes and the hint of arousal in me grows. I can see into her top again and her skin is shiny in the sun, strips of reflected sunlight attract my eyes to follow their progress along her body. I stare. I'm hypnotised.
I move a little closer to the window. She finishes her cigarette and flicks it away, reaches for the glass and gulps juice down. I see her throat bobbing as she swallows and hear the ice cubes rattle. Her head is angled upwards and I freeze, convinced that she's seen me and is going to say something, but instead she rolls the emptied glass across her forehead and over her chest and abdomen. I see perspiration beading and her nipples jut.
My penis stiffens. She extracts an ice cube from the glass and pops it into her mouth and I hear her gasping at the cold against her teeth, then she stands and turns so that her back is to me, water flowing the length of her, reaches up behind and unfastens her hair. It tumbles and sweeps at her shoulders and I follow it down over the valley of her spine to where it spreads out into the luscious curves of her bottom, the bikini pants stretching to contain her and somehow enhancing her arse cheeks. She has two pronounced dimples in the small of her back.
I'm inflamed, and I dare to push even closer and feel cautiously for the bulge in my trousers. I rub at it gently. My mouth is slightly open.
She pauses in the garden and looks back at the fence, and up towards my window, her head angled for listening out. I withdraw a little. She stays this way for a few moments, then I see the tension leave her body and her hands reach up behind and unclasp the bikini top. I stop breathing. She drops it onto the floor beside the glass of melting ice.
She turns and I see her breasts fully exposed, those big brown nipples pronounced against the pale orbs and tan lines, erect, holding onto my wide open eyes like magnets. She settles back down onto the sun lounger. I see her breasts spread and watch as she adjusts her shoulders and bottom to get comfortable. Her legs are slightly apart and I feel all warm and relaxed. I quietly undo the buttons on my fly. I reach in and draw out my penis, hard, hot to the touch, it feels nice out in the air. I feel it, grasping it gently and stroking. I can smell its musk.
She seems to have a little smile playing on her lips and I wonder what she's thinking about. Her foot taps and she sits up again and begins to smooth on more sun tan lotion. She smoothes it into her neck and shoulders, up as far as she can reach around the back, over her bare hanging breasts and across her tummy, then she massages it the length of her thighs and calves, ending with her fingers slipping and sliding about between wriggling toes.
My penis is throbbing with desire, and I tighten my grip a little bit, rubbing along the gorged shaft very slowly. My heart rate and my breathing quicken slightly. I'm masturbating.
She lies back and takes off the sunglasses and her eyes are locked onto mine, seeing me, and I gasp. She stares and I can't see whether she's frowning. Does she look cross? She doesn't move and nor do I. Her eyes are penetrating into my shade. I wait. She closes her eyes and lies back, her hands are outstretched and she wriggles her fingers because they're all sticky with lotion.
I move backwards into the room and take off all my clothes. Can she hear them? Sliding down? Peeling off? I run my hands over my stomach and chest and imagine that they're hers, that she's feeling me.
