Restlessly, I kick the duvet off me and twist my exhausted body around for the twentieth time tonight. I've been willing myself to drift off since I first clambered into bed at midnight. Since then, sleep has been spitefully elusive.
It's no good. Now I'm shivering, wide awake and slightly irritated. I desperately need to switch off. In a few hours, I have to be present the project I've been working for months on. I can't afford to be tired.
Without the warmth of the covers, my skin prickles and my nipples poke alarmingly at my sheer vest top. Absentmindedly, I start to play, rubbing them with the tips of my fingers as if to warm them up. Swinging my legs off the side of the bed, I groggily reach for my glasses on the bedside table. I hate wearing them, but when I'm this tired, my eyes need all the help they can get.
I might just give up trying to sleep now. Decision made, I head to the kitchen where I flick the kettle on. In my weary state, I've not grabbed anything warmer to wear and the cold tiled kitchen floor makes me almost dance, hopping from foot to foot trying to keep warm. The kettle bubbles to a crescendo as I spoon heaps of coffee into my mug. As annoyed as I am about not being able to sleep, I love this time of night. It's so dark and still. It reminds me of wilder nights. Walks of shame as I stumbled home still tipsy and high on the excitement of having been with someone new. The smell of sex mingling with the night air and intoxicating me even further.
So far removed from the life I have now. That giddy, carefree girl long gone. Sometimes thankfully. But sometimes I yearn for those nights where I'd let a stranger run his hand up my skirt in a club. When we'd make out on the dance floor so furiously, it was almost obscene. His erection pushing against me as my pussy tingled with the knowledge that later my legs would be wrapped around him as his cock was buried deep inside me.
Wistfully, I slide my hands round the coffee mug to keep warm and make my way back upstairs. My trip down memory lane has made me more than horny now, but you're fast asleep.
I make my way to the window and climb onto the seat that borders it. The curtains are open. They're usually open. I like it that way. I like the way the streetlamps bathe the bedroom in soft light and the shadows of the trees dance along the walls. Our street is deathly quiet. It's a clear night and the moon is stunningly full. I glance down the road, looking at the dark houses, coveting my neighbours who are clearly tucked up in their beds fast asleep. Except one house. The one diagonally opposite us. A single room lit up. Another insomniac like me it appears.
We've lived here for years, but I don't know much about the occupants of this house. They've not long moved in. I know they have kids around the same age as mine. The mother is stunning. Slender, blonde and the type who is always impeccably turned out. I find him a little more intimidating. I don't know why. He's always perfectly polite when he sees me, but there's something in the way he looks at me - it makes me uncomfortably nervous. As if he can see through me.
Hugging my knees to my chest, I stare at the window wondering if it's him behind the dimly lit curtains. I suddenly get a mental image of him, his head between his wife's thighs. Her slender fingers weaving through his hair, her back arched as he laps at her pussy. I clench down on nothing and gasp as the feeling overtakes me. Fuck, I shouldn't be thinking this, I won't be able to look at either of them again.
