Through the Window

Ten to eight. Fai's husband would be home in twenty minutes. Standing in their little balcony kitchenette, surrounded by the noise of Bangkok, a mosquito feasting unnoticed on her ankle, she immersed her hands into the soapy water once again and continued her vigil of the room across the street. Through a gap in the curtain of the apartment opposite she could see a little slice of someone else's life, and how that someone else spent those precious hours when they believed themselves away from people's prying eyes.

Fai's gaze travelled over the expanse of creamy thigh, the jutting hip bone, the trailing fingers and watched, inscrutable, as the woman on the bed slid her knickers down to tangle around her ankles. Sensuously, as if they belonged to someone else, the woman caressed her thighs. She was teasing herself. Fai had seen this before. The woman liked to build up her own anticipation, work herself up to it. It was as if she was trying to submerge herself in her pleasure, each stroke of her skin erasing a little bit more of the outside world until the only thing that existed was her and her body in all its voluptuous glory. This was the fourth time this week, which Fai knew about anyway, and it was only Tuesday. Three times yesterday and once today. The woman was insatiable. And so was Fai's need to watch this nameless woman as she regressed, surrendering to her desire to fulfill her most base of instincts. In her kitchenette, obscured from view, Fai felt like a scientist in a lab, calmly recording her observations. She was an ethologist cataloguing behaviour.

The woman was massaging the insides of her thighs. Fai could see the tendons on the back of her hands stand out as she exercised all of the constraint she could muster to keep from giving into herself. It wouldn't be long before her forbearance would wear thin. Fai held her breath, it was witnessing this moment that she had begun to crave, that had driven her out onto the balcony to stand with her hands in the sink, pretending to do the washing up, for almost three months now. Even the nights when her husband was home and she couldn't find an excuse to go and stand outside getting eaten alive by mosquitoes she would picture it. That moment, the moment of surrender, played out in her mind's eye in glorious technicolour.

The woman's fingers were sneaking closer and closer to the centre of her desire. From her concealed viewpoint Fai could just imagine how the woman's clit must be throbbing, the feeling as the blood rushed to her crotch, making her labia swell, her juices leak out onto the bed. Fai could smell the tangy scent that emanated from the woman's wet cunt, tainting the air with its sexuality. She pushed her pubis against the sink, feeling her own arousal, the stickiness between her legs. But as tempting as the idea was to mirror the woman's actions here in her sweaty little kitchenette she resisted. Keeping her hands submerged in the cold soapy water she bit her lip in eager anticipation.

Across the street, over the heads of the scabby soi dogs as they engaged in their complex territory battles, surrounded by boxy one-room apartments full of unwitting occupants going about their mundane business, the woman was succumbing to her own administrations. Fai's heart thudded in her chest as those questing fingers lightly glided over swollen cunt lips and she was sure she could hear the woman gasping as if she was in the room with her. The woman closed her eyes and spread her thighs further apart. Using her index finger she began to circle her clit. In Fai's mind the touch was gentle, feather-light, the way Fai herself liked to be touched, the way she'd spent many years trying to encourage her husband to simulate. She could imagine the silky feel of the swollen bud as it was coaxed and teased. The woman's other hand moved down to her hole and a finger pushed inside herself. It would feel so warm, so wet. There is nothing comparable to the feel of one's own sex, to give in to those animal instincts and bring yourself to the pinnacle of pleasure. Always comforting but always a little illicit, a unique thrill. And to share in someone else's personal satisfaction, even as a silent and secret observer, took Fai to new heights of titillation.

The woman's movements were becoming faster, more urgent. A second finger was pushed inside her and the finger on her clit gained speed. She was writhing, eyes squeezed shut, her mouth a perfect 'o' as she moved herself closer to peaking point. Both hands were moving in a frenzy now, the fingers of her left hand pushing inside her harder and faster. She angled her hips to allow them to slide in deeper as the right hand continued its work, moving over her clit with practiced accuracy.

With her dark hair spread across the white sheets like a puddle of oil, her face flushed and her whole body shuddering the woman frigged herself harder and harder. She arched her back and squirmed on the bed and - yes! - it was finally here. Fai's cunt flooded as she witnessed the woman surfing the crest of her orgasm and with a cry that must have resonated through the apartment building like a fire alarm she came.

Fai's eyes were stuck to the window. The final act was complete but she always stuck around for the afterpiece. There was a bittersweet intimacy in watching the woman as she returned to reality. Her hands would be sticky and her hair tangled. Even as the satisfaction radiated through her body it was beginning to fade away. She lay still, staring at nothing, thinking thoughts obscured from Fai. She wanted to be in that room with her, to hold her and stroke her hair as she came down. To hear those elusive musings whispered in her ear. She could weep for the woman as she so often wept for herself - frustrated, isolated, embittered by the world. Fai gazed at the soft, pale body that to her seemed so vulnerable. She watched the float of the woman's breasts as her breathing evened to a steady rise and fall. She looked so beautiful. If she could Fai would have reached through the window and touched her. A simple, friendly touch, just to let her know that she was here and that she understood.

So transfixed was she that she didn't think to move when the woman got up from the bed, crossed the room with languid strides and reached for the curtain. It was just a split second but for Fai it stretched out and filled her whole world as the woman locked eyes with her. Fai would remember that look forever. There was a flicker of understanding and then the curtains were pulled closed.