'The little bastard!'
Amy snuck one hand across his mouth, the other under the waistband of his jeans, and jerked him backward from the cracked open door he'd been peering through. Tim jumped with shock and tripped over his feet because Amy pulled him so hard. Still, she managed to keep him upright, and stifle the grunt of surprise he made, as she bundled him through the adjoining door into his own bedroom.
"What on earth do you think you're doing, Tim?" She asked in an angry whisper as she released him.
"Nothing... "
"Liar!"
Amy slapped him across his face with the full flat of her hand.
"Fuck, Amy! That hurt."
"Amy? Is that you?" The voice came from his mother's bedroom.
Amy wagged a finger in warning at him - not that he was going to do anything, not with that furious expression in her eyes. She slipped out of his bedroom, and quickly moved to the other end of the corridor not.
"Hi, Susan. Yes, it's me."
"What was that noise?"
"I... I tripped over something. I'm ok, nothing broken."
"Is Tim with you?"
"He's around somewhere. Why? Do you want him?"
"No... just wondered. I'll be down in a little while. You can help me with supper."
Amy crept back to her cousin's bedroom door and beckoned him with a finger. She'd bawl him out downstairs, and not where her aunt might hear. He shook his head, a hand still pressed to the side of his face. Amy could see the redness from across the room, but she didn't care β he deserved it.
'Now!' she mouthed fiercely. 'Or else!'
He shrugged, rising off the bed, and Amy led the way downstairs to the room the household used as an office, thinking it to be about the furthest from her aunt's bedroom. She leaned back, her bottom conveniently resting against the edge of the desk, folding her arms across her chest, and waiting for him to come into the room.
"Close the door," she said firmly. "What the hell do you think you were doing, Tim?"
"Nothing!"
"Don't start that again, unless you want the other side slapped too. What were you doing?
"I was just going to the bathroom. I wasn't doing anything."
"Well, I watched you 'doing nothing' for at least two minutes with your head bobbing up and down. Trying to get a better view, were you?"
"I was just passing! I was trying to see if Mum was in."
"Oh, you've lost your voice have you? Couldn't call out? Don't you know peeping is wrong? You can't go peeping on your mother. You can't go peeping on anybody! Do you understand?"
Tim stood looking at the floor wearing a sheepish expression, from what she could see, and eventually nodded his head.
"I'm sorry. Are you going to tell Mum?" he asked, finally looking up, a slightly anxious expression creasing his face.
Amy couldn't tell whether his contrition was genuine β it had all the right components but she thought he might be faking... the blush, for one thing β she'd hit him so damn hard she couldn't distinguish blush from redness.
"I'll not tell, not for the moment, but... I want you to call my office in the morning and make an appointment. We'll have a talk about this problem you appear to have β on a professional level."
"Amy! I can't do that! I don't have a problem."
"Yes, you do Tim," Amy said in a gentler voice. "And you'll have a bigger problem if I tell your mother. So, do as you're told. The first thing you do tomorrow is phone my office and make an appointment."
Now he was blushing.
He sauntered shame-faced out of the room. Amy raised a hand to her mouth to silence a chuckle.
- - - - - - - -
"He was peeping! Honestly. His head was bobbing backwards and forwards, up and down, trying to get a better view of you. All the while he was rubbing himself off through his jeans."
"Oh dear," she laughed. "I should have made sure the damn door was properly closed."
"What were you doing, anyway?"
"You know... I get a little bored in the afternoons. Tim is usually at college. I'd forgotten he'd finished... and didn't expect you for supper so early. I was keeping myself amused."
"Yes... I can easily imagine. I've had the pleasure of watching you amuse yourself."
They weren't lovers, not really, just two people who decided to shun the rigors of middle-aged dating and who cherished a certain intimacy enhanced by familial ties that added a frisson to their play; theirs was a relationship of unsullied mutual pleasure.
"Do you want to watch now?"
"No... Aunty," she added for emphasis. "I'd much rather you do me. Catching Tim peeping has made me quite horny."
- - - - - - - -
The intercom buzzed β 'Tim is here', and Amy pressed the reply button, "Thank you, Mary. Five minutes then show him in."
She'd just finished entering up the notes on her last patient when Mary knocked lightly on her door and showed Tim into the consulting room.
"Hello, Tim." She smiled. "Sit yourself down." She pointed to the sofa along one side of her office. "Get comfy."
She watched his nervous glances around the room. He's clearly embarrassed, she thought, whether that's because he's here at the centre, or because he's shamed-faced about why he's here... I shall discover.
She moved from behind her desk and into an armchair, close to Tim, straightening her pleated black skirt beneath her as she sat, and arranging the matching jacket to hang neatly on her slim frame. She looked up and smiled inviting him to ask the obvious questions she could see in his expression.