Neighbourhood Watch, Part 1

‘It’s not exactly inspiring,’ I mumble, as I stare at the apartment block across the alleyway. It’s a big, red tower of bricks and windows, some of which I can see right into, bathed in the orange glow of a setting sun, and it fills every square inch of our meagre horizon.

‘We’re supposed to be beach-front.’

AJ sighs. ‘We are,’ she says.

‘Yeah, but what’s the point if you can’t actually SEE the beach from anywhere in your apartment?’

AJ grins mischievously and I know she’s about to deal me some of the sass I love her for. ‘Well, Kyle, you could get a proper job. You might not like working, but at least we’d be able to afford more than a room in a giant concrete block.’

‘Oof, rough, babe.’

AJ laughs. ‘You love it,’ she says, kissing me on the cheek.

She’s right, of course. It’s my fault we’re here. My first book didn’t sell so well, but it was enough to score some points with a fringe publisher interested in that sort of thing. By which I mean, erotic thrillers. Yeah, yeah, I know. Let’s just ditch all the sexist stereotyping bullshit, okay? I enjoy writing about sex. In fact, I’d rather read a good piece of erotica than watch a badly acted porno.

Erm, most of the time.

AJ’s the same. It’s even how we met. I was doing a little intranational tour for book signings – mostly at sex and lifestyle exhibitions – and there she was at my local, of all places. One of the few who seemed totally at ease strolling around with a bag full of romantic books and naughty toys, laughing with her friends like they were at a café. Then, when she realised I’d written one of the books she was carrying, she of course asked me to sign it.

I remember what she looked like when she approached my stall. Curvaceous, with green eyes and black hair, a purple streak down one side. She wore stockings that hugged her legs perfectly, and a long-sleeve dress designed to look like a skirt with a top. She was so confident, so cheeky. I asked her out for a drink before I’d even finished my first initial, and it was over that drink I found out she was an intern going for her residency at a hospital.

It was just meant to be.

Anyway, after we started dating, I offered to find work, but AJ wouldn’t hear of it. She said she wanted me to write my second book, and she wanted me to do it without any distractions. So, what could I do? I promised not to let her down and started planning drafts.

That was a year ago.

It was AJ who suggested we move once she got her residency. I mean, I’d won a couple of competitions, done some cash-in-hand work, and royalties for my first book occasionally trickled in, but she was easily the breadwinner. If she thought we could do it, then we could do it. I was frustrated with myself, though, so when she floated the idea, I, like a typical fucking artist, demanded we go somewhere I could find “inspiration”. We settled on the beach, but a medical resident and a struggling writer don’t make much money, so we ended up here, in three-and-half-room heaven, overlooking what I’m tempted to describe as a penitentiary of dreams.

Still, not bad for a couple of twenty-somethings.

‘In any case, it’ll have to do,’ says AJ, handing me my laptop.

We’d set up the “office” by the living room window: a desk made from still-packed boxes and one of those cheapie gas lift chairs for me to sit on. It’s okay, I guess. At the very least, I’m with the woman I love, and it was high-time I made good on that promise.

I inhale deeply. ‘I will do this,’ I declare, more for my own benefit than AJ’s.

‘That’s my hero,’ she replies, grinning again. ‘Seriously, you’ve got this. Go for a walk or join the gym or whatever. I’m sure you’ll find something that inspires you.’

‘Oh, ye of too much faith,’ I say. We kiss again, and I feel her hands wrap around my thighs. She squeezes me tightly. ‘And I want this place cleaned and breakfast on the table for me when I get home. No excuses, you got it?’

‘So, make the bed and leave you some pizza in the fridge?’

She laughs a beautiful, carefree melody. ‘See you in the morning,’ she says, letting me go. ‘Seriously, though. I expect a title by the end of the week.’ She glares at me, just long enough to let me know she means business this time, and then she waves goodbye.

A moment later, I’m alone, AJ and her fire replaced by the cold, white light of the laptop screen and an angry, blinking cursor.

***

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

The smell of takeaway pizza.

The gentle hum of electricity.

The critical stare of a blank page.

I open my planning documents again. Several different story ideas. Character maps. Worldbuilding. It makes me feel good looking at the work I HAVE done, even if I can’t sell any of it. People think writing erotica is as easy as putting a bunch of stereotypes together and forcing them into a fantasia of silly sexual encounters. And, yeah, okay, that’s part of it, but what makes a good erotica is the relatability, the tension, the build-up. If you make the characters believable and you suck the reader into the story, then it doesn’t matter what kind of crazy things kick start the sex: everyone’s onboard for the ride.

I managed to do that in my first book. At least, I thought I did. My new publisher seems to agree, but not enough to pay me an advance. Probably a good decision, given that I’m almost a year in and can’t come up with a decent fucking word.

I sigh and lean back in my chair, listening to that quiet cacophony you get in small apartments at night. Y’know, people slinking up staircases, the occasional thud, voices that should be silent, but instead linger inside the walls? In an act of desperation, I turn away from the laptop and throw open the curtains, once again looking upon the muted kaleidoscope of brick and glass that makes up my new neighbourhood.

Everyone’s lights are off, of course, their blinds or curtains closed. A good thing, given that the alleyway is only about two car lengths wide. Still, I sit there for a while, just taking it in, trying to imagine how an erotic thriller might begin in a place like this.

I don’t have to wait long.

It happens early in the morning, a sight so strange I rub my tired eyes to make sure I’m not dreaming. The lights in the apartment across from ours flick on, and a moment later, a woman enters, stage left. She’s slightly lower than me, probably on the corresponding floor, but offset just enough that I’m looking down on her from my vantage. The room is a bedroom. I can see a cupboard next to a tallboy with a mirror on it, a queen-sized bed with one of those gaudy, ornate headboards and red, cotton sheets, and a few run-of-the-mill stuffed toys. It’s nothing out of the ordinary, and neither is the woman herself. In fact, she looks like she just came home from working at a restaurant or a bar. She even throws her purse on the floor with the same kind of relief AJ does after a nightshift.

She turns to the window, presumably to close the blinds, and then pauses like she’s looking at her own reflection. I can’t tell what colour her eyes are at this time of night, but I can tell she has long, brown hair tied into a ponytail. I know she’s wearing some makeup, too, because her eyeliner’s thick enough to be running a bit, and she’s painted her fingernails with a bright, red polish that matches the bed sheets. She looks about my age – maybe a little older – but it’s hard to be sure. Nothing on her body gives anything away, and, in fact, most of it is hidden beneath a black shirt and a pair of matching pants so dull they might actually be a uniform. Though, now that I think about it, the top is admittedly low cut, and the light glosses over the pants as if they’re made of leather, which is strange…

Wait, ARE they made of leather?

I sit there for a moment trying to resolve this perplexing notion, when she suddenly pouts her hips. It’s such a casual act, but my eyes just get sucked right in, and they follow her curves until I end up at…

Is she looking at me? Oh shit, SHE’S LOOKING AT ME!

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK!

I slam the laptop screen shut and sink completely into what I hope is an impenetrable cloak of proper darkness.

Too late, I realise, as the woman smiles ruefully.

That’s all it takes for my heart to start beating a race. I know I should close the curtains. I know I should walk away and pretend it never happened. But her expression captivates me. I doubt she can see me anymore, but she definitely knows I’m here. I watch as she tilts her head and loosens her ponytail until her hair falls free. I don’t know what I’m expecting to see – in fact, I’m already concocting ways of apologising to her – but she blows me a kiss, which she sends my way with the most modestly seductive wave I’ve ever seen.

Then she closes the blinds, and I’m alone with my empty room.

And my thoughts.

***

I fully intend on telling AJ about the woman in the window over breakfast – in that brief hour we get to share together before she crashes for the day and I go about my business – but I just can’t bring myself to do it. Not after she delivers the news that she’s been rostered on every night this week because two other residents are sick.

It’s not because I’m worried about what she’ll think, though. An erotic writer and a medical intern meet at a sex and lifestyle expo, and you think their crowning sexual jewel is missionary for the purposes of procreation?

No.

How can I put this?

AJ is a dirty little bitch – her words – and I’m not exactly a chaste gentleman. Back when I was doing research for my first book, I got into the house party circuit and ended up going to dozens of them because, well, they turned out to be kinda fun. I didn’t always play, but I’ve done my fair share of pleasuring, and even though I haven’t been on the scene since going monogamous, I still keep myself in decent shape and well-groomed out of habit. AJ, on the other hand, had already known for a while that bringing people to climax was the fastest way to get herself wet, and so decided during university that tantric massage was her calling. In fact, that was why she frequented the sex and lifestyle expo: to learn more techniques.

But she, too, begrudgingly walked this back after we got together. Maybe it’s because we simply have less time for other things these days, or maybe it’s because some of the fun we used to have just lost its appeal. Whatever the case, we may not be stylish swingers right now, but trust me when I say AJ wouldn’t be angry over last night’s escapades. I think she’d even find the woman’s cheeky response arousing. Though maybe not when she’s facing down a week of nightshifts.

Besides, I don’t know if it meant anything. At this point, it was more funny than sexy, but there was still something… something in the way she blew me that kiss…

As I watch my beautiful girlfriend wolf down her fried bacon, I make my decision.

I’ll be spending a few late nights in the “office”, with my laptop screen wide open.

Just to see if inspiration strikes.

***

On the first night, the woman doesn’t show, and the apartment stays dark all night. I’m left bouncing a rubber ball against the kitchen cupboards, my failure to write once again staring me down. I don’t really like thinking about this one, so that’s all I’ll say.

On the second night, her lights flick on, but the blinds stay shut and all I can see is a shadow occasionally moving back and forth. I begin to think the night she’d seen me had just been an offbeat coincidence, and even though she’d handled it with a cheeky kiss, it really hadn’t meant anything after all. I think about sneaking into the building’s lobby to see if there are any names on the buttons, but if that ain’t some Grade A stalker shit, then I don’t know what is. I drop the idea, and instead decide to try the window one more time before letting it go.

On the third night, her lights flick on again, but the blinds stay shut, and even the shadow doesn’t appear this time. She must be showering or something, though, because the lights don’t turn off, and I just stare at this smudge of warm light piercing the alleyway. After a while, though, I figure nothing’s going to happen, and I try to concentrate on work. At first, I’m good, but then my eyes keep hovering back towards the window.

Again, and again, and again, until…

There she is. I don’t even notice her open the blinds, but all of a sudden, she’s standing there, and I can see her. She’s wearing a silk nightie, mauve with black frilling. It clings to her body in all the right places, sensually cupping her chest, cinching her hourglass figure at the waist, and hanging below like a miniskirt, exposing just enough smooth, tanned flesh to scintillate the imagination. Her hair is reborn, cascading over her shoulders like water, and her lips are just as red as her fingernails.

This time, she is ANYTHING but ordinary.

I don’t close the laptop, and she doesn’t disappear. At least, not straight away. She looks at me – into me – and I feel that rush of excitement you get when you know you’ve captured someone’s attention.

Then she moves, and it’s like watching a master at work.

She smiles, runs her tongue slowly across her lips and purses them, offers me a sly wink. I watch her hips move with a subtle rhythm that draws my eyes to the back of her legs, even though the angle she’s standing at makes it a little awkward to see. After a few minutes of her slowly dancing in place, she blows me another kiss and sidles out of sight. I wait patiently for the lights to flick off, for the signal that it’s over and that I can finally attend to the heat slowly building between my legs, but then she reappears, a great, big, AJ-style grin on her face.

She holds up a piece of paper, a message written in black marker.

- If you want to see more, be at the window at 1 AM tomorrow morning -

Another rush, and I overcompensate by giving her a ridiculously cringeworthy thumbs up. I watch with dismay as she giggles, but she still smiles and waves before closing the blinds.

I seem to have forgotten to breathe, because I exhale sharply.

I sit for a moment, wondering what I should do.

A million possibilities run through my mind, but all of them concede to one important truth: I should save it.

Whatever the woman in the window has planned, it’ll be worth the wait.

***

Maybe it was a rising sense of guilt, or maybe it was the thrill of the unknown. I certainly spent most of the rest of the night asking myself rhetorical questions rather than sleeping. Who was this girl, and why was she putting on shows for me rather than, y’know, calling the cops? I honestly couldn’t say. In fact, all I really knew is that it was exciting and mysterious… aaannnd I was basically getting some action behind AJ’s back.

Ugh, I want to tell her so bad, but as I sit behind her on the couch, gently rolling my palms into her shoulders while she fights the urge to snore, something stops me from doing it. Again. This time, it’s not just that she’s more or less a zombie at this stage, but the fact that last night changed things. Last night proved there’s something building, here: the kind of thing AJ will get a good kick out of, if I can time it right.

What do I do?

Do I wait until she might actually be able to appreciate the situation? Or do I just tell her and let her stew in the fact that she’s gonna be at work or too damn tired to do anything about it?

Neither option is particularly appealing, so I opt for what I think is the lesser evil. I let AJ go to bed none the wiser, determined to see at least one more encounter through so I can work out where all this flirting is going. At the very least, it might make a good story for my new book.

Meanwhile, I do the shopping, I clean the apartment, and I work on some of my plots, all the while wondering what will become of me and my post-apocalyptic AJ.

***

The day passes slowly. Before sundown, AJ wakes up. She showers and I make her something quick to eat, then she’s off to help save the world again, and I’ve got nothing but the taste of her mango Chapstick lingering on my lips. That’s enough to tantalise me, though, and I have to put something on television to distract myself.

I watch the sun set and the apartment transform into an aurora of warm colours before they slip away one by one. I’m so excited I barely even eat, just pin myself to the couch and watch action movies, letting the hours vanish into the screen like so much white noise. I sit in the dark for so long, I don’t even realise how late it is until I hear my alarm go off.

12.45 AM, just in case I fell asleep.

But I didn’t need it.

I get up and switch the television off, opting instead for a more subtle table lamp I position strategically on the boxes by the window. Just enough to let her see me, not enough to light up the apartment. I grab a towel – just in case – and take up position in my gas lift chair, where I watch the minutes tick down at an agonisingly slow pace.

Thankfully, at 12.59 AM like clockwork, her lights flick on.

A moment later, I watch the blinds creep open, and a silhouette takes centre stage.

She’s there, her hair parted gently atop her brow, her lips full and red, her eyes piercing the darkness between us. She’s wearing a different outfit this time. Not a nightie, but something black and bewitching, with floral patterns and straps that wrap around her legs, arms, and neck. It barely covers her soft skin any more than underwear would, but it hugs her figure like a set of gently demanding fingers curled tightly around a precious ruby.

I feel blood rush to my chest.

She doesn’t move, at first, just lets me drink her in. My eyes linger on the places I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing yet: the curves of her breasts, the suggestion of her thighs, her smooth stomach framed by a seductively incomplete corset. The heat in my own body swells, and I rest my hand absently on my cock.

She throws me a smile, then holds up another piece of paper with something preprepared written on it.

- No playing. If you’re a good boy, you get rewarded. If you’re a bad boy, you don’t see me again -

Aw. Fuck.

I hold both my hands up so she can see them under the light. She winks at me and disappears. When she comes back, she’s carrying a stool with a purple dildo suction-cupped to the middle. Another thrill rushes from my extremities to my centre, but I begrudgingly let it be, and instead focus on the show unfolding before me.

She starts slow, teasing me with the same subtle rhythms that she used the night before, but this time they’re more angled, more pronounced. It’s almost like she snuck into my apartment to see what works, because this time I can see every electrifying curve, every consummate move, every clever note. I feel like she’s a virtuoso playing her instrument, and I’m little more than her captivated audience.

After a few minutes, she switches up her act, and begins circling the stool. She bends over to present her behind and spanks herself hard enough to leave a light, pink handprint on one cheek while ruefully pouting the other. It’s a mesmerising ballet, one that she repeats several times, and it makes me ache.

I almost break the rules just give my stiffening cock some room, but I let it be. I don’t wanna lose this little game.

Not now.

Not ever.

With one, fluid movement, she spins herself around and I barely notice her touch the straps around her neck before the top of the faux corset falls away, exposing her nipples. Her breasts are big enough for her to suck on them if she wanted to, but instead she licks her lips with her tongue and lets her fingers do the rest. She shoots me a look that’s both playful and accusatory, a pantomime of innocence quickly relegated to fantasy as she proceeds to lose herself to her own grip.

It doesn’t take her long to smile at me again, gauging my response, perhaps, as she kneels behind the stool and parts her soft, red lips. She locks them over the tip of the dildo, slowly letting it fill her mouth as she consumes it, deeper, and deeper. She nearly reaches the base, her eyes never once retreating from me until the universe itself forces them to. Even then, and only after a palpable pause, does she finally gag, an incredible display of oral dexterity that she follows up with far more gentle, almost pendulous, motions.

I lose track of time while this goes on. All I know is that I’m a throbbing mess and keeping my hands at bay is as hard as denying a thirsty man water. But I hold strong, and my coquettish friend seems to notice.

She suddenly stands and slips the straps off her thighs, shuffling them down her sumptuous legs. The suggestion does not disappoint, as she reveals the apex of her delightfully smooth pussy, a crease she takes to massaging sensuously with her fingers. I watch as she parts her legs and brings them too, moving with the trace she maps on her own body’s topography.

It doesn’t last long, however. All too soon, she bites her lower lip, her face tightening into the dirtiest expression yet.

We both know what she’s about to do.

She spins herself around again and runs a hand up and down the shaft of the dildo. I clench my teeth to stop my hands from wandering downstairs, and I feel like I’m ready to burst when she finally shuffles forward, one leg on either side of the stool. Almost sweetly, her wet little pussy parts over the tip of the dildo, just like her lips had done, and she slowly sinks onto it, absorbing its length into her body. The act is seamless, a look of pure pleasure exploding onto her face as she makes it as far down the shaft as she did with her mouth.

She holds it for a moment, and then the rhythm begins again, but this time, it’s her WHOLE body that moves. Eyes closed, hips pressed back onto the stool, hands holding her steady on the windowsill. She takes it slowly at first, then faster, and faster still, managing only to rub her clit or pinch her nipples in short, painfully maintained bursts.

I watch her breasts bounce and her mouth dance as her movements become more and more intense. She’s speaking, that much I can tell, and I imagine the sounds – the words, the moans, the gasps – that must be coming out of her mouth. Whenever she opens her eyes, she looks up at me, a mix of depravity and indifference culminating in what I picture as a raging blue ocean.

She starts to take more of the dildo with every thrust, or at least, I think she does. I swear I can hear her, hear her cry through the windows, across the alleyway, a symphony of delight, and then I do hear something: one muffled but obvious scream as she lunges forward, foregoing the dildo for a jet of warm cum that immediately soaks the toy from top to bottom. Juice continues to trickle from her as she shakes, holding herself steady with one hand and rubbing her thigh with the other, trying to calm the cascade of pleasure still no doubt roaring through her body.

It seems to go on forever, first as one persistent spasm, then as many smaller ones. A rolling orgasm.

Eventually, though, it subsides, and she regains enough composure to look up at me again. I must be sweating – ready to blow – because she gives me her playful grin again as her body settles into a pattern of deep, relieved breathing. She shuffles out of view for a moment, then comes back with yet another piece of paper.

Her hand fogs up the glass where she pins the note steady.

- Good boy. He wants you to watch tomorrow. Same time, same place -

I’ve barely finished reading the note when her hand slides away and she blows me another lazy kiss. Moments later, the blinds slide shut, and I realise it’s over.

At least, for now.

As I get up and switch off the lamp, my mind is on two things. First, that was amazing! And second, who the fuck is “he”? What EXACTLY does “he” want me to watch, and more importantly, is “he” gonna track down my apartment number and kill me in my sleep?

All very good questions.

Sadly, I can only think of one solution after the show I just witnessed, and it involves low-light, a towel, and some spare time before bed.

I guess I’ll work out the rest tomorrow.