The Accidental Voyeurist

He leaned towards her, and they kissed. Her fingers reached up between their bodies to undo the top button of his shirt, then the second. When she unfastened the third, he reached down and pulled the hem of the shirt out of his pants and lifted it over his head for her. As the fabric separated them and his abs were exposed, she reached for his belt. She watched hungrily as she undid the buckle and unbuttoned and unzipped his slacks. She pulled the waist of his black boxers down until his swollen member was freed from their constraint. There it was again for their secret audience. She grabbed it in her hand, her fingers not reaching all the way around it, and knelt before him. She admired it for a second before she slid her lips around its head. As she took him in her mouth, her hands reached up to slide his pants and boxers down to the floor. She reached around to squeeze his ass and draw him all the way in. To their silent watcher, it seemed a miracle the woman could get her lips all the way around its base, but she did. His hands rested lightly on the back of her head as her hands wandered from his ass to his abs and her lips and tongue began to work up and down his dick.

On another occasion, they returned home around the same time (they had a busy social calendar, it seemed, and no kids in evidence to prevent them from going out). It didn't seem as if anything would happen that night. He stripped down to his boxers on his side of the bed and put on black pajama bottoms, his taut chest exposed, while she removed her narrow skirt and her black silk blouse on her side of the bed. She could get away with not wearing a bra, and on this occasion she was not wearing one. She stood facing her night stand as she removed her earrings, her naked back to the window, her ass framed by two straps of black lace that met in the middle and descended between her legs. She said something to him, and he turned to her. He couldn't look her in the eyes -- he was staring at her naked breasts. Even from where she watched, she could see the sudden rise as his cock lifted the loose fabric covering him. He walked over to her. As she took a step towards him and the foot of the bed, it became evident she'd left on a pair of tall stilettos. As he stood and stared, she raised her arms to show herself off to him. He reached out and cradled her breasts in his palms. He soon had her bent over the side of the bed, face first, panties pulled halfway down her thighs, his hands on her hips rocking her back and forth on her heels, their bodies touching only where the warm wet circle of her pussy glided smoothly over the surface of his cock.

Another night, a very different routine. As soon as she came in the room, she jumped playfully on his side of the bed, sitting on the edge, facing him, her legs spread apart in a loose-fitting skirt. She reached out and pulled him to her by his tie until he was standing between her legs. She gave him a deep, assertive kiss, then pushed him away so he could watch as she raised the hem of her skirt one hand and slid her other hand up her thigh. As would later become visible to the woman in the dark, she wasn't wearing any panties. He grew instantly rock hard at the sight of her sweet, shaved pussy and her slickening fingers sliding from her pussy to her clit.

As she watched the woman tease him, she liked to imagine that she had started the evening wearing panties. At dinner that night, he had slipped his hand under the table and up that skirt and pressed his finger into the notch of her pussy through the fabric. As she conversed and dined, she had to fight the rising tide of arousal from his touch. She couldn't moan, couldn't clutch to the feel, couldn't react at all. So cruel, so playful. She had upped the ante by slipping them off of her when he was forced to take his hand away to eat. When his hand returned between her legs, he had to stifle a gasp at the soft, wet feel of her against his skin. Touché. In the car, she continued to torture him by flipping up her skirt and touching herself while he drove, unable to do anything but catch the motion of her hand in the periphery of his vision. Now, she sunk her fingers inside herself. She said something to him. As she watched through the glass, her mind filled in the words, "My pussy is so soft and wet for you." By now, his pants were around his ankles, and he fired back by wrapping his fist around his dick. She watched him stroke it as she continued to run her finger over the wet contours of her lips and around her clit until he buried his face under that skirt and she wrapped her legs around his head. It wasn't much longer after that that she was shuddering under his tongue, which was inside her as she came, feeling her pussy squeeze against its surface. His hand remained wrapped around his cock, and when she came, he stroked himself to a messy climax.

To say she enjoyed watching them would be an understatement. There was an easy comfort between them that was soothing to see, and there were a thousand little signs of the intense hunger between them that she found arousing. She felt a pang when they looked in each other's eyes, and another in the heartbeat between that look and the moment their lips met. She felt a stab when the woman's fingers draped softly against his arm as his hips thrust into hers again and again. She felt a spasm of desire when those same fingers would move slightly, pressing with a gentle urgency, the echo of the building tension inside her spilling out. It reminded her of an infinite string of little moments when it was her hand on Luke's arm or his arms wrapped around her, holding her close.

She watched it all in her silent ritual of mourning, timing the motion of her hand to their movements, letting the tension build within her in a sequence matching theirs, keeping herself on the edge, trembling until she sensed that their orgasms were near. She would close her eyes and let herself go only once she had witnessed the explosion of their desire, then she would push herself over the edge and ride the sweet release of all the pent up excitement of an hour or more of their spectacular display.

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Chapter 4: In the Light of Day

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Of the various buses she could take to work, one of the routes swung down their narrow street, and she took it one day to see their place in the plain light of day. Curiosity had gotten the better of her.

The scene of the crime looked so ordinary in the daytime. The far side of the street, the one on which her alley terminated, was anchored by a two-story brick building. For now, it had escaped the fate of so many others like it: the family that owned it had yet to sell to a developer who would turn it into a five-story condo building with high-rent stores at street level; but the barbarians were at the gate -- a couple of upscale shops had joined the longstanding butcher in the historic structure so as to borrow its gritty, shabby vibe (and advantageous rent) while they still could. At this hour, the sidewalk was dotted with the occasional person going from their car to coffee.

The couple's side of the street held a row of houses just like theirs -- sleek, modern, angular, clad in metallic grey panels. She looked for but didn't see any sign of her subjects. The row of houses was shielded from the riff raff on the sidewalk by a uniform hedge. Mostly uniform -- the tops of the Leyland cypresses that formed it sometimes grew apart, as she well knew. In the daylight, the extra bits of the houses thus exposed were unremarkable.

Her eyes lingered on the gap that exposed the window -- her window -- as the bus rolled on its way through other neighborhoods to take her the boutique where she spent her day helping women pick out expensive clothes.

The day passed blandly, as it always did. Folding, fetching -- the only drama came when someone asked for an opinion and a recommendation. She was restoring order to a display after helping a client sort through an array of downy sweaters when she heard a woman's clarion voice behind her.

"Excuse me, do you have this in a size two?"

She turned towards the source of the question and was confronted with a slender woman with straight dark hair and deep brown eyes, roughly her same height, pert nose, round cheek bones, delicate chin, teardrop breasts. She was unmistakable. The woman she spent her evenings invading the privacy of -- the woman whose naked breasts she'd seen caressed, kissed, fondled and squeezed as she was getting fucked by that gorgeous specimen of a man whose comically strong jaw she'd witnessed between this very woman's legs bringing her to orgasm -- that woman's smoldering eyes were sparkling at her and looking for a different size of a wine-colored sheath that she couldn't help but think would probably look as incredible coming off of her as it would on her.

She just stared, unable to blink, unable to think, unable to form the words to say anything, a stain extending its pink fingers rapidly up her neck.

The smile on the other woman's lips strangely never wavered, and thankfully, she broke the silence to provide a way out of the awkwardness...

"Have I seen you before?"

...with the worst possible question. Her cheeks flushed scarlet as the blood rushed to her face and her mouth dropped open, but it got her to speak. "No, no," she stammered, "I don't think so."

"You look so familiar."

"Have you been in the shop before?"

"No, first time. A friend recommended it to me."

"Maybe you're mistaking me for someone else. I get that a lot."

The woman looked up and down her lanky frame. "I doubt that."

"Maybe you've just seen me around."

"Where do you live?"

She gave the name of her neighborhood.

"Oh, I'm in that same part of town. Maybe we passed each other on the street sometime."

"That must be it." She gave her a harried, relieved smile. The inquisition was over, mystery safely explained. They were back to an awkward silence.

"So...any hope?"

"About...?" She gave her a confused look.

"Finding this in my size?" She held the dress a little higher.

"Oh, right. Let me look."

In the back, she heaved a relieved sigh and collected herself before she found the dress in the proper size and returned out front to show her the dressing room. She waited just outside, like she would for any client, as she tried it on. There were the customary sounds of a belt coming undone and jeans sliding to the floor with the gentler rustle of a shirt (and the uncustomary realization that she had seen this ritual performed on this customer by her husband multiple times), followed by the clatter of the clothes hanger and the dress being put on. Then silence.

"How's it looking?"

"You know, it's hard to tell. It's hanging funny. I can't zip it all the way. Can I get your help?"

Oh god, of all the stores she had to have chosen, why...

Be a professional.

"Sure."

The door to the dressing room opened to, and she slipped inside. The other woman was facing away, towards the mirror, her hair swept up off her neck and held in both hands. She hadn't bothered to zip the dress up at all. It was open from the nape of her neck, over the flawless skin of her back (uninterrupted, she noted, by a bra strap), down to the cleft of her ass, wherein a triangle of fabric was held in place by two delicate gold chains attached to two thin strings sweeping forward. The burgundy color of her underwear somehow matched the dress exactly, and the pair was familiar: she'd seen her bent over her bed in a pair just like them -- maybe this very pair -- the week before.

Duty calls. She couldn't help but graze her ass as she retrieved the tiny zipper from where it fell between the sides of her ass, beneath the triangle of her thong and slid it upwards until the dress was closed. The fabric draped over her, the hint of her body implied in every silhouette and movement. The cheeks of her ass were offset by the way the fabric tucked in the cleft between them. The woman inspected it in the mirror, turning front to back and back again.

"That's better." After a few additional turns in front of the mirror, a verdict: "Perfect. Do you mind?"

She gathered her hair up again and waited until she reversed the trail of the zipper. The woman shrugged it off her graceful shoulders and draped it across her hands and turned towards her. She held it out just below the level of her exposed breasts -- so soft yet so firm, so perfectly round, a little larger than her own, slightly pert from the store's air conditioning. "Can you ring this up for me? I'll be there in a minute."

"Of course." She slipped out, eager to remove herself from the déjà vu of the perfect woman with the perfect life and the perfect body and the perfectly trimmed mons that was totally visible through the front panel of her perfect-colored panties she was so unapologetically parading in front of her in.

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She handed her the credit card slip to sign and looked down at the woman's hands as she affixed her signature: neatly manicured fingers, supple skin that looked like it got moisturized by the hour, and a wedding ring with an ideal cut diamond of outsized proportions. As she returned the signed slip and she held it up to compare the signature on the credit card per store practice, she inquired: "Is it 'sher-ree?'"

"That's right. Most people mis-pronounce it 'Cherry.' I don't correct them..." she squinted at her copy of the receipt, "Sarah."

She handed her back the card. The transaction was almost complete, just a few seconds left now before this inscrutable coincidence could come to a close, when the woman asked her, "Is your day almost over?"

"About half an hour more."

"Would you like a ride home? Seeing as we're practically neighbors and all."

"I don't want you to have to wait."

"I was planning to do a little more shopping and grab a drink anyway. You could meet me when you're done."

"I don't want to be a bother."

"It's no bother. I'd be happy to give you a lift."

"Really, it's OK."

"I insist."

There was no time to argue. A line had begun to form, out of keeping for a store like theirs that prided itself on a very high personal level of service. Sarah, reluctantly, relented.

"I'll come find you. Where will you be?"

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She had given her the name of a wine bar a few doors down. She knew it; she never went there; but with her shift over, she had no trouble finding it or the table where she had just settled in and ordered a glass of wine.

With them both settled, the other woman opened with a polite inquiry: "How was the rest of your day?"

Pretty uneventful by comparison. Would you believe not one other woman I've been spying on came in and asked me to help undress her? True story.

After a quick actual response ("Fine. It was fine."), she ordered her own glass of wine to keep the other woman's company and jumped into small talk.

"How long have you lived in the neighborhood?"

"Coming up on three years."

"Where are you from?"

"All over. Piers -- that's my husband -- his job has kept us on the move a lot over the past few years. How about you -- how long have you lived here?"

"Pretty much my whole life."

"You ever wanted to live anywhere else?"

"Not really. This is home. For better or worse."

"You married?"

"No."

"Seeing someone?"

"Not anymore."

"Sounds a little raw. Still recent?"

The question caught her by surprise. No one ever asked her what had happened with Luke. Not the women she worked with. Not the couples they used to go out with, many of whom had drifted out of touch anyway, distracted doing couples stuff in their continued coupledoms. The one thing she had wanted all this time, maybe even more than to have him back, was to have someone to talk to about losing him. Something about the way she asked and the genuinely sympathetic look she gave her opened the floodgates. She disgorged the whole tale to this relative stranger, how they met, coming home and finding him gone (technically, not finding him), how hard it was to lose him, especially after having lost her parents not that long before. How unfair it all seemed to her sometimes to be deprived of the people she needed most and not being able to do anything about it.

As she spoke, the other woman considered her. She looked nice, if perhaps a little plain. Her face was lean, her cheekbones not as roundly defined as her own. Her lips were a bit on the thin side, not the luscious look most men would find alluring (her own were, as Piers sometimes helpfully told her, "blowjob-ready"). Her eyes were a light hazel, not the vibrant blue or smoldering brown of a true stunner. She had nice breasts, definitely no larger than her own. There was a somewhat masculine quality to the line of her jaw and the angle of her nose. She'd already noted that her ass, while shapely, wasn't as round as hers. She was blonde -- that counted for something -- but more of a straw blonde, not a bombshell blonde. As the story ended with the moistening of the lower edges of her eyes, she reached her conclusion, "She's just right."

Back in the moment, she reached out and rested her hand on Sarah's upper arm. "I'm sorry."

"God, I don't know why I'm telling you all this," she said as she wiped her eyes with the fringe of her sleeve.

"That's all right. Sometimes, you have to get these things out. It's the only thing that lets us move on."

"Oh well." She made one final wipe of her eye. "Enough of my self-pity. Tell me more about you. What does your husband do?"

"He works for a real estate development company. He sells luxury urban dwellings."

"You mean, like, condos?"

"We don't like that term. We prefer to emphasize the lifestyle over the domicile."

"Sounds complicated."

"Not really. It's a lot of wining and dining. We do a ton of entertaining. You know -- take people out, sell the vision, look the part."

"What do you do?"

"I complete the look."

"What does that entail?"

"I am his silent partner cum image consultant. I make sure he looks good. I buy his clothes and put together outfits for him. I make sure I look my best. I hit the gym. I wear nice clothes. I get my hair, skin, and nails done. I make sure I know about every hot, new restaurant the second it opens."

"Sounds like a lot to keep up. Good thing you don't have kids to worry about."

The other woman gave her a quizzical look: bemused smile, slight knit in her brow.

"What?"

"I never told you if we have kids."

Sarah's heart jumped in panic, all but sure she'd given herself away. She stammered an explanation, "I'm sorry...I mean...I just assumed..."

Her companion let her twist like this for a few seconds before smiling warmly. "It's okay. We don't."

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Chapter 5: Behind the Glass

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She was sitting alone in the dark, waiting, wondering when or even if the light would come on. As she imagined watching them again, she felt an extra rush from the taboo of now personally knowing the woman who would fuck her husband in front of her. The window remained stubbornly unilluminated.

And then something happened that had never happened, not once the entire time she'd been coming here. In her side view mirror, she saw two headlights. A car had turned up the alley. She slumped low in her seat as it rolled slowly closer and closer. There was nowhere for the car to turn, and whoever it was, she did not want to be seen as they drove by. The reflection of the headlights in her mirror traveled across the cloth of her headrest. As the front of the car drew level with her bumper, the lights flooded the side of her car. When it was alongside her, it stopped. Her heart pounded in near panic, as she peered out.