The Girl Next Door

"I think," said Sandra over breakfast on Tuesday, the fourth day of the beach house rental. "That the young people next door are," here she paused as if thinking of the right words. "All together."

Her husband looked up from his cantaloupe. "What do you mean?"

"Well," Sandra said. "Have you noticed them at all?"

"Young girl," he said. "And a guy. Seem nice enough. What do you mean by altogether?"

"There's three of them," Sandra told him. "The girl and two guys."

"Really?"

"Yesterday she was down on the beach with one of them and the day before she was with the other one."

"Well," he said. "That doesn't mean..."

"You didn't see them," she said. "In both cases I would have said they were a couple."

He seemed more interested. "Really? Wow. Were they, uh...?"

"Hugging and kissing," she said. "And lot of rubbing lotion into each other's bodies. It wasn't subtle."

"What's the second guy look like? The one I saw looked like a surfer, tall and blond."

"They both look like that," she said. "They look very similar, actually. I was wondering if they were brothers."

He looked uncomfortable. "Are you sure there are two of them? Have you seen them at the same time?"

"One has a tattoo," Sandra said. "A big snake across his lower back, it disappears into his bathing suit."

Paul stared at her. "Huh," he said.

---

After breakfast Paul packed up his fishing gear and went down to the beach. Sandra washed the dishes and went out for a walk. She brought along a little daypack with a bottle of water, a snack bar and a birding book and had her binoculars slung around her neck.

It was a nice house, secluded but still walking distance from the beach. There were woods nearby where she could look for interesting birds.

Not far from the house, but camouflaged by the woods, she turned and focused her binoculars on the back window of the house next door. She could see the girl sitting at the dining room table. Kind of an ordinary looking girl, she thought. Petite and pale with short straight black hair and a small snub nose. One of the young men was sitting next to her. HIs hand was resting on hers and he leaned forward and gave her a slow, soft kiss. His hand moved up to her shoulder and then to her neck. They broke apart and the girl smiled at him. Suddenly she didn't look ordinary - there was something mysterious and alluring in the smile.

The swing door to the kitchen opened and the other young man came in. Aha, Sandra thought. Definite evidence. And yes, the resemblance was amazing.

He was wearing a red apron that covered his chest, but his arms and shoulders were bare. He set some plates down on the table and turned to go back into the kitchen. That was when Sandra realized that he was completely naked under the apron. And there was no snake tattoo across his lower back.

The door was a nuisance, she couldn't see into the kitchen. He came back out with juice glasses and again disappeared into the kitchen with a flash of butt cheeks. She focused on the louvered door but couldn't see anything beyond it. She looked back at the couple but nothing was happening there - they were eating breakfast like any normal couple. She wondered if she'd imagined the man's nudity or if the others were oblivious to it.

She crept out of the woods and up the road a bit. From a little grove across the street she was able to establish a post where she had a good view of the kitchen window. The man was washing up pans and spatulas and putting things in the refrigerator. When he bent to put the eggs away she tightened her grip on her binoculars.

The door to the kitchen opened and the girl came in with the now empty plates. She brought them over and popped them in the sink and (Sandra was watching intently) the young man reached over and tweaked one of her nipples and then returned to his washing up. The girl squawked (Sandra didn't hear her of course but there was no mistaking the motion of her mouth) and came up behind the man and pinched one of his bare ass cheeks. He flicked some soap bubbles over his shoulder and she came up behind him and put her arms around his waist.

There was a moment when Sandra wasn't sure what was happening but then she saw that the girl had reached under the apron. She said something, laughing and the man flicked more soap at her. Her arm moved up and down in a very definite motion and the man wiggled his hips.

Suddenly the door swung open and the other young man was standing in the doorway. Sandra held her breath. He strode forward and pushed up against the girl from behind. Now she was trapped between the two men and she started flailing around. The man behind her lifted her dress up and hooked his thumbs in her underwear, pushing it over her hips and onto the floor. She tried to turn around but couldn't - the man in the apron was pushing back from the sink and the other was pushing towards it, trapping her between them.

Was this a rape? Sandra wasn't sure what was happening. What should she do?

The girl leaned her head back and whispered something to the man behind her. He scooted his feet back and unzipped his shorts, dropping them on the floor. More bare ass cheeks, except these had a snake tattoo across the top of them. The girl's other hand came back and reached down in front of him. He leaned forward and kissed her neck.

There was a side window to the kitchen that would have given her a much better view, but there wasn't much cover over there.

A car came slowly up the street and Sandra quickly rotated her gaze as if she were following a bird in flight and pulled out her birding book. When the car had gone she turned back to the scene in the kitchen. The apron man had disappeared and the girl was naked now, kissing the other man passionately while he ran his hands on her body. He still had his shirt on. She whispered something to him and his right hand moved down her belly and stopped, covering and cupping her mound. Her face changed.

The girl wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled herself upward. He gripped her ass and lifted her up and her legs appeared around his back. He turned around and carried her over to the swing door, bumping it open with her body and disappearing from view.

Sandra wasn't entirely sure what to make of all this. It was possible that the girl and the man with the tattoo were lovers and the other man was just a third party - a friend, or maybe the other man's brother. But she was sure the girl had been stroking his prick under his apron (did girls do that to their friends these days?) and in any case why the whole naked-under-the-apron thing? Plus, she was really almost entirely sure she had seen him kissing the girl on the beach in a non-brotherly way.

It was all confusing and exciting. She realized she was still standing there with her binoculars focused on the kitchen window. She lowered them and put her birding book away.

---

Sandra spent the afternoon at the outlet mall with her friend Lisa but her mind was mostly elsewhere. She shopped for clothes for her grandchildren and for a table runner for the house back home and admired Lisa's purchases, but she had none of the intensity or interest she usually brought to shopping. Nothing was particularly calling to her, and if you'd asked her ten minutes later what Lisa had bought she wouldn't have known whether it was a baby blanket or a set of snow tires. Her mind kept drifting back to the house next door.

What was going on? She kept thinking about the girl being reaching under the apron - was she really stroking a hard cock under there? And then there was the way her face had suddenly relaxed when the other man put his hand on her bare mound. And the way he had lifted her up and carried her out of the room, clinging to his body with her legs. Was he actually inside her at that moment? These thoughts rolled through her again and again, shocking, exciting, thoughts that derailed everything else she was thinking about.

Lisa seemed disappointed in her distraction. "Are you okay?" she asked. "You seem kind of tired."

"Yes," Sandra admitted. "Kind of a long morning, I have a bit of a headache."

Lisa clucked and said she should have said something.

"I think I'll go home and lie down," Sandra said. "Take some Advil."

---

Who could she talk to about it? Paul would have been inclined to judge her for peeping on the neighbors, she thought. Anyway, he was still out fishing or, more likely, having a beer with his fishing buddies.

She had taken off her dress and was lying on the bed in her underwear, the blinds closed against the heat and light of the afternoon. She slipped a hand in her panties and stroked herself.

The image of the girl pinned between the two men kept coming back to her. She'd been concerned about her at the time but now the whole scene felt playful and sexy. The man pressing up behind her and stripping off her underwear. Her hand gripping the cock of the man in front of her. Were both men her lovers? Sandra had heard of such things but the girl seemed so very unglamorous it was hard to imagine. And yet.

She wondered if she had sex with both of them at the same time. What would that be like, two men straining to satisfy her, two hard cocks up against her? Her hand quickened its rhythm. What if the man behind her had been naked right from the beginning, and hard? She would suddenly have been trapped between the man she was teasing and the other one, pressing his hardness into her from behind. When she felt the cock against her she would probably have squeezed the one in her hand by reflex.

The feeling of the hardness against her ass, the hot meat rod in her hand. Sandra's breath came faster and harder. Oh, she said.

That was really nice, she thought.

--

By the next morning, Sandra had developed a resolve. When Paul went off to fish she loaded her birding gear into the car and drove off without a glance at the house next door.

She and Paul had made love the night before but the excitement of her morning voyeurism had bumped up against a nagging sense of having crossed a line. Fantasies were wonderful but this felt much more real than a fantasy and her guilt had kicked in. It had not been a successful lovemaking.

She woke up feeling tired and ashamed of herself. Clearly she shouldn't be using her binoculars to spy on her neighbors. If they wanted to do amazing and exciting things, well, good for them. She should leave them alone to enjoy themselves.

She drove several miles inland to a pond where she'd heard reports of birds worth seeing, including a pair of nesting ospreys. The morning cool hung in the woods and an almost eerie quiet was broken only by bird calls. She heard the fluting of a Swainson's warbler but didn't think it likely that she'd see it, hidden away in a thicket somewhere. She climbed a small rise, puffing a little, then pulled out her spotting scope. Somewhere below her she heard a splash and swung around to find what had made it.

The first thing Sandra saw was a picnic basket on a fallen log near the pond, two champagne glasses next to it. There was a movement nearby and she switched to her binoculars. Slowly a head and shoulders came into view from behind the log. It was the girl from next door. She was sitting on something out of sight behind the log, rocking herself. Her shoulders and breasts were bare. Sandra caught her breath. So much for good resolutions.

A head appeared from behind the log, one of the young men. He curled forward and grasped her shoulders, touching his lips to one of her nipples. She shook her head and he released her nipple and grinned at her. She continued rocking, not slackening her pace or rhythm. Sandra watched, enthralled. The pace quickened and the girl writhed a bit then cried out softly and flopped forward onto her lover, out of sight.

Sandra stood watching, her heart pounding. Quiet, she thought. Don't make a sound.

The young man's head reappeared and then the girl's. They kissed and he stood up, pulling her upright without releasing her from the kiss. The girl reached up and stroked his face. With her binoculars, Sandra could see there was no tattoo on the young man's back. This was apron man, not the one who the girl had been having sex with yesterday.

The girl turned away and planted her hands against the trunk of a tree and he came up behind her. In a moment his cock had slid inside her and he froze for a moment then his hips started pounding him into her with a frightening ferocity. One hand swung around her breasts while the other reached between her legs. Her head rocked slowly from side to side as if the cock thrusts were driving it by some mechanism. His thrusts grew wilder, her hands gripped the bark of the tree and her head suddenly rolled back. His final thrust drove her forward against the tree trunk, then both collapsed onto the ground next to the log, panting.

--

The rest of the morning was a blur for Sandra. She beat a quiet retreat down the little rise and found a trail taking her away from the pond and the log. She listened for bird calls and wielded her spotting scope and binoculars but made no entries in her notebook. Probably she saw some birds.

She drove home in the same reverie. Her heart pounded every time she thought of the two young lovers, the fierceness of the man's ardor, the abandon of the woman as her head lolled back with pleasure. She saw again and again in her mind the girl rising up behind the log, catching her lip in her teeth as she rocked against the man's hard cock.

She had a yogurt and a handful of nuts and then went upstairs. Paul wouldn't be home for hours. The house was cool and dim. She undressed and slipped into the bed naked. She didn't think about whether it was wrong to have spied on her neighbors - she wasn't thinking at all. She put her hand between her legs and lost herself in re-living the scenes in the woods. The girl swaying on her lover, rocking against him and feeling him up inside her. The man's cock pounding the girl's cunt from behind. Sandra came again and again as she thought about the pair fucking in plain view, oblivious to Sandra as well as to any other early morning birdwatchers. It was like watching a satyr and a dryad going at it next to a pond.

Yesterday, Sandra had thought the scene in the kitchen, the girl and the two young men teasing and tearing at one another, the most stimulating thing she had ever seen. Today what she had witnessed boiled over inside her, leaving her helpless to think about anything else.

Eventually she slept. Paul came home and was surprised that she had made no start on dinner. She said she was tired, which was true, and didn't feel well, which wasn't. He ran a hand across her forehead and said she didn't seem to have a fever, but the touch of his hand was like a burn.

She took a cool shower while he called for a pizza delivery. The water was soothing and afterward she made an effort to focus on her surroundings and on Paul. They went to bed early and she didn't try to initiate sex.

--

They only had a couple more days at the beach. The next morning Paul was up early for a charter fishing excursion he'd arranged a spot on - he offered not to go since Sandra hadn't been feeling well but she insisted. This was the highlight of the week for him and she didn't want him to miss it. Anyway, by the time morning came the erotic fever had abated. She felt more like herself and told him to go off and have fun and bring back some fish. By 5:15 he had left for the dock.

No bird-watching today, she decided. Enough was enough. She lay in bed reading for an hour, then got up and had a slow breakfast. At eight-thirty she called Lisa and arranged to go shopping with her in the afternoon. Then she packed up her book and hat and sunscreen, her snack bar and water, and went for a walk down to the beach.

The surf was running high but the tide was out. She kicked off her sandals and walked on the wet sand for a half mile and then back, settling down in one of the beach chairs she and Paul had paid to rent for the week. Lifeguards were driving up the beach in buggies, setting up umbrellas and shouting to each other. She smiled and looked out to sea. Somewhere out there Paul was casting and reeling in.

Thirty feet away somebody was putting down a towel on the sand. Sandra looked over. It was the girl from next door. She had on a purple beach cover-up, and a big pink straw hat. She sat down on her towel, took off the cover-up and hat and applied lotion liberally all over. Her eyes were hidden by a huge pair of sunglasses but Sandra was in no doubt as to who this was.

The girl lay face-down on the towel, reached up behind her to untie the straps of her bikini top and laid them down to prevent tan lines. Sandra eyed her. She was such a very pale creature, surely she'd burn right up in the sun. Then Sandra shrugged and went back to her book. The girl seemed like such a prosaic creature, plain even. Not a dryad here.

A gust of wind swooped in and carried the girl's hat away. By some freak it was blown straight to Sandra, who even more amazingly managed to catch it. The girl was sitting up, holding her top to her breasts. Sandra smiled and waved the hat at her, then got up and walked over to her.

"Here you go," she said. "Quite windy this morning, should probably put something on top of this."

"Thanks," the girl said. Her voice had a dry, almost harsh, sound. She took the hat and put her tube of sunscreen in it to weigh it down, then looked at it uncertainly.

"Where are your friends this morning?" Sandra asked. The girl turned her head to look at her. The sunglasses were huge and reflective.

"My friends?" she asked.

"Yes," Sandra said. She felt she'd said the wrong thing. "I live next door to you, I've seen you out with your friends, the young men."

"Really?" the girl said. "Of course, I've seen you around." She waved at the sea. "They went fishing, in one of the charter boats."

Amazing, thought Sandra. They'd rather go fishing than...

"That's interesting," Sandra said. "My husband's out there on a charter as well. Which boat did they go on?"

But the girl didn't know and Sandra was suddenly conscious of her reflections in the big sunglasses. She saw herself, a middle-aged (or even older) woman, fluttering around foolishly while this cool creature with the two lovers regarded her gravely. The girl thanked her again for the hat and lay back down in the sand. Sandra retreated and sat down to read, but twenty minutes later she got up and left.

--

Paul had a great day. He came home with a sea bass, cleaned and scaled, ready for cooking. He'd also caught a sizeable mako shark that he'd sold to one of the wharf fishmongers.

"Here," he said. "Let me show you the picture."

He got out his tablet. "One of the guys on the boat had a great camera," he explained. "He emailed me the photo." While the picture was loading, he explained how he had caught the shark. Sandra listened and looked at the photo of him standing with his trophy.

He flicked forward in the email. "Here's the fish that he caught," he said. "The guy with the camera - I took the photo so I asked him to send me a copy." The photo showed two young men, blond and well built, holding a fish of some kind in an attitude of accomplishment and power. Sandra's heart fluttered.

"Those are the two young men from next door," she told Paul.

"No kidding," he said. He looked at the photo. "Interesting."

"Are they brothers?" she asked.

"Hell, i think they're twins," Paul said. "They sure look alike."

She looked at the photo. It was hard to be sure how similar they looked since one was wearing sunglasses and the other wasn't.

"But definitely brothers?" Sandra asked.

Paul shrugged. "I didn't ask them," he said. "We mostly talked about fish."