Four Years Watching Her Without Daring to Speak

There’s a kind of woman who doesn’t show herself all at once. You have to discover her little by little, like learning to read in a new language. Laura was like that. About five foot three, dark hair with soft waves that reached her shoulders, fine-rimmed glasses framing calm brown eyes. She dressed without pretension: jeans, loose blouses, sneakers. A woman who didn’t compete for your attention and, maybe because of that, was the only one who managed to have it completely.

She wasn’t striking in the conventional sense. Not one of those women who walk into a bar and make everyone look up. But there was something about her that settled in slowly, like a temperature that rises without you noticing, and one day you realize you’ve been thinking about her for months for no obvious reason. Without having talked about anything important. Without having had a single extraordinary moment. Just that constant, calm presence that asked for nothing and therefore got etched somewhere you couldn’t quite pinpoint. For months I’d been jerking off thinking about her without exactly knowing what about her got me so hard. Only that every time I closed my eyes in bed my cock would go rigid imagining her behind the bar, and I’d reach for it with my hand until I came.

That was what hooked me from the start. Not understanding her. Not knowing what tits she had under those blouses, what pussy she had under those jeans, what face she’d make if I found her straddling my cock at three in the morning.

Laura has run her family’s bar since she was young. A no-frills neighborhood place with a worn wooden counter and one of those noisy old coffee machines. My parents had gone there forever, so I’d known her all my life. But I didn’t really start seeing her until I was about twenty-five. It happened gradually, with no clear starting date. Suddenly I found myself looking for her every time I walked in, paying attention to how she moved behind the bar, to how she held the glasses with both hands when the place was busy, to how she listened without interrupting the people talking to her. She had that rare knack of making you feel she was paying attention even when she was busy with something else. And I, while I watched her, would look at the curve of her ass every time she bent to grab something from the fridge, look at her nipples pressing against the thin fabric of her blouse when the night got cooler, look at her tongue when she licked her lips without realizing it.

She looked at me too. At first I ignored it. I thought it was in my head, that my brain was looking for confirmation of something that only existed in my imagination. But as time went by, over the years that kept passing, it became too obvious to keep ignoring. When I walked in, she’d look up even if she was in the middle of something. When I left, there was always a fraction of a second before she went back to what she was doing. A tiny pause, barely perceptible, but one I had learned to recognize. And once, just once, I caught her dropping her eyes straight to the bulge in my jeans when I stood up from the stool. It was half a second. But it was enough for me to jerk off twice that night thinking about that look.

It wasn’t a dramatic or cinematic tension. It was something more everyday and, for that very reason, harder to shake.

She always wore jeans. Nothing flashy. But there was something in the way she moved when she walked to the far end of the bar that made me look at her without meaning to. Those stretchy jeans, the kind that aren’t stiff denim, the kind that show what’s underneath if there’s anything to show. On her, nothing showed. And I’d stay there with that unanswered question running through my head, imagining different possibilities. A string thong wedged between her ass cheeks. A very thin strap crossing her hip. A shaved pussy with nothing over it, her lips pressed against the seam of her pants. I know, it was a ridiculous thought. But it was the one that came to me every time I saw her walk, and over the years I stopped resisting it. I’d go home with my cock half-hard and spend the night imagining her legs open, fingers sunk into her own pussy, looking at me with that same calm from behind the bar while she worked her hand wet.

***

Last summer was different.

I went into the bar in the middle of July, on a Tuesday afternoon. It was hot and the place was almost empty. And there was Laura, behind the bar, her hair tied up in a messy bun and wearing a sleeveless shirt that was new, or at least I’d never seen her wear it before. She had on jeans that fit snugly over her hips and flared slightly toward the bottom, and black leather sandals with a toe strap. With her hair up, her neck and the upper part of her shoulders were exposed. The shirt was loose enough that when she leaned down to pick something up from the low fridge, you could see her black bra and the curve of her tits pressed against it.

I stopped in the doorway for a second. I couldn’t help it. My cock started swelling just from looking at her.

There are things you never fully explain to yourself. I’ve always liked glasses on a woman, though for a long time I didn’t quite know why. I think they have something of a double identity: what you see in front of you and what you imagine is behind it. The face of a proper librarian and the mental image of that same face with the glasses crooked and her mouth full of cock. Sandals too—that way of leaving your feet bare has something casual and intimate at the same time, something that reminds you that underneath it all there’s a real body. Laura’s feet were slim, with dark red painted toenails, and I imagined licking each one while she squeezed my cock with her other hand. Laura had both things, and that day she had them in that body I’d been imagining for years without ever being able to confirm it fully.

I walked up to the bar. She looked up.

“What can I get you?” she asked, in that calm voice of hers, as if there were no urgency anywhere in the world.

“A shot of Baileys,” I said.

While she made it, I let myself look at her without hiding it, something I rarely did because it seemed unnecessarily obvious to me. But that day I didn’t care. I looked at her cleavage, her collarbones, the line of her throat down to the beginnings of her tits. I looked at her nipples pushing against the fabric of her shirt, two hard points that hadn’t been there when I came in. She didn’t do anything to stop me either. She moved behind the bar with her usual calm, as if she were perfectly comfortable with my attention, as if she knew full well I was staring at her tits and liked that I was staring at them.

When she brought the glass over, our hands ended up close together. There was a strange, awkward moment in which she seemed to start to brush against mine and then stopped. I saw it clearly. It wasn’t accidental or random: it was a movement begun and canceled, halfway between intention and restraint. My cock was hard inside my jeans and it ached against the fabric.

I went out to smoke to sort out my thoughts and to let my erection go down a little.

When I came back, I went to the far end of the bar, where she was leaning with her elbows on the wood. I reached out to pick up the empty glass in front of me and she placed her hand over mine, slowly, never taking her eyes off mine. I moved my index finger and stroked her wrist, very slowly, following the line of the tendon. Her skin was warm. I ran my finger along the inside of her forearm and felt her pulse racing under my fingertip.

I heard a small sound, almost inaudible, that was cut off immediately. A gasp. A gasp cut short.

“Thanks,” she said, and moved back toward the other end of the bar. But as she turned I saw the back of her neck flushed red and I saw her nipples even harder than before, pressing against the shirt as if they were begging to be sucked right there and then.

That night I didn’t sleep well.

I got home with my cock about to burst inside my jeans. I pulled them down as soon as I shut the door, without turning on the light. I jerked off on the sofa thinking about the look on her face when she felt my finger on her wrist, about the gasp that had escaped her, about how her nipples had shown through her shirt. I came right away, too soon, and stayed there sitting with my hand full of semen and my breath ragged. Ten minutes later I was hard again. I started over, this time in bed, imagining her kneeling between my legs with those crooked glasses and her mouth open, sucking me off slowly, looking up at me with the same calm she used when she served me coffee. I came a second time with a rough groan I couldn’t hold back. And I still jerked off a third time before falling asleep, imagining her riding me, her tits bouncing, her pussy squeezing my cock while she finished cumming all over it.

***

It took me a few days to work up the nerve to go back, and when I did, I picked an afternoon when I knew the bar would be empty. Tuesdays after four, before the work crowd started coming in: that was the moment. I went in, and there was no one else. She was sitting on a stool at the far end of the bar, checking something on her phone.

“What can I get you?” she said, still not getting up.

“An iced coffee.”

While she made it, I sat at the end of the bar farthest from the door. When she brought it over, she stayed standing in front of me, leaning on the wood with both hands. We looked at each other for a moment without saying anything. I felt the heat of her closeness with a sharpness that was almost uncomfortable, that kind of heat that isn’t just temperature but something more, something that fills the space between two people and can’t be ignored. I looked at her cleavage from where I sat on the stool and saw a piece of bra, white this time, and saw a nipple swelling against it.

“Laura,” I said, “I’m attracted to you. I’ve been attracted to you for a long time. I don’t know exactly what it is, but there’s something about you I can’t quite understand, and it’s driven me crazy for years. I jerk off thinking about you. I’ve been doing it for years. I’ve come more times thinking about you than with all the women I’ve actually fucked.”

I looked at her after saying it. I expected something: discomfort, surprise, a polite smile to gently end the matter. What I saw was something completely different.

“It’s about time you told me,” she answered, resting her hands on the bar with absolute calm. “I’ve come thinking about you too. Quite a few times.”

She said it without drama. Like someone confirming something that had been obvious for a long time and that was already becoming a little ridiculous not to name. As if saying “I’ve come thinking about you” were the same as saying “it’s raining.”

I breathed in. My cock was hard again against my jeans and I noticed her give the bulge a quick look before meeting my eyes again.

“How long have you been waiting for me to say it?”

“Quite a while,” she admitted, with the first real half-smile I’d seen from her in years of knowing her. “Too long. There are nights I’ve shoved two fingers into myself thinking about your face and gotten pissed off that I couldn’t use you for real.”

***

There was a long pause in which neither of us spoke. I finished my coffee slowly, trying not to tremble. She leaned against the counter behind the bar, arms crossed, never taking her eyes off mine. A car went by outside. The coffee machine made a noise. No one came through the door.

“What happens with you,” I said at last, “is that I look at you and I don’t know what to expect. With most people you get a sense right away. With you I can’t.”

“That’s because I’m not easy to read,” she said.

“I know.”

“Not in bed either.”

She said it without breaking eye contact and without changing her tone. As if it were a neutral observation, a gentle warning she wanted me to process properly before going on.

“What do you mean?” I asked, though I already had a pretty clear idea.

“I like fucking in charge. I like having a guy on his knees with his cock about to burst, begging me to let him come. I like tying them to the bed, riding them until they’re dry, and making them eat my pussy after they’ve come inside me. I’ve got toys and I know how to use them. The first time I fuck you, I’m going to make you beg.”

I stayed quiet for a moment. Not from surprise, but to properly take in what she’d just said and not answer too quickly. My cock was throbbing inside my pants, and my cunt dried up with envy at the thought of her in that position.

“That has one problem,” I said at last.

“What’s that?”

“I like being in charge too. I like having a woman by the hair sucking my cock at my pace. I like leaving her fucked out until she can’t even talk. So far nobody’s been able to handle that.”

She smiled for real then, for the first time in years of knowing her. A slow smile, unhurried, as if she’d just gotten exactly what she’d expected to hear.

“With me it’ll be different. With me you’ll end up on your knees begging me to let you come. And when I let you, you’ll come so hard you’ll forget your own name.”

“We’ll have to see.”

“Yes,” she said. “We’ll have to see.”

***

She picked up her phone and started looking something up. I watched her while she did it, that concentration of hers that was the same for anything: making coffee, balancing the books, making a decision in seconds. There was something I liked a lot about that, about that way she had of not dramatizing anything. My cock was still half-hard and I had to shift it inside my briefs without it showing too much. She saw me do it and licked her lips for a second before looking back at her phone.

“This weekend,” she said, without lifting her eyes from the screen. “There’s a rural house forty minutes from here. It’s isolated. No neighbors close by. You’ll be able to scream all you want and no one will hear you.”

“Are you booking it right now?”

“It’s already booked. I made the reservation two months ago in case you ever opened your mouth. Bring condoms. Lots of them. And don’t eat much that day, because I don’t want you vomiting when I jam it all the way down your throat.”

We exchanged phone numbers. At that moment a customer came in through the door and she went back to work without a transition, as if the conversation we’d just had had been about the weather. I stood up, left the money for the coffee on the bar, and walked out without saying anything else. My legs were weak and my cock was swollen and my neck was hot.

I was reaching the corner when the phone buzzed.

It was a photo. Laura’s hand over the fabric of a blue thong, fine string, the kind I’d imagined for years. The fabric had a dark wet stain in the crotch, a heavy round stain spreading from where the clit should be to lower down. You could see the bulge of her pussy against the wet fabric. You could see the shape of her lips pressed against the string. Under the photo there was a message: “Look what you’ve done to me. I’ve been like this since I saw you walk in. Paint your hand, asshole.”

I got into the entryway of my building, ran up the stairs three at a time, and went into my apartment slamming the door behind me. I pulled my jeans and briefs down to my ankles before I even reached the sofa. My cock was so hard it hurt. I grabbed it with my right hand and started stroking slowly, looking at the photo of the wet thong. I imagined tearing that string off her with my teeth. I imagined spreading her pussy lips apart with two fingers and watching them glisten with wetness. I imagined burying my tongue between them until I touched her swollen clit, and hearing her moan with that same calm shattered into a thousand pieces. I started pumping faster and faster. I spat into my palm so I’d slide better and worked it hard, squeezing my balls with my other hand, my feet planted in the floor. I thought about her mouth around my cock, I thought about her pussy pressed to my face, I thought about her tits bouncing on top of me while she fucked herself with my body. I came with a long growl, spraying thick ropes of semen onto the sofa, onto my hand, onto my thigh. Three, four, five spurts, one after another, until my breathing cut off.

I lay there for a minute, panting, my cock still rigid and dripping the last threads of cum. I grabbed my phone with the hand I had free, took a photo of the other hand: fingers covered in cum, thigh stained, cock still hard peeking out underneath. I sent it to her with a message: “This is what you’ve done. And this is only the first time. Wait for the weekend, because I’m going to wreck you.”

She replied thirty seconds later. Another photo. Now without the thong. Shaved pussy, lips spread with two fingers, gleaming with how wet she was. One finger shoved in up to the knuckle. And underneath, a short message: “I’ve been like this for two months. Dream about me tonight.”

There were no more messages that night. They weren’t needed. I jerked off every time I woke up to look at the photos, and I woke up three times before dawn.

***

I’ve spent days thinking about that weekend and not being able to think about anything else. About what’s going to happen between us when there’s no bar in the middle, no customers who might walk in, no reason at all to hold back. About what her pussy will taste like when I finally eat it. About how tightly she’ll squeeze my cock when I bury it all the way inside her. About whether she’s going to get what she says she’s going to get: me on my knees begging her. About whether I’m going to let her do it, or whether that’s something I can really control. About whether I’ll end up fucking her until she’s voiceless, or whether I’ll end up underneath her with her thighs clamped around my head while I lick her pussy the way she orders me to.

Because what has me beside myself isn’t sex itself. It’s that for years I wondered what was under that calm of hers, that way she moved without urgency, that way of looking at you as if she already knew something you didn’t yet. And now that I have a partial answer — that under that calm there’s a woman who shoves two fingers into her pussy thinking about me and who already had a rural house booked in case I ever decided to go through with it — I want the whole thing. I need to know whether the woman I imagined all this time really exists or whether she was just my own projection, building itself up over the years on its own.

Laura said she has toys. She said she likes to dominate. She said that with me it would be different. She said I’d end up on my knees begging her to let me come.

I don’t usually lose those bets.

But I also don’t usually want to lose them this badly. And I also don’t usually stay this hard for so many days in a row just thinking about one woman.