I Used to Spy on My Neighbor Until He Caught Me

My name is Camila, and I’ve lived alone since I was twenty. I’m twenty-two, blonde, short, with a body it took me years to accept in the mirror. Wide hips, big breasts, a mouth my last boyfriend said was made for sin. I rent a studio in an old building that looks onto an inner courtyard, with a white-tiled clothesline and a single window across from mine: Aurelio’s.

Aurelio is fifty-five years old. He’s from the port, tall, thin, with huge hands and a deep voice that seems to drag every word up through his throat before letting it go. He’s lived alone since he separated from his wife, more than a decade ago. The building superintendent told me that the day I moved in, in that warning tone superintendents reserve for men who draw attention.

I started watching him almost without realizing it.

The first time was on a March afternoon. I was hanging laundry on the balcony when I saw him cross the courtyard in shorts, shirtless, with a towel over his shoulder. His body was firmer than I’d expected for a man his age. I followed him with my eyes until he went into his apartment, and from that day on I found myself looking for him in every window.

I’d turn off the light in my room before leaning out. I’d watch him eat dinner standing at the counter in his kitchen. I’d watch him read in an old armchair, with glasses slipping down his nose. I’d watch him walk to the bathroom in boxer briefs, with the easy confidence of someone who knows he lives alone and nobody’s watching him.

Except I was watching him.

***

At first I only looked. Then I started touching myself. I’d sit on the floor by the window, with the curtain open just enough, one hand between my legs and my phone propped against the wall so the screen wouldn’t give me away. Aurelio never closed his blinds. Maybe he didn’t care. Maybe he didn’t imagine it.

I learned his routine better than my own. At eleven he turned off the TV. At eleven-thirty he poured himself a glass of whiskey. At midnight he unbuckled his belt and sat down to read. Some nights, only some, he’d set the book on the table, lean back in the armchair, and take his hand to his pants.

Those were the nights I understood I was getting into something I didn’t want to get out of.

I don’t touch myself because he’s beautiful. I touch myself because I imagine he’s watching me.

***

One May dawn I stayed awake later than usual. It was hot, I was in my underwear, with a fan on the floor. Aurelio was sitting in his armchair, not moving, his gaze fixed on the window. On mine.

It took me a while to realize he wasn’t reading.

Aurelio lifted his hand and, very slowly, drew a circle in the air with his index finger. As if asking me to turn around. I froze. Then he smiled. It wasn’t a smile of surprise. It was the patient smile of someone who’s been waiting for weeks for the other person to finally work up the nerve.

I slapped the lamp off. I got into bed with my heart banging against my ribs and didn’t sleep all night.

The next morning I went downstairs to take out the trash and ran into him at the gate.

“Good morning, neighbor,” he said, with his usual ease. “Hot out, isn’t it?”

“Very,” I answered, without looking at him.

“If you’re bored, knock on my door. I’ve got the air conditioning on.”

I didn’t answer. But that night, when I turned off my light again, I saw that his was on and a piece of paper was taped to the glass. It only said a number, written large in black marker. His number.

***

I waited three days to call him. Three days in which I couldn’t work, or read, or sleep properly. Three days in which I thought about texting him twenty times and deleted every message before sending it.

When I finally did it, it was a Saturday at ten at night.

“Are you alone?” I wrote, and hit send before I could change my mind.

“Always,” he answered, two minutes later. “You coming up or should I come down?”

“I’m coming down. But not to your place.”

There was a long pause. Then:

“I’ll meet you in the garage, spot seven.”

I changed three times before deciding. In the end I put on a light black dress with nothing underneath. I took the stairs so I wouldn’t run into anyone in the elevator, my heart trying to climb out through my mouth.

Aurelio was sitting in the driver’s seat of an old earth-colored car with the lights off. He rolled down the window when he saw me coming.

“Get in on the passenger side,” he said, without touching me.

The garage was silent. It smelled of damp, tire rubber, something older I couldn’t name. I sat down beside him and closed the door slowly. He kept looking at me for a few seconds before he spoke.

“You know I watched you as many nights as you watched me, right?”

I felt my throat tighten.

“I suspected,” I said.

“You suspected wrong. You knew.”

And then he leaned over me.

***

Aurelio kisses like he has all the time in the world. He started with my jaw, then my ear, then my neck, barely biting the skin with a patience that made me shake before he even really touched me. He didn’t put his hands on me until I couldn’t take it anymore and drove mine into his thigh, right where the pants were already straining hard. Only then did he grab the back of my neck and kiss my mouth, opening it with his tongue without hurry, sucking my lips like he wanted to learn them.

When he slid my dress straps down, he wasn’t surprised to find me without a bra. He stared at my breasts for a long moment, breathing heavily, like someone looking at something he’d imagined for a very long time. He brushed my tits first with his fingertips, weighing the fullness, circling them over the dress pulled down to my waist, and then he slipped his hand under the fabric to free one, then the other, into the cold garage air.

“You’re even more beautiful up close,” he said, his voice rough.

He lowered his head and kissed them slowly, one nipple and then the other, circling each with his tongue until they were fully hard. He sucked on them one at a time, hard, making that wet sound that set me on fire between my legs. I grabbed his hair, pressed his head to my chest, and he gave a low laugh before obeying, licking me lower, nipping the tip of each nipple until I let out a moan that bounced off the windshield.

When he pulled my dress up to my waist and spread my legs, he didn’t ask me anything. He knew there was no need. I gasped when I felt his fingers shove my panties aside and touch me directly, right where I was already slick. He ran a finger along the seam of my cunt, slowly, as if gauging how much wetness I’d collected, and then he sank two fingers in with obscene ease. I opened my mouth, threw my head back against the glass, and writhed in the seat when he started moving them inside me, slow, deep, searching for that exact spot that made my back arch.

“You’re soaked,” he murmured against my thigh.

“Don’t act surprised.”

I felt his tongue on my thigh first, one long lick that left my skin taut. Then deeper, where I’d been wet since before I got into the garage. He opened my legs wider with his hands, held my knees against the edge of the seat, and buried his face between my thighs, licking me hungrily, without delicacy, plunging into my cunt as if he wanted to empty me all at once. I closed my eyes and let my head fall against the window. The cold glass at the nape of my neck, his tongue circling my clit, his warm breath beating against my pussy. One hand had clamped onto my hip and held me to the seat as if he were afraid I’d get away.

“Stay still,” he murmured without lifting his head.

I didn’t stay still. I couldn’t.

I gripped his shoulders, dug my heels into the seat, and came the first time before I even realized it. I felt something rise from the soles of my feet, close my legs around his head, and make my whole body tremble while I soaked his mouth and beard. He didn’t move. He kept eating my orgasm, sucking out everything spilling from me, until the shaking eased. Then he straightened up very slowly, his mouth shining, his beard wet, and kissed the inside of my thigh like he was thanking me for letting him.

“It’s been a long time since anyone did this to me,” I said, without looking at him, still breathless, my hard nipples brushing the dress fabric I’d pulled aside.

“I know,” he answered.

***

I grabbed his shirt and forced him to lean back. Aurelio laughed again, a low, hoarse laugh, and let me do it. I unbuttoned his shirt with clumsy fingers, one by one, until I opened up his lean, hard chest, all full of gray hair on his belly and the center of his torso. I pulled down his zipper and loosened his belt, then dragged his pants down to his ankles. He’d been hard for a while; I’d felt him against my leg when he was kissing me. He was thick. Thicker than his pants showed, much thicker than I’d imagined in my window-watching nights. His cock strained against the already damp briefs, heavy, tense, the head making an obscene shape under the fabric.

I pulled his underwear down slowly and saw him in full. Big, dark, with a vein throbbing along the side and the head shining with wetness. I bent down and licked him from base to tip, once, unhurriedly, swallowing the first salty smell of his skin. Aurelio let his head fall back against the seat and closed his eyes.

“Slowly,” he begged, his voice broken.

“Like this, old man?”

I ran my tongue underneath, kissed his frenulum, sucked the tip until he let out a rough exhale. I took him into my mouth almost all the way and relaxed my jaw. I wasn’t used to that much. I had to help with my hand, circling the base, while my mouth moved up and down slowly in a wet suction that filled my chin with spit. I sucked him patiently, watching him from the corner of my eye, measuring every movement on his face. When I pushed away the hand he’d placed on the back of my neck, he understood that part was mine to handle. I set the pace. I decided how much of his cock sank into my throat and how much I left outside to play with my tongue.

Aurelio moaned softly, jaw clenched, and every time I swallowed his thighs tightened. I spat a little saliva on the tip before closing my mouth over him again, and he muttered a low curse, almost grateful. I licked his balls underneath, rolled them in my hand, and when I pulled back he was breathing raggedly, fingers dug into the seatback.

After a while he took a condom from his pants pocket. I felt more grown-up just watching him open it with his mouth, tear the wrapper with his teeth, and roll it over his cock with steady, slow hands, as if that gesture were part of the game too. I just watched him, my panties shoved aside and my cunt pulsing, wet, open, waiting.

“Turn around,” he said.

“It doesn’t just go in like that here.”

“We’ll see about that.”

I sat on top of him. The driver’s seat was narrow, my knees bumped against the steering wheel, but I didn’t care. I ran a hand over the back of his neck, found his mouth, and sank down on his cock with a gasp that came from the bottom of my belly. I felt him inside me little by little. At first it burned. I braced my hands on his shoulders and breathed slowly until my body adjusted. He didn’t rush me. He had both hands on my hips, holding me tight, not moving, waiting for me to lower myself all the way.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

“If it hurts, tell me.”

“It doesn’t hurt.”

It did hurt a little. But it was that kind of pain you can take. That pain that’s half the pleasure. When I finally took him all the way, I stayed still for a second, feeling how he filled me and opened me from within, how his head thudded deep inside each time I breathed. Then I started moving back and forth, rubbing against him, finding a slow rhythm. Aurelio let his head fall against the headrest and parted his lips. An expression he hadn’t allowed himself with me until that moment. He was watching my tits bounce above the shifted dress, watching my stomach tense, watching my cunt swallow him whole and slide out wet.

He likes it. He likes it as much as I do.

I leaned forward, buried my face in his neck, and let all my weight drop. The feeling of having him all the way inside me pulled a groan out of me I couldn’t control. He grabbed my ass with both hands and helped me set the motion, soft at first, firmer after. I lifted myself just enough to sink back down, and every time my lips brushed his skin, he squeezed harder, digging his fingers into the flesh of my ass as if he wanted to leave his handprints on me.

“Faster,” I told him in his ear, my voice wrecked.

Aurelio obeyed. He started fucking me from below, hard, deep, making the seat creak with every thrust. His cock truly opened me, rubbed inside a place that made me see stars, and I answered by moving my hips, digging my nails into his shoulders, driving down until I ran out of air and started crying from sheer pleasure. The car filled with our gasps, with the smell of hot leather, sweat, and sex. I came in short waves, one after another, while he kept pounding the bottom of my cunt with a stubbornness that made me scream his name.

“Camila,” he said, almost like an order.

“Fuck me harder.”

And he fucked me harder. He shoved me against the steering wheel, spread my legs wider, and kept going until my whole body was shaking. I felt the orgasm clench around me from the inside, like it was wringing out every muscle, and then I came again, against his chest, biting his neck so I wouldn’t scream loud enough for the whole garage to hear us.

***

Afterward, when everything stopped, we stayed like that for a while, me on top and him circling me with one arm. The garage was still empty. Outside, on the street, a dog barked and then fell silent.

“Next time you come upstairs,” Aurelio said softly, his breathing still heavy and his cock slowly hardening inside the condom that had already loosened.

“Maybe.”

“No maybe.”

I climbed off him carefully, fixed my dress, and opened the door. Before I stepped out, I turned back.

“How long have you been spying on me?”

Aurelio smiled. The same patient smile from that dawn at the window.

“Since the first time you hung laundry on the balcony,” he said.

I went up to my apartment without turning on the light. I leaned out my bedroom window, my heart still beating all wrong. Across from me, Aurelio’s window was dark for the first time in weeks.

I smiled in the dark.

Now I didn’t have anything left to watch from far away.