I Watched Her from the Doorway, and She Didn’t Turn Around

It’s eleven twenty when I hear her steps on the stairs.

I’ve been waiting for them for three nights.

I’m on the living-room sofa, pretending to watch a documentary about volcanoes I left on an hour ago. The blue light from the television hits me full in the face. I’ve got a half-empty beer in my hand. The pose is perfect: relaxed, distracted, someone who hasn’t moved from the spot the whole time.

But I’ve been listening for an hour. Every noise in the house. And I’ve been hard for an hour, my cock half-rigid against the seam of my pants, thinking about her.

She comes downstairs barefoot. She always comes downstairs barefoot. She reaches the bottom of the stairs, looks at me for a second from the living-room doorway, and keeps going toward the kitchen without saying a word. She’s wearing that gray T-shirt. The one with the stretched-out neckline. The one that shows the bra strap when she leans over. The one that clings to her tits when she’s sweated a little in bed.

“Aren’t you going to sleep?” I ask, without taking my eyes off the TV.

“I’m going to put on a load of laundry,” she answers from the hallway. “Then I’ll go up.”

“Okay.”

I listen to her walk away. The laundry-room light at the back of the house comes on.

I wait two minutes. Not three. Two.

I take off my socks for no real reason. Just because the house is silent and footsteps in socks sound louder than bare feet. I touch my cock over my pants once, to settle it. It’s already fully hard.

I turn off the television.

***

I got to this house five days ago. “A couple of weeks, until I get myself sorted,” I told Rafael on the phone. He agreed right away, because that’s what he’s like. My best friend since college. The most trusting guy in the world.

And his wife, Alicia, welcomed me with a polite smile and a cup of coffee and a look that lasted one second longer than necessary.

Just one second. But we both noticed.

The first night I thought I’d imagined it.

The second, she went down to the laundry room at eleven fifteen. I listened from the guest room and didn’t move. I heard the drum. I heard the sigh. A long sigh, the kind a woman makes when she’s just slipped her hand inside her shorts to see what happens. She came back up fifteen minutes later. And I jerked off in silence, biting the pillow, imagining what her pussy would be like at that moment, whether she’d come with her ass against the washing machine or whether she’d gone upstairs with wet panties to get into bed beside Rafael.

The third night she went down at eleven twenty-five. And when she was coming back up, she passed in front of my bedroom door, which I’d left slightly open on purpose, if you know what I mean, and stopped for an instant before moving on. I was lying on my back, the sheet lifted by my erection, and she saw it. She saw it and kept walking.

Today is the fourth.

And today I’m going down.

***

I walk barefoot down the hallway. Without turning on any lights. I know the house well: I lived here the summer Rafael and she moved in. Four nights sleeping on the sofa while the three of us painted. Four nights of beers in the garden, watching her from the other side of the grill, staring at her ass every time she bent to take something out of the low fridge, staring at her cleavage every time she leaned over to pour Rafael more wine.

I was already watching her then.

She already knew it then.

I caught her twice that week. Once in the garden, when I came back from the pool with a towel over my shoulder and she was at the upstairs window, looking at the wet bulge inside my swim trunks. She looked at me a second too long. The other time, during dinner, when Rafael was telling a story about work and she laughed without looking at Rafael. She was looking at me. And there, when our eyes met, she lowered her gaze to her wineglass, and I saw her cross her legs under the table, squeezing them tight.

I thought then it was a coincidence. That I was reading too much into it. That a married woman doesn’t look at her closest friend that way. So I filed the image away and went home and promised myself I wouldn’t think about it again.

I lasted eight years.

Eight years jerking off thinking about her every two or three weeks, always guilty, always promising myself it was the last time.

Until five days ago.

The laundry-room door is ajar. She always leaves it ajar. She never closes the doors all the way in this house. I’ve thought about that a lot these days.

I stop in the doorway.

And I see her.

She’s crouched in front of the washing machine. Her back to me. Her T-shirt rides up over her shorts when she bends, and I can see a strip of her lower back, the imprint of her panties elastic pressed into the flesh, the curve where her ass begins. A lock of hair has slipped out of the band and falls over her cheek. She’s holding a garment in her hand. She isn’t putting it in the drum. She’s just holding it.

It’s panties.

Black panties, small, with the lining visible from where I’m standing. And she’s holding them by the tips of two fingers, still, as if she hasn’t decided whether to let go.

She’s still.

As if she heard something too and is deciding what to do.

I don’t move.

She doesn’t turn around.

Three seconds pass. Five. Ten.

Then, very slowly, she lowers her hand and drops the panties into the washing machine. She picks up another item from the basket. Puts it in. Picks up another.

Automatic.

But her breathing isn’t the same anymore.

I can see her from the doorway. Her chest rises and falls too fast for someone who’s only putting on a load of laundry. Her nipples show through the gray T-shirt. Hard. There’s no bra. I was wrong earlier: she isn’t wearing one. What the fabric was showing was her nipples, standing out, pushing against the cotton.

She knows I’m here.

And she doesn’t turn around.

I take the first step.

The floor is old tile. Cold. I know the loose tile, the one that creaks. I avoid it without thinking. I move in behind her, slowly, so slowly it almost feels drawn out. Each step measures a meter. My cock inside my pants is heavy, pulling forward, making a bulge.

She keeps putting in clothes.

I stop two meters away. Look at her.

The T-shirt has a small coffee stain near the shoulder. The shorts belong to Rafael. I recognized them two mornings ago when she crossed the kitchen wearing them. The fabric hangs loose at the waist but disappears between her ass cheeks when she bends, outlining her ass completely. Her legs are longer than they seemed before. Or maybe before I hadn’t allowed myself to look at them.

I move one step closer.

Now I’m a meter and a half away.

And I do something I didn’t expect from myself.

I crouch down.

I crouch without making a sound, right behind her, keeping the same distance. I don’t touch her. I don’t speak to her. I’m just there, in silence, at hip level, breathing very slowly. From here I can see the inside of her thigh, the paler skin, the shadow of the shorts pulled all the way up. I can see the soft bulge of her cunt pressing against the fabric.

I can see it, fuck. I can see the stain.

The shorts are dark right there, at the crotch, a small wet ring that wasn’t there when she came down from upstairs.

She’s wet.

She’s wet from knowing I’m behind her.

She isn’t putting clothes in anymore.

Her hands are resting on the edge of the drum. Knuckles white. Her head slightly bowed forward, as if she’s listening to something inside herself.

I straighten up very slowly. When I’m standing, my body is behind hers, almost pressed to it, without touching. My hard cock is ten centimeters from the shorts. I could push forward. I could press it between her ass cheeks and she’d feel all of it. I don’t. I can see the reflection of both of us in the steel of the drum over her shoulder. She’s bent over. I’m behind her.

I put my hands on the edge of the washing machine, one on each side of hers. I don’t touch her. But I’ve trapped her.

She lets the air out. A small, wet sound, trembling at the end. A sound you can’t fake. A sound of a woman whose cunt is soaked and whose knees are half-buckling.

“Alicia,” I say.

She doesn’t answer.

“Alicia.”

“Don’t say my name.”

“Why?”

“Because if you do, I won’t be able to pretend I’m not here anymore.”

I smile. She can’t see me, but she feels it. Her shoulders tighten a millimeter.

“You are here.”

“I’m putting on a load of laundry.”

“You haven’t put anything in the drum for two minutes. And your shorts are wet, Alicia. It’s showing through.”

Silence.

I hear her swallow. I hear her squeeze her thighs together. I hear her breathing through her mouth.

My face is ten centimeters from her hair. I smell shampoo. I smell something else too, something warmer, something beneath the shampoo and beneath the cream and beneath everything. It smells like pussy. Like an aroused woman’s pussy, salty and thick, rising from between her legs and slipping up the neck of her T-shirt. I recognize it. I’ve been learning it for five days.

“Rafael’s upstairs,” she says, without turning around.

“I know.”

“He sleeps with his mouth open. He rolls over at two. At four he gets up to use the bathroom.”

“It’s eleven thirty.”

“Exactly.”

It takes her a while to say it. But she says it.

And that “exactly” is the closest she’s going to get tonight to admitting it out loud.

I lean in again. Very slowly. I don’t touch her with my body. Only with my breath.

I speak in her ear. Her ear trembles for a second, just a little, before going still.

“I’m not going to touch you,” I tell her.

She swallows again.

“No?”

“Not yet.”

“And then?”

“I’m going to watch you.”

She stays silent.

“I’m going to watch you finish the laundry. Everything. Every movement. And you’re going to act like I’m not here. And when you’re done, you’re going to walk up the stairs slowly. And I’m going to watch you go.”

“No.”

“Yes. And tomorrow, Alicia, tomorrow you’re going to come down here at this same time without panties. And I’m going to be here waiting for you. And I’m going to fuck you against the washing machine. I’m going to bury my cock all the way inside you with Rafael sleeping two floors above us. And you’re going to come biting your hand so you don’t wake him.”

I hear her moan. Very softly. A broken moan, tiny, that slips out of her throat before she can swallow it back.

“Please,” she says.

“Please what, Alicia?”

She doesn’t answer.

Because she doesn’t know what to answer. Because “please don’t” and “please do” are the same sentence when you can’t say either one out loud. Because her cunt is drenched and her panties are stuck to her and another man’s cock is ten centimeters from her ass and she still has to pretend she’s only putting on a load of laundry.

I step back. Just one step. I lean against the laundry-room wall, sideways, at an angle from which I can see her whole body. She can’t see me without turning around. She doesn’t turn around.

“Keep going,” I say.

For one very long second, she doesn’t move.

Then, very slowly, she picks up another item from the basket.

She drops it into the drum.

I watch her. And I unbutton my pants, very slowly, without taking my eyes off her. I unzip. I pull my cock out. It’s so hard it hurts. I start jerking off right there, leaning against the wall, watching her ass every time she bends.

The movements are different now. More deliberate. Slower. She knows I’m watching and she’s decided to let herself be watched. Her hands linger a little longer than necessary when she lets go of each garment. When she bends, she bends at an angle, opening her legs a little more than she needs to, letting the shorts ride up between her ass cheeks. When she straightens, she straightens knowing exactly where I am, arching her back a millimeter, sticking her ass out a millimeter.

And on the third or fourth item, she turns her head. Not toward me. Toward the reflection in the drum. She looks at me there, in the steel, with my cock out and my hand moving it up and down slowly. And she doesn’t look away.

She bites her lip.

She bends again. And this time, when she bends, she takes one hand to her thigh. Moves up. Up along the inside. Slides her hand under the shorts. She closes her eyes for a second.

I watch her touch herself. I watch her fingers move under the fabric. I watch her squeeze her thighs around her own wrist. I can see the stain on her shorts spread, dark and round, until the shape of her soaked cunt shows through the cotton.

“Keep putting in clothes,” I tell her, hoarse. “Don’t stop putting in clothes.”

She obeys. With one hand she grabs the garments and tosses them in. With the other, the one between her legs, she rubs herself slowly, without rhythm, biting her lip so she won’t make a sound. I jerk off to the same beat. I don’t take my eyes off her fingers moving under the fabric.

It takes us seven minutes.

Seven minutes in which we don’t touch. Don’t talk. Don’t turn all the way around.

But at minute six she stops. She grips the edge of the drum with both hands. Presses her forehead against the washing-machine door. And I see the small tremor in her legs, the slight arch of her back, the tight moan trapped behind her teeth. She comes like that, in silence, with her husband’s dirty laundry in the basket and her friend watching her from two meters away with his cock in his hand.

I come half a minute later, aiming at the floor, biting the inside of my cheek so I won’t grunt. A long white stream spills onto the old tile. Then another shorter one. Then one more.

I have never in my life seen a woman so exposed.

When she’s done, she closes the drum door. Presses the program button. The washing machine starts spinning, with that low sound that swallows up the silence of the house.

She stays a second leaning on top of it, back to the world, breathing hard.

I put my cock away. Zip up. Drag the tip of my shoe across the puddle on the floor, smearing it against the tile grout. I’ll clean it up later.

“Go up,” I tell her. “Slowly.”

She straightens. Wipes one hand against her thigh, the hand that was inside her shorts, and there’s a faint sheen left on her skin. She picks up the empty basket.

She walks toward the door.

As she passes me, she doesn’t look at me.

But she stops for an instant, just one, when her face is closest to mine. Half a meter. Her breath mixes with mine. She smells like pussy and sweat and shampoo and something only women smell like when they’ve just come.

And then she says something.

So quietly I have to read her lips.

“Tomorrow. Without panties.”

She keeps walking. She leaves the laundry room. I hear her bare feet in the hallway. Then on the first step. Then on the seventh. Then on the landing.

Then, silence.

I stay in the laundry room, leaning against the wall, with the washing machine turning behind me. Looking at the door she just went through. With my cock already soft inside my pants and my mouth dry.

Smiling slowly.

Tomorrow. Without panties.

Three nights waiting for the moment.

And it turns out the moment, in the end, was only the first night.