My Neighbor Caught Me from the Window

For several months I’ve had an obsession with Mariela, the neighbor across from me. She’s forty-six, married, with three teenage children, and ever since the first time I saw her carrying grocery bags into the building I knew I was going to have trouble getting her out of my head. She isn’t a spectacular woman in the magazine sense. She’s pleasantly full in all the right places, with wide hips, big, firm tits that show under any blouse, short, barely five foot three. She always wears her hair tied back in a loose ponytail, with strands falling over the nape of her neck, and brown eyes that smile before her mouth does.

When they moved in, she and her husband came up to the landing with a box of sweets and invited us over for Sunday lunch. My wife and I declined, using work as the excuse. The truth was different: I didn’t want that woman around me in a family setting. Something about the way she looked at me, about how she lingered just half a second longer than necessary when she answered, got my cock twitching before my head did.

Our buildings are identical and separated by a very narrow inner courtyard. The layout is identical too. From our armchair, looking left, I can make out part of her living room through the sliding window. They don’t have a terrace, just a large window that opens wide. We do, a narrow terrace with a round table and two flowerpots my wife waters on Saturdays. If I sit in the armchair and look straight ahead, my head is perfectly aligned with Mariela’s window.

One Friday my wife went out to lunch with her coworkers from the studio and I was left sprawled on the sofa in shorts and a T-shirt, with a match on TV I wasn’t even watching. I saw Mariela appear behind the glass. She was wearing a loose blouse with her arms bare. She opened the window all the way, I assumed to air the place out, and when she turned her head she spotted me. I raised my hand in a little two-finger wave. She smiled, waved back with exaggerated cheerfulness, and blushed right up to her ears. The flush was so obvious I felt a pulse in my cock before I felt one in my chest.

She was looking at me, she knew I was looking at her, and I caught her.

I closed my eyes for a second. The match kept drifting in from far away. A very simple thought crossed my mind: if she’d opened the window to air out the room, in a little while she was going to close it again. That meant she’d reappear in that rectangular opening, looking toward my living room. And what if by then I was sitting there with my robe open? What if I pretended to be asleep? What if I just looked at my phone and left my cock out, hard and drooling, like by accident?

***

I got up, went to the bedroom, stripped completely, and put on the cotton robe I keep hanging behind the door. I went back to the living room with the belt loosely tied. The sun was slanting in from the terrace, laying a golden band across the sofa. I sat down and tried to breathe slowly. I couldn’t. Just the thought that she might come back to that glass and see me had my cock hard as a rod before I even touched myself, pushing the fabric upward, outlining the bulge and a little wet spot at the tip.

I yanked the robe open. My cock sprang upward, red, with the thick vein down the center throbbing in time with my heartbeat. I spat into the palm of my left hand and brought the saliva down to the base. I started stroking myself slowly, squeezing hard, with my eyes locked on the window across from me. I was thinking about her flushed face, how she’d waved like a little girl when I caught her looking. I was thinking about what she might be doing now, sitting on her sofa, maybe trying to concentrate on the afternoon soap opera but with her head pressed against the glass separating her from me. I imagined her with her hand under her skirt, her fingers digging into her cunt, rubbing her clit while thinking about the cock she’d caught a glimpse of beneath my shorts.

I sped up. My hand moved up and down with a wet sound, chof chof, and the foreskin drew back, leaving the glans in view, shiny, purplish, with a thread of liquid slipping over the crown. With my other hand I grabbed my balls, squeezed them, tugged downward. The feeling shot up my back like an electric jolt. I arched, bit my lip, never taking my eyes off the empty glass across from me.

—Mariela —I whispered, almost voiceless—. Fucking neighbor.

I came much sooner than I expected. The first jet hit my chest, hot, thick. The second landed on my open robe. The third and fourth slid between my fingers and wet my balls and thigh. I stained the armrest, stained a cushion. I stayed seated with my cock still hard in my hand, breathing like I’d run up a flight of stairs, with semen cooling on my skin.

I was wiping myself with a fistful of tissues when I heard the metallic frame click on the other side of the courtyard. I looked up and only caught her back. Mariela was already going inside; she had closed the window. I didn’t know if she’d seen me in the act, if she’d arrived just as I was coming, if she’d only seen the mess of my open robe and my dripping cock, or if she’d seen nothing at all. I didn’t know anything.

And that was the worst part.

***

All afternoon I was haunted by a loop of questions. Is she going to tell? Is she telling her husband? Are they calling the police for indecent exposure? Is my wife going to show up at the door with her face twisted? I got dressed, went down to the bar on the corner, and drank three beers alone, checking my phone every five minutes as if it were going to explode. Nothing happened.

I went back up, my wife arrived at seven, we had tomato pasta for dinner and sat out on the terrace. A few minutes later Mariela’s husband appeared at the window across from us and started a textbook conversation: the weather, gas prices, the garbage strike. I answered like an automaton, smiling at the right moments. There wasn’t a trace of tension in him. Mariela hadn’t told him anything.

That night, in bed, my wife fell asleep almost immediately. I stayed awake a long time, listening to the low hum of the air conditioner, my cock rigid again under my briefs, thinking only one thing: if next time I wanted a bigger margin, I had to learn their schedules.

***

For the next six days I devoted myself to watching Mariela like a detective in a bad movie. I did it with the casual air of someone reading the paper in an armchair, but I was taking mental notes. I went out onto the terrace under any excuse, watered the flowerpots, pretended to check the thermostat. I was able to reconstruct her routine with fair precision.

At four thirty she opened the living room window. She stayed inside for about forty-five minutes, almost always out of my line of sight, I suppose in the kitchen. At around five fifteen she closed the window again. Like clockwork. Some days three minutes early, others three minutes late, but that was the window.

On the seventh day I decided to get ahead of her. At four twenty I went out onto my terrace with the cotton robe tied properly, hands in my pockets, and the most distracted posture I could fake. I leaned on the railing and looked out at the street. Cars passed, a woman with a shopping cart passed. Ten minutes later, I heard the snap of the frame across from me. I waited a second before turning my head, as if I were only just noticing.

—Neighbor! —I said.

Mariela looked at me from the other side of the courtyard. She was wearing a white tank top and a lock of hair had escaped her tie. Her nipples showed through the thin fabric, big, dark, no bra. Her cheeks went red again, identical to the Friday before.

—Hi —she answered, not very loudly.

—How are you? Gorgeous day, isn’t it?

—Yes, lovely.

We talked for five minutes. The usual: the early heat, the new construction at the end of the block, the greengrocer’s prices. I tried to keep her gaze. She held it for two seconds and dropped it to the edge of the railing, but every time she lowered her eyes they slid to my crotch, to the bulge the poorly tied robe barely concealed. At one point, for no reason at all, she told me:

—I have to leave you, okay, I’ve got to go to the studio for a couple of hours. They asked me to cover a shift and I’m running on just enough time.

—Don’t worry, go on.

She closed the window without looking back at me. I went into the apartment with my heart racing and my robe damp. I had soaked through with pre-cum without touching myself. My cock was pounding against the fabric as if it had a life of its own. I went straight to the bathroom, tore off the robe, braced myself against the cold tiles, and grabbed my dick with both hands. It was so swollen the skin of the glans barely moved. I started pumping fast, angrily, thinking about the nipples outlined under her tank top, about the way that strand had escaped from her tie, about her half-open mouth when she glanced at me sideways.

I imagined her there on her knees against the tiles, with that mouth open and her tongue out waiting for my load. I imagined shoving it down her throat, grabbing her by the hair, by that loose ponytail, yanking it apart in one pull. I imagined her spitting saliva on my cock, sucking me off with tears in her eyes and those big tits bouncing with every thrust. I came over the sink with a growl that echoed off the ceramic, semen splattering the faucet and the mirror wall. It took me a while to breathe normally again. I stared at the white streaks sliding down the porcelain and thought that next time I had to be the one seeing her.

***

The next day my wife texted me at eleven in the morning. Something had come up at the office, she was going to lunch with two coworkers and then staying to cover a presentation event that ran late. She wouldn’t be back until eleven at night, at least. I read the message and said, almost out loud:

This is my chance.

At three fifty I was naked in the living room. I’d pulled the armchair a few inches so it lined up with Mariela’s window without obstacles, and I’d lowered the blinds in the other rooms so the only light was the living room’s. I opened the robe wide and let it fall behind me like two curtains. The sun hit my body full on, lighting up my cock, my balls, every hair in my pubic patch. I propped my phone on the side table, framed on me, and hit record.

I wanted proof. I wanted to see her face again afterward, as many times as I wanted.

My cock was so hard it hurt. The veins stood out thick and blue, running from the base to the crown as if I’d been lifting weights with it. The tip glistened with pre-cum, with a thick thread hanging from it and stretching toward my thigh. I started moving it slowly, up and down, with my palm tight around it. My hand slid over the wet skin with an obscene sound. I looked at the phone clock. Three minutes left until four thirty.

I thought about holding out, about coming right when she opened the window, but the image of her loose strand of hair, of her nipples outlined beneath the tank top, and of her voice saying “yes, lovely” brought me to the edge too soon. I grabbed my balls with my left hand, milked them, tugged downward to delay. It didn’t work. My thighs were shaking. My toes curled against the floorboards.

—Shit —I muttered.

I stood up from the armchair. If I came sitting down, she’d arrive and see my face twisted and my hand still moving, but the spray would stay inside the robe. I wanted her to see the jet in the air. I wanted her to see what she provoked. I wanted the exact moment burned into her, the moment I emptied my balls for her.

I stood in the middle of the living room, the robe hanging from my shoulders like a cape, my cock pointing at the ceiling, my hand moving fast, brutal, without concealment. Just then I heard the metallic frame click on the other side. The window opened. Mariela appeared in the frame like a photograph. She was starting to wave at me with that nervous smile I already knew, and when she lifted her gaze from the frame to the inside of my living room, she froze.

The first jet came out in that same second. A white lash that flew halfway across the living room and splattered the floorboards a meter from the sofa. The second landed closer, hot, thick, falling onto the back of my hand. The third ran down my knuckles. The fourth and fifth stained my belly, my balls, my thigh. I was moaning without holding back, mouth open, eyes fixed on her, on her mouth opening and closing without a sound, on how her neck turned as red as her cheeks.

Mariela brought both hands to her face, one over her mouth, the other over her chest. The hand on her chest wasn’t still: I saw her squeeze her tit over her dress, grasp it fully and let it go, like someone trying to hold onto a heart that was about to leap out. She kept looking. She didn’t lower the blind. She didn’t go inside. She stayed there, frozen in the frame, until the last spasm left my cock dripping and my legs trembling.

I made the clumsy gesture of covering myself with the robe, pretending I’d only just realized she was there. I walked to my living room window and, from my side of the courtyard, spoke to her as best I could, still breathless.

—Sorry, neighbor —I said—. I didn’t want you to see me like this. I thought you’d already closed it.

She shook her head from side to side, still red-faced, and waved the free hand as if to say, “It’s nothing, it’s nothing.” She ran her tongue over her upper lip, a gesture so quick I almost missed it, and swallowed. Her throat moved.

—You forgive me too —she answered at last, almost voiceless—. I shouldn’t be looking into your apartment, but the window opens right here and when I open it I see you by accident.

—Relax —I said—. We’re even.

—We’re even —she repeated, very softly, as if savoring the phrase.

She closed the window very slowly, never taking her eyes off the floor. I sat back down in the armchair, still breathing hard, my cock thickening again against my sticky thigh, and stayed a long while with my eyes on the empty glass across from me.

***

Later I sat in the kitchen with a glass of wine and watched the video again. It had everything: the click of the frame, Mariela’s shadow appearing behind the glass, the hand going up to her mouth, the other pressed against her neckline, squeezing her breast. I zoomed in. There it was, crystal clear: her fingers sinking into the flesh above the dress, squeezing and releasing in time with my spurts. Her eyes had never left me. There was no victim’s surprise there. There was something else. There was hunger.

I paused the video right on that shot and left the phone resting against the bottle. I pulled down my shorts and took my cock out again, semi-erect, still sensitive from the last orgasm. I felt it waking again between my legs, slow, insistent, swelling in my hand in time with my breathing. I sighed.

This is just the beginning.