The Voyeur Next Door

by Airicka Phoenix

  I exhaled.

  It wasn’t that I believed in the whole don’t orgasm because I said so thing, but there had been an understanding between us that we would both wait and he was, or at least, he said he was and I believed him. It just wasn’t fair that I had, inadvertently, had a cheap thrill in my sleep while he was sitting on a hard dick … metaphorically speaking … I hoped. Except the problem I couldn’t get my head around was whether or not to wait until Monday to tell him. The annoying little shoulder angel kept insisting I should purge my freaky little soul sooner rather than later, while the shoulder devil pointed out I had three days. What was the rush?

  Shoulder angel won.

  I glanced at the alarm clock next to the bed and inwardly cringed. It was still only six in the morning. While it was time to get up, shower, and get ready for work, it was thirteen hours before I could call him, assuming he would be home. But what if he didn’t want me to call unless he said so? What if he thought me experiencing happy hour mid REM cycle was news that could have waited until Monday? But no, my shoulder angel was insistent. Of all my sins, this was one that required a confession, which made me question my shoulder angel’s priorities; I was pretty sure I had much more confession worthy sins.

  Yet, it wasn’t about cleansing my soul and doing what was right. It was about equality and, believe it or not, trust. Q and I had an unspoken agreement and I was nothing if not honest. Okay, and there was guilt.

  Realistically, I shouldn’t have been as enthralled by the man and his smoky, Brad Pitt voice, but I was and I wanted to keep hearing that voice whispering dirty things into my subconscious. It was insane, but having a guy never see my face was apparently the only way I could get a man. No one else would understand me, or want me if they could see me in person. While I wasn’t grotesque, I knew what I was and what I wasn’t and I had worked hard to get to a place where I could finally accept myself and I accepted that I was not any guy’s cup of tea. My own mother had been appalled by the daughter that wasn’t like other children and she claimed it was why she drank as much as she did.

  Growing up, my mom hadn’t understood my fascination with keeping to myself, to being that shy little girl who watched people from a distance. She thought it was dirty and abnormal. More importantly, she thought there was something mentally wrong with me. Normal children didn’t behave like that. So, she did what any parent would do; she took me to see a shrink.

  Dr. Wilber Woynim was the leading psychologist in child behavior. He believed there wasn’t a thing that couldn’t be solved with fear. If you could scare a gay kid enough, he’d eventually go straight, or a bed wetter, or a kid afraid of the dark. In my case, my perverted obsession deserved humiliation. He wrote me a sign that read: I’m Ali Eckrich and I’m a pervert. I like watching you while you sleep. Which wasn’t true. But I was made to walk up and down the busy sidewalk in front of his office building for two hours wearing it. I never told my mom I watched people again. So in a sense, Dr. Woynim’s methods actually worked; my mom no longer believed I was a sicko and I was saved from further humiliation.

  I’d been eleven at the time.

  For years after, that was how I saw myself, too. I thought there was something wrong with me. I saw other kids and how they were and I wasn’t like them. I figured my mom was right; there was something wrong with me.

  I was eighteen and living at the university dorms when I found a book at the library explaining the mind of an introvert. It went on to describe how most preferred to watch others around them and kept to small groups. Because they weren’t comfortable in a social setting, most saw them as voyeurs. So that was always what I considered myself, a sort of voyeur. I watched people, because I was socially awkward and preferred my own company.

  Everyone was a voyeur to some degree. Most of the time, it had nothing to do with sex or being a pervert. Not everyone was pressing their foreheads to bedroom windows, hoping to catch someone naked. Anyone who had ever seen a porno is a voyeur. Anyone who has watched a jogger at the park, or hot, sweaty men play basketball is a voyeur. Even photographers and authors. It was such a wide spectrum and probably one of the only fetishes that everyone shared. For me, it had always been a mental high. It had a calming effect, like knitting or reading a book.

  Also, until recently, wanting to be watched hadn’t crossed my radar either. But I knew about those urges. After learning about what I was, I had broadened my view of the fetish world. I had read everything and anything that displayed people in such a way that no one else thought was normal. I read about the sick and twisted and secretly loved everything they were doing.

  Then I met Tony, tall, beautiful Tony with his curly brown hair and shy blue eyes. It had taken him a month to ask me out. We dated a year before I finally let him into my bed. A wishful part of me had hoped he would take me the way it had been written in all those books, rough and angry, but gentle and firm. He hadn’t. It had been sloppy and messy. It had hurt and I hadn’t come. My first time had been a joke. But I tried again and again, striving for different results and being left disappointed each time. Finally, I just told him what I wanted. I wanted him to get kinky, not necessarily flogging and ball gags, but just … more. Maybe a spank, here and there, or handcuffs. Little things.

  Tony left the next day and I never saw him again. Although, he did leave me a very nice note telling me he just wasn’t into that kind of thing, but good luck. I never thought about it again. Part of me had wondered if maybe everyone else was seeing this whole thing differently than me. Maybe I really was a sick pervert for wanting something so taboo. I had given up on the idea entirely.

  Until Q.

  He didn’t seem disturbed by the idea of different. I couldn’t honestly say how this webcam idea would go, but I liked it. I was excited for it. I would have jumped into it the first night we talked, but despite my drive, a girl had to be careful.

  Rolling out of bed, I padded into the bathroom. The sun was climbing over the building when I finished my shower and dressed. I combed out my hair and twisted the strands into a tight bun at the back of my head. It was contained by a series of pins and a light mist of hairspray. While I loved my hair, it possessed the supernatural ability to piss me off. It was heavy and thick and clung to everything. Done up was the only way to keep my sanity.

  As an afterthought, I slicked on a coat of clear gloss. There was no reason behind it. I normally didn’t bother, but something made me reach for the tube and sweep on a layer.

  I stole a peek at the alarm clock. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t late for work a second time.

  The garage was already open when I got there with ten minutes to spare, making up for the ten minutes I was late the day before. I knew nothing about cars, but there were two parked in the bays. The first one was getting something removed from the bottom. The second one was just sitting there. I didn’t recognize the man gutting the car. I didn’t recognize any of them. The only one I knew was Gabriel and he was just impossible to like. Earl hadn’t returned since his Houdini act at the restaurant so I was on my own to socialize, which would never happen.

  Moving quickly and quietly, I jogged up the steps and stepped into the office. The massive tower of papers I had left behind the day before sat exactly as I had placed them. If anything, the pile seemed to be even higher. I couldn’t help wondering what type of business could continue functioning for so long and have such shitty organizational skills. It was incredible. It was mind boggling. I didn’t know whether to be impressed or disgusted.

  Tearing the strap up and over my head, I tossed my purse unceremoniously onto the swiveling chair and delved in.

  I was still organizing sale slips from waybills when Gabriel tromped in. From my kneeling place on the floor, he seemed extra enormous darkening the doorway. I felt my spine tingle when he took a step in deeper and stopped when the curved toes of his boots were mere inches from the circle of papers around me. In that position, my neck was forced back and my spine straightened in result. I st
ared up at him, wide-eyed and curious, and maybe it was my imagination, but I could have sworn something darkened in his eyes.

  “You can take all of this upstairs,” he said. “There’s a bed up there.”

  A bed.

  Lord knew what the hell possessed me, but my gaze drifted down the width of that broad chest to stop at the silver buckle on his belt. My dream came back to me in hot flashes of brilliant color, me, on a bed with a dark haired mystery guy working over my body. Two sensations rocketed through me simultaneously. The first was lust at the memory, a deep, sticky rush of arousal that made my core pang for attention. The second was horror that my mystery guy had hair the same shade as Gabriel’s.

  Panicked, I darted quickly to my feet, putting some distance between me and the faint outline of his cock leaning a little to the left through the hard grains of his jeans.

  I swallowed with great difficulty and forced myself to meet his gaze.

  “I’m okay here.”

  He studied me for a long, sizzling moment, studied my mouth the way I obsessed over steak, which was to say the way a wolf studied a fresh kill. The gray swirled like an approaching thunderstorm and I was trapped in its path. My skin prickled with an awareness that tightened my nipples and dampened my panties. I felt the stretch of fabric rub uncomfortably against my skin and fought not to shift. My lips parted, not because I had something to say, but because they wanted something I knew was crazy. In reaction, his nostrils flared. The thin material of his top strained over his chest with his sharp inhale. His hand lifted and the place between my legs spiked in anticipation. My lungs constricted and I could barely move as every bit of me waited for contact.

  The fingers balled mid reach and lifted to splay across the back of his neck. He rubbed hard before dragging his palm forward over his hair, ruffling the already unruly strands to a rumpled state that did not lessen the sexiness.

  “I’ll let you get back to work,” he grumbled, already moving away.

  My throat muscles worked to generate spit so I could formulate words, but he had turned away and was jogging up the stairs.

  I waited until he was fully out of sight before dropping back down in a graceless heap. I ran a clammy hand over my face, nearly dislodging my glasses. I was almost steady again when he returned, thundering down the stairs like zombies were chasing him. He hit the main level and found me with wide eyes.

  “I didn’t do it,” I blurted out of pure reflex.

  He blinked. “What? No.” He stepped closer. “Do you sew?”

  It was my turn to blink, flabbergasted. “Like a button?”

  Of course, my gaze dropped to his midsection and the button on his jeans, which inadvertently, pulled my gaze to the very rigid cock making an impressively long bump against the front. The boy was endowed.

  “A costume,” he said, his voice rising in a hopeful ripple of excitement. “You can sew like clothes, right?”

  “Uh…” I began, grimacing. “Not really. I mean, I can sew a hole, or a—”

  “But if you were given simple instructions?” he interrupted.

  I scratched absently at the back of my head. “I guess…”

  He beamed and the sheer force of that smile smacked me upside the head. It was a hot smile. There were even dimples, deep, beautiful dimples hidden behind that ugly patch of hair covering his face. I stared. I gawked. I was sure my mouth was hanging open and drool was escaping down my chin.

  “What are you doing Saturday?”

  Jesus, was he asking me out? I hadn’t been asked out since Tony and I wasn’t sure what the protocol was for rejecting ones boss.

  “I’m kind of in a semi relationship?” I only semi lied, thinking of Q. “It’s really recent, but—”

  His smile morphed into the sort of frown I would have given someone if they suggested I start making a living flinging poo at unsuspecting pedestrians.

  “I’m not asking you out.”

  Ouch.

  Despite having wanted to reject him only moments earlier, the offense in his tone was insulting.

  “Oh,” I mumbled, smothering my hurt. “Well, I guess in that case, I’m not doing anything.” I narrowed my eyes. “Unless you want me to work. Then I have plans.”

  Humor shone in his eyes that I liked to think was brought on by my adorableness, but I knew it wasn’t. His smile returned and it was all kinds of sexy. I kind of hated that I noticed.

  “It’s not work,” he promised. “Tammy’s got this school play and she needs help with her costume.”

  “Oh!” I said for a second time. “Okay … what do you need from me?”

  It was unclear how I got roped into helping a sixteen year old with her school costume, but it was sort of worth it to see the brilliant flash of Gabriel’s smile again. The full thing was a breathtaking sight. It would have been better if he didn’t have a face bush, but regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed seeing all those straight, white teeth in something other than a sneer.

  Then I mentally smacked myself and reminded myself why we didn’t like him and why we needed to stop thinking pervy thoughts about him. Aside from being my boss, he was a grade-A douche bar and I needed to remember that.

  The rest of the day seemed to wear on, not really going fast, but not taking forever. I stayed in the office, dutifully righting a very tragic catastrophe. The crew stomped in around one and trudged upstairs, no one stopping to say hi, or introduce themselves. It was day two and I was still the pariah. The only one that darkened my progress was Gabriel.

  “It’s lunch,” he told me as he had the day before.

  “Not hungry,” I told him, lying through my teeth.

  I was starving. My head was pounding with the force of my hunger. But I didn’t eat in front of people, not unless it was something small, and I wanted a giant steak burger with chili fries and a salad.

  “You should eat something,” he pressed.

  I managed not to ogle his crotch this time as I lifted my head to peer up at him.

  “I will,” I lied, yet again. “I’m just going to get through this stack.”

  His eyes narrowed. He continued to hover over me for several more minutes, like he was trying to Jedi mind meld me into complying. But his batteries must have been low, because I felt nothing, except a mild sense of irritation that he was intensifying my headache.

  “Make sure you do,” he said at last, giving up our showdown.

  I would have saluted him if I had the energy. Instead, I could only sit and watch as he pivoted on his heels and disappeared upstairs.

  The throb between my temples had escalated to a dull roar by the time six o’clock rolled around. I could barely see straight as I returned the leftover piles to the desk, grabbed my purse and hurried from the office. Gabriel glanced up from the tire gauge he was attaching to the back tire of the car he’d been working on. Then he peeked at his watch.

  “It’s six,” I assured him, struggling to keep my voice even. “I’ll see you tomorrow at your sister’s school.”

  He rose from his crouch. It was so unexpected, or maybe it was because my head was spinning, I jumped and staggered back into a metal toolbox. The momentum drove it backwards with a noisy clatter that sounded like a bomb going off inside my skull. I grabbed it before it could go too far and hit the sports car behind me. Then I used it to steady my weight when the room swayed beneath my feet.

  “Ali?” Gabriel’s fingers closed around my elbow. “What’s wrong?”

  I gave a shake of my head. Bad idea. Spots exploded across my vision. I squeezed my eyes closed, counted to ten before opening them again and forcing myself to meet his gaze.

  “I’m just really tired,” I said, rolling my eyes in emphasis. “Too many papers.”

  “You look pale.

  “I’m fine.” I dislodged him from my arm and ducked around his frame. “Night.”

  I left before I could pass out at his feet, or worse, before he could stop me.

  The walk home was barely twenty minutes, but
it felt like forever. Between the hunger and the heat, I was sure I was going to die. It was sheer willpower that got me to my apartment and through the door. My purse hit the table, along with my keys and I staggered into the kitchen for the Chinese I’d ordered the night before.

  I ate it cold, straight out of the takeout container with my fingers while standing over the sink. My stomach roiled in both protest and greedy delight as several egg rolls, chow mein noodles and sweet and sour pork dropped into its empty abyss. I stopped when the containers were empty and the tremors in my legs had subsided. I cleaned up my mess and made my way into the living room to strip and change into my robe. The headache was still there, but it was nothing a couple of aspirins wouldn’t take care of, if I had the energy to find any. Instead, I pushed open the terrace doors and stepped out into the sweltering heat.

  My neighbors weren’t home. They wouldn’t be for another fifteen minutes. It irked me that I would miss them for the third day in a row because seven was when Q wanted me to call. I made a mental note to tell him to change the time to eight. That gave me an hour to relax my mind after spending the entire day organizing files.

  Regardless, at six fifty-eight, I wandered back into the apartment and picked up the phone. It rang. Once. Twice. Four times. Five.

  I started to hang up.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, I know it’s not Monday,” I rushed on before he could speak the words I knew were coming. “But I hope it’s okay I called.”

  “Have you already decided?”

  I looked down at my comforter, my face twisted in a grimace I knew he couldn’t see. I traced a finger along the neat little diamonds stitched into the floral pattern.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  Wrong? No. There was nothing really wrong exactly.

  “I came last night,” I blurted, kind of the way one would tear off a band aid—quickly. I blew out a breath. “I didn’t mean to,” I went on, much more calmly. “It happened in my sleep.”