It had been two weeks since the new guy had moved in and I'd only caught sun-blurred details as I'd noted him moving through his living room. His bedroom curtains hadn’t yet been pulled back.
I could feel my body wanting to fall toward the bed before I even decided that sleep was what I wanted. No comforter tonight. September was proving much warmer than usual. Though the leaves on the trees had started to brighten in color, I lamented the fact that the building was not outfitted with central air, and that my window unit in the kitchen had gone kaput during a particularly steamy July.
Gliding my hands over my belly awakened my flesh to a prickling awareness. I was comfortable with my body, and touching it. But for some reason, standing naked—In Paris! Before the window only covered by sheers!—felt naughty. Decadent.
I loved that word: decadent. Unrestrained self-gratification. Indulgence. And here I was, engaging in decadence. And yet, my kneeling musketeer was strangely absent. Oh, to grip him by the hair and pull his face closer to sup between my legs.
I glanced to the bed. The romance novel I'd tossed near the pillow beckoned. I ordered them from Amazon because the bookstores here did not carry a sufficient selection of romance in English. Rarely did I drift off to sleep without reading for at least half an hour. Non-fiction during the week. Escape novels on the weekend.
Opening to the bookmarked page, I wandered toward the big, gray velvet easy chair before the window—a match to the tufted chaise in the living room—and paused before the chair as a sentence held me riveted.
I wanted to find out if Lucette would realize that Chance was two-timing her with the secretary who wore the tight pencil skirts, and who always left the top three buttons on her blouse undone. I also wanted to snuggle into the velvet chair and lose myself in the story before going to bed, but the chair was overflowing with discarded clothing, tossed shoes, and a stack of hardcovers that awaited sorting into various research stacks.
Navigating a turn, I strode before the window. Lucette wasn't so stupid that she didn't notice Chance was taking more care with his looks lately. Hell, the guy had started manscaping, and he was wearing that new cologne.
Mmm, I loved a spicy smelling man. I could fall to my knees at the mercy of Old Spice.
So? I'm easy.
But seriously, Lucette needed to notice Blaise. Now there was a fine man. The gardener had landscaped her yard to bloom throughout the year in varying stages of colors, and he always brought her fresh chocolate eclairs on Monday mornings when he arrived to weed and tend her garden.
I’d like a man to tend my garden. And I wasn’t thinking about turning over dirt or plucking off dead blossoms.
Movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. I paused, the opened book falling against my naked breasts. A three-inch opening beckoned between the pulled sheers. I peered out the floor-to-ceiling window and across the narrow alleyway.
The neighbor's curtains were pulled to the sides. The window opposite mine revealed the interior of a bedroom thanks to a lamp on the short dresser next to the bed.
Suddenly I remembered I was naked. I threw an arm across my chest cupping one breast, and scooted my hips backward, bending my knees and pressing my legs together while I angled the book over my pussy. I leaned forward, maintaining my sight on the bedroom across the street.
I spied the neighbor strolling around his bed, his attention also focused on a book. A fencing manual? Possible. I'd seen him practicing a few days ago in the other room. The position of the buildings didn’t allow a good view. Either he'd been stabbing a sword at something or he'd killed an intruder.
Sexy Fencer Guy wasn't wearing much of anything, save underwear. Oh, baby. I’ll take a musketeer in skivvies any day.
Fortunately, we both had windows sans wrought iron railings across the lower halves. Rare in Paris, but it did provide a full-length, unhampered view.
He hadn't noticed that he had an audience as he stood there before the end of his bed, the thick book held with both hands, and his head bowed intently over the words. I did like a man who read. Hands-down, it beat burping the alphabet as a means to impress the girl.
Boxer briefs hugged a nice, tight ass and the tops of well-muscled thighs. On my list of preferred underwear types for males, boxer briefs came in at numbers three, two, and one. They snugged the male form, yet landed lower on the thigh, like boxer shorts. His were gray, and they conformed to his hips and ass and…unfortunately, he stood at an angle that didn't reveal the front package to me.
Biting my lip, I savored the sight. What fortune, to catch a glimpse of a half-naked man out my window and have him look like some kind of Adonis. I mean, how often did that happen? Most women were lucky to spy a slouchy, middle-aged divorcee who stood in his tighty-whities, scratching his crumb-riddled belly waiting for someone to notice him.
"Welcome to the neighborhood, Mr. Sexy," I declared.
My neighbor was long, lean and ripped. Muscles strapped his back like skin-colored armor. Biceps curved with power and strength. He stood straight, his shoulders tilted back. From the side, the ripples defining his abs and chest resembled steps a girl—like me—would gladly skip up.
Fencing did all that? I had never thought the sport good for much more than the thighs and calves. I'd tried it one summer in high school. Strenuous on the legs. And the padded vest and required mesh mask had been smelly and smothering.
He probably owned his suit and fencing sword. I'm sure it smelled like him. Spicy? I could hope.
Suddenly he lifted his head, and as if remembering something he'd forgotten—he turned and looked right at me.
Chapter Two
Frantic, I almost dropped my book, but in a miracle save, I tossed it onto the bed and tugged the sheers closed.
"Really?" I argued with my beating heart. "Is that the way you're going to let this one go down?"
The man was a god. I'd seen him in his skivvies. He'd seen me spying on him. Naked. Hell. I grabbed the yellow silk robe from the end of the bed and tugged it on. Embroidered across the breast was a little black bee. Save the bees, save the world!
Yeah, I was into that. Tres serieux.
Holding the two sheer curtains together with one hand to each, I stood there, vacillating my options. If I didn't open the curtains, it would be over. But not really, because I'd always worry about seeing him on the street and having to explain that stupid moment when he'd caught me naked and spying on him.
I was not a pervert.
At least, I didn't think I qualified for pervert status. It had been a quick look. And it wasn't as though he'd been trying to hide behind curtains. He'd been standing there before the window, waiting to be seen.
Maybe he was the pervert? Did it work that way? I was out of my league on pervert knowledge. Hadn't had the displeasure of researching that for any of my clients.
"Get it over with." I tugged the curtain aside, and managed a silly little wave and said, "Hi" even though I knew he couldn't hear me.
His smile was nice, reaching his eyes. He waved back, and didn't seem to notice his lacking attire. He wore dark rimmed glasses and his loose hair was thick and waved over his ears. It looked as though he might sweep his fingers through it to make it go back, otherwise it probably fell over his face and into his eyes in an unruly challenge.
He pointed to me, than tapped his book.
"Uh. Oh!" Grabbing the romance novel, I pressed the cover to the window so he could see that it was indeed one of those books with a man and woman embracing on the cover. Didn't embarrass me. Romance readers had the best sex lives, don't you know?
Then I pointed to him and my book.
He pressed the cover of his book to the window. Advanced PHP, and…I couldn't read the tiny subtitle. Computer stuff I couldn't begin to understand. Beauty and brains, eh?
He pointed to me, and gave me the thumbs up sign. Stabbing his book with a finger, he then made the gesture of a gun shooting his brains out.
"Romance always wins,"
I said to myself. "But I'll take a sexy computer geek in his underwear any day."
Thankful he couldn't hear my lusty thoughts, I shrugged and performed the silly wave again. Standing in my robe, communicating with the man across the street? This was already more exciting than half the dates I'd been on lately.
He put his hands to his tilted head to indicate sleep, then made the thumbs up gesture.
"Have a good night," I deciphered. I performed the same gesture. "You too. Good night."
I plopped onto the bed, stomach-first, and bent up my legs. Elated and grinning like the cat that had eaten the canary, I searched for the last sentence I'd read. I was aware that I'd left the sheers open, and from his perspective across the street, he could probably see my bare legs bent upward, my feet bobbling as I read. I didn't move them out of view.
Hell, I wanted to dive off the bed, push my nose up against the window, and drink him in like a fizzy glass of champagne. But I wasn’t so bold. My fantasies could prove even more interesting.
I resumed reading. And suddenly Blaise the gardener looked a lot like Mr. Sexy with the computer textbook.
***
Two nights later, I filled a glass of water from the kitchen tap and wandered back into the bedroom where the green LED from the clock lasered a blurry line across the wall beside the bed. 2:30 a.m. A sigh was appropriate.
I was having a bout of insomnia, thanks, I think, to my inability to let things go. I'd just handed in some disturbing research to a thriller novelist. He'd needed to know how to remove the skin from a human being, and then how to take out the bones while maintaining the integrity and form of the body.
I hadn't thought it possible, and I certainly hadn't thought that I would find the information anywhere online. Turns out there was a booming industry for the bones taken from corpses to be resold for marrow transplants. The thieves would remove the bones from the body and replace them with PVC pipes so the family wouldn’t be the wiser during an open-casket funeral.
I decided to refuse requests for such macabre research from now on. I loved researching thrillers. The weaponry, police procedure, and martial arts and fighting skills were interesting to me. But serial killers? I'd had enough.
Stubbing my toe on a hardcover, I clicked on the nightlight to make it easier to spot the killer tome. A volume on Henri XIII. I set it aside on the top of a stack, knowing I'd need to finish it soon and hand in my notes.
It was either bone removal keeping me awake, or the chemicals in the book glue at the library—where I had spent the afternoon pouring over plates from a pristine version of Diderot's Encyclopedia—were infesting my brain and slowly deteriorating it.
I preferred the glue version. Such a tragic way to die, and the tombstone could read: Glue sniffers unite!
Before clicking off the nightlight, I noticed the light from across the street. Mr. Sexy was up too?
I pulled aside the sheer and attempted to engage x-ray vision to see through his curtains. The way the night muted the window I couldn't see well, though if the curtain were open his light would reveal the interior of his bedroom as if it were a diorama lit up at a museum.
When the curtains suddenly parted, I panicked and almost slammed the sheers shut, yet made the save by raising my glass in a silent toast.
"Just your friendly peeping Jane," I muttered. "Can't sleep?" I wondered.
The man held up a glass of milk and rubbed his eyes in the universal signal of sleeplessness.
I lifted my glass in another toast, and he matched it. We drank our respective libations. If a girl could get drunk off water, it was going to happen when the view was so tantalizing.
He leaned a shoulder against the window, brazenly unselfconscious of the fact that he stood in only his boxer briefs—that emphasized his package nicely. Or maybe he was aware and wanted me to take a good long look.
I did. And I wished it was my birthday. Or Christmas. This Catholic chick would even settle for Hanukah at this point. Right now any reason to open a package was good by me. As I assessed the abundant gift displayed behind glass and cotton, it hardened noticeably, forming a nice firm bulge that angled toward his hip. It must serve a good handful for him.
I sucked in my lower lip.
Call it lack of sleep. Call it needing to get laid more often than the once every month or so rotation I'd been on lately. Call it…fascinated by his soft, sexy smile that twinkled in his eyes, and that extremely enticing, hard, huge package.
He winked at me.
My heartbeats stopped for a full ten seconds. Count out ten seconds. That is one hell of a long time. His sexy wink stole away my breath and threatened to keep it from me. His regard glided over my heart, stunning it still with a powerful beguilement spell.
Smirking, I resumed breathing. Arousal tended to make me breathe faster. My heartbeats kicked back into gear, though a little faster and lighter now, like butterflies beating the airstream that encircled the universe.
Touching the empty water glass to my lips, I dipped a lash flutter at him. I wasn't an expert in flirtation, but I'd read books, and had actually researched different forms of kissing for a romance novelist. I pointed at him, and gave him the thumbs up sign.
He lowered his head in an embarrassed shrug. A few dark curls spilled over his ear, and he brushed them back. Could the man be any cuter?
Setting his glass of milk on a marble-topped dresser across from the end of his bed, he then put his forearm to the window and propped his palm against a temple. His gaze sought mine and I let him have the connection. Or was it my soul he'd connected to? Could souls flutter?
No, wait. I was getting ahead of myself. It was just a look shared between two people who stood, scantily clad, in their respective windows. No soul mating going on here, folks. Move along. No pictures allowed behind this line.
What he did next was to be my undoing. I just wouldn't know it for months to come. He pointed to me, holding the gesture for a few seconds…then, he made a motion of slipping the robe from my shoulder.
Eyebrow lifting, I defied him with a tilt of my head. My slightly-longer-than-shoulder-length hair spilled off one shoulder. Cheeky of him. Very forward. I wasn't that kind of girl.
But right now I needed to be that kind of girl more than I needed to breathe.
He shrugged and splayed his palms in a 'what can I say?' gesture.
And for some reason, maybe lack of sleep, or glue-induced insanity, I tapped into the vixen I knew existed somewhere inside me. That part of me who pranced before the mirror on tiptoes when I tried on a new dress or a sexy pair of panties. The seductress who pursed her lips at the reflection in the mirror, yet who shuddered at the idea of actually doing such a thing before a real, live, breathing male.
Oh, tiny vixen. It's your time to shine. Or at least turn up the dimmer switch to the next level of brightness.
I slipped the yellow silk robe from my shoulder. Taking particular notice of the slide of fabric over my skin, I focused on that instead of the man watching me. Swift, light, as if a brush of a lover's hand, it sent a shiver down my arm and perked the hairs over goose flesh. The silk draped above my breast, the little embroidered bee crushed within the folds.
As I shifted my shoulders back, allowing the other sleeve to drop down, the robe spilled even further, both sleeves landing at the crooks of my elbows. My nipples tightened, much less from the fabric, and more from anticipation. Or was it fear? The tremble in my chest gave me away. But I was determined, so I continued.
I didn't feel compelled to cup my hands before my breasts, so the lightweight fabric splayed open, shifting across my skin in delicious tingles, and inspiring a heavy inhale of courage on my part.
The man's smile deepened, and he nodded at the sight of my exposed breasts. His thumbs up sign didn't seem lecherous so much as a quiet thank you. Because there I stood, in the middle of the night, exposing myself to a complete stranger who I hardly knew. Hell, I didn't know him at all.
Wait. The other night's
window wave and book sharing counted as a first meeting, right? Sure, we were old friends.
Struggling with the weirdness of my newly-emerged exhibitionism and the need to wrap the silk back across my breasts and flee for safety under the comforter, I exhaled slowly and breathed in through my nose. Aware that the action lifted my breasts, I noticed that he was even more acutely tuned in.
Too much. Too fast. What the hell are you doing?
Right. Enough with playing the wanton for the night. I pulled up the robe, kissed the palm of my hand and blew him a kiss. Then I shuffled into bed and switched off the lamp.
Snuggling into the sheets, my head crushing into the pillow, I closed my eyes. A smile curled my mouth. I'd never done anything so brazen before. Ever. It was completely out of character.
My introvert's crown had just tilted. And the vixen within giggled.
I wondered if he was still standing there, waiting for my return? Dare I look?
I pulled up the comforter to my nose.
"Tomorrow night," I whispered. "It’ll be his turn to reveal something to me."
Chapter Three
I fantasize about shoes, a lot. Or are such dreams simply a natural trait indicative of the female species?
After working at the map shop, I beelined toward the shoe store in the sixth arrondissement that had been calling my name for weeks.
Christian Louboutin called every woman’s name. It was an elite little shop that boasted a doorman who only let in so many shoppers at a time. On any given day it was normal to see a line outside the storefront windows, and in that line, women pushing and cursing one another for better positioning closer to the door. Seriously.
Ever since those black, ribbon-tied, fuck-me pumps had made their appearance in the front window, I had not been able to stop thinking about them. I wanted to slide my feet into those pretties, and wearing nothing more than those and a smile, prance before a sexy stranger and watch his eyes follow my every move.
Did I have a sexy stranger in mind? After last night I did. I’d done it. I’d actually flashed a stranger my naked breasts. And I’d stood there some time, allowing him a good long look. How crazy was that?
The Paris Secrets trilogy: includes: Window, Screen, and Skin Page 2
