Deep Desires

by Stein, Charlotte

  DEEP DESIRES

  Charlotte Stein

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  More from Mischief

  About Mischief

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  I don’t mean to keep spying on him, as he strips out of his clothes. But the thing is, I just don’t expect it. No one could expect it. I’ve seen him in hallways and around The Courtyard looking so strange and still and boxed in, in his always buttoned overcoats and his too thick glasses and that face of his, as expressionless as a glacier.

  He just doesn’t look the type to have the body he does. He looks like the type to be doughy underneath, as flaccid and pale as undercooked fish, but once he’s gotten down to his queerly exciting underwear – long in the leg and somehow skintight – I’m transfixed.

  I actually stop pretending I’m drawing the curtains and let myself linger on the taut planes of his body, so perfectly visible beneath that clingy material. And those thighs, God, those thighs. Where did he get those thighs from? And how do they look so good and thick and solid beneath what is, essentially, a pair of longjohns?

  He should look ridiculous. He is ridiculous. Mrs Hoffman from 3F calls him the Serial Killer, because no one knows where he works or what he does, and Kayla from 4D swears blind she saw him opening and shutting his door three times, like something she saw once on CSI.

  But I don’t know. I don’t know about him, and I want to know even less about their furtive gossip sessions around the pool that sits in the middle of our courtyard.

  It’s sitting there right now, giving a dull blue glow to this thing I’m definitely not doing. Like a neon lamp flashing stop stop stop, before it gets as far as, say, him taking off that long-sleeved woollen top.

  Which he does, while I clutch the curtain into one sweaty fist and pretend this isn’t affecting me at all. Because it definitely isn’t. It’s having no more effect on me than seeing him peel an orange did the other day.

  I just looked out of my window, down onto his window across the courtyard, and there he was. Sat at a table, eating a piece of fruit. No big deal.

  Only it is a big deal, because now he’s peeling something else altogether. He’s peeling himself, and after a moment I can see the solid mass of his pectoral muscles. I can see the nearly honeyed hue of his skin, pale from the pathetic weather up here in Darkly Falls, but buttery because of something uniquely him.

  Though his skin tone isn’t the thing that draws my eye. It isn’t even the sight of the rough scratch of hair all over his chest and belly, or the thought of how many crunches he had to do before his abs hardened into that exact shape.

  It’s the way he puts his thumb and forefinger to his lips, licks, and then slicks that wetness over one tight nipple.

  Lord, I don’t even know what to say about that. The urge to slam the curtain shut wells up in me, bright and strong, but the questions filling my head win out. Questions like:

  Do men actually do things like that?

  I can’t quite believe that they do, given the information I’ve previously been given by Sid, my last unfortunate foray into relationships – I got no feeling there, just suck my fucking cock, etc. – and yet there it is, right in front of me. A man, rubbing and pinching and playing with one of his own nipples. And then even more incriminating, his mouth opens slightly – as though touching himself that way feels like the best thing in the world.

  I can almost hear him moaning, through the glass. Though, of course, that’s what makes me realise what he’s going to do.

  I realise it before I let my gaze travel downwards, to the thick, heavy bulge between his legs. I realise it before he tugs at the waistband of those ridiculous longjohns, and everything in me screams, look away, look away now.

  I think I even go as far as to take a step backwards, but it’s far too little and far too late. Besides, if I move too much he’ll undoubtedly see me, even with my apartment all dark like this and his all light. He’ll make out my silhouette, or the slide of the curtains, and then I’ll always be the woman across the courtyard who watched him ease his underwear down over his heavy-boned hips, to reveal his glorious cock.

  Because, by God, it is glorious. I’ve seen enough terrible porn while huddled beneath the safety of my sheets to know what a glorious one should look like, even if I’ve never viewed one in reality. In reality, I’ve seen short stunted ones and big hairy ones and ones that look as though they belong on someone as muted and strange as he is. But I’ve never seen a cock like the one he actually has.

  He isn’t cut for a start. A man as tidy seeming as him should be cut, but apparently his sexual self doesn’t give a shit about things like that. His sexual self is as generous as he seems mean, as lush as he is contained.

  It’s quite a revelation. But not as much of a revelation as the size of him. I want to glance at my wrist just to make a comparison, even though that’s ridiculous. No one has a cock as thick as a wrist, and even if they did they wouldn’t be living in some godforsaken apartment block called The Courtyard, waiting for neighbours to spy on them.

  He should be out there fucking someone, I think. Fucking some tight-bodied, thin-lipped girl with his thick, deliciously curved cock.

  Is it such a crime that I’m picturing it right now? The girl with her legs spread wide, that big, solid thing easing in and out of her wet, willing hole. Him losing some of that strange, serial-killer control until he makes that noise for her – the one I can’t quite hear.

  Lord. Why am I like this?

  I don’t even know what this is, to be honest. I only know that my nipples have stiffened beneath the stupid Mickey Mouse printed material of my pyjama top, and, when I move even the tiniest fraction, I can feel how wet I suddenly am – wetter than I’ve been in a long, long time. Wetter than I ever was for Sid, and his constant gruelling demands that I just enjoy it, that I’d better fucking enjoy it, that if I don’t enjoy it he’s going to make me with his fists.

  And it’s for him. The Serial Killer. The guy with the eyes that always seem as though they’re covered in gauze. The one I’m urging to masturbate with my mind, even as my sanity begs him not to. Don’t, I think, at no one in particular.

  But then he strokes one hand over himself, long and slow, and I forget I’ve ever had any thoughts about anything at all, ever.

  It just looks so good. The way he does it, all nice and easy as though he’s got all the time in the world and he’s absolutely not stood in front of his own window right now. In fact, I think he’s kind of leaning against his window, which seems even ruder somehow. He’s pushing into the glass, one hand stroking and stroking over his cock, until the flesh there is as slick as I feel.

  I don’t mind admitting that the sight excites me. It makes me think of dirty things, like maybe he got some lube before he started, and is now spreading it all over himself. Or possibly he licked his palm when I wasn’t looking, and all that slipperiness is his spit, getting worked and worked into his stiff cock.

  Though neither of these ideas is as hot as the one that occurs a moment later: that maybe it’s his own lubrication. He’s so turned on that he’s leaking thin streamers of pre-come, and, if I was just a little closer, I’d be able to see it clearly.

  I want to be closer. I want to take that cock in my mouth, and suck until he’s even slicker. I want him to moan for me the way I know he’s moaning now – head back, mouth open, body vibrating with the kind of pleasure I’ve n
ever experienced.

  His hand tightens on his cock to the point where I’m sure it should hurt, but the roll of his hips says otherwise. He’s practically fucking his fist now, lips moving around words I long to hear. Are they dirty, those words? Is he saying a stream of hot things to himself, to urge his orgasm on?

  I like to think so, but it’s hard to tell, when it’s someone like him. I can’t imagine him saying stuff like yeah, suck me off, baby, but then again I could never have imagined him doing what he’s doing.

  Fucking himself, where anyone could see. I mean, it’s three o’clock in the morning, but that doesn’t mean anything. The drunk girl from 9G often stumbles home around this time, and I bet she’d have to walk right past his window to get to the entrance. Even if she’d have to stand on tiptoe to see in, it’s still too exposed.

  Unless maybe he wants to be exposed, to her. Maybe she stumbles through the courtyard and then right into his apartment, to do all the things I’d never dare to: suck him and fuck him and let him come all over her, God, I want him to come all over her.

  He’s going to do it now, I can tell. His hips are jerking and he’s biting his lip and the head of his cock looks so red and swollen, as though he’s just about to burst. Go on, I think, go on, as he rubs himself faster and faster, thumb sliding over the slick tip on every upstroke, body shuddering and shuddering.

  I can almost taste his climax, can almost see it arcing from the head of his swollen cock, but it seems as though it’s never going to come. He can’t get at it, in a way that makes me just ache for him. My entire body feels strung taut and raw, but it gives this one extra pulse for him. This little shiver of something that gets me closer to the glass, that makes me dare to drop my bunched hand one inch closer to my breast.

  It must be as bad for him as it is for me. My nipples just feel so stiff, so tense with pleasure that I’m not willing to spill, and between my legs there’s that same sensation magnified a thousand times.

  Liquid is soaking into my little sleep shorts. My sex swells against the material, tight and aching for release, but I can’t, I can’t. I’m in darkness, but I still can’t.

  It’s too much. I have to be satisfied with watching and imagining a million dirty things – like him finally spurting all over my spread cunt – and even those are too much. They make me a pervert, a person who could rightly be called a voyeur, though I confess I didn’t really know what being a voyeur meant, until now.

  It’s like I’m inside his skin, as his cock leaps and his entire body ripples, that firm hand of his slowing a little on his cock as the first thick pulse of come eases out over his fist.

  The second is stronger and he seems to go rigid when it hits – as though the pleasure’s too much. And then the third spasm hits and it is too much, it’s definitely too much, because he puts his free hand to his mouth and bites down so hard I feel an answering pang of pleasure go through me.

  It’s so intense that for a moment I’m sure I’ve climaxed too. I’m absolutely drenched down there, and all of these little aftershocks are jolting through me – though, when he finally moves away from the window, I know I haven’t gone over.

  I know because this great aching void opens up in me, unresolved, unsatisfied, untouched. And though I try to step back and think of other things – the shift at the grocery store I’ve got tomorrow, the one dirty tape I possess that I could masturbate to now, if I so chose – I can’t.

  It’s too late. He has me now.

  I see him in the hallway getting his mail, but shamefully pretend I don’t. I go as far as to pretend we’re actually strangers, and have never so much as exchanged a nod of the head. Instead of the truth, which is still utmost in my mind:

  I watched you masturbate last night.

  I think the words at his back, as he turns and begins to sift through whatever letters he’s received. Probably bills, I’m sure. Maybe a leaflet from a charity he donates to. Possibly a subscription to a really innocent and normal magazine.

  Like Horny Voyeurs Monthly.

  Because that’s what I am, isn’t it? I stepped out of my life of supermarket working and TV watching and dying a little inside every day, and I watched with bated breath as a man did something sexual to himself, in the ostensible privacy of his home.

  Even though it’s not really privacy at all now. I mean, he had to know that wasn’t private. He must have understood that I could see him, that anyone could have seen him, even though I rarely see an open curtain in this place.

  But when I push those words into his back and he doesn’t even turn, I start to think otherwise. He didn’t secretly want someone to see him. And whatever connection I’m imagining between us is just that: imaginary. None of this is actually real. I’m just a loser who spied on someone, and he’s actually a really cool guy who has an amazing job, like software developer.

  Those glasses he wears? They’re not dorky. They’re … they’re hipster.

  And that’s what I’m thinking when he closes the metal door of his little post box – not three times, like Kayla claimed – and starts in my direction. Hipster, I think, cool and unattainable and awesome, as he strides towards me in slow motion. Those eyes, like something blurred beneath a mist-covered pane of glass. Those cheekbones – God, did he have cheekbones like that before? I could reach out and cut my finger on them, if I ever dared to do anything like touch him.

  Which, of course, I won’t. I can’t even bring myself to meet his gaze when it flicks to me for just the barest second – like maybe he can’t help himself. He wants to be aloof, I think. He needs to pretend that all of this is just something I dreamed up, one night when I couldn’t sleep.

  Only that one darting look says otherwise. It flashes out of him, as bright and sharp as he is dark and blunted. And once he’s made it all the way to the end of this stifling green hallway – like a tunnel in a funhouse that doesn’t exist – I take that one surreptitious glance and bury it down deep inside me.

  I keep it close, for all the times I’ve wanted something like that and been denied.

  He saw me.

  And I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I have seen him.

  * * *

  The next time I dare to look, I’m disappointed. Of course I am. He’s closed his curtains, like a sign: I know what you did. And I don’t like it.

  Even though I know that’s completely irrational. If I accept that he knows what I did, I have to also accept that he did it on purpose. He could have stopped once he realised I was watching – and yet here we are. Trapped in our places. Him with his curtains drawn, me wishing they weren’t.

  Though I understand it’s not just because of the dirty things now. It’s not just because of his gorgeous body and his filthy actions, I swear it’s not. It’s those eyes, burning out at me. It’s that look that lingered long after the event, so furtive and … and complicit, somehow. I lie in bed thinking of the weight of that gaze, and when I actually entertain the idea of putting my hand between my legs it’s with his face in mind.

  Would he stare at me like that as he fucked me? With that kind of intensity? I don’t know and obviously will never be privy to it, but that’s beside the point, isn’t it? I can fantasise. For the first time in my life, I can actually fantasise about a real, living, breathing person and not panic.

  I’m safe, behind the glass. I can lie on my stomach and press a pillow between my thighs, then imagine him taking me like that, haunches up like an animal. With Sid, it was never like that. It was always face to face so that he could slap me as we did it, but I’m not sure my blue-eyed Serial Killer would be that way.

  He’d probably just chop up my body and put it in the freezer.

  Or maybe he’ll simply leave his curtains open, when I least expect it.

  It’s the seventh day since it happened, and I’ve almost started thinking it was a dream. And then I wake up twisted on my side, foggy with images I don’t want to have in my head, and there’s a glow seeping into my apartment. I can
see it just edging its fingers across the carpet, like the light of a convenience store after you’ve just trekked ten miles through a barren desert.

  I think of the Rocky Horror Picture Show – that song they sing when they see the castle and think everything’s going to be OK – and then I heave myself out of bed like a zombie and stumble across to that light.

  It can’t be helped. I’m dying of thirst. I’m drowning in desperation. I have to hang on to my own curtains just to keep myself standing, and then I see him. He’s in the window, just like before. On the same day, too, I realise, which practically makes this some sort of ritual. I was silly to doubt him, or imagine he thought badly of me.

  He just likes to do it on the same day every week, the way he likes to do everything. The orange, I remember, always gets peeled at the same time. And he picks his mail up at certain intervals – maybe when it’s safe to come out of his lair.

  And so it follows that he stands in front of his window half-naked, at the previously allotted time. He’s even wearing the same garb he did before – those queer longjohns, so tight over his every bulge and curve.

  Though there’s a subtle difference.

  He’s not stood up. He’s sat at that little table in front of his window, and he isn’t staring straight forward, like an automaton playing out a role.

  He’s staring up at my window. I know he is. I know he is even though I kind of lean forwards and look up, expecting to somehow see a prettier woman in the apartment above … Or maybe she’s below me? Yeah, maybe she’s doing an exotic dance for him in the apartment below me, and, once she’s done, that’s when he masturbates.

  For her. Not for me.

  And the message he’s scrawled on his window in lipstick?

  That’s for her, too.

  Your turn now, it says, and I can’t help admiring his gall. I admire his lettering, too – as neat as he seems, as ordered, in spite of the ink he’s used. I’m fairly certain it’s lipstick – so red and garish, glaring in the backwash of that strange light from his apartment – but of course I can’t fathom why.