by Don Elliott
She was taking off her clothes, and the blind was still open!
He strained his eyes to take in every detail. Now she was unbuttoning her blouse, removing it, hurling it into the same corner where she had thrown her. jacket. She was still angry. So angry that she wouldn't remember about the blind? Maybe.
She was wearing a yellow brassiere. Take it off, he urged silently. Let me see some boob-flesh, at least. But she didn't remove it, not yet. She unzipped her slacks instead and flung them after the other things.
Mr. Crispian's keen memory supplied the image of her nakedness from that other time. The lean, tawny, young body, the firm jutting breasts, the solid mounds of her buttocks. A healthy fifteen-or sixteen-year-old animal, in the full pantherish grace of her girlhood.
He wanted to see that body again. All of it. She was down to her panties and bra now. She picked up a hairbrush from the dresser and began to tug it in vigorous, angry strokes through her thick, lustrous dark hair. Mr. Crispian let out his breath in disappointment. No, he thought. First take off everything. Then start brushing your hair.
As though in direct answer to Mr. Crispian's thought, the girl slammed the hairbrush down after perhaps half a dozen strokes. Then her hands went behind her back to unclasp the hooks of her brassiere.
Ah, yes, he thought. That's what I've been waiting to see! At last! At last!
The brassiere came away.
The firm cones of her ripe young breasts tumbled into view.
Once again, Mr. Crispian could see them two ways at once. He had the profile view of the steeply out-thrust mounds, and he could also see them head-on reflected in the mirror, twin globes tipped with delectable little nipples.
She took the panties off, too. Crumpled them into a ball, flung them hard. She was steaming mad, obviously.
And now she was nude.
There was a dry coppery taste of yearning in Mr. Crispian's mouth as he stared. His beady eyes flickered from side to side, taking in the view of those succulent taut-fleshed bare buttocks, the haunches and flanks, the flat young stomach, the ebony shadows of delight.
Just a child, he thought. Fifteen years old, sixteen. Still a virgin, maybe. Beautiful! Beautiful!
Now the girl had picked up the hairbrush again. She was pulling it through her hair, taking out on those dark tresses all the resentment that for some unknown reason was boiling through her system. She gave her hair at least a hundred strokes before putting the brush down.
What now, Mr. Crispian wondered? Time for sleep?
No. She still stood by the mirror. Her hands were on her breasts, now. She was cupping them, hiding them from Mr. Crispian's view, but what she was doing was as exciting as being able to see her breasts. She was squeezing them, playing with them, stirring herself up. The sharp eyes of the watchful peeper saw her face in the mirror, and it seemed to him that her eyes were narrow with lust, that her full lips were thrust out in a pout of desire.
She writhed in front of her mirror. She rubbed her thighs together, wriggled voluptuously, fondled her breasts, made the dark rigid nipples stick out between her fingers. It was one of the most overpoweringly erotic solo performances Mr. Crispian had ever witnessed. The girl seemed to radiate sensuality and desire.
He pushed his face forward, throwing caution to the winds. This was too good to miss. Instead of peeping between two slats of his blinds, he stuck his head in front of the blinds for an unobstructed view.
The girl continued her self-adoring writhing before the mirror. Stroking her breasts, letting her hand steal down her flat stomach to the curved alabaster of her thighs.
Mr. Crispian began to revise some of his thoughts about her. Maybe she wasn't a virgin after all. Maybe she was one of the passionate, swinging girls of today, who start to make love at thirteen or fourteen. He could even imagine what she was angry about. Suppose she had been out with her boy friend, in a parked car somewhere, and she had asked him to make love to her. And he said no. Maybe he was inexperienced or afraid. So she angrily told him to take her home if he didn't have the guts to love her as she wanted.
And she came into her apartment still hopping mad and full of desires. Her parents didn't seem to be home; all the other lights in the apartment were dark. Furious, sizzling with frustration and anger, she stripped off her clothes, not even bothering to draw the blinds. And she began to play with herself, to ease the burning need within her.
It seemed plausible to Mr. Crispian. The peeper stared intently. The girl continued to gyrate and twist before her mirror. He imagined her gasping, breathing hard, throbbing with sensuality.
Then came catastrophe.
The girl turned away from her mirror, suddenly, unexpectedly. She looked at the window, as though noticing for the first time that the blinds were open. She didn't hurry to draw them, though.
She looked out across the courtyard.
And she saw Mr. Crispian.
He was trapped, in full view, his whole head in the window. He froze, not knowing what to do. If he ducked away quickly, he might attract her attention. He couldn't be absolutely sure that she was really looking at his window, after all. Maybe she was just staring vacantly into space. But he had to be careful. So far he had avoided all legal troubles while a peeper.
But he knew how embarrassing it could be if somebody filed a complaint against him.
The girl did see him, though. Not only that. Standing there brazenly naked in the window, her youthful body on display right down to her thighs, she smiled at him.
She winked.
She waved!
Mr. Crispian threw caution to the winds. He broke his freeze and got out of the window in a hurry. Dropping to his knees, he crawled quickly across the floor as though he were under sniper fire. When he reached the doorway he stuck a hand up and snapped off the hall switch, so that his entire apartment was dark, and not just the room in which he had been doing his peeping.
Then he crouched there in the darkness, shivering with terror, his heart pounding fearfully.
She had seen him. The smile, the wink, the wave-those were her mocking, jeering ways of letting him know that she knew what he was up to. He wasn't fooling her. She knew he was a peeper.
Right now, he imagined, she was calling the police. Filing a complaint. And soon The knock at the door. The police wagon downstairs. The arrest, the shame, the punishment.
Up till now, Mr. Crispian had remained detached, remote, like an observer on another world watching these courtyard people through a remote television pickup. You don't expect a person on a television screen to wave and wink at you. He had never had any contact with his victims while he was violating their privacy. But now-now, everything was different.
He found the strength to rise from the floor. He was trembling all over. What am I going to do now, he wondered? He debated leaving the apartment, trying to go out and establish an alibi for himself. He could tell the police that he had been in the corner saloon all evening. The girl couldn't prove that he had been peeping, could she? She didn't have a photograph. If he denied it, it was his word against hers, and what could they do to him.
He felt a little better at that.
Cautiously, Mr. Crispian edged toward a window, not the same one that he normally did his peeping from. He dared to take a squint across the courtyard, just a quick one.
The girl's light was out.
What did that mean? What was she up to?
He pulled away from the window and walked around his apartment like a nervous sparrow. Like a physical blow, the memory of that wave and that wink reverberated in his stunned brain; the first hint from the other side of the courtyard that anybody really saw him.
And now he would The doorbell rang.
Mr. Crispian almost had a heart attack. He reeled dizzily, clung to his balance, felt his skin starting to crawl. The police!
The police were here already!
Stay calm, he told himself. Don't answer. Don't even breathe. All your lights a
re out. They won't break in. Will they? Maybe they'll just go away.
The doorbell rang a second time, louder, more insistently.
Go away, Mr. Crispian prayed! Go away, please!
A voice said, "Come on, open up. You're not fooling anybody, you know."
It was a girl's voice!
Mr. Crispian still did not move.
"I know you're in there," she went on. "You didn't have time to go anywhere. I saw you peeping at me. Come on, let me in or I'll make trouble for you."
"I-I don't know what you're talking about," Mr. Crispian heard his own voice replying.
"Sure you do, mister. Open up. Open up or I'll start to scream bloody murder. If you do the smart thing, you'll let me in. You won't regret it if you do."
Mr. Crispian was almost paralyzed with fear. He could not think straight. He didn't want to open the door, but he didn't want the girl to start screaming either.
He forced himself to be calm. Open the door, he told himself. Act innocent. Deny everything. What can she do to prove it if you deny everything?
"I'm coming," he said.
He unlocked and unchained the door and opened it. The girl stood in the hall, grinning impudently at him. She was alone. She was wearing a tan trench coat, belted tight at the middle and buttoned all the way up, and her glossy black hair hung almost to her shoulders.
She was the one, all right. The one he had been peeping at just a few minutes ago, the one whose nude body he had ogled so breathlessly. She was very young, Mr. Crispian saw. Sixteen at most. Snub nose, full lips, dark, alert, shining eyes. A good-looking girl.
She stepped into the apartment.
"Hi," she said. "You're older than I thought you were. You're almost an old man. I should have known that a window peeper would be old."
"What do you want?" Mr. Crispian asked in a thick, tension-choked voice.
"Fun," she said. She giggled. "I'm Kathryn. Who are you, you old lech?"
Mr. Crispian moistened his lips. "Please-please, just go away."
She didn't go away. She took a step toward him and said, "Listen, I want some fun, you hear what I'm telling you? I saw you peeping at me. I've seen you sitting there all year, staring across the courtyard. You aren't kidding anybody, mister. Well, I've got news for you. There's something in life a whole lot better than window peeping. And I came over here to show you."
"No, look here-"
"You look here," she said.
She swept her trench coat off.
She wasn't wearing a stitch of clothing. That was how she had crossed the courtyard so fast. She had simply put the trench coat on over her bare body and come over.
Mr. Crispian stared in shock at her incandescently nude body, so unexpectedly revealed. It was one thing to peep at her with the safe distance of the courtyard between them. It was another thing entirely to have her standing here, stripped to the buff, a couple of yards away.
Waves of dizziness swept over him. His knees seemed to turn to water, and he fought to keep from toppling.
Her nipples were little buttons of lust. Her nude breasts were round, high and deep-set, close together, two melons of tawny, firm flesh. Her thighs, parted slightly, were smooth columns of desire. She turned on a slight angle, showing him the succulent globes of her buttocks. She seemed utterly shameless as she displayed her unclad body to him, flaunting it wantonly, almost shoving herself into his eyes.
She said huskily, "I had a date tonight, and my boy friend chickened out on me. He didn't give me what I wanted. Okay. You give it to me. Serve a purpose in the world. Give instead of taking, for once in your life."
Mr. Crispian's lips moved, but for a moment no sound came out. He could not take his eyes from the gleaming globes of those spectacular breasts.
He was pleased, in a way, despite his shock, to know that his guess had been right, that she had come home angry because she hadn't had what she craved. She was a wanton little minx, a tramp at fifteen. But she had invaded the sanctuary of his apartment, and that terrified him. Mr. Crispian wanted her to take her breasts, thighs, taut-fleshed buttocks and her shameless body, and get herself out of here as fast as she could.
But she sidled toward him.
"Come on," she purred. "Give in to me, mister. I'll do you some good. I'll make you feel young again.
What's the matter, you just good for looking? You don't like to do? Don't be a kook. I'm good. You may think I'm just a kid, but I've had plenty of experience; I'm real good. Try me and see. Just try me."
Mr. Crispian found words. "I-I don't want to. Go away."
"Take a feel," she said. "Nothing but the best here, all real genuine Kathryn, no imitations, no padding. Here. Here, cop a feel, peeper."
She seized his hand. She drew it up and clamped it over one of her breasts. Mr. Crispian gasped. He could not remember how long it had been since he had last held a woman's bare breast in his hand. And certainly he had not held many breasts like this one. It was firm and taut, almost hard, though the surface was soft as satin. It stood up high and proud, a girlish breast, though not girlish in size, just in texture and firmness. The nipple was like a hot little rock against the palm of Mr. Crispian's hand.
She slid her naked body closer to him. She was purring and crooning a whispered little song of desire to him. Her hand reached down, found the front of Mr. Crispian's trousers, began to move in a stimulating massage of sinful delegability.
"There you go," she said. "See? See how good that feels? Now all we've got to do is lie down, and you can get on top of me ... "
"No," Mr. Crispian said.
"No? What's the matter with you? Yon just Eke to sit there and watch?" She rubbed her thighs against him. The nearness of her naked body was almost overpowering to Mr. Crispian. The musky woman-smell of her in his nostrils was driving him wild.
How could he tell her that he was afraid?
Afraid of passion, afraid of sex, afraid of all real human contacts? Afraid to join his body to hers. Afraid to take a chance, to drive himself to the passion of ecstasy.
This hotshot teen-ager terrified him. She was like a hurricane passing through his quiet world. He had to get rid of her, he thought feverishly, before he destroyed him.
Mr. Crispian ignored her sinuous, twisting, sidling postures of provocation. He brought his other hand up and clamped it over her other breast. Now he held both smooth, firm, taut globes of youthful flesh in his hands.
Kathryn smiled. "That's it," she said. "You're getting the idea now!"
Mr. Crispian dug his fingertips into the twin mounds. Her breasts were so large that his small-fingered hands could not even begin to cup their entireties. Even so, he got a good grip on them.
He stood there for a moment, his eyes half closed, holding the girl's bare breasts, digging the tips of his fingers into the resilient flesh. His breathing was harsh and ragged, and he felt the unaccustomed drumbeat of desire within himself. But he was not going to give in. The force of lifelong habit was too strong.
He pushed.
He put all his strength together and heaved the girl away from him. Mr. Crispian didn't have much strength to muster, but it was enough, and he caught the nude girl off guard. Her naked body staggered backward.
Then she fell. She landed heavily, solidly, on the firm cheeks of her bare buttocks. She lay there a moment, seemingly stunned. Her legs were spread, and her breasts were heaving wildly.
Mr. Crispian picked up her trench coat and threw it at her. "Get out!" he cried frantically. "Get yourself out of here! Out! Out!"
"GodI" she said. "What a kook!"
"Out!"
She picked herself up. She rubbed the soft globes of her buttocks. Then, shaking her head, she slipped the trench coat on and went out of Mr. Crispian's apartment, slamming the door behind her.
Mr. Crispian, alone again, stood dumbly in the middle of the room. Then, like a man who has had a stroke, he sagged to the floor and huddled there. His bo
dy was drenched with perspiration. The image of the nude girl blazed like an atomic flash in his mind.
She was so beautiful, he thought.
I could have had her ... I could have had her....
He looked at his hands. They felt red-hot, where he had grasped her bare breasts. He could still feel the texture of those twin globes of delight, could still feel the way they had given in his hands as he used them as levers to push her backward.
I could have had her ... but I was afraid.
Hot tears flooded down his face. Mr. Crispian put his hands over his eyes and huddled miserably on the floor, sobbing convulsively, his thin frame shaking as the sobs racked and tormented him.