Neighbor’s Window: Part 4

We stopped closing the curtains after that night.

The next evening the lamp went on at the usual hour. I undressed slowly, deliberately, facing the glass the way I had for weeks. He watched from his window for a few minutes, same as always. Then he disappeared from view. Three minutes later the knock sounded at my door.

I let him in.

He had me against the wall before the door fully closed, mouth on mine, hands already under the T-shirt I had thrown on. We didn’t make it to the bed the first time. He fucked me right there in the entryway, one of my legs hooked over his arm, the other barely holding me up. When I came he covered my mouth with his hand to keep me quiet, then carried me to the bedroom and took me again, slower, with the lamp still on and the curtains wide open.

Anyone across the courtyard who looked would have seen us.

We both knew it. Neither of us reached for the fabric.

After that it became the rule.

Some nights he watched me put on the full show first—fingers inside myself, eyes on him, coming for an audience of one—before he walked the short distance between our buildings and knocked. Other nights he was already at my door when I got home, less patient, less willing to wait for the performance. Those nights the lamp still went on. The curtains still stayed open. He just didn’t bother with the glass anymore.

One Thursday he had me on my hands and knees in the center of the bed, the lamp throwing warm light across my back and the open window framing us like a living picture. He fucked me in long, deep strokes while one hand reached under to rub my clit. Every time I got close he slowed down, keeping me trembling on the edge until I was begging in broken whispers.

“Anyone could look over,” he said against my ear, voice rough. “See you like this. See what I do to you.”

“I know.”

“You want them to.”

It wasn’t a question. I nodded anyway, forehead pressed to the sheets, and he rewarded me with harder thrusts and the exact pressure on my clit that finally let me come. I shook apart under him with a muffled cry. He followed soon after, burying himself deep and spilling into me with a low groan.

We stayed joined for a while afterward, his chest against my back, both of us looking toward the dark windows across the courtyard. No lights had come on. No silhouettes had appeared. But the possibility sat in the room with us like a third presence, sharp and electric.

He pulled out carefully. I felt the slow trickle of his come down my thighs. Instead of reaching for a towel he simply rolled me onto my back and looked at me—naked, flushed, clearly used—in the open lamplight.

“Leave it,” he said when I shifted to clean up. “I want you to sleep like this. Windows open. Everything visible.”

A fresh pulse of heat went through me at the instruction.

He dressed slowly, eyes on me the entire time. At the doorway he paused the way he always did.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Same time. Curtains stay open.”

“They always do now.”

The corner of his mouth lifted. Then he left.

I didn’t move from the bed. The lamp stayed on for another ten minutes while I lay there naked, thighs sticky, body marked by his hands, the night air from the open window cooling my skin. Somewhere across the courtyard a light might have flicked on. Or it might not have. I didn’t check.

I turned the lamp off eventually and slept that way—curtains open, the scent of sex still in the sheets, the quiet understanding that this was no longer a secret we were trying to keep.

It was a secret we were choosing to risk.

And every night the lamp went on, the glass stayed uncovered, and I waited for the knock that meant he had decided looking was no longer enough.

It never took long.