*** © 2010 by "Lillian". The author maintains that all content in this story refers to fictional characters only and that any similarities with persons living or dead is only coincidence. These stories are not for reproduction without the author's written permission. *** Author: Lillian EMail: write.to.ll@gmail.com - Feedback is appreciated! Title: The View Story Codes: FF I took my morning coffee at the small table draped in pastel blue trimmed with snowy white lace and pleated edging. It had become a ritual for me, the alarm going off at 5:30 before I climbed out of bed and rubbed my eyes. The smell of a single cup being brewed in my kitchen began to drip, the little machine with its clock and timer greeting me each morning like a well-trained butler. I wrapped myself in my robe and moved through the dimly lit condo on the same path across the hardwood to collect my cup and relax into the same little wooden chair. The lure of this habit wasn't the morning caffeine; I had never had a problem feeling wakeful and bright even on those days when I'd forgotten to pick up more. It wasn't the chance to watch the dawn, either; my windows were turned away from the light as the sunrise washed the opposite side of the high building with the morning glow. The event that drew me to the window each morning without fail was the time I was given to gaze across the wide alleyway between 13157 and 13159 St. Laurence Street and into the window just one floor down where she lay in her bed waiting for her morning alarm to sound at six. Since the very first morning she had moved-in I'd been watching her. I realized long ago that it might be considered creepy and, as I looked down into her bedroom window every morning, I felt shameless in the act. She was beautiful. Not the sort of beautiful that one sees walking a runway or the type of beautiful that Hollywood stars flaunt on screen, she was the kind of beautiful that comes from normal people living everyday lives in a large city; a man would see her on the street and marvel at how beautiful she was but, in a few moments she'd be swallowed up by the crowd and leave him with only a memory. I was luckier than any man, though. From my small blue clothed table I could gaze down on her from on high, taking in her amazing beauty as she slept the last minutes before her alarm sounded to draw her from her bed. I got to see a side of her that few ever would and I cherished every moment of it. It was my favorite time of year. It was far different from Christmas, but magical in its own little way... at least to me. A late spring morning meant that the sun would rise as I sipped my coffee and the light would fall along the street and, at just the right angle, spill over her body and cover her in a warm, orange glow. The weather was turning from cool to warm in the city, giving us all the chance to turn off the heat without turning on the air and inspiring in my beautiful girl the urge to sleep nude below her smooth, satin sheets. On particularly warm evenings she would push the sheets down her body as she slept, showing the majority of her lovely body. It was a blessing that she was so very comfortable with herself and a blessing that she enjoyed the warmth of the sun as much as I. I don't know if she'd ever noticed me, but I couldn't imagine in the five years I'd been watching her that she had spent every day without looking up just once. If she had seen me, it clearly didn't bother her; she'd never acknowledged me or even seemed to look my way. Each morning when she woke, sometimes even before the flashing light on her alarm alerted me that it had turned six already, she would open her eyes and just lay there, pulling the sheet or comforter up around her body and snuggling into her pillow. It was the vision of her that I took with me each day for the first few months after she had moved in and one I would have been very satisfied with for as long as I had the chance to enjoy the view. I could find no flaw in the woman. She seemed a perfect height, at least for me, with a slender but not quite athletic build; the curve of her hips formed well into the trim line of her legs without folding and without creasing her skin, but still there was no sign of the muscular tone that so many seemed to find attractive these days. She was well groomed, sliding from her bed each morning as the snooze alarm on her clock sounded at 6:10 and moving on bare feet across the plush carpet into her bathroom where she would disappear for her shower. When she would emerge again, her hair would be wet and her body wrapped in a downy-soft looking towel that was shed only when she had chosen her panties from the highest-drawer of her wardrobe. Of those times when I was so graced as to see, she had kept herself neatly shaven and always wore the perfect garments for a woman of her appearance. There was more to her than met the eye, too. It was only from years of watching her morning routine that I began to feel a sense of who she was; a simple glimpse of her beauty would never have told the story of the woman. She was guilty of tapping the snooze more than once from time-to-time, but she never shirked her responsibilities. She was timely and graceful even when she was alone. She didn't sleep around or sell her beauty short - the few times I'd seen her bedroom light come on deeper in the evenings on the weekends she had always had the same young man, handsome in his own right, there with her before the curtains closed. Even when she was sick she did her best to meet her goals, as I'd spied her at least three times through the years with a box of tissues and a laptop there on her bed working away even though she was too ill to face the outdoors. I admired the quality of the woman, not just the appearance. The first time I'd seen the young man come into her bedroom window I had been faintly jealous. He had dark hair, handsome features, and dressed like a man with money and taste without seeming to flaunt it on expensive watches and jewelry. The two were clearly friends and more, the way he kissed her told me he had wanted her for a long time - likely more than even me - and the way she responded told me that she understood. He was a gentleman of sorts as well, even going to the window to draw the maroon material closed before touching her in an untoward way on that first evening. It had been by chance that I had seen it at all; passing the window as I walked toward my bed and having the light catch my eye just before they shared the passion that the kiss clearly carried. The jealousy faded as quickly as it had come, as I realized that my lovely girl was a lovely woman and had all the same needs I did but the will to answer them that I lacked. There came a morning some years ago where I sat and watched my lovely girl for a shorter time. I had a meeting with my publisher and left home at 6:30 to be on my way to the office downtown. I had stopped into the coffee shop on the corner for something to keep me warm on the trip when I saw her walk in just after me; the lovely girl I had seen from afar was even more the work of art I had always dreamed of in person. Then, too, I heard her speak for the first time - her cherry-sweet tone matching her strawberry hair almost too perfectly. We stood in line together until our orders were made and, as we stood to the side to wait for the busy corner shop to finish, I had the chance to speak to her. I complimented her outfit and she smiled and thanked me. I told her that my name was Robin and she replied with the loveliest thing I'd ever heard to that point in my life, "Gwen... Guinevere." Since that day, I'd made the weekday morning trek each day that she had slipped from her bed and we had spoken casual hellos repeatedly amid the swirl of coffee scent and bustle of travelers on their way to work. Each morning I greeted Gwen as she came along a minute or sometimes slightly more after me to order her double-shot Macchiato and each morning we parted ways with a smile. Each morning I turned right as she turned left from the doorway and we parted ways without my ever having the courage to know more about her than what I'd seen from a distance. Of course, she too had never spoken a word of my voyeurism (if she had noticed it at all). Her male partner may not have made frequent appearances in her window, but I knew from his presence alone that the road I had longed to walk down was a rocky one just the same. The girl of my dreams was a dream herself, there but not there, just out of reach. I had known for a very long time that I was gay and that the life wouldn't be easy. It was a time when things weren't perfect; certainly it wasn't seen as the sickness it once was, but even in the modern days you still felt excluded or, worse, a fad. I often thought as I spent my days high above the world behind a computer screen putting words together on stark white pixels that I chose the career more because I was afraid of the world than anything else. Still, I was able to write and create things well outside my experience - lovers holding one another to go forward living happily ever after while my experience ended with casual flings stretched across my thirty years on Earth, no one more outstanding than the next. Then this woman stepped into my life by following through with hers and my mind constantly drifted back to her: the fruit at the top of the tree, just out of reach. I brought myself to a decision on the last morning. I had become quite adept at knowing when the sun would rise and at just what angle it would fall along the buildings and, on that early May morning I knew that it would be the last one that allowed me to see my lovely girl with the sun slowly rising to drape across her body and warm her before I was forced to wait another year again. I hadn't even realized I was fighting with myself until I felt my heart rise and fall with a swell of emotions like a bit of wood on the tide. I had spent so long just watching and going out of my way on those mornings just to hear her voice say a few words before she departed for her day and finally I could take no more of the constant fear of scaring her away by saying more back. That morning I left a cool cup of coffee on its saucer and sacrificed the last few minutes of watching her after her slender fingers had tapped the snooze button in exchange for the chance to look my best. For the first time in my life I went out of my way to take the extra time to touch up my lipstick, to brush the clumps from my mascara, and to pick the clothes that made me feel my best. If cowardice won on that morning, if I couldn't speak, there was surely no recovery for my easily bruised ego. Failure, at least, would be closure and I could pull the curtains on my favorite window and take down my antique table with the blue and white cloth. I left from my doorway that morning just a minute early. The sound of my heels clicking along the marble inlay of the hall had never seemed louder, like a voice telling me giving me encouragement with each step despite the words only making me fear the outcome even more. In the lobby, the eyes of the people I'd seen from time to time but never known seemed to know me enough in return to know that something about me had changed. I kept imagining that there was some glossy writing on a tag hanging from my back that said 'Lesbian on the prowl,' but yet I knew that my blouse couldn't support the tape that would hold it there. It was nervousness and sinking hopes that teased me -- nothing more physical than that. The doorman opened the heavy glass door for me and I slipped past with the same smile and polite thanks I had every day before but the faintest quirk in his smile seemed, on that day, like a chortle behind a mask. The street was far friendlier than the lobby; in the streets were faceless women and empty suits where men had been, each moving in their own direction with no care for the interruption of a passing glance or concern over a faint change in makeup. The street allowed me to calm myself. I arrived at the coffee shop faintly early and took up my usual position beside the newsstand just inside. I glanced over the headlines and put down a pair of bills for the paper while I waited, anticipating her arrival with a flight of jays swirling about my stomach in a rush to find answers hidden much higher than they could fly. I imaged that time seemed to dilate, spreading wider over a smaller time because my perceptions were going faster than the speed of light, but soon enough I realized that my lovely girl wasn't coming. When the clock inside ticked to the hour I felt my sweet little jays fall dead into the pit of my stomach and the eyes of all the people about me turn from snickering jest into mocking cruelty; all a mirage, all in my head, but painful as reality just the same, it marked the first day I'd failed to catch her and the first day in all those years that her routine had changed. She was going out, I could tell; before I had walked away, I'd taken one last glance in time to see her pull the thin strings of pink satin panties up along her thighs and open the closet where she kept her blouses. She hadn't stayed home sick, but she hadn't come to meet me either. I swallowed back the feelings inside me and approached the counter, ordering my simple coffee - black - before the smiling young woman opposite took my money and the time to make for me the same tall cup she had each day before. I reached for the door and closed my eyes in pause. My hand on the metal felt cold and, in all my days in and out of the shop, I'd never felt it before; my eyes, closed in shame, opened at the touch to see there, across the street, the beautiful girl I had feared avoided me. She was sitting alone at a table in front of the caf‚ where I often took an early dinner while I waited for her to return home, just to catch a glimpse of her as she passed and pretend to be one of those who got nothing more than that of her beauty before she disappeared into the sea of people again. She sat quiet and still, observing as I did ever morning, her eyes watching the people who passed her with a deep and thoughtful emotion mixed into the color of her irises. I turned back into the shop and ordered a double-shot Macchiato from the young woman who had only just filled my order. For the first time I knew, in the smile on her lips, that she actually did understand; she made the cup and I paid and tipped her for the genuine understanding that she seemed to have. There in the barista's expression was the only sign I'd yet seen of someone who could actually tell just how nervous I was and, unlike all the others who I'd imagined were so cruel, she was kind. With a paper under my arm and two cups of coffee in hand, I gently pressed my hip to the door and stepped into the street again. At the light, I slipped across and time seemed to slow again. She sat in the caf‚ chair, pushed faintly back from the table to allow her to lean forward against it with her arms folded, and a look in her eyes that showed deeper thought than I'd captured in her expression before. Troubled, perhaps, but captivating still; as the painting of a brilliant artist, who had captured the image of one moment in time, wrapped in soft floral-print white. She hadn't dressed in her businesslike attire but had instead come out on that Monday morning on a warm spring day in a sundress that flattered her in every way. Two thin straps crossed softly over her shoulders and made a small x-shape over the unblemished skin of her back, the curve of her spine as much a glimpse of beauty as the simple curve of her lips and, while nothing I hadn't seen before, somehow different in the way she sat that day. The skirt brushed gently over her thighs as I approached her from behind, going just down the block to catch the light and cross I'd put myself out of her view for the sake of my nerves and to spare me the chance that her gaze would scare me away if she'd seen me walking toward her. "Gwen?" I asked as I stepped in close enough to speak in a soft voice, and she turned. It wasn't me she had expected, but her expression told me she hadn't expected anyone in particular at all. For the first time, I'd called her by her name and she'd responded without any delay. I caught my breath as it tried to leave me and, before she could answer from the stunned moment I'd gained in her pause to recognize me, I extended my hand toward her with the coffee and offered it to her, "Double-shot Macchiato, just like you like it... right?" If she could sense the fear in my voice, she didn't show it. I'd spoken to her before but never so directly and never with the goal I'd had in mind on that morning. Her lips turned to a faint smile, brought back from the brink of melancholy for at least that moment as an act of need masked by kindness played out before her. "Thanks," she replied, but the word seemed too gentle to be anything more than gracious acceptance of a gift that wasn't earned. "You didn't come into the shop... and then I noticed you over here. Are you alright?" I asked her, hoping to garner something more and to keep her from turning back to her table and slipping into that thoughtful posture again. To interrupt it once was concern but twice seemed in my mind to mark me as what I had hoped to avoid becoming... a stalker. I took the paper from under my arm and walked around the table while her eyes followed me. She took her time, not immediately answering though there was a need in her eyes to let go of what she held. When finally she let the emotions free and began to tell me her story. "I was let go Friday and I guess I just haven't come to grips with it yet. It's all coming down on me this morning. I thought I'd take a week and just relax, just let myself be 'me' for a while before I got back to looking for a new job. I got up this morning and decided to just go out and see the city... but this is as far as I got. I sat down here, I looked around, and I realized that I might not be able to stay here much longer if I couldn't find a job or had to find one further away." I had never written a horror story before - I wrote stories about romance and drama where families collided and worlds changed - but in that moment I knew how it would begin if I did. My expression must have gone pale, my jays that had felt a new bit of life spring up inside them had been caught by a sharp breeze and plunged down once more, and all I could think of was myself. Selfishly, I imagined my life with the girl in the window ending not because I had been a coward or she had rejected me but instead because she'd simply gone away. It never seemed possible before, never crossed my mind, but in that moment it seemed far too close to the truth. I must have said "Oh no," or "Oh my" or something sympathetic, though it came only by instinct as my rational mind was busy being self-centered, but she continued. "It's okay. I've got a few weeks of severance and a few good references; I should be able to find something. I really love this area, though, I don't want to move," she said, and I agreed silently. I didn't want it to end. It couldn't end like that. "What do you do?" I asked her. For all the time I'd watched her, all the times we had exchanged pleasantries, I had never asked her and she had never asked me. It felt silly. We knew each other for years and were comfortable enough that my taking the seat opposite her hadn't seemed odd at all but we could barely claim to know anything about one another beyond first names. "I was working for Jameson as an associate publicist. I guess the market just isn't what it was and they let me and a few others go. I should have seen it coming, but I was too wrapped up in it to know," she answered, but I only heard the first words. She had been an associate publicist for Jameson? It was a competing publisher, but a publisher nonetheless. I searched my mind to see if ever I had made a prayer for a moment like that, but I couldn't recall it; never the religious girl, I had still not been above looking skyward when in my times of need, but on that morning it hadn't been an answered prayer that had given me the chance. "Really?" I asked in return. The rhetorical word spouted from my mouth faster than I could stop it. My excitement brimmed and my hand fidgeted from the cup I held upward as if to shout 'Eureka!' to the world. In an effort to salvage my chance, and my dignity, I added, "I'm an author... Robin Lake. I'd be happy to make some phone calls for you, if you like. I'd love to have you." My lips betrayed me but my mind still clung to strings. My restless want for the girl in the window, and my failures as a social creature were fighting success like a lion tamer to keep me locked up alone behind that glass. "To have you on my team, I mean. I could try being a Prima donna for once, I'd probably catch them off guard at first but I think it might work." What my words were really saying didn't translate easily. She understood them, in way, but behind a long history of small talk and minimal interaction there was a veil that protected my real feelings from her sight. I wanted to pull my cellular from my purse and demand my publisher's attention then and there, to demand that they take something from the millions of dollars they made each year from my sales and furnish the young lady whom I longed to have in my bed with a job and title to keep her near me. My hands ached as much as my eyes, the strain to keep them both still giving me pains but the gentle soul opposite me eased them just the same. "You are?" her eyes searched my face with some note of recognition. "I couldn't ask you to do that. You're very nice, but I wouldn't want you to..." she began. "It's no problem," I insisted, abruptly stopping her words before she could speak them. I feared her voice more than anything - if she asked, I might do whatever she demanded without pause, and if that request was to let her go it would be crushing. "At least let me make a couple of calls and see if I can't get you an interview? If you insist on it, then you can have this paper too," I said, pushing it across the table toward her, "but I think you'll have more luck my way." Grudgingly she took the paper and drew it toward her. I could tell by the subtle change in her expression that there, mingled with the surprise of it all and the weight of the problems she faced, was a glimmer of hope. She didn't have to trust me, she certainly didn't have to agree, but in doing so a door was opened for her and for me and together we could step through it - each with our own reasoning. No, she had no clue that I wanted more than just the chance to get to know her, but a crisis I never wanted to face could be gently averted without ever revealing to her the nightmare that it was to me. Guinevere Ross, for the first time, gave me more than just her first name. She gave me her name and her phone number and I asked her to my home. With coffee cups in hand and a paper carried along, we walked back along the path I had taken each day as we separated at the coffee shop. Back past the doorman and the people in the lobby, up through the elevator and along the hall, I never noticed the mocking smirks, the prying eyes, or the cheerleading heels. For the first time they didn't exist, even in my mind. Instead, I could see the girl from the window at my side, I could smell the lavender and apple of her shampoo, I could hear the soft swishing of the skirt of her sundress, and I could feel warmth at my side where she stood. I don't think I've ever fallen in love. Certainly, I hadn't fallen in love with a girl I didn't know. I'd watched her and lusted for her, yes; I'd even let my hand drift gently into my panties on occasion to touch myself as I watched her sleeping body in the warmth of the sunlight, I'll admit. I had not fallen in love, though, until the moment we passed the doorway. Stepping inside, I closed the door behind her and she slipped the sandals from her feet and, with her toe, poked them until they sat side by side just inside the doorway. It wasn't an act that was in any way special or outstanding, it was a nudging with the tip of her big toe until beige-white sandals were evenly spaced and resting there. It was a nonsensical act done playfully without invitation in the home of a virtual stranger, a small quirk of personality shown in actions rather than words that acted as the feather atop the weight of a thousand others to collapse me completely into her's. I invited her in while I turned to my phone. It never for a moment occurred to me that, as I turned along the hallway and she politely restricted herself to the sitting room, she'd see a cold cup of coffee there before the window where my little table with the blue and white cloth sat with such a view of her bed and bedroom. I put on my best airs for her; I reached my publisher and, knowing I could be hear quietly in the background, I told her that I had a friend who had come upon a hard time and needed a leg up. She was, I described, a hard worker who barely missed any days even when she was sick, so long as she could work from home, and that I had known her for years and would trust her even with my own publicity. I had never before asked for anything but what I was paid in my contract, never once asked to change the amount I received from royalties, and never once been even a minute late for a signing, but I had never once experienced being told 'no' because of it in turn. By the time I hung up the phone there was a promise made to call the girl for an interview. I had spent the majority of the time talking in my bedroom, the door open to let the sound of my words travel softly down the hallway toward where she lingered. It was rude to invite a guest into your home and abandon them, but I had every excuse in the world for the act. It was for her, after all, and it ended with a sense of completion that I imagined might give her similar warmth in her chest to the one that I felt. For the ten minutes it must have taken to complete the conversation, she had the time to see in my front room all the things that I had left. She'd had time to look over the stack of printed papers filled with pink and yellow stripes - a new book I had been working on now in the maturing stages of its life cycle, she'd even had time to see my little table with a view. It's just where I found her sitting, having taken my chair and crossed her legs below the blue and white cloth as she turned her eyes out the window toward her own bedroom. The white skirt drifted high on her thigh, letting my eyes trace the line of her leg from the knee much higher than ever I had seen before from such small distance. As much as I thirsted for that chance, I pulled my eyes away from the smoothness of her skin before her own were brought back to find me there where the hallway spilled into the living area. I could tell that she didn't know what to say, but I could see that she wasn't offended. I hadn't asked for anything from her or given her false pretense. I had even gone out of my way to step out of the voyeuristic world I lived in to offer her kindness and coffee and, it seemed, it softened the blow of finding my secret life as her stalker. I walked across the floor and slipped my shoes off to quiet their tapping before I sat down opposite her once more. It was a strange angle to see her there, without dipping my head I could not just see her but smell and sense her in every way. I was encouraged, not defeated, by the way she sat in a seemingly vacant state of emotion - I had cleared away the worry and fear of being jobless in a horrible economy, even if I had introduced something new and undefined. "I've been watching you," I admitted to her, taking the first step without forcing her to speak. "I know that may seem strange, but I noticed you when you first moved in... and I've been..." I let my voice trail to a murmur, unable to think of the right words despite having spent a decade and a half steaming consciousness into written text. "I've been captivated. You lead a life I've never had... shut in up here, away from the world, I know that you may feel violated, like I was stepping into your privacy, but I was doing it to gain some sick thrill, I was doing it from envy. "It's like the Monet print I have in the foyer. A beautiful sight separated from the world by glass and air. You can't touch, you can't sense it, you can only see it and if you're very lucky have the chance to know the real thing," I continued, unsure if I was digging a grave or filling a hole I had made. "I know," she interrupted. For the first time I saw in her eyes a sign, clear as the blue sky, and I safe from worry. "I mean, I didn't know it was you," she admitted, "but I knew someone was watching me. It made me feel a little nervous, a little scared, but then I realized it wasn't like that. I guess I just didn't know... you were a woman. That's all that's surprising me." The silence that followed must have been just a touch too long for comfort. Time had played its game again and, to me, it seemed like only a small pause between the words and the sound that followed, but the ticking of the clock told the truth as long seconds passed between the words and any reaction I might have been having. It's a strange relationship between perception and time; nervousness and fear makes time dilate and feel like an eternity but shock and pleasure make it zip by at bunny speeds, strange combination of emotions that they may be. "I didn't mean to offend you," Gwen said finally, breaking the quiet I'd left her in through my moments of defeat and shock. "I've never thought of a woman that way before and when I saw this table and your coffee... then I sat down and I knew it was you... I just felt something different. It's uncomfortable," she swallowed on the last word as if to take it back or change its meaning. "You don't need to say anything," I replied finally, catching up with the words coming from her lips and processing them as quickly as I could. "Today didn't go the way I expected it to either," I then admitted, clearing the air from my lungs and the thoughts that still rattled about my head. I turned my eyes down toward her bedroom again, looking at the unmade bed on display. I'd never seen it that way before that I could remember - her last act before leaving her apartment was to pull the comforter up and tuck it just below the pillows to prepare for the night to come. "I guess it hasn't gone the way you expected either," I said with a better understanding of where she stood. I saw her lips part faintly as if to speak, but no sound came before she swallowed back the words again. "I left here early today to see you. I pushed myself into making a decision. I wanted to finally talk to you and to tell you that I thought you were beautiful," I said as I felt the blush of heat cross my cheeks. My chin dipped to the right, drawing my face from the window as she looked toward me again. She could sense my nervousness, and if not she understood it just the same. It made her smile. When she didn't speak, I continued, "I told myself that I'd been watching for too long... that it was time to learn more than your name... and when I didn't see you I thought I was going to be sick... and when..." I almost continued, catching myself in the middle of a run-on sentence and dragging it to a halt. Pushing myself from the small chair, I felt the urge to flee. Standing there in my sitting room there was nowhere to go, and so I stood and waited for the embarrassment to wash away. My mouth had wanted so badly to tell her I had fallen in love with her when she'd taken off her shoes, no matter how fetishistic and psychotic it had sounded in my mind. When she stood in turn, I had wondered if she was going to leave or if my signals had been interpreted not as embarrassment but as a wish to see her go. The truth was far easier than that: I didn't want to see her go, I just wanted to see her. For the first time, looking at her was simply too difficult. "What were you going to ask me?" she questioned. I could feel the warmth of her radiating just behind me, I imagined the breath from her words brushing softly past my shoulder and my mind once again rewarded me with the pleasantness of dreamy thoughts. I took the time she gave me to think, to try and form the words that were constantly leaping out of my grasp, but before I spoke, I turned. I looked into her eyes, no longer letting my gaze be forced away from her beautiful face. I had spent enough time longing to see it, wanting to be this close, and I wasn't going to let the chance slip away. "It was less about asking you a question... and more about telling you the truth. I've been watching you for five years. I've looked at you and learned about you... and since the day I first ran into you in the coffee shop I've gone down there every morning just to run into you again. I've listened to your voice when you were on your phone in line; I've made small talk with you just to hear you speak. I've watched the sun come up and slowly pass over you until you woke up and I've seen your arm slowly snake out from under your covers in the winter to press the snooze button and take just a few more minutes away from the cold," I told her, unleashing it all in a big flood of words and thoughts strung together in no particular order. "I've wanted to touch you and hold you; I've fantasized about you and imagined what it must be like to be the one you cared for. I know this is all so quick and so much at once, but hearing you say that you might have to move away made me realize that I'm an idiot... I've waited five years for fear that you'd say no or worse... that you'd find me repulsive because you're straight. Now I don't care. I don't want you to have to move, and I don't want anything from you but for you to stay," I finished, finally letting my words taper off to nothing as I stared into her eyes. I wanted to reach out and touch her, to take her by the hand or to cup her cheek and feel its warmth, but she was just far enough away to make the act too deliberate and just far enough away to be gone before my and ever reached her. She inhaled slowly, not taking her eyes from me as she let my words settle in her mind. It was those moments you read about in books or see in movies but never think will be real. It took a special blend of things, I learned in that instant, for it to happen: You had to have a moment in time when two people anticipated something without knowing the outcome, you had to have an attraction that was deeper than the surface, and, most of all, you had to have the silence and calm of a still room where no one and nothing could distract you from the experience. "Would you maybe want to date first?" she asked with a tinge of sarcasm in her voice. The playful side of her showed through, the one that I knew existed from the way she bounced across her bed on particularly happy mornings to the little game she had played with the tip of her toe and her sandals at my door. "No," I smiled back, my voice as set as my mind. I image she knew the answer before she asked the question. I had given up trying to hide emotions or trying to keep my expressions hidden away. I took the biggest leap I had ever taken, then. I stepped forward, I put my hands on hers, and wrapped my fingers between her own, and I lifted my lips to meet her own. It was a surprise attack in some ways but, in others, she knew it was going to happen if she didn't resist it. I imagined that she had wanted me to make the first move, that she'd wanted me to take her by the hand and lead her down the hallway toward my bed, and maybe, just maybe, that she'd wanted me to take that leap long before that day. It was a blur, a flurry of action that took me from taking her hands and kissing her to pulling her gently over the hardwood floors toward my bedroom. It was a fantasy I'd had a thousand times before, but this time it was coming true. She wasn't resisting, simply nervously complying and fidgeting in the same way I had before she had even come to know the truth. "I've never done this," she whispered into my ear as I held her close to me and nuzzled gently at her neck, nipping softly at the sweet soft skin I had seen from behind the glass for so very long. I drew my lips back to hers, kissing her softly to silence the words as my hands moved down to caress the curve of her hip where it became her thigh. "You don't need to have done this before... you just need to enjoy it," I told her in a single, heated breath. I had no interest in her experience, no thought at all for what she might do for me or how she might touch or kiss me. I only wanted to have her in the ways my fantasies had drifted on those mornings when I found my hand tucked gently between the material of my panties and the damp flesh of my pussy. She could lay back and enjoy herself and nothing more; it would make my life complete just the same. She gasped, her body quivering for a moment against me as I felt the heat inside her rise. I don't know if it was my words or my hands that drew the tingling through her, but I knew what it meant. Rather than find herself frightened or disgusted by the feel of my hands taking the thing strings of her pink panties to peel them softly away from her body, she felt the same want that I did and recognized the passion I felt for her as it raged inside me even stronger than before. Still I couldn't distract myself from the details. As she lay on my bed, her strawberry blonde hair spilled out around her against the velveteen maroon sheets, I held the same small satin panties I'd seen her pick from the drawer in my hand. They were soft to the touch, thin strings with a soft panel of pink satin to cover her, embossed with lighter pink paisleys for beauty and texture. I held them in my hand, the strings wrapped around my fingers as I reached forward and ran my fingertips along her inner thigh toward the smoothly shaven mound I'd only glimpsed from so far away; I couldn't bear parting with them even though the reward was right in front of me. I heard her breath hitch again as my hand drew away from her skin and I saw small goose flesh along her thighs, I could already sense the anticipation in her and, for once in my life, I didn't think that this would be a dead-end experiment that went nowhere at all. Without any experience or plans to have ever placed herself in that position, my darling girl that had for so long known she was being watched through the window was finally mine and knew all too well that it had been a woman who had wanted her. I lay on the bed against her and placed my lips softly to the elegant line of her stomach where it came to meet her hips only to hear her breath once again break from the soft inhale and exhale she was trying to maintain. I turned my eyes up, looking to her beautiful emerald gaze watching down over the slopes of her breasts. I smiled hoping to ease her anxiety, knowing all the while that she was no longer scared or nervous about her safety but instead timid and lost like a virgin all over again. The idea of being her first female lover - even if I wasn't her first lover - only encouraged me and took over the lead in my racing thoughts. With her satin panties clutched in one hand I moved the other up to touch her smooth, warm inner thigh again as I dabbed my lips against her stomach. It was the only warning she'd get, a building of anticipation and a clear indicator that I wasn't willing to play or wait for what I'd craved in my dreams. I felt the softness of her pussy against my fingertips for the first time and couldn't resist the chance to see the few hidden portions of my darling girl that I'd never before glimpsed; with a gentle pressure, I spread her folds and exposed the dampness of her cleft. I lay my head gently against her spread thigh and began to toy with her with a tender grace, relishing the chance to explore my beautiful girl not as a distant and unknowing companion but as a willing participant in what I wanted to be a most memorable debauchery. I could have written a thousand pages and never captured the tiny reactions that said so very much as her body reacted to each motion and curious caress. Turning my body against hers, I pulled myself softly up and drew my fingertips up over her clit to play softly at the tender bud. With my weight shifted, I rose over her and dabbed a soft kiss down on her cheek while drawing slow circles with my fingertips. My words seemed like commands as they passed from my lips in whispered tones, "Take off your dress," and yet she complied all too easily with a wiggling of her body and a momentary lifting of her back and shoulders from the bed's surface to shrug the delicate dress away from her skin. I hadn't anticipated it, though I should have known all too well that it was there, but her lovely full breasts were covered then by matching pink satin alone. Though the bra that covered her then was the only scrap of clothing she still had to shield her, it seemed like a cowl and gown hiding her from me and drew jealousy from within me at the closeness of its touch and the distance it kept between us. I pulled the hem of my skirt higher on my thigh and pressed the flesh against her warm pussy as I lean over her, drawing my hand away from her to brush a thin strip of pink from her shoulder and chase it with a kiss along the blade. I felt her body shift against me, the pressure of my thigh drawing her down to take more than I'd given as she drew her hips upward. I felt a new dampness forming, wanting a woman knows from her own fingertips; it was a thing I'd felt so many times on my own. I lingered over her, my blouse brushing her stomach and chest, my lips so near to hers as I held on to that moment when she had come to me for the first time. Her lips begged for me, supple and parted as she gazed up, raising her hand and sliding softly along my shoulder to draw me to her. She knew what she wanted even if she didn't understand, a grown woman so familiar with her body and the touch of a man still lost to inexperience because of another woman. I felt the words in her kiss. Tasting her lips, spreading my own to capture her warm mouth and the touch of her tongue, I heard the unspoken pleading to go forward and relieve the torture of the need she was feeling so deep in her stomach. I was all too familiar with the little monster inside her, I had no doubt that it had left me and entered her the moment I'd pushed her back onto the bed. Still I couldn't halt my kisses no matter how much she pleaded in the quiet of our passion. I had to feel the softness of her lips and taste the light raspberry flavor of her lip-gloss. I needed the warm wetness of her tongue against mine and the feel of her nails digging into my back through the thin material that felt ever more confining with every moment that passed. I could even smell the mingled scents of her body, her shampoo, and that sweet gloss; for the first time I had known the real smell of the woman, a fragrance as indelible as the memory of the first day I had seen her. In the flurry of thoughts that skittered through me, shooting out to every nerve in my body, I had realized that my lovely girl had long since accepted that whoever had given her such wonderful fantasies, whoever it was that sat in that window watching her each morning, would be her lover one day if they demanded it. I understood that if I had been a man, younger or older, she would have never hesitated to fulfill that fantasy that had been inside her since the moment she realized his presence. I simply didn't care. I had my every desire to meet and new ones to introduce her to; it was a moot point to explore. Why would I begin to feel used when, breast to breast and lip to lip was a girl who had resigned herself to allow my every whim to be answered with the user of her body? I wasn't being used as I pressed my thigh tight between hers. I was using. Propping myself up on my hands, the strings of her panties still wrapped about my left, I gazed down at her and rocked softly against her until her legs spread wider and folded at the knee to curl upward. My clothes began to cling to me desperately, attracted by the steamy sweat spreading below them, but even a moment of feeling the wetness of her pussy growing against my thigh could not be spared to shed them. Lifting herself on her elbows the last of her garments was released, the lovely bra that had been in my way was shed and tossed aside before her hands grasped hold of my arms again and leveraged her weight down against my thigh. Her breasts gently swayed when free of their binding, the fullness of them falling just as I remembered it each morning... such a captivating sight and so simple in their attractiveness. Her small, pink nipples had tightened from the cool air, the pleasure and adrenaline in her, but she sighed not from the new sensations of soft chiffon dragging back and forth against them but from the intensifying arousal she felt against me. I felt her hips shudder as I rocked my thigh against her with more pressure than before, faster still from the growing urge to see her cum and look into her eyes as she did. I wanted to see in those beautiful eyes the memories being formed of her first female lover bringing her to orgasm with nothing but touch and passion before she had even began to introduce her to lovemaking in the way that she might have always imagined a lesbian would. My thigh was slick from her wetness but my panties clung to me just as wetly. I would never have imagined it possible to bring myself off without ever having felt a single touch against my pussy, but as I listened to her breathing quicken and saw in her eyes the quickly approaching release I wondered if it was possible. Every cell in my body felt stimulated. I kissed her again, needful for the taste of her lip-gloss and the caress of her tongue in hopes that it would drive me over the edge as I pressed into her and ground her clit against my pale skin. The sound of her moans against my lips, muffled by the pressure of my mouth against hers, drove me toward the edge of control even before I saw the flash of her eyes and felt the rippling coils strung so tightly inside her unwind in a flood. Oh, how I wanted to cum as she did, I wanted so very badly to feel the ecstasy of my walls tightening and releasing again-and-again and the thundering waves of pleasure that would wrap around those moments and follow them with a wash of relief, freedom, and tranquility. I could see in her eyes, cast so wide open as to show me the purity of their white and the definition of their stunning green, all those things I wanted so badly in that moment. I could feel the quaking of her body below me and the wetness so slick against my thigh as she continued to draw her hips upward then down against me without a want to stop until every tiny aftershock had passed. All my senses overwhelmed, having experienced the girl in the window and felt her body in the heights of her pleasure, I still didn't feel the slaked emotions that I had anticipated. She was like a drug that lasted only seconds before the next fix was demanded and I had no will to ignore the calling. I tasted her lips once more, pressing my body against hers and letting her feel the weight of me against her before my lips began to trail softly down to caress her jaw, her neck, and her breasts. Rising and falling in a heated draw for air, the tremors through her body tightened the darkened pink nipples capping her breasts again as I captured the right with my hand and the left with my lips. Sampling her flesh with new senses, I felt the weight of her against my palm and the taste of her on my tongue; she felt soft and natural, firm but relenting and tasted only for a moment of faintly bitter vanilla before the traces of salty dew and warm skin took hold. Her hands moved to follow me, her touch near ethereal against my hair as the bashful girl who had gazed at me so full of anxiety before returned when her imagination turned in anticipation of the acts I was performing. Still she was not afraid, simply demure and unsure of a new lover so eager to have her way. I moved forward, drawing the weight of her breast to my hand until it softly bounced upward freely from my grasp. Dragging my nails softly down as I trailed wet kisses before them, I covered inch after inch along her firm tummy to taste and let her mind race with thoughts of what would be part of the newest adventure we'd share. Still so sensitive, I brushed her clit with my tongue only for a moment as my lips finally arrived at the crest of her thighs. She jolted for a moment, the sensation pulling another gasp from her lungs before she let her hips settle against the bed again. Just as my fingers had explored her, I moved my tongue against her wet pussy to draw in the taste of her and feel the heat emanating from every pour of her body. Still I clutched her panties, holding them ever tighter as I slid my arms under her thighs and drew her against my, feeling the wetness of her skin against my cheeks and letting it lewdly spread there without a moment of humility. I wanted to taste the depths of her body and know her in ways she hadn't ever experienced; I pressed my tongue into her and, softly teasing against her walls, I knew that she felt the faint fullness of it and the traces of roughness like the underside of a silken cloth within her. She had no control of my designs on her and no way of knowing that her scent, so wanton and heavy, pushed me once again toward that brink. Taking from her the wetness of her body on my tongue, coating her warm labia with the fluid, I knew I could spend a very long time coming to know each small contour and tiny crease in her skin before ever becoming appeased. Even as my lips took her soft petal folds and suckled softly against them each in turn, my hand drifted down to draw up my skirt and slip almost invisibly into the tight, humid confines of my panties. It was an absent act, a matter of instinct not requiring the mind to focus or guide my digits across my own clit as I once again nudged hers all too carefully against the tip of my tongue to warn her of a coming storm. My lips and tongue were smoothly coated in the taste of her, my cheeks a mess from the wetness my thigh had left on hers, but there was no shame in me over the sloppiness of the act we had shared. It made it that much more easy to move against her, delving into her and drawing the smoothness of that coating to her clit to encircle it with my lips and taste her pleasure again. My fingers captured my own, but I moaned instead to join her in harmonic pleasure as she arched her back and closed her thighs against my cheeks more tightly. Her ankles hooked at the bedclothes, her hands fell away to grip the soft comforter below her, and once again I began to push her with a lover's touch toward the most intimate of pleasures. I was becoming more familiar with the animal I'd kept pent up inside me for so long. She was a needy and selfish beast that wanted to lay claim to something that didn't belong to her and use it up in whatever way pleased her. It was a trance I had entered: a change of senses leading to an altered perception of the world. Every bit of my awareness was confined to the woman as I tasted her body, took in her scent with each inhalation, felt the softness of her skin and the heat of my own, heard her breath raggedly huffed as she was carried toward her release again, and saw over the crested peaks of her breasts the brilliant green eyes desperately seeking me below. My animal had been my guide; where once I would have been a shy and gentle lover, I became unrestrained and voracious. My grip on her thigh tightened, pulling her body against my mouth as I clutched the soft pink satin between my palm and her supple thigh. I could feel it in myself, the flags whipping in the hurricane as the storm approached, and every signal from my precious girl signaled the same in return. Leaning into her, pressing my cheeks to her slippery inner thighs, my body jerked upward as I came. My fingers had become like a stranger to me, molesting and teasing the need to drive it farther toward insanity before setting the gate open and freeing it in a rush. My lover joined me in the mutuality of it all. From the knowledge of what she had caused or the vibration of my lips and tongue against her as I moaned, she was brought again to the pinnacle and pushed forcefully over. A moment filled with wild passions that two bodies lost in the same sensations swept us up; a happening wherein time had dilated and left us swirling in the ecstasy of the act. Thoughts and actions meant so little, morality and genteel behavior were cast away to leave our choices raw and real. Reflection on the events could bring a blush or a light turning of the eyes away from the thought, but in those moments, as it happened, there was no need for a polished mien. Running my tongue the length of her pussy, I tasted her folds and the thick dew on them, breathing deeply of her scent and drawing my hand away from myself to press my fingers into the tight confines of her opening to feel her constrict around my touch. She did not resist, never flinching against the invasion or choices I made for her, and I took my liberties as I wanted. I heard her moan, her hips lifting against the pressure of my hand as I nuzzled against the warmth of her thighs, and I knew that my darling girl had been spent. I treated her gently then, like a prized possession not meant for such things as I had already been guilty of doing. Slipping my fingers gently from her grasp, tracing along her thigh as I moved upward to find her lips with my own once more, I gazed into her eyes and felt the smooth slickness of her skin against my own again. Shameless, I kissed her deeply, knowing that she would not resist me no matter the mess I had made of myself, and I lay my body over hers again to give her the familiarity of a body's weight over her that I imaged she craved after lovemaking. Her arms wrapped about me, nails dragging over my blouse, and I felt her wordless appreciation. "Stay with me... today, tonight. I want to be there when they call you, I want to keep you at least that long," I whispered against her ear, letting my wet lips play softly over the soft flesh just below. I wanted to keep her far longer but knew I couldn't demand it. I wanted to have her for my meals and see her lying gently in my own bed when the sun peeked past my curtains in the mornings but I knew I couldn't keep her forever. Devilish, horrible thoughts that they were, I wanted to lock her away for my own needs and keep her away from the world who could not appreciate her. She didn't answer, but resigned with the warmth of a hug and nuzzled herself against my ruffled clothes. How could I blame her? She hadn't planned to have sex in another woman's bed that morning and couldn't have known that it would be the last time she'd ever see the panties she'd worn out that day. She protested gently the clothing that I wore and offered herself to me with gentle tugs at the hem of skirt, but I needed nothing more. Far greater than the orgasm I'd felt was the satisfaction of having her there and volunteering to acts she'd never before been party to prior. With soft shushes and tender kisses along her jaw I eased her into a soft submission, resigning her to accept all that I had to give and demand nothing. Since that day, my beautiful girl has returned to her own bed. Each morning I sit and watch her, though now she gazes back in the waking hours when the light allows. I sip my coffee and she readies for work knowing that the kindness of a near-stranger played a part and that I made no demands of the performance in exchange. My perfect Guinevere, ravished and ravishing, is no less than a dear friend to me; evenings often are spent over the warmth of a shared meal next the window overlooking her bed at the small wooden table with blue and white cloth. Lovers moments are shared but never required, tender at times when we need and ferocious in others when we want. Neither of us has ever requested more of the other. Never a suggestion that we be more than we are or share space more than we already do. There is a deeper bond than that, a line running deeper than we can express and, yet, something still just below the surface that makes us who we are. Never have I asked her for more than to be my perfect view and never again has she closed her curtains.