Page 107 of Letters From A Stalker

My free hand rests against the window frame while I let myself follow the sensation, my attention shifting between my own reflection and the dark stretch of woods behind it. I imagine him seeing the flush spreading over my face, the way my lips part when breathing quietly becomes harder. Knowing somebody is waiting for every reaction makes each one feel larger and that’s the moment I stop being able to pretend this is only curiosity. This is something significantly different, it’s about being wanted.

That word catches inside me — wanted — because it has nothing to do with feeling useful, or convenient, or appreciated. Wanted because he looked at me and decided wanting me was enough reason to stand outside in the cold. It’s completely insane, entirely inappropriate but, unfortunately for me, hot as hell. A laugh almost escapes me, but it becomes something else when the tension inside me sharpens. My eyes close, then his letter flashes through my mind.

Keep your eyes on the trees.

I open them again. The darkness beyond the glass blurs slightly while I stare into it. For one moment, the enormity of what I’m doing hits me again and my hand stills. Who are you? The question comes with enough force that fear moves underneath everything else.

I could stop, that matters. I could step away right now and, if he is telling the truth, he would understand. For the first time since this began, knowing that doesn’t make me want to use the escape. It makes me feel safe enough not to so, I continue. The release builds differently than it did on Sunday because this time there is another person attached to it, even if I cannot see him. I’m not simply giving my body something it asked for. I am letting someone share the reaction with me.

When pleasure finally overtakes everything else, my fingers curl around the edge of the window frame and my forehead nearly touches the glass. My eyes want to close, but I keep them open, just like he asked. I look directly toward the trees when the last of my control slips. For several seconds afterward, I remain exactly where I am, breathing hard enough that a faint patch of condensation appears against the glass before fading.

Then the reality of the situation returns all at once. Somewhere outside my house, a man I have never met just watched me come because I deliberately let him.

A quiet, disbelieving laugh slips out. “Holy shit.”

My face burns. So does half the rest of me, but I don’t feel the same hollow dissatisfaction I felt on Sunday night. I don’t feel used either. If anything, there is a strange little current of power running beneath the embarrassment because none of this happened accidentally. He asked. I decided. I could have walked away, only I didn’t. I remained at the window instead of retreating from it.

The woods look exactly as they always do after dark, a mass of black trunks and deeper shadows that refuse to give up whatever might be hidden between them. I search anyway. There is no movement, no silhouette. No proof anyone is there at all and, still, I know better. I lift one hand and rest my fingertips lightly against the cool glass.

“You’re still there, aren’t you?”

Nothing answers and I don’t expect it to. For some reason, the silence doesn’t feel empty anymore. A small sense of relief settles beneath everything else, strange enough that I know better than to examine it too closely tonight.

I still can’t see him, but knowing he might be there no longer feels like being alone in the dark. And tonight, against absolutely every rule of common sense I possess, I’m glad.

20

Kai

The lamp stays on.

Warm amber light spills from Julia’s living room and stretches across the lawn before thinning into darkness near the tree line, leaving her perfectly visible against the glass while everything around me remains buried beneath branches and shadow. From where I’m standing, deep enough inside the woods that the uneven trunks break apart my silhouette, I can even see the black envelope and the letter lying open on the coffee table behind her. She stands several feet from the window at first, wearing the loose gray T-shirt and black shorts she changed into after coming home, her damp hair darker toward the ends where it hangs over her shoulders.

There is nothing deliberately seductive about any of it, which somehow makes the sight of her more distracting. She looks comfortable and completely herself, like she showered, opened the closet and grabbed whatever felt soft rather than wondering what might look good to the man waiting outside. Apparently bras become optional the second Julia closes her front door too. I’ve noticed that before. Tonight I notice it considerably more.

She doesn’t move for several seconds, and even from here I can see enough hesitation in her posture to know she is giving herself one last chance to decide that reading the letter was as far as she wants this to go. She could walk away now. I made sure she knew that. If she leaves the window, I leave too, because I’m not following her view through another room or standing here until she comes back and then deciding that maybe she changed her mind. I asked her for one thing, and if the answer is no, that needs to be the end of it. Especially after everything she told me in my office about what happens inside her when that particular word is ignored. I shouldn’t have needed her history to understand that, but now that I know it, there is no pretending it doesn’t sit between us.

Julia stays. The tension between my shoulders loosened enough that I realized I had been holding it there. Then her lips move. The closed window and the distance make hearing her impossible, but I’ve watched her speak often enough to recognize the shape of the question.

Are you there?

A quiet smile pulls at the corner of my mouth.

Yeah, little ember. I’m here.

I remain hidden between the trees and watch her search for something she has no real chance of finding. From this distance, I am little more than another shadow among dozens, exactly where I need to be if tonight is going to happen on the terms I gave her. Julia waits another moment before letting one hand settle against her thigh. At first she does nothing with it, simply resting her fingers beneath the loose edge of her shirt while she looks into the trees, almost as though she is checking how it feels to know someone may be looking back before she decides whether she wants to continue.

The hesitation gets to me more than I expected. She is choosing. Last Sunday, I took that choice from her completely. She believed she was alone inside her own home, and I knew she believed it while I stood out here watching anyway. There isn’t a clever argument that turns that into anything else, no matter how many times I tell myself I only stayed because I wanted to understand the version of Julia nobody else seemed to notice. Tonight isn’t the same, it doesn’t fix what came before, but it isn’t the same. She knows I’m here. She knows what I asked her for. She left the lamp burning and came to the window anyway.

Her hand finally begins moving, slowly enough that the anticipation becomes its own kind of torture. She doesn’t immediately slide beneath her shorts but lets her palm travel higher along her thigh, pausing again as her eyes move between her reflection in the glass and the darkness outside. For me and knowing that hits low and hard. When her hand moves between her legs, the fabric stays between her fingers and skin for a little longer, and I see the first obvious change in her before she gives me anything else. Her lips part slightly and her shoulders tighten, then a quick flash of embarrassment crosses her face as though the reality of what she is doing has suddenly caught up with her.

For half a second I expect her to step away. Instead, she looks back toward the trees. Something dark and deeply satisfied settles beneath my ribs. She is checking whether I’m still here. I don’t move. Her fingers eventually slip beneath the waistband of her shorts, and there is almost nothing explicit I can actually see from this distance. I know where her hand is because of the angle of her wrist and the way her body reacts when she touches herself somewhere more sensitive, her breath catching while the tension in her shoulders shifts and color begins creeping slowly up her throat.

I breathe in through my nose.

Jesus fucking Christ.

Most of my working life is built around watching people without letting their reactions take control of mine. Patients cry, panic, get angry, shut down or tell me things they have carried alone for years, and I know how to stay steady enough that they never have to worry about managing me on top of whatever they are trying to survive themselves. None of that skill is useful here. Everything Julia does seems to land somewhere inside my own body. When her breathing deepens, mine follows. When her hips shift forward slightly, searching for more pressure from her hand, the response beneath my jeans becomes impossible to ignore, and when one of her palms braces against the window frame as she leans closer to the glass, every instinct in me wants to close the distance between us.