Selena Kitt: The Baumgartners Plus One

I met the Baumgartners because, as my mother was too fond of saying, “Danielle is nosier than a cat in a tuna fish factory.” Maybe that was true and maybe it wasn’t. But what was I supposed to do when someone started sunbathing nude right outside my back door-just close the blinds?

Besides, a fully-clothed Carrie Baumgartner would have been pretty hard to ignore, let alone a topless, unbelievably bronze one, completely covered in coconut-scented oil. The stuff was so strong I could smell it from the window.

I’d seen her around before-we waved to each other on the way to the mailbox, had even said, “Hi,” and had brief conversations about having to lug laundry across the street and guests parking in our reserved spots-the usual neighbor stuff.

Maybe if I’d been a prude, or if I’d had kids like everyone else in University of Michigan married housing, or if Carrie had been just a little less attractive in her black bikini bottoms, I might have called campus security or just turned a blind eye like a good girl. But I didn’t.

Instead, I was a very bad girl.

It had been a long time since I’d even thought about anyone sexually, but I had to admit, she perked my formerly dormant libido. She was so sexy, even fully clothed just passing me on the way to the mailbox, that her presence alone practically bordered on pornography. She probably would have made a ninety-year-old man remember what other function his cock was made to perform, aside from peeing the bed. She certainly made me wish for a moment that I had one myself, just so I could imagine it inside of her.

I knelt up on my bed- our bed still, not that Mason came home to it much anymore-and peeked around the white sheet I’d tacked to the wall as a curtain when we moved in. According to our lease, we were supposed to cover our windows and I’d just never gotten around to putting up the blinds. Besides, I didn’t know how to hang them, and I couldn’t rely on Mason for much of anything.

Our backyards were tiny little postage stamps and only semi-private. There was a black, wooden head-high sort of half-fence at the end of all of the apartment yards, but instead of a divider between each, there was only a divider between every two, as if these one-story apartments had been connected or meant to connect at some point.

The Baumgartners’ yard and ours meshed together and while the blue and yellow U of M blanket was spread out over on their side, I could still see everything from my vantage point. And I mean everything.

I watched her drizzle oil over the copper colored flesh of her belly, her hands kneading it into the sloping curve of her ribs and onto the generous swell of her breasts, brazenly bared to the sun. I stayed quiet, swallowing my breath, as her palms made slow, lazy circles over her nipples and then dipped gently into the hollow of her throat, her slender, buttery fingers stroking her neck down to her collarbone.

I heard her sigh and saw her hips shift as her hands moved downward once again, lingering on the fullness of her breasts. She was so beautiful I could barely breathe, her hair spilling like honey against the navy blue blanket, her limbs long and shapely. I bit my lip when she pinched her nipples, hearing her again, a soft cry.

I ducked when she sat up on her elbows, sliding her dark glasses down so she could peer around. It was nearly noon on a Monday, the late August sun high and bright, still hot although it was moving steadily toward autumn. The kids were back in school just this week, the neighborhood quieter than it had been all summer.

She glanced around and thought she was alone. She didn’t see me watching from the window as she slid her slick hand down the flat, sloping surface of her belly, under the elastic band of her black bikini bottoms. At first, I thought she was going to take those off too, but when her hand moved under them, fully between her legs, I understood.

Breathless, I watched as she began to touch herself, occasionally glancing around, worried she might get caught, that someone might walk by. Our little one-story apartments backed up to a small, wooded area. The kids liked to play there, but today there were no calls of “You’re it!” and no one fighting over the tire swing someone had hung from a tree.

We were alone, she and I, two women longing for something, looking to ease a sudden, throbbing ache. I should have just turned away and gone back to studying my Italian phrasing, which is what I’d been doing before I heard the sound of her back door opening and closing, that tell-tale squeak and bang. But, as my mother would also attest to, I rarely did the things I should do in life. Instead, I usually did the things people told me I shouldn’t, and more importantly, I did the things I wanted to do.

And I wanted to watch. I was wearing jeans, too confining, but they were quickly unbuttoned and unzipped. I sought my own heat, my pussy moist, still shaved smooth the way Mason liked it. God, how long had it been since he’d touched me? I shoved that dark thought away and turned my attention to the luminous visage of the woman writhing on the lawn next door, taking her own unabashed pleasure.

Her hand moved rhythmically under the stretched crotch of her bikini bottoms, her face turned toward me. The dark sunglasses she wore kept her eyes from me, but I saw the part of her lips, the way the pink tip of her tongue slipped out and licked them.

Her chest moved with her increasing breath, her breasts rising and falling, faster and faster.

My clit hid, untouched for so long, in the swollen folds of my flesh, but I managed to find it, shuddering at my body’s response, as if I had an instant “on” switch I’d just rediscovered. I teased it to life, back and forth, round and round, my own breath coming faster, my nipples hard under my t-shirt as I pressed close to the wall, straining to see out the window.

The blond on the blanket flicked and tugged at her own nipples. They were brown and hard, like my own, although I was far paler than she and her breasts were a little bigger. We were both pretty well-endowed in that department though, and I cupped my breast though my bra with my other hand as if to check, rubbing my thumb over the ridge of my nipple, feeling the weight of it, wondering what her breast would feel like in my hand-heavy, oily, fleshy.

It wouldn’t have been the first time I’d been with a woman. Before Mason, I’d been with Dee. My mother had insisted I was “going through a phase,” and when Dee and I broke up in the midst of a huge drama over-what else?-some guy, my mother had crowed that I’d proven her right, that I wasn’t a lesbian after all. I didn’t know what I was-I just knew that women turned me on and men turned me on, and maybe aliens would turn me on, too, but I’d never met one. Maybe I was just greedy, insatiable. I had always wanted more than the world could ever give me. At least, I used to.

“Ohhhh!” The soft cry that rose up from her throat drew my attention back to the spectacle next door. She bit her lip, her tanned thighs spread and shining with oil, glistening in the sunlight. I wished then that she had taken her bottoms off too so I could watch her fingers plunging into her pussy, as fast and furious as my own, wishing for a cock, a tongue, something, everything at once.

I arched my back and rocked up and down, back and forth, riding my own hand, my nipples rubbing hard against the windowsill, forgetting myself, forgetting that I was supposed to stay quiet, unnoticed. I pressed my nose to the screen, catching the scent of fresh cut grass and coconut oil, imagining I could smell her too, the pungent aroma of her pussy. Was she shaved, like me? Was she blond down there or dark, I wondered?