him she was sketching dress designs. Julian loved to watch her. It was harder to see inside during the day, but he’d gotten good at it, and in the summer, Sasha usually took a shower before dinner.
He pressed the binoculars to his eyes, aiming down into her room. He didn’t mess with the focus because it was perfect, too, and he waited for his eyes to adjust, trying to see the moving shadows in her room as she walked back and forth. He couldn’t see much because she hadn’t turned on a light, but he didn’t need to see. He’d seen her undress so many times, he knew every curve of her body. It excited him to think that she was undressing right now. He told himself that she was undressing for him. Only for him.
He watched her as she took off her shirt, and she was walking around as she undressed, and he realized she was talking on the phone, so he caught only fleeting glimpses of her breasts. He got stiff just thinking about it but didn’t jerk off. He was saving it for later, when she went to bed. She slept naked in summertime.
He held his breath as she turned to the side, and he caught the swell of her breasts, trying to see the nipples, which he knew stuck out like pencil erasers. It turned him on so much he almost couldn’t stand it. He was getting harder, and his right hand went automatically downward, squeezing himself. He was as hard as a rock, like it said in one of his father’s Penthouse magazines.
Sasha slipped out of sight into the bathroom, and Julian knew she was taking a shower. It thrilled him they were naked at the same time, mirror images of the same bedroom, their upgraded showers running. His bedroom was filling with steam, just like hers, and Julian heard himself breathing harder, from trying to make himself wait until bedtime. His gaze shifted to behind her house, which was in the general direction of Connemara Road and the area kept wooded because of township zoning.
He’d lied to them, even David, about how he’d found the gun. Of course he couldn’t have told the truth, which was that he had been watching Sasha in her bedroom one night and been distracted by a light behind her house. He had realized the light was a flashlight and watched its jittery dot for an hour, knowing that someone was in the woods, doing something they wanted to hide. Later Julian had tried to put it out of his mind, but he hadn’t been able to stop wondering. It showed him he wasn’t the only person in Brandywine Hunt with a secret.
Later he’d ridden his bike to the woods, searched around, and found ground that looked like it had been disturbed under the bent tree. He had started digging and discovered the buried gun in the newspaper. He had no idea who had buried it, but it was most likely somebody in the development. He’d thought about moving it, but he left it where it was, and every night when he watched Sasha undress, he checked to see if the flashlight had returned. So far it hadn’t.
He’d been showing the gun to David today when the girls caught them, and that was how Sasha knew, which brought her close to him again. He was so in love with her, he wanted her so much, nothing could ever change that, not a different school, nothing. He knew that she would want him, too, someday. And then they would go into her bedroom, lie down on the pink flowery bedspread, and her golden hair would spread out on the pillowcase with the pink edges, and he would kiss her and touch her breasts, and she would get so wet for him and then he’d be inside her, rock-hard and losing himself, deeper and deeper into her, until they became one.
Julian’s attention returned to Sasha’s room because she’d reappeared. He squeezed himself again, harder, bringing a rush of pleasure and pain and anger and love and a feeling so deep it didn’t have a name yet, but it drove him crazy, and he couldn’t stop himself or wait another minute.
There was no saying no to that feeling.
Julian stopped trying.
CHAPTER 6
Kyle Gallagher
Kyle entered their townhouse, wondering if it would ever feel like home. They had moved to Brandywine Hunt two months ago, and he could still smell the paint in the entrance