She had to think she was alone, that the world belonged only to her as she took those tentative, dancing steps onto the grass. Naked, she was holding her smartphone and moving to whatever music she was hearing through the earphones. She was slightly pale and almost too slender, but she moved selflessly through sunlight with a sinuous grace that took Parker by surprise.

Maybe it was just the disbelief of seeing her suddenly walk naked into the yard from the screened porch on the back of the house. After those first few moments, he began to see the hint of curve and shape in her lithe body. Where she’d always struck him as quiet and a little mousey – pretty enough, but not in a very noticeable way – it was as if a statement of waifish sensuality had suddenly been revealed.

She hugged herself, forcing firm, conical breasts into a plaintive pout that made his pulse jack. Her areolae had a distended puffiness, as if each breast had a pale, pink breast of its own.

Parker thought about making noise enough to warn Rachel he was there, in the space above the garage. It had once been an efficiency apartment. He’d used it as a studio, but now Deena, his ex and her new husband, Jim, used it for storage. As Parker and Deena’s divorce had gone amicably, he still kept things there, and it wasn’t unusual for him to be in or around the house at any given time.

Rachel probably wouldn’t have heard him through the earphones, and Parker decided whatever world she was in was too sweet to disturb. But she was moving her hands down over her hips and caressing her ass and thighs, and he couldn’t bring himself to leave her the total privacy she had to believe she was in.

She suddenly grew shy in the sunlight and skipped back to the porch doorway. She closed her eyes and caressed her breasts, cupping and squeezing the creamy flesh until her fingers snaked around her nipples and pinched.

Parker’s throat felt dry and constricted. Rachel turned inside. He could see her silhouette through the screen, but before giving himself a chance to think about what he was doing, he padded down the stairs and into the house.

Rachel was something of an anomaly in the house. She was the daughter of a previous wife of Jim’s. She probably should have been in college, but for reasons Parker hadn’t paid attention to, she’d come into the new marriage along with him; nobody’s daughter. Nobody’s baby angel.

While Parker had never sensed any awkwardness or tension, Rachel still seemed to live at an arm’s length from it all, even though Jim had been married to Deena for almost a year. But then, Deena and Jim kept their own distance, such as now, being away on a trip that didn’t include Rachel.

By the time Parker slipped into the living room where he could see most of the porch reflected in the hutch mirror, Rachel was lying on the unfolded studio bed. It was July, and by all appearances, she seemed to have adopted the screen porch as a bedroom for the sultry nights they’d been having.

She was lying across rumpled, white sheets. Her slender thighs were raised and separated, and her hands were calmly traversing the soft terrain of her body. Her palms made the smooth glide along her ribs and across her ripe breasts as she paused to cup and knead her pliable flesh. Then they made the return trip, traveling over her hips to the insides of her thighs, caressing the satin length of each side.

She was breathing at an exaggerated volume. Whatever she was listening to through her earphones was all she could hear. All Parker could hear were the whimpering sighs pushing up from her throat as her breathing slowly grew deeper.

Thighs jutting upward into a widely spaced V, her mound seemed perfectly formed, so carefully pampered as it was, with nothing but a pencil thin landing strip along the curve. One hand slipped over the teacup shape of her pussy, the fan of her fingers firmly rubbing the plush slit Parker couldn’t see from where he stood.

She uttered a muted gasp that stretched into some other sound. Her entire body tensed briefly, her breasts puffing upward into new shapes between her arms.

Then Rachel drew her hands away from her pussy, back up along her torso, over her breasts and then off to the sides as she stretched and sighed loudly. Her legs rose higher as she turned herself around to lean against the pile of pillows at the head. Her feet came back close to her body, bringing her knees up and wide as they were before, but now her tender pussy was directly facing the mirror.

Parker realized his neck was damp with sweat. The sight of Rachel’s simple grace across the mattress set tiny rivers in motion under his skin. One of her knees dropped to the mattress. She pulled the phones out of her ears and then sucked her ring and middle fingers to moisten them. She cupped a breast in one hand and slipped the other over the delicate slit facing the mirror.

Her breasts seemed bigger from this angle, and Parker had always thought it was as beautiful a way to look at a woman as any. The more he watched her move, the more he realized how fluid and selfless her sensuality was, and how deep it ran inside her.

She brought her fingers back to her mouth and sucked them again. The other hand left her breast and moved down to spread and frame her pussy with long, slender fingers, while the right went again to attend to her swelling lips. She stroked her slit up and down and rubbed from side to side, massaging herself thoroughly, eagerly.

Her breath grew deeper, sharper, louder as she rubbed harder and faster. Her head rolled back, deeper into the pillows while her hips began to heave with a subtle roll.

Parker felt his cock uncoil inside his loose pants. He felt like a complete interloper, and at the same time he felt a deep connection with the shy, solitary nineteen year old. Though she had no idea he was anywhere nearby, she was teaching him how beautiful loneliness could be.

She was teaching him you could love yourself with as much care as you could ever love someone else. He wondered what she’d think if she ever imagined, more than anything, she was teaching him how she herself could be loved.

Then she stopped again. Took a break. She rolled her head and looked outside. Parker felt her will to be caressed. It was as clear and tangible as any pair of hands that had ever touched him. She came back to herself and pressed her hand over her slit again. She moaned, not too softly this time and ground her fingers in a broad circular motion, pulling her lips around in her fingers’ path.

Parker’s cock began aching for freedom, straining to be fondled. He felt his thick shaft through his pants. He could see Rachel’s moisture flowing more heavily, smearing her fingers until he could see the glisten of her body’s lacquer even in the mirror. The hollows of her carriage joints were getting wetter and wetter.

Rachel’s light brown hair fanned around her on the pillow as she stretched her legs forward, bringing her thighs together to trap her hand snugly against her pussy. Her hips arched upward against the confined stroke of her fingers. She moaned and drew breath like a stage whisper.

Then her thighs opened again, one leg fanning out to the side while she raised the other. The demure sweetness of her face became a grimace of yearning as her brow knit and her eyes closed. Her right hand was back in harder circles over her pussy while the left was grasping at her breasts, kneading anxiously at each pert mound of flesh. Her body was moving like the undulation of ocean waves.

Parker was dying to release his cock and stroke himself at the same time. He felt consumed with the need to feel as much as she was. It seemed enough of a way of being with her to change how he would always look at her. He would go on knowing how they’d come together one sweet, quiet, summer afternoon. But how could it ever compare to tasting her, or filling his head with the scent rising from her humid core?

The thought of her suddenly discovering him watching her with his hard, naked cock in his stroking fist was the only thing that kept him from following his instinct. As it was, he quietly drew his zipper down and slid his hand inside his pants. His fingers drifted along his aching shaft as he watched her shift position again.

Rachel squirmed higher on the pillows, raising her posture and lifting her thighs high until she was completely open to the mirror. Her heels came to rest near her ass and her knees went high and apart. She started rubbing her clit in circles again while the other hand reached down around her hip to grasp her ass cheek.

Her breath was coming in long, deep gasps and her ass was beginning to lift off the mattress, to grind up against her hand. She whimpered and lightly spanked at her open pussy several times before she started rubbing again.

Her fingers were moving faster. Parker was amazed at how fast and gracefully her hand could fly. But then, every time he thought he’d gotten the rhythm and pace of her ardent self-massage, she would shift gears and suddenly slow down or speed up.

The dancing, wavelike motion of her body was growing more intense, more labored and driven toward her release. Just as Parker thought she was going to shove herself off the precipice, she arched her body and pulled her hands away from her pussy, running them back over her body. She cupped and squeezed her breasts hard. Syrup coated fingers smeared her flesh.

Parker squeezed his straining cock and felt a shooting pang of hunger for the shimmering sap sticking to her breasts. He felt the same shroud of abject desire envelope them both. She became the only thing of beauty or grace within it. Nothing mattered but the rock of her limbs, the torque of her twisting body, her ultimate drive toward that popping spark of being alive.

Straining to keep his laboring breath silent, he drew his stiff cock out through his open fly. Rachel was shifting again, scooting up even higher into the small mountain of pillows. He skimmed his fist along his steaming cock while she ground her clustered finger-pads over her clit.

She massaged herself in circles again, gathering speed quickly as the need in her cells begged and demanded to be set afire. Her hips began a steady up and down rock while her breathing descended into a see-saw rhythm of gasping and whimpers. There was no more gear shifting. Her hand was moving in a grinding blur, while Parker could just imagine the scorching throb in her clit just beneath.

The skinny little waif in ill-fitting clothes was taking luminous flight. All grace and crashing at the same time. Blood hammered down the length of his cock as if his veins were staging a revolution. He cranked his own stalk in sympathetic waves of lust. He could feel the storm of heat swirling through her mind and ached to imagine she felt his presence – maybe not know what it was she felt – just wishing her a vague sense of swimming through some dream-like continuum of desire.

Rachel mauled her pussy with grinding speed and hot friction. Her body jerked and heaved as if she were fucking the air around her.

Passion, lust and desire weren’t their transformation. It was the horrible disguise of living that transformed them into something less. The crushing oppression of manners and daily motions. They lived their lives in a soul choking prison of mediocrity and only now were coming out of their cells to meet the light of what they truly were.

Parker lost himself in whatever shaded angel Rachel unknowingly made of him. He watched her in the mirror and realized he’d wasted every day of his life. He pounded his throbbing cock and uttered a long, swelling wail of need.

He saw her turn to discover to his reflection from her own angle on the mirror. She saw the ravenous cock in his thrashing fist. Her eyes glittered like dark, drowning stars. Her arms and legs shook while a cry grew up out of her throat and struck a long, breathless pitch. She looked as if her body were rattling, pushing something out of itself that was too much to contain.

Parker’s brain suddenly went black while his cock spattered the entire fucking universe with the last of his dreams.

Oxygen slowly came back. They watched each other in the mirror. Parker felt cautious and sorry. Rachel looked cautious, but not sorry. She curled into a loose fetal position, hugging a pillow and keeping her eye on the man in the mirror. Her ass was turned to him. Her flushed pussy squeezed into a delicate puff.

He walked onto the porch and sat on the edge of the mattress. Rachel moved closer, tucking her body around him where he sat. He put his fingers in her hair and felt the shape of her skull.

“I used to wonder if you knew I was alive,” she said.

He leaned down and kissed her temple.

“No. What I was wondering was if I were alive.”

“Well?” She smiled. Kittenish and deadly.

“I wasn’t,” he said. “But I am now, and I swear I’m trying to stay that way.”