The telephone woke me out of deep sleep.

“I can’t come over. It’s snowing,” she said.

I raised my head to look out the window. Large white flakes drifted into the glass and dissolved into droplets that ran in crooked streaks down the pane.

“He’ll see my foot prints.”

“I understand,” I said, imagining the trail of her feet in the snow between the houses that would betray us.

“I’ll come to you soon,” she whispered and hung up.

I didn’t covet my neighbor’s wife until the day I saw her playing.

I wasn’t spying. My bedroom window faces hers across the narrow space that separates our houses. The blind in her window was raised about a foot, just enough to allow me to see her on the bed.

She lay on her back with her legs spread wide and moved a bright purple vibrator over and in and out of her crotch. It buzzed like a faraway wasp and she arched her back and I knew she must have climaxed.

That was in August. The month began with a brief heat wave followed by a cold front that brought a heavy thunderstorm and a week of weather so fresh and cool that we all opened windows and slept without air conditioners.

I thought she must have raised the shade to allow cool night air into her bedroom and forgot to close it.

It’s not my habit to look at younger women, especially other men’s wives. I couldn’t turn away. I had to watch her to completion. I heard her throaty moan as she climaxed. The sound of her voice, the sight of her naked skin aroused thoughts and feelings I thought I had forgotten. I immediately wanted her.

The husband is often away. He travels, installing office equipment—telephone systems or computers, it’s not clear to me. I didn’t know them well. I’m a radiology technician. Night shifts and days sleeping don’t allow time for socializing with neighbors.

Her name is Megan. After that day I began to get up earlier hoping to see her. She has three children, the oldest a teenager. In September they were back in school and when her husband travelled she was alone during the day.

I went to the window often, hoping to see her again. The shade was down the following week and I felt more alone than usual, almost as if I had lost a friend. Then several days later it was raised again and I saw her with her purple toy. It occurred to me that she intended me to see and the thought aroused me. I kneeled at my window and opened my trousers. I felt suddenly overheated. I had barely gripped my erection when she moaned and writhed and seeing her made me come with such force I couldn’t stifle a loud groan.

I was shocked when I saw her at her window grinning at me. I dropped below the sill and crawled away.

The following day and the next Megan worked in her backyard. It was warm and she wore shorts and a summer top. She raked the early fallen leaves and cut grass. I wanted to approach her but strong embarrassment held me back. I could only desire her slender shapely body, her bronze hair and tiny feet from the safety of my window.

On the morning of the third day she was out again. I was in the kitchen making coffee. As the water gurgled in the coffeemaker I stared at my back door. I wanted her. Finally I could wait no longer. I went and found Megan squatting, pulling weeds in the flower bid that separated our properties. She raised her eyes and I waved and said, “Hello.” My heart pounded.

She smiled, her eyes crinkled. She stood. “How are you, Phil?”

“I’m fine, and you?”

“Good. I’m surprised at so many weeds.” She stepped over the mulched bed, between fading perennials, and came into my yard. She looked up at the yellowing leaves of the tall maples in her yard. “They’ll drop the leaves soon,” she said. “The summer went so fast.”

I nodded. I couldn’t think of anything to say. Being so close to her knotted my tongue. I wanted to touch her.

“What have you been up to?” Her devilish smile was the same as the day she looked over at me in the window and embarrassed me all over again.

She knew.

“Oh, nothing much,” I said. Then without knowing how or where I found the nerve, “Are you ready for a break? I just made coffee.”

Her eyes met mine and exchanged wordless communication. “Sure,” she said, “I’d love it.”

Megan followed me into the kitchen. “Please,” I said, “Sit. How do you take it?” I got two cups from the cupboard above the coffeemaker.

“Black with a little sugar.”

I poured two cups and took the coffee to the table. “Me too.” Standing over her I could see the tops of her breasts in the scooped neck of her top. They looked firm. I sat down facing her. “Black, I mean, no sugar.”

She stirred sugar into her coffee. As she removed the spoon from the cup it slipped from her hand and dropped. “Oh!” she said.

“Let me get it,” I said. The spoon was under her chair. I knelt to reach for it and she opened her legs, allowed me a glimpse into the leg of her shorts into the dark that absorbed the light. My face burned and my heart beat so fast it seemed to vibrate. Kneeling before her, frozen, not able to speak, I handed her the spoon.

“What are you doing down there?” she said. Her voice was husky. Excitement shined in her eyes and her cheeks reddened.

I was too aroused to control myself. I uttered a whispery croak: “Whatever you want.”

Without a word Megan stood, unbuttoned her shorts, and let them drop. She stepped out of them and sat on the edge of her chair and spread her thighs.

A warm earthy odor filled my nostrils and inflamed my brain. I went for her crotch like a starving wolf. My trembling fingers opened her. My tongue found the swollen nub and my finger the opening below. Her salty taste filled my mouth. Her hands on the back of my head pulled me close as her thrusting hips pressed her furry cunt into my face.

“Yes, yes, yes,” she moaned. “Oh my god, yes! Ohhhh.”

My tongue licked her sopping wet slit, my teeth gently nibbled her flaps, my lips sucked her clit. Her juice and my drool dripped off her and puddled on the floor.

She tensed and I knew she was getting close. My cock was like a hot iron in my pants as her excitement inflamed me. My tongue ached, my jaws cramped. She came—filling the room with a feverish scream.

When her spasms faded she sagged off the chair and tumbled onto me and I cradled her in my arms like a sleepy child.

When she settled back to normal she rose and put on her shorts. “God, I wanted that.” Her tone was flat; she sounded satisfied. “Tom won’t do it,” she said, referring to her husband. “But he always wants me to, you know, do it for him.”

I sat on the floor watching her. My cock ached. She sensed it, or spotted the bulge, and kneeled between my legs and undid my belt and unzipped my fly. My cock sprang into her hand. I leaned back on my arms and she caressed it and clenched the shaft and moved her grip slowly up and down and pulled a hot flood of cum and a long moan out of me.

Since that day Megan comes to me when she can. When her children are at school. When Tom is away. When she needs my mouth to satisfy her. She comes to my bed and allows me to strip her, to kiss and fondle her breasts, but she hurries my mouth to give what she wants.

We know our needs without speaking. Once, after a rare second orgasm, she smiled fondly and touched my cheek. “Did I trick you?” she asked softly.

I knew she had. She had tricked me last August when she let me see her with her purple vibrator. I shook my head.

She is using me, I know. I know what she wants and I give it freely. I know her pussy like my own body now. I love it.

She won’t let me enter her, the thing I want most. It would be wrong, she tells me, I’m married.

I have to settle for her wonderful cunt and the magic her soft hands work on my cock and hope one day she’ll change her mind.

Not today. The snow is keeping us apart.