The glass is cold against my forehead, unforgiving and sharp, whilst beneath my skin, feverish heat coils and burns. Outside, the autumn night lies still and shadowed. The only light spills soft gold from his window across the dark lawn. My room is a cave of darkness, a guilty secret I wear like skin.

He doesn’t know I'm here, watching him. That furious, wicked thrill tightens beneath my ribs, a yearning both wrong and impossible to resist. The ache is sharp and cruel, twisting something fragile inside me.

He, Alex, is on his bed, propped against a mountain of pillows, duvet kicked to his ankles. The pale light from his phone carves sharp angles into his jawline, casting shadows in the hollow of his throat. Alex has just turned eighteen. The backyard party is still fresh in my mind, paper plates balanced on knees, tongues tangled awkwardly around the awful off-key singing. Streamers flutter in the chill breeze; crushed beer cans litter a grass patch thick with trampled leaves. The bass thumps so loud it makes my wine glass vibrate where it sits on the windowsill. From this very spot, I stood watching, while my husband snored softly behind me. A man so comforted in his routine he’s become invisible, like worn furniture gathering dust.

My name is Clara. I am forty-two years old. I carry a mortgage. My husband, who kisses my cheek with the absent-minded affection you save for a household pet, is asleep in our marital bed. My world has turned sterile, washed-out, as if I am suffocating beneath cold water. "I am a grown, married woman," a mantra I whisper to chase away the shame. But the fire only roars louder inside me.

I see him clearly across the street. through the window. His grey sweatpants hang loose, waistband stretched. Beneath the fabric, the hard, thick outline of his cock pulses urgently, matching the frantic movement of his fingers. His free arm jerks relentlessly, piston-like, raw beneath soft cotton. The muscles ripple and cord in his forearm. His head is thrown back, neck exposed, pale and vulnerable, a fragile offering to the cracked ceiling. The blue glow of his phone flickers and reflects in his eyes, hungry and fixed on the porn before him. Images flash behind his lashes, the fever of desire burning wild.

A low, wanting moan escapes my lips before I can stop it. I swallow hard, terrified the silence might break and betray me. My fingers tremble slightly, a hesitation so brief I almost miss it. Then, as if it had a will of its own, my hand slips inside the waistband of my shorts, obeying the fire I can no longer deny.

And I begin to match him.

My rhythm falls in line with the desperate pace of his hand. It is a grotesque and beautiful pantomime, a silent duet performed across twenty feet of darkness. My breath fogs the glass, and I watch him, pleasure mounting in fierce, rising waves, fed by the voyeuristic fire between us.

He is so young. So beautifully, devastatingly young. Every movement crude and unpolished, a need so pure it feels almost innocent in its urgency. A need I buried years ago beneath mortgage statements, quiet dinners, and the gentle patina of a long marriage.

A sound escapes me, a soft, choked whimper, I try to swallow too late. My body screams in sympathy. My pussy throbs, hot and aching, pulsing in time with the frantic motion of his hand. I am already so fucking wet, nearly dripping, a slick, shameful heat soaking into the cotton of my sleep shorts. The thin fabric is a feeble barrier, a torture.

I shouldn’t be watching. I am a voyeur. A ghost. A sinner.

My breath fogs a small circle on the glass. I press my trembling fingers against it, wiping it away with desperate urgency, willing myself invisible. The cold weight of my wedding band pinches my finger like a judge condemning filthy, aching thoughts. But my eyes refuse to leave him. Sweat gleams at his temple, and I watch as desire climbs higher.

Behind me, my husband’s slow, steady snore rises and falls, a steady rhythm that mocks the chaos burning through me.

Across the street, through the glowing window, Alex’s body stiffens. A harsh, shuddering convulsion seizes him. Pulses of hot cum burst thick and sticky onto his stomach, dampening rumpled sheets beneath, glittering obscenely in the phone’s cold light.

He reaches for a tissue and roughly dabs the mess away, dropping the sticky wad into a small bin beside his bed.

The performance is over. For him.

For me, the agony blooms.

His climax abandons me on a jagged precipice. I tighten my grip, fingers moving frantically, a messy scramble for a finish line I’ve already crossed.

A fierce, suffocating wave of shame drowns the thrill inside me. I stand frantic and trembling, a middle-aged woman pressed against cold windowpanes, consumed by the raw burn left behind by that boy’s orgasm. The darkness is not in the act but in the gaping chasm it exposes, the devastating, crushing weight of loneliness.

So deep, this twisted violation becomes a warped substitute for intimacy and safety.

My breath falters, tight and quick. The climax is nearly mine.

Suddenly, a quiet rustle breaks the silence behind me. My husband stirs, turning in his sleep, the mattress creaking beneath his weight.

My heart leaps sharply. For a fragile second, I think he’s awake, watching me. Panic roots me still. Every nerve screams for me to stay perfectly still.

But the snore returns. He’s lost to dreams, not me.

I let the tension roll off like trembling waves.

And then release crashes over me with wild, shattering force, hard, fierce, clenched, and electric. My muscles convulse uncontrollably. My breath explodes into ragged, satisfied groans. Warm gushes flood my hand and soak the thin fabric of my sleep shorts, slick and urgent, mirroring the boy’s messy release so many feet away.

Tears sting and trail down my chilled cheeks as pleasure pulses through every nerve.

Spent and hollowed, I collapse against the unforgiving glass, the chill an echo of the emptiness swelling deep inside me.

He rolls back onto his side, switches off the lamp, plunging the world into darkness. But his shape lingers, flushed and wrecked, and that secret, post-coital smile stays etched behind my eyelids.

Tomorrow night, he’ll do it all again. And so will I, forehead pressed cold to the glass, breath fogging the fleeting circle I wipe away, waiting, watching, bound by desire and shadow.