Chapter One
Blackout
“Temperatures reached a scorching and record-breaking 110 degrees in the Bay Area today, folks, and tonight won’t be any cooler, so try to stay in that A/C and watch your hydration levels.”
I drink my cold brew decaf coffee and listen to the weatherman while standing in front of the one fan I own. My body is an avalanche of perspiration and misery, the stilted heat in my apartment turning me into a lethargic sweat monster. I’ve already taken two cold showers today, and even though the sun went down hours ago, I’m still sweltering and overheated.
110 degrees in Oakland. Unheard of. Sure, we’ll get our high 80 degree days, maybe even hints of the 90s, but never anything worse than that. The average high in August is a whopping 73. And you know what happens when it’s an average 73 degrees in your area? You don’t bother buying an air conditioner, so when it’s unusually hot—so hot kids on the street are popping fire hydrants like some scene from a 1950s New York Italian gangster movie—you suffer and attempt to mitigate the discomfort by sticking your head in the freezer, taking cold showers and standing in front of a small fan so weak I sometimes think I’m dreaming the slight breeze it emits.
It works for a little while, at least until after ten at night, when the power blows. The apartment goes dark, the fridge shuts down, and my little fan dies. All avenues of cooling off have been stolen from me.
“What the actual fuck?”
No one responds. The weatherman doesn’t appear as an incorporeal spirit, guiding me through the heat-induced hallucination I’m about to suffer if I stay in my sauna of an apartment one second longer.
“This isn’t happening. I do not accept this is a thing that’s happening.”
I go to remove the open bottle of sauvignon blanc from the fridge, thinking to hell with proper hydration, when I realize I need to keep the doors closed so all my food doesn’t spoil.
“Damn it!” I yell, hitting the wall in annoyance. “I moved away from New York to escape the appalling weather.” I look up, beseeching whatever god is looking down at me right now, chuckling in self-satisfaction. “This is not what I signed up for. Can’t you at least cut me a break?”
A second goes by as I stew, waiting for an answer, then two knocks come from the other side of the wall I just hit.
My heart skips a beat. Hell, it nearly stops completely.
I wait for something more. A sign. A crack in the wall. A spirit claiming to be the ghost of heat waves past. Nothing.
Then I hear another knock, except this one isn’t a knock, it’s a loud crash followed by a distinct shout of, “Fucking Christ!”
My skin burns and my face flushes for reasons far from high temperatures. I know who’s on the other side of that wall, and he can cause a heat wave without even trying. Mother Nature be damned, but my neighbor is hotter than any record-breaking summer day.
I moved into my apartment four months ago, and ever since looking up from putting my keys into the door for the first time, a feeling of pride suffusing me at finally having a place of my own, my plan of living a quiet and uncomplicated life flew out the door as my new neighbor poked his head around the corner to introduce himself.
Tall—like, Viking tall—with thick muscles and dark brown skin so smooth I could have bent to lick his hand as he extended it in greeting. Hair shorn close to his head, the lines along his forehead and temples shaped to perfection, the angles of which were only surpassed by his astonishingly sharp yet charming cheekbones.
Who knew cheekbones could be charming?
And then there was the dimple. One dimple that said hello after every smile and chuckle. His eyes looked like a jar of amber honey sitting on a sunny window sill, and his teeth were whiter than my bleached bed sheets, but it’s that dimple I dream of. It’s the dimple I want to lick and bite. It’s the dimple I found myself staring at that first day, as he strode over with an unhurried swagger that hypnotized me with more adroitness than any swinging pocket watch.
“You must be the newbie. I saw that apartment got snatched up quickly. I’m Benjamin Matus—call me Ben—of apartment 328. Welcome.”
He holds his hand out, waiting for me to take it. I have no reason not to. I’m only holding my keys, my bag slung over my shoulder. There is no logical reason not to smile, act like a normal, cordial person, and greet my new gut-wrenchingly sexy neighbor.
But I am not a normal, cordial person. I am a superhero whose kryptonite is men possessing unbearable hotness, and the result is stammering and a general lack of convivial behavior.
I try to smile. I attempt to pretend I’m anything close to normal, even though fantasies of him saying the exact same thing, only naked, play through my mind. When I see his hand start to retreat I reach forward, not wanting him to think I’m a bitch, except I’ve given him the wrong hand, and we’re shaking clumsily.
“Hi,” I croak. I clear my throat quickly. “Hi. I’m Faye Arnell.”
“I hope you don’t have a hamster.”
“Wh-what?”
“The last guy who lived here had twenty hamsters and a massive labyrinth of plastic tubes for them to play in. He never cleaned it. Not once. It stunk to high heaven.” He laughs, the dimple deepens. “So, no hamster, right? Because I will seriously cry if you say yes.”
I have to smile at that. His easy and charismatic nature is infectious. I find I can speak without stammering if I ignore the fact that my body has burst into a towering inferno of lust and sin.
“No hamsters. I have two cats though.”
“Yes.” He makes a gesture proclaiming victory. “You are officially my favorite pretty neighbor.”
“Your favorite pretty neighbor. That’s quite an honor.” I let the sarcasm out a bit, wanting him to know I’m not the kind of woman who melts whenever a man gives me a compliment. In fact it usually has the opposite effect. I get uncomfortable and feel I can’t trust him for anything more than skin deep.
But Ben Matus has layers upon layers that dive much deeper than the surface.
“Sorry,” he says, rubbing his hand over his shorn hair, clearly embarrassed. “That was probably inappropriate. I can’t help myself. Sometimes I have no filter, shit just bursts out. I have this disgusting habit of brutal honesty.”
“There’s nothing wrong with honesty.”
“There is if it comes without a filter and gets you into way more trouble than it’s worth.” He lays his hand over his chest and apologizes like a fucking Duke from the Victorian era. How I do not instantly turn into a puddle I will never know. “Anyway, why don’t you stop by after you’re settled? I can show you around the neighborhood. I promise not to be so weird next time. Or at least I’ll try.”
His quirky embarrassment is endearing and I know I’m in trouble because it just makes me want to invite him into my empty apartment and fuck him on the floor. I will definitely need to work these fantasies out on some Tinder dates because there is no way I am ever getting involved with a neighbor. It is literally too close to home and we’d have to see each other every day if it ended badly. Which it always does.
“Maybe,” I say, attempting to smile instead of drool at him.
“Great.” His dimple practically winks at me. “See you around.”
And then he was gone, and the following months were nothing but sheer torture.
I soon learned we’re both extremely punctual, leaving at the same time every day. We eventually just accepted that we’d be walking to the BART station together in the mornings, and added a pit stop at the corner store for some local drip coffee, stretching our time together.
Ben works in tech, of course. He codes during the week and on the weekend goes hiking and climbs at the local gym, with a preference for belaying. I would have dubbed him a typical Bay Area male, and not in a complimentary way, except for the little things he does. He volunteers at soup kitchens, and he takes his parents out to dinner every Saturday, giving up a night on the town with friends in favor of spending time with his folks. He even shows me pictures of stray cats around the neighborhood and tells me all their names.
I look forward to our morning commute so much I start to make it a point to apply makeup and put more than minimal effort into my tangled mass of ash blonde curls. I wear clothes that fit a little tighter than I’m normally comfortable with, especially because my body is so short and a bit too curvy for my preference. But I’ve caught him looking on more than one occasion, and each time it shoots an electric thrill from my pussy to my breasts and makes me feel like the sexiest woman on the planet. All from a look.
On our walks to the train we talk about everything—from the local sports teams and the political climate to popular TV shows and books. He lends me articles to read, and I recommend podcasts. He feeds my cats when I go away for the weekend and I get his mail and water his hanging herb garden.
He’s the perfect neighbor. An awesome friend. So why is it torture? Because of course there’s no way someone as beautiful as Ben comes home alone on a Friday night, and he doesn’t. More often than not it’s only a few friends over. But once, there was the distinct sound of two voices, one male and one female. I heard them talking, and worse, as the night progressed, I heard them fucking. Loudly. Hard.
It was the longest night of my life, not only because they kept me up with their moaning, and the sounds of the bedframe hitting the wall, but also because I could hear every dirty, lascivious thing he said, all the things I’ve fantasized about him saying to me.
All. Night. Long.
Words like pussy, cunt, wet, hard, cock, thick. It all filtered through our thin walls, and I am not ashamed to admit I used my vibrator a record-breaking five times that night. They just kept going and I couldn’t help it. I worked myself into a writhing mess. I had to bite down on my fist to keep from moaning because if I could hear him, he most definitely could hear me.
That was the first weekend I was in my apartment. I didn’t even need to read my usual sexy romance novels as fuel for masturbation for a month afterward, the memory so fresh and dirty in my mind. I fantasized about him moving over a woman, his amiable manner fading away as his instincts take over, the muscular masculinity of his true self pushing to the forefront of his mind and transforming him into a total control freak in bed. He tugs her hair, bites her shoulder as he fucks her from behind, tickles her clit, never leaving a partner unsatisfied. It’s a delicious fantasy, one I held on to for some time.
Then came the shower incident.
Oh, the shower incident. A night so sexually charged, we both knew immediately what we’d done, and we can barely look at each other now.
I came home from a late night at the office. Our annual meeting was coming up and I’m on the logistics team, planning and coordinating all company events. There’d been a snafu with the name tags so we’d needed to stay an extra four hours, getting the five hundred names formatted correctly. I was tired and frustrated by the time I stomped home, dropping my bags, shedding my clothes and heading straight for the shower.
It wasn’t hot out that night, the heat wave yet to hit, but I felt so wrung out by the events of the day I just needed to claim a little time for myself. Nothing sounded better than a hot shower and a little stress relief in the form of my waterproof vibrator.
I love my bathroom. It’s larger than you’d think for my apartment’s size—the tub is wide and deep enough to fit two, with a ledge perfect for sitting. The shower has two heads, one a rainspout, the other detachable for all those hard-to-reach areas. My bathroom is my hideaway, and that night it became my den of iniquities.
The second I turned on my shower I heard a second shower do the same on the other side of the wall. Ben’s apartment and mine are mirror images of each other: where my kitchen, bathroom and bedroom line up, his are exactly the same on his side of the wall. I can hear him cooking. I can hear him brushing his teeth with an electric toothbrush in the morning. I hear him in bed listening to music...fucking strange women.
And that night, I could hear the distinct sound of his belt buckle hitting the floor and the shower door sliding open as he stepped in.
I hear him groan as the water hits his skin.
Oh, it’s long and low and the exact sound I imagined he’d make when thrusting his cock into a woman’s pussy for the first time.
My pussy, I think as I turn on the vibrator, the sound of the shower loud enough he shouldn’t be able to make out what I’m doing.
I want him inside my pussy. I want to be the woman he fucks so hard the bed frame makes a dent in the wall. I want to keep the neighbors up all night with our moans and cries of pleasure. I want him to pull my hair and make me submit, until I can’t take it anymore and I turn the tables on him, pinning him underneath me while I ride what I know will be a long, thick cock.
I lean against the wall and prop my foot up on the ledge, widening my stance, opening myself as I slip the cylindrical shape into my cunt. I run my fingers lightly over my breasts, tripping on the nipples and stopping a moment to take the heavy weights into my palm, squeezing. It feels good, but it feels even better when I imagine a large, dark hand taking over.
I can see him now. His body towering over me, the scratchy hair on his legs rubbing against the smoothness of mine, his cock hard and heavy, pointing toward me.
I moan. Loudly. I can’t help it. Just thinking of his dick anywhere near me makes me wet.
I plunge the vibrator in and out, letting the curved tip rub against that perfect spot inside me. I squirm against it, bite my knuckles to keep my whimpers down. I’m almost there when I hear an echoing groan on Ben’s side of the wall.
I freeze. Waiting. Wondering if I hallucinated it.
Then it comes again. Resonant and lingering, distinctly Ben’s voice.
“Fuck, yes,” he groans.
I am a disgraceful, terrible, shameful human being. I put my ear against the wall and listen and then I hear what I’m searching for. The sound of slick, slapping flesh.
Ben is jerking off the same time I am. We’re nearly doing it together.
My knees buckle but I stay pressed against the wall, listening to every delightful moan and groan, every time he curses—which is often—then it gets even worse. Or better.
“Fuck me. I want your pussy. I want to fuck your beautiful, juicy cunt. I bet it’s gorgeous. So swollen, isn’t it, baby? Is your clit all big?”
“Yes,” I whimper, not even thinking. He can’t hear me, he’s too wrapped up in whatever fantasy he’s conjured. I’ll just piggyback it a bit, nothing wrong with that.
“Do you want me to fuck you with this big cock?” His voice is muffled and I can barely make out the words.
“Yes, fuck me hard.”
I touch my clit with my free hand and use my legs to bounce on the vibrator, the tension twisting tighter inside my gut. My thighs shake with the effort to keep the rhythm going, but I’m not stopping for anything in the world.
“I want to lick your clit, I want to suck on it till you come in my mouth. Then I’ll flip you over and take you from behind, push into your cunt. It’s so swollen from your orgasm it takes me a good ten minutes just to get all the way inside you. I gratify every part of you, then fuck you till I fill your dirty hole with my cum.”
“Yes, yes. Yes,” I yell. “I’m coming, oh shit.”
“Do it, baby, come for me.”
And it’s only when he says that, a clear response to my cries, that I accept he knows exactly what he’s doing, and exactly what I’m doing, and we are doing it together.
“Oh, fuck, I wish it were your mouth on my cock instead of my hand. Shit, here it comes.” He practically growls as he comes, booming and guttural.
Then he cuts me off at my knees, making me run from my shower as fast as I can when I hear, “Oh, Faye.”
That was a week ago, and ever since then we haven’t walked together, haven’t talked. We’ve only nodded in greeting on the stairs or by the mailboxes. I experienced the single most erotic moment of my life through a fucking wall, and now we’re acting as if we just broke up. I knew getting involved with a neighbor would spell trouble, especially one who has come to mean so much to me as a friend.
I miss him, but what’s worse, my body craves him now more than ever before, and hearing him go about his day on his side of the wall is pure torture.
Another crash and curse filters through the thin wall and I make a split decision. The city is dark, it’s hot as balls, and I’m frustrated emotionally and sexually. What better reason to let my inhibitions fly and claim what I’ve been fantasizing about since first moving to Oakland? When it’s all over, when we’ve finally quenched our thirst for one another, we can go back to our friendly talks and commutes. Nothing will have changed, the itch will be scratched.
I throw on a skimpy sundress, toss my hair up in a bun with a few pins, then put mascara on by candlelight. After a quick glance in the mirror I exit and lock up my apartment.
I’m two steps from Ben’s door when it opens. He’s there, in a tank top and shorts, as surprised to see me as I am.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi.”
He waits a second, thinking, searching my gaze, then bites his sumptuous lip and says, “Want to come inside?”
I lick my lips, mirroring his movements. He has to know what I’m here for, dressed the way I am, after not talking to him for a week because we essentially jerked off together.
“Yes.”
Without a word he widens the door for me. I enter his dark apartment. It’s surprisingly cool, and as I walk into the living room I can see candles littering the edges of the walls, casting it in an ethereal romantic glow.
I turn around and he’s there, his hands on the bottom of his shirt, tugging it off and throwing it to the floor. He’s massive, and muscular, and so totally overwhelming the hot man kryptonite hits me again and I start to stammer a response to his shirtlessness.
Nothing. Nothing comes out.
His hands tug at the button on his jeans.
“Tell me this is what you’re here for, Faye, because my cock’s been hard for you all week.”
Oh, holy fuck, what have I gotten myself into?