My dirty little secret.
I take one more look toward the door as my hand slips inside my panties again, and then my eyes drift back to the glowing glass of the screen and I breathe out, and quiver.
*
I stand outside the door to Mackenzie’s room and think, my brain breaking down the last few minutes in my head as I breathe. The sequence of images that flashback in my mind’s eye is as clear as a movie. Mackenzie’s desk lamp switched on, and from where I was standing the difference was stark. I looked up at that moment, my eyes flicking to the window, and there’s no use pretending and lying to myself about what I’d been hoping to see there.
Her silhouette came next and my heart tightened as she’d stood for a moment, and then she’d dropped like a stone from view and her light had flicked off. For a brief second, I’d felt the faintest glimmer of guilt, but this is my house and my eyes can travel wherever they damn well please. Either way, I looked away, but my eyes were on her. Then a few long breaths later, I saw her shadow in the frame. I was trained to see movement, to sense danger where there appeared to be none, and I know what I saw… and then the flicker and the flash.
She took a photo.
Why though?
I stare at her door, knowing it’s unlocked, knowing I could walk back inside again and tear the covers from her bed and find her awake and demand that she hands me her phone. It’s my property after all, but that won’t help me understand why. I can’t just damn well ask her either, certainly not whilst I’m dressed like this and she’s wearing, well… I shut down my thoughts as I start to get hard.
Fuck.
What is wrong with me?
I need to get a grip.
I turn around and walk away, but as I reach the top of the stairs I hear the faintest noise and I look back. My mind must be playing tricks on me, because for a second there I thought I heard a soft moan. I shake my head, take a deep breath, and head back downstairs as my mind races.
But as I reach the bottom I freeze.
It’s my property. My phone.
And I have access to the account.
Guilt floods my chest as I consider the implications of the idea forming in my head. It would be a gross invasion of privacy, but she just took a photograph of me in my own home, without my permission. Isn’t it my duty to know what’s going on in my own home?
I close my eyes and think, but I already know what I’m going to do, and after a few seconds, I breathe out and turn toward my study. I close the door behind me as I step inside and boot up my console, and then I sit down with a dark fuzz in my chest as I load up the website and enter the account details.
The screen feels too bright against my eyes as the options appear as if the data itself is trying to push me away, but I focus in on the Photos app and slowly move the cursor toward it.
Instantly I’m presented with selfie after selfie, tiny thumbnails with flashes of red hair and pale freckled skin making my heart thump and my crotch warm, and then as I scroll down, at the very bottom… nothing.
No photograph of me.
‘Shit.’
I made a mistake. It must’ve been a reflection, car headlights out on the road, or a flash of torchlight. I breathe out, but what I feel isn’t relief, it’s disappointment. I’d be hoping to find something, some proof that-
No.
I can’t even think about it, it’s so stupid. She’s half my age. But still…
I click the back button and then my eyes fall on all the images of her, her radiant beauty stirring something inside of me every time I see her face, even at such tiny resolutions. I move the mouse, hover the cursor over one, and click.
Goddamn.
She’s so beautiful. Her skin, her eyes, her hair.
I growl and click the back button, closing my eyes and rubbing them as I chastise myself.
‘Fuck.’
I really need to get a fucking grip.