Chapter 1: Little Sister

I WALKED UP behind her, behind the parapet where she rested her elbows to steady the binoculars. I know she heard me but she didn’t turn. Her target, the figure standing in the apartment window opposite us, apparently fresh from the shower and nude but for her hair wrapped in a towel, was easy to spot.

I leaned in close to whisper in her ear.

“You’re a bad girl, Roberta.”

No reply. I rested my hands on her shoulders, colored a light peach from the sun, and kissed the back of her neck. She smelled of sweaty girl with an overlay of sunblock and a gentle touch of shampoo. I moved my fingers in little circles, her skin smoother than the smoothest silk and without blemish.

“A very bad girl.”

I think I heard a giggle this time but still she didn’t turn, didn’t put down the binoculars.

With my fingernails I drew lines down her bare smooth back. She’d skipped her t-shirt this afternoon.

“A very very bad girl.”

Now I was certain I heard a giggle. I repeated the strokes a couple of times before I touched her flanks lightly to stroke her again, only this time I moved up and around to her almost-flat chest, perhaps the most prominent sign that even if she’d come of age more than a year ago her body hadn’t caught up yet. She shivered when I very lightly dragged my fingernails across each erect nipple where the silk of her skin yielded to slightly pebbled areolas and then to stiff little bumps.

“Um.”

“Really bad,” I whispered. I turned my hands over and let the pads of my forefingers pass with the lightest of touches over each nipple and up to stroke the sides of her neck. I kissed path of each stroke.

“Yes,” she turned the word into a drawn-out whisper. At the same time she widened her stance and moved back but I shifted to stand beside her. I wasn’t going to give her the pleasure of that contact. Yet.

“Aren’t you worried she’s going to notice you, Roberta?”

At this she lowered the binoculars and turned to look at me. She shrugged.

“I don’t care.”

Another giggle.

“Besides, she’s the one in front of the window, right? I’m standing on my own azotea minding my own business.”

Aside from the minding her own business bit and that it was my azotea, not hers, she had a point. If the neighbor wanted to display herself she could hardly complain if others noticed.

Roberta let the binoculars rest against her chest.

“What are you doing home so early, don Alejandro?”

Cheeky, it was my house and Roberta was here as a favor to her big sister, my housekeeper.

“Checking on you, querida.“

I’d known for some time what the pint-sized minx was up to but wanted to confirm it. Showing up when your household staff doesn’t expect you is sometimes very enlightening. My colleague James told me he’d arrived home once unexpectedly during the siesta, a custom not observed by most businesspeople in this capital city, to find a small orgy in his living room. What made it pretty funny was three or four members of the little Bible study group his cook had organized and hosted, with his permission, for a couple of years by then, in a tangle of nude bodies on the rug.

There wasn’t any doubt who was in charge. Marta, the cook, stood over the group as tall as her four feet eleven inches would let her, legs apart, her pubic curls thick and wet and tangled. Her full breasts, nipples extended, were spattered with what looked like semen. She had a stiff brush in her hand and at least two of the visible bottoms, male and female, were red and marked, James said. I wondered if he’d joined them but if so he didn’t share that part of the story with me.

Plus, and I’ll just lay this out right now, I had other thoughts, ones I was pretending to stay away from, but I’d decided where I was going and the only real question was how long it would take to get there and how many twists and turns the road might have. Two, or even three, could dance this dance. My housekeeper was a worthy foe, her little sister a quick and enthusiastic study.

“And?”

“And what, Roberta?”

“You know what I mean. Is it OK?”

I shrugged.

“If she gets ticked off and does something about it, sweetie, it’s all on you.”

A snicker.

“Yeah. That’ll be the day.”

I wondered if she’d seen the movie. Probably not, although everyone around here seemed to know who John Wayne was.

“Are you going to get in the water, don Alejandro?”

“I think so.”

“May I join you?”

She knew the answer. I’d long ago given her and her sister permission to use the hot tub in a corner of the roof whenever they wished. A lattice screen on two sides and large plants in pots all around gave it some privacy, although perhaps less than we might have liked during the day, especially from those on the upper floors of the high-rise Roberta liked to inspect with her binoculars. I had a feeling there might be more than one person up there with his or her own pair of glasses, perhaps including the present target of Roberta’s surveillance. She may not have been nude like her target, but despite her boyish figure Roberta was clearly female and topless.

“Of course, Roberta. You know that.”

“Yay!”

She put the binoculars on the bench beside her and skipped over to the hot tub, stripped off her shorts and hopped into the water wearing only her panties. I went downstairs to my bedroom and changed into my swimsuit. Nude was better, except not this afternoon, not alone with this frisky little person who clearly had learned more from her sister than was good for her.

I had yet to yield to her sister, even if this wasn’t the first time I’d used my fingernails on Roberta and Sara knew it. I was pretty sure my fingernails weren’t the first ones to drag across her smooth skin and her little nipples that soon would adorn real breasts, either. So far I was confident there were no unannounced visitors when I wasn’t home, but the looks and giggles and snatches of conversation I overheard, especially when the two returned from a weekend visit with their parents and siblings in that cow town up north, suggested Roberta learned fast and enjoyed each discovery.