“You are one sick puppy, Tina Moreland,” Maryanne
teased as she slammed the lid on her lunchbox and stood to
leave.
“It’s harmless, Maryanne. I’m not hurting anyone.” Tina
set the binoculars down for a moment to focus on her only
friend on the construction site.
“You need a real man, not some figment of your
imagination.”
“Oh he’s no figment. He’s right there, in flesh and
blood. Besides, it isn’t like I’ve done all that well with
the real men around here. They take one look at me in my
hardhat and run, or they hear about my degrees and run
faster. Real men don’t want flat chested, freckled redheads
with ghost eyes, a master’s degree and an interest in
welding.”
“Sweetheart, don’t put yourself down. There’s a real man
out there for you, but watching a stranger through your
binoculars isn’t going to help you find him.” She gave Tina
her warmest smile and then laughed at her sour response.
Tina ignored her and the laughter trailing away as her
one friend began the short-stepping gait everyone used on
the high-rise ironworks. They were working the fifth floor
now - high enough up in construction that a fall would
likely kill you, but Tina and Maryanne had both been in
construction long enough that the height and the walk that
came with it were natural. Maryanne was the only other
woman on the job this summer. Ironworking was hard work for
women and it came with a lot of flack from the men in the
Irondogs, as they were known in New York construction
circles.
Tina sat on the newly constructed platform floor that
covered the skeleton of ironworks. The platform now
extended about half-way down the level but the side-rails
hadn’t been installed – it was a great place to hang your
feet over the edge and have lunch, and of course, enjoy the
view.
Maryanne’s jokes made light of Tina’s latest hobby, but
she was getting tired of the taunts from the guys. She
deserved respect. Not only was she a woman doing a man’s
job, but she’d completed her Masters in Architecture and
was now a PhD student studying buildings from the inside
out. But add that to her red curly hair and her pale grey
eyes and freckles and she was a natural target for her less
than tolerant tough guy co-workers. They looked for reasons
to make fun of her. Now that she had taken to using her
binoculars on her lunch hours, she’d been dubbed a Peeping
Tom.
The worst of it was they were right. Initially the
binoculars had come in handy as she studied the
architecture of the nearby buildings, the details that had
been built long ago high into the walls and roofs of the
structures surrounding the one she now worked on. Her hi-
rise was going to be taller, but the old buildings had
style. Two weeks ago she’d been studying the elaborate
stonework of the offices directly across from where she now
sat when she’d seen him.
From her vantage point on the ironworks, Tina could see
right into the fifth floor corner office, but binoculars
made it so much clearer. Her heart beat faster as she
raised them to her eyes again. Are you in today, you
gorgeous man? The tall windows let in so much light. He
seemed to enjoy that, and in the afternoons, on a bright
day like today, he took a break from his bean-counting job,
locked his office door, and stripped.
A shudder of excitement slipped down Tina’s back as she
looked for him and found his lean body doing exactly what
she had hoped for, slowly shedding his clothes. Oh baby!
You are so hot; yes…take off that shirt…. The naughtiness
she felt watching a stranger added to the thrill. He didn’t
know she was out here, didn’t know he was being watched.
His casual sexiness was real, not practiced. If she could
watch him from the privacy of her own home she’d have been
naked too by now.
“Tina-Tom! Let’s go little lady, quit being a perv and
get to work,” A laughing male voice called to her.
Without looking away, she shouted back. “I’m on lunch
asshole, and I’ve got seven minutes left.”
Slowly, almost as if he were stripping just for her,
the bean-counter let his pants slide down his narrow hips.
Tina reached blindly for her water bottle. Watching his
long lean body did amazing things to hers. Her mouth felt
so dry, her skin feverish. An electric current seemed to be
zinging its way from her taut nipples to her wet pussy. She
fine tuned her focus, shutting out the noise of
construction around her. Crisp dark hair sprinkled across
his chest - matching his short hairstyle and pointing an
arrow through his six-pack abs and straight toward the
object of her desire.
Come on man, that’s it. Show it all to me…the litany
ran through her mind. Yes! The pants had hit the floor. As
usual he wore no underpants. Tina swallowed hard. This was
the best view she’d had yet and she was nearly creaming in
her panties. She didn’t have a great history with men, but
that didn’t mean she couldn’t desire a well made one. This
view would be fodder for her fantasy love life for weeks to
come.
“Yer minutes are up, Tina-Tom. Get back to work.” The
smoke roughened voice of her supervisor cut into her wet
daydreams. She lowered the binoculars and closed her eyes
for a minute. Why again did I take this job? Oh yeah, the
dream of building something spectacular, from design to
nails to sliding glass doors. She sighed and gathered her
lunch before standing up on the platform. Regulations said
she should be having her lunch on the ground but she, like
most of the Irondogs, occasionally ignored the rules for
expedience and love of the heights.
She made her way to the corner of the platform and
stepped onto the bare rail. She would have to re-secure her
safety straps here, no one avoided that rule for long. For
the Hell of it, she raised her binoculars to have another
look at the studly bean-counter before she had to stash her
stuff and get back to welding on the seventh level. By now
he’ll be stretching out his glorious muscles, or perhaps,
just perhaps today he’ll give in to a little hedonism and
stroke his majestic cock for me.
Instead, she frowned as she focused on something
strange. It took her a moment to recognize it. Fire! The
man’s office is on fire! Then she realized that wasn’t
quite what she was seeing. It wasn’t natural. The fire
seemed to be following his gestures, moving with him, no,
she realized, it was flowing from his fingertips. He was
drawing a rectangle in the air with flames. He finished the
last corner. She couldn’t help it - she couldn’t look away.
Inside the rectangle a picture was forming.
“Holy shit!” she said aloud. Her mind reeled. As she
watched, he reached into the burning picture and pulled…
something…through. “What is that?” she breathed. All
awareness of where she was and what she was doing fled from
her mind. He’s a fucking Harry Potter. She leaned forward,
tried to focus, and finally took a step closer.
Unfortunately, there was nothing to step on.