Hide and Seek, page 3
In the front room, the chair is hard, cold wood beneath me. I sit up straight, cross my legs, and put the black toe of my shoe against the window ledge. I take a deep breath, let it out slowly, and pull open the curtain.
Almost instantly, there are faces in front of the window. Men of all ages and colors. Eyes and eyes. I feel like a fish or a mermaid. Some press their fingertips against the window, leaving dirty smears. Others mouth things at me. English and Spanish and a billion other languages. Cunt. How much? Fuck you. I am so grateful for the glass between us. I skim their red-lit faces, looking for Danny, but I still don’t see him.
Some of the boys are obviously from the States—Yankees caps and jackets that say UCLA and CORNELL. I skim over their pale faces. They’re cute, but they’re not what I want. With others, it’s hard to tell. Black men with dreadlocks and knit caps, pale older men in sharp suits and leaning on canes. The few women walk hand in hand, looking either uncomfortable or excited.
One man stops in front of my window—young, shoulder-length blond hair. He looks for a moment, passes on, perhaps to something more exotic, something darker or skinnier. Next to these exotic women, I look very American. Or maybe very German, with my blond hair, green eyes, and come-hither hips. These other women, they have boobs the size of Texas. Not me—I’m all ass and hip and nipple. You could look all night, in all these windows, and not find the same body shape twice, I think. I could look all night into this street and not find the same man twice.
Another man, this one “armied-out” in a crew cut and broad shoulders, steps through the crowd, up to the corner of my window. He knocks, hard enough to make the glass tremble. I shake my head. He steps back through the crowd.
I watch the street. I’ll know when it’s right. I’ve practiced my wink, my rap-rap on the glass with the back of my knuckles.
When I see him, he’s already looking at me. Watching. He’s got olive skin and dark, heavy eyebrows. Tall. A dark wool coat that looks like it was tailored just for him. He’s alone, despite the packs of men moving around him. When I catch his eye, he doesn’t hang his head. Those brown eyes look right into me, as if he’s appraising a piece of art, as though he’s been careful to choose just the right piece.
I almost look down at the ground. Almost.
Instead, I breathe in the scent of silk through my nose, let the corners of my lips curve up. I duck my head just a little but keep my eyes on this man. I wink, and for some reason, I tap my toe against the glass, even though I know he can’t see it.
He grins—beautiful double dimples on each cheek that send a shiver through my stomach—and takes a step forward. That’s when I see Danny behind him, leaning against the railing that lines the canal. Watching me. The man is moving toward my window, but I keep my eyes on Danny, his grin barely visible in the red neon, while I draw the curtain.
I open the door and there he is, the man I’ve chosen, smelling of snow and wind and the doughnut shops that are on every corner. The cold air makes my nipples strain against the fabric.
“Yes?” he says.
I nod. I am afraid to answer, sure that my American accent will give me away as nonnative, that he will walk out the door before I have the chance to touch him.
He steps inside and I close the door behind him.
He takes off his coat, hangs it on the hook near the door. Beneath, he is dressed in an eggplant-purple, button-up shirt and black dress pants. “How much?” he says in English. His accent is almost hidden and is hard to place. Portuguese, maybe. Or Italian.
I’m tempted to offer him a freebie, since I’m just posing and, although he doesn’t know it, he’s actually doing me the service. But he looks like he has the money, and I don’t want him to feel like he’s not getting the real deal. Plus, if I’m going to do this, I want to do it all the way.
I put one hand on his shoulder. Cock my hip near his. “How long?” I ask. When I speak, he looks up from his wallet. I think that he is surprised by my accent, that he will ask if I am from the States.
Instead, he touches his cold finger to my bottom lip. Pulls it away from my teeth, pinching the skin gently. Lets his dark eyes linger on my chest, on my belly, on the front of my panties. Says, “One hour, maybe longer.”
Despite the cold he’s brought with him, my cheeks burn. “Fifty euros for twenty minutes,” I say around his finger.
He nods, drops his hand away from my lips. I step in front of him, careful in my heels, and lead him into the back room, holding the curtain aside so he can follow. He is a big man in this small room, his shoulders wide through the doorway, and I am glad I wore my heels, glad that I can reach his shoulder without stretching.
I am not sure what do now. It was easy to play the seductress behind the glass, but here in this room that’s so obviously made for only one thing, I am suddenly uncomfortable, like I don’t know what to do with my hands. I haven’t touched anyone’s body but Danny’s for so long—I know what he likes and doesn’t—how do I touch someone new, let him touch me?
But then the man steps up behind me, cups my ass with his cold hands. The cool feels good against my overheated skin. The way his fingers grasp with want makes me less nervous.
I turn toward him, letting his hands stay around my ass, and reach up to undo his shirt buttons. Beneath the fabric, his skin is even and tight, the muscles across his chest strong. I slide the shirt over his shoulders, press myself against him. He pulls me toward him with both hands so that I can feel his erection, pressing hard against my belly.
“Lie down,” he says. I lie on the bed on my back, and he lowers himself on me, running his tongue across my skin, nipping here and there with his teeth—the side of my hip, the tip of my nipple, the bottom of my lip. By the time he has his tongue against the front of my panties, my nervousness has changed to charged desire. My skin tingles everywhere. Even through the fabric, his tongue is sending quivers down my thighs.
I grab his head, pull it away from me. “Let me,” I say. He lies down on the bed, and I slide his pants down. His blue boxer-briefs bulge in the front. A drop of precome wets the fabric. I run my tongue against the rough cotton. His liquid tastes like oysters and laundry soap.
He moans and lifts his thin hips, letting me pull the briefs down. His cock springs up, thinner and longer than Danny’s, curving toward me. I climb onto him and rub my hand across the top of his wet head, down over the crown. He bucks beneath me, raising us both off the bed. I explore his cock with my hand: the small blue veins, the mushroom head, the way it jumps when I wrap my fingers around the base.
His hands wander over my breasts, tweaking my nipples through the lace bra, sending sparks everywhere. When I lean my head back and moan, he sits up, takes my shoulders in his hands, and gently pushes me off of him.
“Stand up,” he says.
I do. He sits on the edge of the bed and spins me around until I am facing the wall. The room is small enough that I can lean my hands against the wall without moving my feet, my ass, away from the bed. I am breathing hard, my hair down over my face. He kicks my heels apart with his feet, nips at my ass. I can feel the small points of his teeth all the way up in my nipples, all the way down into the juices that soak my panties.
As though he can read my mind, he tucks the length of his finger right against me, right against the wet strip of cotton. Turns it over and over like a screw. I want to grind against him, but I hold myself still, hands on the wall, waiting to see what he wants.
He grabs the strip of fabric between my thighs, shoves it to one side. His finger inside me, cold and hard, makes my knees tremble, makes me cry out. With his other hand, he reaches around and pulls down the cup of the lace bra until my nipple’s exposed. He pinches my nipple and pulls. It feels so good, I have to grind against him, get him to sink his fingers deeper.
When he drops his hands, away from me and out of me, I can breathe again. The crinkle of a condom. Then, “Sit,” and he’s pulling me down on him. His cock slides into me so smooth and fast that I can’t believe it’s happening and then it is—I’m fucking this stranger.
I ride him backward, his hand pulling me down, hips pumping up. I put my hand to my wet clit, think of Danny standing out there in the cold, watching my closed curtain, waiting while this other man fucks me. It nearly makes me come right there, just thinking of that. But I promised Danny I’d wait, that I’d wait for him. I have to take my hand away from my clit, concentrate on the man beneath me, on the way he moans and rocks under me, on the way his cock feels, longer inside me, as though he’s reaching farther up in me than Danny ever does.
Soon, he flips me around so I’m facing him. He puts his hands on my ass, pulling him me onto him again and again. How different inside me, the way his hips move and his cock. I run my hands over his chest, the muscles moving, the way his chest hair uncurls under my fingers.
And then he’s rising inside me, nearly lifting me off his hips. The muscle in his jaw clenches, releases. He cries out, his fingers tightening on my ass as he shudders and shakes and goes silent. I wait until he stops shaking, and then I wrap my fingers around the bottom of the condom and slide off of him.
I look at the clock by the bed. “One hundred euros,” I say, all business. And then I go into the front room, with my dripping panties and my nipples aching, and sit in my tall chair waiting for him to get dressed and go.
When I hear him put the money on the table and shut the door, I slide the red curtain back open and look out into the street. The man in the wool coat steps out the door, stands on the concrete for a moment, men milling around him. He looks content, smiling like a man who’s just spent his money wisely.
Danny leans against the railing against the canal, watching my face. He also looks like a man who’s spent his money wisely. The man walks by Danny, nods his chin. My husband nods back. Two men passing in the street, two men who appreciate the finer things in life.
I look at my husband, at his handsome face, the gray hairs that I can’t see but that I know are there, just above his ears. I stretch out my long legs, giving him a flash of nipple above the corset. Then I wink.
Danny pushes himself off the railing, comes forward, toward the door that leads into my window. I slide the curtain closed one last time and walk to the door.
“How much?” Danny asks. He smells like coffee and my favorite shampoo.
“Everything,” I say. “Everything you got.”
THE CORNERS OF MY EYES
Stan Kent
When you’ve been as dedicated a voyeur for as long as I have you tend to think you’ve seen it all. Of course, that doesn’t stop me from looking. I’m always searching for that elusive new scopophiliac thrill. But in general, the sexual events under my microscope do play out like an old favorite movie where you know all the words and every scene, but still watch, captivated, to the feel-good end, even though there are no surprises. Yet do not think that familiarity breeds voyeuristic contempt; while those moments where I catch my girlfriend Lizzie in flagrante delicto with some wannabe paramour on the dance floor are not new, watching her flirt, kiss, and fondle—and be fondled and sometimes fucked—always provides me with a luscious stiffening and a desire to fuck her senseless once we get home. Or perhaps in the nightclub’s bathroom. Or in the parking lot. Or, oh, fuck it, right there on the dance floor. I may be a voyeur, but in the face of some serious sexy watching I become a doer.
As you might imagine, it’s not easy being the object of my eyes’ affection. When going out there is an unsaid pressure on a voyeur’s partner to perform. I realize it is tough to always be on your game, to feel like every night out is showtime on the center stage of my perverse passion play. I know, believe me, I know it is tough to come up with some new visual treat. I do appreciate the effort Lizzie goes to, hunting through her closets to find just the right combination of revealing clothes and fuck-me shoes, topping that off with the appropriate hairdo and makeup that will make the evening perfect. Don’t get me wrong, Lizzie is a born exhibitionist and loves dressing up and showing off, but even stars crave their moments out of the public (or private) eye. Yet necessity is the motherfucker of invention, and what Lizzie came up with the last time we went out was a very mischievous way for us to have our voyeuristic cake and eat it, too. Just when I thought I had seen it all, the old familiar movie had a new ending.
That night, Lizzie looked particularly ravishing and especially ready to perform. Her burgundy wraparound miniskirt was split up the side and made of a semitransparent material that showed every curvaceous nuance, including the line of her pink thong and the bulge of her pussy lips that the panties barely covered. Her legs were sheathed in Wolford purple fishnet thigh-highs. Her feet were adorned in black, open-toed Christian Louboutin platform stilettos with wraparound ankle straps. She topped the exotic ensemble off with a burgundy corset laced up tight with the suspender straps dangling free. Her raven dark hair, streaked with tinges of copper and gold, fell about her bare shoulders. Her makeup, though perfectly applied, with the added touch of extra-large glittery eyelashes, begged to be messed up.
We arrived at The Eye, a new club in Hollywood, around eleven. From years of voyeuristic practice I’ve become skilled at scoping a nightclub from the moment I cross the velvet rope. I scan for the vantage points where I can watch Lizzie be both predator and prey. I often feel like David Bowie in The Hunger where he and fellow vampire Catherine Deneuve prowl the second-floor gallery of a nightclub to the tune of “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” surveying the dance floor for their midnight bite. Let me tell you, there is nothing more exciting than going into a nightclub as a loving couple, then splitting up into singles-on-the-hunt, knowing that at the end of the night we’ll be back between each other’s thighs. It’s all the fun of dating without the messy, disappointing downsides faced by normal people: We never go home alone. And that’s just one of the liberating benefits of being an exhibitionist/voyeuristic nonmonogamous couple.
It’s ideal if there is a raised area where I can lurk in the shadows, single malt in hand, or perhaps a Sapphire and tonic, and stake out Lizzie being single. Tonight The Eye rewarded me with a comfortable booth on a mezzanine above the dance floor and bar. I was hard as a stripper’s pole just sitting there in anticipation.
It never takes long for Lizzie to attract an admirer. She saunters onto the dance floor, drink in hand, and moves and sways to her own sexy beat, no matter what is playing. She radiates carnal heat, taking the occasional sip of her cocktail as if she must to keep cool. Okay, call me biased, but she can be on a dance floor full of other women and the guys fixate on her. She stands out not just because she has such sexy beauty and wears to-die-for-a-fuck outfits, but because she’s there on her own, dressed to thrill. Guys simply can’t believe their luck; women that beautiful and that seductively attired aren’t usually available out there solo, roaming free like some tasty sheep in the midst of a hungry wolf pack.
I watch, wondering who will figure this lonely beautiful woman is just too good an opportunity to pass up and make a move on her. I know her type well; it’s easy to predict the rejects. Jocks and frat-boy types need not apply. She goes for the exotic-esoteric type, although sometimes she’ll toy with someone completely out of her wish list just to mess with me. She’s knows I’m up there watching, and she knows that I’m turned on, and this is her way of letting me know she’s in total control. It’s funny when you’ve been together as long as we have—six years—we might be separated by a nightclub expanse, but we know each other’s sexual predilections and what we’re thinking as if we were next to each other comparing notes.
Tonight, Lizzie stayed true to type. After a couple of guys that looked like young Republican lawyers on ethics leave were dispatched to nightclub purgatory, Lizzie let a rocker dude enter her space. He resembled one of those countless lead singers of a soon-to-be-the-next-big-thing band who forever frequent Hollywood clubs waiting to be adored by some pretty young things, and whose pants are tight enough to show all the pretty young things his big thing.
Lizzie and Next Big Thing danced; they danced closer, bodies brushing. They kissed, and they retired to the bar. They shared cocktails. They felt each other out with conversation. They kissed some more. His hand slipped to her ass. At some point he asked for her number. She told him she had a boyfriend, but she was allowed to play around as long as he could watch. I may not have heard the exact exchange of words, but I’ve watched this scene unfold so many times that I can get the gist of what’s being said from their body language. Next Big Thing’s eyebrows arched and he smiled and nodded. This was a crucial point in the flirtation. If Next Big Thing bolted, then he was a no-confidence, insecure, vanilla, poser-rocker guy and not worthy of any more of Lizzie’s favors. If he stayed, then he was up for some kinky fun.
Next Big Thing stayed, but just as long as it took him to finish his drink. I was surprised and more than a little bit let down. I thought he was made of sterner, kinkier stuff. I was looking forward to seeing him between Lizzie’s widespread thighs. Before he left, they exchanged phone numbers, poking their respective digits directly into their cell phones. He gave Lizzie a kiss that was much more than just a friendly-see-you-later peck, and with a wave he was off. Lizzie finished her drink and signaled to me. I joined her. We danced, and I was entranced to be at the center of her universe again. We kissed with a passion that surprised me. It was deep, pleased-to-fuck-you lip sex. Our bodies ground together as we had sex with our clothes on, and when we parted for air I asked her about Next Big Thing. She liked him. He was cute and sexy and kissed good and possessed a nice-size cock she wouldn’t have minded peeling out of his tight jeans. She was bummed he had split; he said there was a friend’s band he had to go see play. He asked her to go with him, but she wasn’t up for being a groupie, so they exchanged numbers for maybe another time when he wasn’t so busy being a rock star wannabe.
