"It's all right. I want you to watch."
She does not move from the doorway.
"Are you sure?”
"Yes."
"Are you sure you're sure?”
"Yes, Max. Come and watch me.”
She steps into the room.
She does not come to the bed. She does not come within a foot of the bed. She crosses to the armchair. She pulls her jacket off without looking at the bed, folds it once, puts it over the back of the chair. She sits down. She puts her hands on the arms of the chair, one on each arm, flat.
She looks at me.
"Keep going, touch yourself,” she says.
I keep going.
I put my hand back where it was. I do it slower than I was doing it for me. I do it at the speed of a woman being watched. Her eyes on me change how my hand moves. I find my clit. I circle. I arch a little. I make the small sound I was making before she walked in and I make it a little louder, because I want her to hear the version of me that I was, and I want to give that woman to this room.
"Yes," Max says.
That is all she says.
"Yes," once. Soft. Low. Not an order. A confirmation.
I push two fingers inside me, slow. I work my clit with the other hand. I let my knees fall open. I let her see me. I have never let anyone see me like this. I have never been looked at like this. I look at her while she looks at me. She does not move. Her hands stay on the arms of the chair. Her jaw is tight. Her eyes are steady. A pulse beats in her throat.
I watch the pulse in her throat and I come close.
“I’m close," I whisper.
"Yes."
"Will you help me?”
"I'm not going to move," she says. "I'm going to sit here. I want to watch you come.”
"Okay."
"Look at me."
"I'm looking at you."
"Stay looking.”
I stay looking.
I work my clit faster. I keep my eyes on her eyes. Her eyes are the bedroom-blue. Her pulse in her throat is moving. Her hands on the arms of the chair are still flat and the tendons on the backs of her hands have come up. She is holding herself in that chair like a woman holding a door closed against weather.
I come.
I come with my eyes on her eyes. I come in a long pull that starts in my hips and goes up through my ribs and out the top of my throat in a sound that is her name again,Max, loud this time, not a whisper. I come with my knees up and my back arched and my hand hard on my clit and her eyes on me. I come for her. I come because she is sitting in the chair and not coming to the bed. I come because she has not touched me yet and that is the hottest thing I have ever known about sex.
I shake.
