“Yep,” he said, and kissed her neck. “And the rest? Someone watching us have sex?”
“We’ll see,” she said. “Don’t push. Let me decide.”
He kept kissing her and didn’t answer.
Chapter 19
P
am started thinking more about people looking at her. Okay, she thought a lot about being watched. At first she didn’t like the idea but then, after being the center of attention, it started to p ique her interest. She liked the idea of people watching because that meant they were into her and wanted to get to know her. Yeah, there would be creeps that only wanted sex from her, but she already knew how to deal with those kinds of men. Yeah, she liked the idea of people wanting her.
Almost accidentally, she flashed a guy one day on her way to work. She probably wouldn’t have even noticed if she hadn’t been thinking about being watched anyway. Usually, at work, if she was wearing heels, she took them off when she was sitting at her desk and put them back on to go to meetings or lunch. One afternoon, leaning on the edge of her desk, fiddling with the strap on a tricky shoe, she realized that the way she had one leg bent against the other to reach, she might be showing quite a lot of thigh.
Then she realized Paul, whose office was opposite of hers, was taking advantage of the glass walls separating their offices. Oh yeah, there was no doubt that he was looking. Or was that gawking!
Sometimes it happened. Sometimes you bent over, and people looked. Some guys were creepy and that was bad. Some weren’t and that was better. Paul was an okay person, and kind of cute, and if he looked now and then he wasn’t usually that obvious, so Pam didn’t really care.
He was looking now.
She watched him through her hair and tried not to be obvious that she was.
He was looking, but might not have completely realized it himself. It seemed like it was from habit, because her legs were there. She was fairly sure he didn’t know she’d seen him, so she stayed as she was for a moment, trying to work out how it made her feel.
It made her feel good. If she liked the person looking at her, she liked being noticed. She liked the attention.
Now she was doing it on purpose. It turned out the idea of being looked at was hot.
She started fiddling with her shoes more often if Paul was at his desk. She started kneeling the wrong way to get into low filing cabinets, or bending over to hand him something with one too many buttons of her shirt undone. She spent a week flashing Paul, then decided it was stupid, that soon people would start noticing. This wasn’t something to do at work.
She found other ways to be seen instead. She went out with friends and spent the evening crossing her legs and noticing how people looked when she did. She went for a walk and pulled off her hoodie in front of a stranger and let her shirt come up with it. She went jeans shopping at lunchtime with undies that were see-through and too small to be sensible and forgot to close the curtains properly in the changing room. She waited for a guy to ask if anyone needed a different size and handed him the jeans and stood there while he looked.
Then she got embarrassed and said never mind and left.
She decided she needed to talk to Steve before this went much f urther.
“So maybe on the being watched…” she said to Steve that night, getting ready for bed.
“Okay,” he said. “How do you mean?”
“I tried it. I think I like being looked at. So, maybe it’d be okay with someone else watching us. Maybe.”
He was looking at her.
“What?” she said.
“You tried being looked at?”
“Yeah,” she said, and pulled up her tee shirt to flash him. “I tried it. So what?”
“Nothing,” he said.
“Good.” She went and brushed her teeth.
When she came back into the bedroom he said, “You really need to tell me a bit more. About the trying it.”
Amos Oz
Charles de Lint
Chris Kluwe
Alyse Zaftig
Savannah Stuart, Katie Reus
William C. Dietz
Betty Hechtman
Kylie Scott
Leah Braemel
The war in 202