For a few minutes she lay still, with her eyes closed, savouring the after-glow of her ecstasy. She opened her eyes and saw him standing awkwardly, unsure what to say or do. After all, they were almost strangers, he a self-employed photographer, and she his client. Their eyes met briefly, then he swept his eyes over body and down to his own feet in embarrassment. She felt a slight surge of delight at his potent but restrained desire for her. And, although she felt ashamed by her wantonness, her ego was also boosted by her desirability and appeal to the man who stood coyly before her.
He was a good fifteen years older than she was, and there was nothing striking about his appearance. But his gentleness and refusal to take advantage of the situation was gratifying.
She had only intended to go as far as she had now done, content with the idea of having video of herself captured -- and captured by a stranger. She wanted a stranger to witness and to record this most private and intimate act. It was an act that for years she had been encouraged to view as unnatural and debased, an act that in her own mind had now become a secret defiance against hurts she had sustained, a private two-fingered gesture at those who had inflicted them. She looked forward to viewing it and to reliving the illicitness of the occasion.
Yet even in those few moments her mind was wandering, and a further silent debate was taking place.
First, though, she needed to know if anyone else was watching her through the unveiled window. With her desire for self-liberation outweighing her shame, she gestured to Tom to step further to one side of the window. Though clearly puzzled, he followed her lead. Her glance took in the taut bulge in his trousers as she swung her feet from the bed to the floor and, with her back to the open curtains, she stood up.
She looked briefly in the mirror, and saw his reflection admiring her. She sighed with pleasure. She looked at her face, still glowing slightly with the heat of her climax, and slight beads of perspiration on her face, breasts and stomach.
Without looking towards the window, and as nonchalantly as she could -- though her heart was beating quickly -- she walked to the wall opposite the foot of the bed. Hidden from view, she stepped slowly and deliberately to the wall where the window was sited. Again she felt a surge of delight at Tom's rapt expression as she approached, then stepped around him.
She paused briefly as the raging debate in her head neared its conclusion. Half of her hoped that nobody would be watching her, but the other half of her yearned for someone to be doing so. Her agonising decision was soon resolved, however. She was an anonymous guest in a hotel room fifty-odd miles from her home town...
She stepped, naked, to the window.
Still apprehensive, she watched the cars passing below. She felt a twinge of naughty delight at their oblivion to her naked torso as she looked out through the glass a few floors above street level. A few passers-by walked along the pavement in ones or twos. Despite her silently willing them to, none looked up.
She looked up slowly and, without moving her head much so that she appeared casual, she ran her eyes across the windows of the apartments. Her stomach fluttered with in her as her cursory glances noted the darkened windows, and those illuminated from behind their curtains.
Her heart skipped a beat
Though subtle, there was no mistaking the movement of one pair of curtains. They were twitching discreetly, though she could see no face. She stifled a gasp and looked sideways to Tom, gesturing him to recommence filming her at the window, but to keep himself out of sight.
Her imagination raced as she conjured up images of the person behind the curtain. A shocked housewife? A student who had casually broken off his studies and stumbled across an unprecedented and alluring sight? A man of similar age to her, watching secretly as his wife or partner watched television in the adjoining room, unaware of what had caught his attention? A white-haired old man, the days of his physical arousal long past, enjoying the view and wishing he could bring himself off to the sight of her...
As such thoughts ran through her mind, accompanied by the whirring of the camera and Tom's movements as he recorded her, she raised one hand to her throat and pretended to be scratching her skin.
Slowly her hand inched down between her modest breasts and circled each in turn. She moved her fingertips in decreasing circles around her nipple.
Still keeping her head fairly still, she swept her eyes over the illuminated windows. Then she saw what she half longed-for, and half-dreaded. For a few seconds she saw a man's rounded face, and receding and slightly greying hair. He was of average height and build, but his shirt-clad left arm was moving up and down. She knew he was playing with himself, even though the window only came to his waist. She felt suddenly cold with shock -- and with excitement.
To her astonishment, though, he did not close the curtains in embarrassment. He turned his back, and she saw step out of sight. She saw his stocky thighs, his boxers, and thought she saw fleetingly a bulge in his boxers, though perhaps that was just an assumption.
The light in his room went out.
She continued to look, with a mixture of relief and disappointment. But only for a moment.
The curtains in his window shook a few times. A thrill of pleasure ran through her. This stranger was still there, still watching her. More to the point, though, it was as though he was signalling his unseen presence to her, and beckoning her to continue. Her eyes strained in the darkness, but she could not make him out.
Tom's video camera zoomed in on her nipple-playing, but she was only dimly aware of it now, other than the ambience of its gentle, hypnotic sound. She was now more conscious of her Hidden Watcher.
She played with her breasts, kneading and scooping each in turn gently but rhythmically. She closed her eyes for a few moments, trying to picture her unseen voyeur, the grimacing of his face as he savoured the sight of her. She blushed and closed her eyes as she wondered whether he was hissing obscenities, or even, if he were alone, uttering them aloud, urging her, though she could not hear him, to continue, calling her lewd names, mouthing suggestions as to what to do next...
She opened her eyes and peered hard at his unlit window, trying to penetrate the gloom, but was unable to. She continued to tease her nipples, rubbing them with her fingertip, pressing them flat and letting them rise again. Tom moved in slightly closer then stepped further back to commit the wider scene of her to the tape -- her naked body in profile, and the darkness outside.
She was intrigued as well as highly aroused by her Hidden Watcher. She was fairly sure that he was still there, but wanted to be certain. She raised her the back of her hand to her mouth and, leaning forward, blew a kiss towards the darkened window. Her pulse was racing.
