A Night at the Movies

Kasey swung her lithe legs out from the open car door and into the night. For the mall movie theater, the sunflower print sundress was a little overdressed but she didn't care. It was date night and it'd been a long time since her and Sam had been able to find a sitter for the kids and enjoy a night for themselves. Now more than ever in her mundane suburban life was it time to throw caution to the wind. What work hadn't stolen from her in the way of time as a full-time accounts manager had taken from her as a part-time mother in style and spontaneity. She missed the rush of being caressed during long car rides and even Sam sneakily groping her derriere when they were out shopping. The thoughtful or sometimes even unplanned meeting of their two bodies in the most unexpected of places could make her forget for a moment there was anyone else in the world but the two of them.

As if sensing her thought the image of her bare legs beneath her dress conjured the wind mischievously peeled the linen up past her knees to reveal the barely sunkissed flesh of her thighs. Without thinking she padded her dress back down and less than gingerly standing straight to look around her. It was night and in the black parking lot the overhead illumination was a spotlight on her for anyone nearby to take in her figure in the frilly dress. She had a few moments to take in the distance between her and fortress-sized wall of the movie theater before Sam made his way around the car and back to her.

Men loitered beneath the wall's looming shadow, many their faces cloaked in the ghostly halo of whatever they were smoking. Their bodies huddled beside the exit doors, it gave the impression most if not all were escorted out for not obeying the No Smoking policy in the theaters. Three congregating on the side of the closest to the entrance were passing back and forth what appeared to be cellphone and chuckling about whatever was on its screen. The tallest one who's close-cropped hair and complexion were a deeper gloom than the shadow he stood beneath thumbed something on the liquid crystal screen and smiled. She thought he mouthed the words "...and this one" before smiling to himself.

Sam's arm slipping around her back broke Kasey's attention on the three men if only for a moment.

"Alright honey?" Sam's hand hugged her to him and kissed her cheek.

"Fine. Just.." more than the others, she found herself staring at the man and his two friends. In the halo of light and dark the parking lot formed it was as though someone had swiped over the man with a highlighter pen to emboss his figure standing in the distance, "let's just get inside. We're missing the movie."

Smiling, Sam shook off any strange vibe she'd left him with and they walked together across the lot and over the sidewalk passing the corner of the wall. For a brief moment, Sam on the left and the three men loitering to her right, Kasey found her head turning to look back at them again. Why the impulse came upon her she didn't know. She felt foreboding looking at them and yet, had to see them again a little closer.

Not going unnoticed, the darker of the three men turned to look back at her, his gaze taking a slight detour to take in how her body filled out her sundress before finally meeting her eyes. Though a fleeting moment she gathered two vivid impressions from the man. One, the way the breeze toying with the hem of her skirt turned up the end of his full lips in a smirk, and two, the way his bright green eyes accented his dark face when their eyes met.

Turning away to face the marquette and ticket booth they still hung iridescent in the gloom hauntingly in her thoughts. There was an intensity to the man's glare that made her think of the chemicals used in fireworks to make the flames burn in strange alien hues they never were meant to.

"Two for Nightwatcher" Sam said. After much deliberation they'd decided on the suspense film who's trailer Kasey thought looked spooky from the last time they went out to the movies. Something to do with a happy couple moving into a new home, not realizing there was already someone living inside it.

Grabbing the tickets, Sam smiled to himself, his thoughts taking him an hour into the future, feeling Kasey grip his shirt sleeve, jump in her seat and pull him ever closer with fright. In the same way she'd fallen for the sensitive man but was drawn to his more dominant side he fell for the strong confident woman but found Kasey her sexiest when that strength and certitude was brushed aside for the defenseless girl in need of rescue. Seeing the strong woman frightened into a frail girl was the closest he'd found to a kink and one on occasion she was all too happy to indulge him in to see the nice guy metamorphose into the protective daddy.

Entering the lobby Sam paused and tucking the tickets into his pocket escorted her to the snack bar. A fresh and acne pocked faced kid in red hair smiled dopily back at them from behind the glass concession stand.

"A popcorn and two cokes, anything else honey?" Sam smiled, fingering his wallet in his back pocket.

"Oh, no.. no.. " Kasey smiled. She didn't quite know where her mind was at the moment. She was following the trip from the car past the ticket booth into the lobby like she dropped her keys on the way. As they took their drinks and box of popcorn and stepped away from the concessions stand and toward their theater she heard the doors into the lobby behind her swing open and the for a moment her heart picked up the pace. She thought of the man watching her from the parking lot. There was in her memories now a sneering look as she walked past him. A look that told her how much he liked what he saw.

Kasey descended into the black of the theater. She felt like she was resubmerging herself back into the black night of the outside. Was he waiting for her in there? Or was that him approaching them from behind?

She didn't know whether to grab her husband's hand and race away before that man saw her and stop herself before she walked inside and saw him staring back at her from the darkness. As the doors swung shut behind them and the gloom scaled the walls, floor and ceiling of the corridor she had the briefest moment to look back over her shoulder as the doors were still flung wide enough for a look. Three men stood at the far end of the lobby, one in particularly eerily familiar. She had barely a moment to take a snapshot of the distant figure but he was instantly recognizable and the sudden shift in his posture telegraphed she was just as familiar to him.

He'd seen her.

It took a moment for them to find their seat, and Kasey to convince them to sit toward the back. The vantage point would mean if those men followed her in she would see them before they would her and she could tell Sam and they could leave. Settling into those seats though the thought wasn't any more reassuring to her. She'd put Sam between her and the aisle and snuggled into his shoulder. She felt bad for essentially putting him between her and them. Reducing him to a human shield of sorts. She couldn't decide whether the man watching from the parking lot was particularly tall but his frame did strike her as more foreboding than her husband's. Right now though all she wanted to do was disappear into the cushy wool of Sam's jacket's sleeve.

Outside her thoughts in the blackness of the theater the screen had already furrowed through the coming attractions and the white title card cast a light into the room. While Sam was smiling to himself, gleeful that she had already descended into her skittish girl mode she was scanning the distance between them and the screen, looking for any human shape she didn't recognize from when they came in. She saw no one yet, no new bodies skittering past the bright light and up the stairs connecting the seats to the door. The movie was starting and they as alone as she needed to be to feel somewhat safe again.

On the screen the happy newlyweds were already driving to their new home. They looked so fresh and full of optimism and completely unaware of what was going to happen to them.

She found herself looking up at Sam from his shoulder, his features sedated into a similarly sublime look of obliviousness. In her head she was trying to distract herself from the sense of sameness. She remembered watching the trailer the first time in the theater and feeling a sort of pervasive kinship for the onscreen couple. They reminded her of her and Sam before the kids. The sort of doey eyed naivety. A bright eyed romanticism to the world before all the trivialities of what her older sister recalled to her as "adulting" she knew all too well now.

In the trailer there was a sense of the husband as the brave confident protector of the wife appealed to her in a vicariously romantic way. As the actress entered the house beside the man the lingering shot of her in silhouette as their voyeur looked on replaced that with a sense of exploitation and the sense they did not cast this woman for her talent as a thespian. As she turned her body toward the light of the kitchen and her husband asked the realtor about the plumbing her jade eyed admirer studied how well the wife's sweater hugged her bosomy figure.

It was hard for her not staring back at the eye on the screen and not see the eyes of the man studying her from the shadows. In her memory they were the same green azure as his avatar now on the screen. She stared at the young woman smiling and admiring the room around her unaware as their host decided more than ever he was not leaving this house.

"We'll take it" the husband said to the realty moments later as his wife jumped up into his arms in celebration, the kicking of her feet in her skirt revealing delicately formed calves and the beginnings of thighs and reaffirming all at once the true owner of this house would not be going anywhere.

Kasey swallowed. Heat she tried to push down like she'd gulped a hot coal rose up to her face. She watched the happy couple move into their new home, go through the machinations of moving the things they packed away and knew where this was going. Beside her she could feel the brimming anticipation from Sam. He was practically buzzing with energy as she already was clutching at the linen of his jacket, being reduced before his eyes to the frightened girl he couldn't wait to take home to fuck. The needful and desperate lover who turned to a frightened girl who would do anything to thank and please her brave protector.

She wished he could see past the harmless facade he'd arrange from their formative years. This wasn't the simple and inconsequential thrill he'd been chasing at all.

She tried her best to keep her eye on the screen and step out of her own life for a moment. To cleave away her own anxiety and replace it with the vicarious life of the main characters but as the first day of the couple winded down into night they caught their first glimpses of their faceless watcher's eye again for the first time since the opening. And she knew why.

The happy couple was getting ready for bed. Or rather, the wife was.

"Honey, let me finish this up, then I'll join you" the good looking if a bit unremarkable husband half-smiled to his wife from behind the light of his laptop's screen. Beside him she hugged a yellow terry robe tightly around her curvy figure before stalking off to the upstairs to turn on the shower.

In her heart Kasey hoped something would stop her but she knew this wasn't that kind of movie. There wouldn't be a phone call at the last minute, her husband wouldn't close the laptop and surprise her and she wouldn't rethink things and decide to wait on her husband and shower together.

Her back to the camera the girl peeled the fluffy lapels of her robe down her shoulders, exposing her back, as she stretched out the moment into an incredulous ceremony the camera's eye switched from the close medium shot to a wide shot peering back at her from the closet of the bedroom where her audience's eye narrowed and breath turned labored with desire. The robe suddenly puddling at her feet she watched as the girl descended into the steam of the shower, the fog carefully cloaking her curves as two feet emerged from behind the opening closet door. As she dressed her body in foam and struck poses for the camera in the mist of the shower's steam a dark silhouette appeared on the glass shower door.

Through the haze of the shampoo running between her fingers and over her face she glanced at the glass door and the figure standing sentinel at it, smiling to herself reassured it was her husband admiring the view.

"Enjoying the view now, are you?" she smirked as the shots dollied between her spectator doing just that and the husband still at his computer. The wife coyly struck sexy poses as Kasey gripped her arm rest with one hand and Sam's sleeve with the other.

Why did she get the feeling from how this movie was going she was gonna fuck this guy?

Despite the lingering eye of the camera on her every tawdry boast of the actress' curvy figure the camera hung just high enough and steam just thick enough to conceal her breasts. Still, looking up toward Sam she felt the prick of jealousy along with her uneasiness at seeing his enjoyment. He probably wanted to see this bitch topless. And he was completely detached from her obvious disquiet.

He was riveted by the sight on the screen be it the suspense that the husband stumble upon his wife's voyeur that captivated him or the luscious body of the actress on screen. Either way she felt her bitterness grow into spite at the scene unfolding both on screen and in the theater between them. Usually these moments offered a liberating even out of body thrill but now she was wondering if he'd find such a scene as titillating if it were her up the screen getting leered at by some other man.

That man with the green eyes stood watching the wife in the shower and in a way watching Kasey squirm in her seat.

She wondered whether the man in the shadows had seen her go into this theater. Was he waiting for her to come out alone? Would he be waiting for her? What would he do if he saw her? Her skin and senses bristled as though caressed by a cold finger. She was afraid although for all the wrong reasons.

As the wife turned down the shower and her voyeur stealthily slunk back into the shadows the husband made his way up the stairs to greet her through the dissipating fog. It was one of those serendipitous moments that only occurred in movies to keep the plot going. Had the husband arrived a moment earlier or voyeur left a second later the wife and husband would both know they were being watched. Instead they both hugged and held each other, her still awash in pride that she'd caught him ogling her and the husband enticed to see his lithesome wife emerge nakedly from the steam. Before the thought of what come next could form in her thoughts their two bodies entangling over smooth saxophone music was interrupted by the sound of a straw sucking at the air stole her mind from the scene unfolding in celluloid.

"I'll be right back," Sam reassured her, kissing her temple as the weight shifted off the seat behind her and a moment later she was alone, stuck staring at his enormous suddenly empty save for some ice.

The time it took to register, adrift in the crucible of her inner turmoil he was already gone. Out the theater. Down the corridor. Probably back in the lobby looking for the mens room.

She wanted to follow him. Catch him in the lobby. She was afraid to move now. Afraid that man and his friends were waiting for her in the lobby. Worried her husband couldn't stop them. Worried he wouldn't get to her in time. On the screen the married couple were making love and the man was watching from the closet.

The whole affair felt like some carefully arranged kink. Like they knew he was there. As though any second she'd look back over her shoulder at their watcher and wink mischievously. Did she know? Did she really want this to happen? Did she really think it was her husband watching her in the shower? Even in stature they were nothing alike. Despite his handsome profile her husband was a fairly meek man in silhouette. Her admirer was broad shouldered and imposing. Surely she noticed the difference. She sensed it. The faint intuition might of even enticed her at the time. On screen their bodies moved in a mesmeric rhythm, her straddling her husband, her body rising and falling as though in a choreographed harmony. His figure had all but vanished beneath her. This scene was not about the two of them together. It was her allowing the man watching to roleplay her lover. And Kasey knew she was doing this on purpose.

For a brief moment in the lingering medium shot of her body undulating with her husband their motion slowed and the all seeing eye blinked and narrowed with want. They were not quite a half hour into the film and already the couple were playing into his fantasies. And if her husband was as conveniently absent as the premise required she almost hoped she would sleep with the other man. Perhaps she would enjoy it more than sex with her passive inattentive hubby.

She kinda hoped the girl would get tricked. Maybe she could look back on it and realize she enjoyed taking another lover.

The hypnotic image on the screen unravelling her mind she almost didn't notice the shift of weight on the seat beside her again. She could feel herself slipping under the same provocative spell Sam had earlier fallen under. Moonlight strained through the bedroom blinds casting a sensual spotlight on the woman's body as she sat up and pointedly straddled her husband, initiating sex more of the fucking variety than making love. The kind of sex her and Sam used to christen their first apartment together, the beach where they spent their honeymoon, the backseat of their car in the parking lot of their old high school. More than the other milestones Kasey missed the mugginess of the air in the tight confines of their Chevy Suburban. Their first time getting pregnant her hormones went into overdrive and gave their lovelife a second wind. Any opportunity planted the idea and every new idea was a fresh urge in her eager body.

Gripping the hem of her light skirt in her fists she watched wondering how she would look fucking in this perfectly cinematic lighting. There was something more to the charm of fucking in their car in the parking lot than the desire to revisit her teenage bucket list but a nagging curiousity of how it would feel to be caught in the act. Naked. Fucking. The flirty devil on her shoulder asked the then twenty-five year old wife how it'd feel to chance such a thing. Her body answered then and again now as an excitingly unexpected heat blossomed not far from where her hands held her skirt. She wondered if her and Sam would ever film their making love. If they did and she misplaced the tape the thought of the indecent little thrill of fear that would charge her body enticed her now.

The thought that any moment watching would not be enough to fulfill the voyeur's fantasy turned the cold press of fear into something warmth and dormant in the places where her mind pressed ahead into their bedroom after the movie. It wasn't the sound of a voice or even the caress of the hand on her thigh that severed her from the thought but the smell of musky cologne that was not Sam's.

The screen cut to the green eye watching the two lovers and suddenly it wasn't looking inwardly into the action on the bed but outwardly at Kasey as she felt a hand on her thigh palm her just above her knee.

His hand felt enormous and beneath its touch she couldn't force herself to swallow, speak or even breath. She could barely budge her gaze and once she did looked down to see the man's brown hand holding her leg like it belonged to him. Worst still, seeing it the image like an epiphany to her nervous system awoke the more astute of sensations. She felt the heat of that hand. The eagerness of its press. The way incredulously heat seemed to cocoon the places his fingers stroked as they moved down inside her thighs. That heat tightened something straining inside her, like a caged animal thrown into a frenzy.