I Let Him Watch

Everyone who knows me would tell you I'm the shy one. I blush when waiters talk to me. I change in bathroom stalls at the gym. So when my boyfriend drove us up to the overlook that night, parked where the whole city glittered below us, and told me what he wanted, my face went so hot I thought it might actually catch fire.

He wanted to watch me. Just watch. No touching me, no helping, just his eyes on me while I did it to myself, right there in the passenger seat with the windows down and the summer air coming in.

I said I couldn't. I said it three times, my voice getting smaller each time, while my hands twisted in the skirt of my sundress. He just leaned back in his seat, calm as anything, and said he'd wait. And the terrible, wonderful truth was that I was already wet. The idea of it had soaked through my panties before I'd even finished saying no.

The overlook wasn't empty. That's the part that made my stomach flip. Every few minutes another car would crawl up the winding road, headlights sweeping across our windshield, and I'd freeze like a rabbit. Nobody stopped. Nobody looked, as far as I knew. But they could have. Anyone glancing over would have seen a girl in a passenger seat with her dress rucked up, and that possibility sat in my chest like a live wire.

He reached over and tugged my dress strap down off my shoulder. I let him. Then the other one. My dress sagged down to my waist and the night air touched my bare breasts and my nipples went tight instantly. I crossed my arms over myself out of pure instinct, and he gently took my wrists and moved my hands to my own lap. I could have pulled away. I didn't.

I started slow, my fingertips barely brushing over my panties, my eyes everywhere at once, on him, on the road, on the rearview mirror. He watched me like I was the only thing in the world, and that look on his face, hungry and patient at the same time, made me braver than I've ever been. I slipped my fingers under the elastic and touched myself skin to skin for the first time that night, and a sound came out of me I didn't recognize.

A car came up the hill. I saw the headlights bend around the curve and I gasped and tried to yank my dress back up, but he caught my hand, held it still, and the car rolled right past us, close enough that I could hear its tires on the gravel. My heart was slamming so hard I was sure the driver could hear it. My fingers never stopped moving. If anything, they moved faster.

After that, something in me just broke open. I stopped watching the road. I stopped caring. I pushed my panties aside and gave him everything, my knees falling open against the dashboard, my dress bunched around my waist, my head tipped back against the headrest. I was so loud, little pleading whimpers spilling out of me with every circle of my fingers, and he just watched, his breathing ragged, his hands gripping his own thighs like he was holding himself back from grabbing me.

I came with a car parked two spaces down. I don't know when it arrived. I only know that as the pleasure ripped through me, as my hips bucked up off the seat and I cried out into the open window, I saw headlights flick on over there, and the thought that someone might have heard me, might have been watching too, sent a second wave crashing right through the first.

When I finally came back to myself, I was shaking all over, my dress still around my waist, my cheeks burning. He pulled me into his lap right there, dress and all, and took me the way he'd clearly been dying to, deep and hard with the windows still down and the city lights spread out below us like they were watching too.

On the drive home, I sat in my wrinkled dress with my hand in his, still trembling, still glowing. He kept glancing over at me like he couldn't quite believe what we'd just done, and honestly, neither could I. The shy girl who changes in bathroom stalls had just put on a show with the windows down. But my body already knew the truth my brain was still catching up to: I had never felt so wanted, so seen, so completely alive as I did with his eyes on me and the whole warm night holding its breath around us.

I used to think I was the shy one. Now I catch myself suggesting the overlook every time we drive past the turnoff, and I sit in that passenger seat with my skirt riding high, wondering how many headlights have slowed down just a little on their way past us.

I think I like being watched. I think I might need it.