Page 44 of Watch Me

The first sense I have is of spaciousness. The back room must be twice as big as the main room. From where I’m standing, I can’t even see the back wall. The room seems to go on forever. To my left is a large bar, backlit in purple and pink, where a man with a towel wrapped around his waist talks to two women in lingerie. White, vinyl-covered beds and couches are arranged in small groups around the open center space and separated by drapes of sheer fabric hung with fairy lights. Fake palm trees scattered throughout give the impression of a chic, bohemian encampment. A naked woman with wet hair walks past me, leaving a waft of chlorine in her wake.

I head to the bar first to fortify myself, aware of the man’s appraising glance as I approach, and the way the two women turn to follow his gaze and eye me up and down.

“Shot of vodka,” I say to the bartender. I usually don’t drink much, but I’m suddenly feeling very nervous. There aren’t as many people in here as I expected and I’m grateful for the mask, even as I notice that no one else in here is hiding their face.

“First time?” says the man to me, as I lift the shot to my mouth and down it.

“No,” I answer quickly. “I work here.” I pull my credit card from my bra and hand it to the bartender, asking to start a tab, then move quickly away from the man with the too-eager eyes and his less eager companions.

I meander into the center of the room, walking past empty beds until I hear the unmistakable sound of moaning. To my right, a couple is locked in a missionary embrace, the woman curvy and dark, breathing heavily as the skinnier, paler man thrusts into her. I stumble to a halt, shocked and pruriently interested, but when the man lifts his eyes to me with a slow smile, I become embarrassed and resume walking, grateful that my face is hidden.

In the back right-hand corner of the room, I follow the scent of chlorine through an arched doorway and discover a hot tub with four naked people in it, all smiles, and then, further down, a tiled hallway leading to an open shower room, like in a high school gym. One shower is running, and there’s Andre underneath it, leaning back against the wall. The shower billows steamy water over the back of a man kneeling in front of him, taking his cock in his mouth while Andre rolls his eyes up towards the ceiling in pleasure.

I shouldn’t look, it feels like a violation… but I can’t look away. Hidden in the shadow of the hallway where I’m standing, I don’t think Andre can see me—he’s not looking, anyway—and I’m frozen at the sight of his lean, muscular torso, the way his hand cups the head of the man sucking him off, driving him down harder and faster as Andre squeezes his eyes shut and huffs through an open mouth. I’m getting wet watching my friend get off, and when he grits out, “Oh, fuck,” and lets out a choked breath, my insides contract. His companion moans and sucks Andre down slowly, right to the base of his cock, and then pulls back with a smile, licking his lips. I retreat back into the hallway, careful to walk on the balls of my feet so my heels don’t tap, past the hot tubbers again, and back out into the main space.

Already there are more people circulating around the room, many of them in masks and fetish wear now, and I feel less conspicuous in my full hood. I trace my steps back to the front of the room, noting how many more naked bodies are sprawled on the beds, moving and kissing and stroking, and by the time I get to the bar, I’m feeling quite hot. It’s exactly what I thought, just what David said it was, and my blood is pumping with a mixture of excitement and shame.

“Shot of vodka,” I say to the bartender again, and then down it. I lean back against the bar, feeling the vodka burn off in my belly and turn into a loose heat that travels outwards to my fingertips and toes, and survey the room with more courage.

In front of me, three women in birdlike masks kiss and fondle each other’s breasts, while three men sit across from them and watch, one of them with his hand on the cock of the man beside him—jerking him off while he watches his wife making out with his friends’ wives, or so I suppose. On the other side of the bar, near the entrance, an old man is inviting a tall, stunning blonde to stretch out on a massage table. She does, and he squirts oil into his hands from a bottle and then rubs his fleshy fingers together with glee.

When I first notice the man in the bull mask, I wonder if he’s here alone, like me. He’s sitting at the bar, long legs kicked out in front of him, his head turned to the side. The molded rubber mask covers almost all of his face except a strong, dark chin with a shadow of stubble. He’s dressed in fitted leather pants and boots with no shirt on. I notice the round boulders of his shoulders and the impossibly flat plane of his stomach with a painful longing. It reminds me of Nick. Beautiful bodies always remind me of Nick.

I push those sad thoughts away as soon as they rise up. Tonight isn’t about moping over the past. Tonight is about moving on from it. And in this den of iniquity, there’s no room for the past anyway. This place is all about the now.

I’m pleased when the bull’s head swivels in my direction and seems to stare. It’s hard to know for sure if he’s looking at me as his mask, like mine, conceals his eyes. But the rush of energy and heat I feel tells me he is. I stare back, emboldened by vodka, and hope he’ll approach. But he turns his head away again after a moment and looks towards the massage table, where the old man has begun massaging the blonde girl’s naked body. It occurs to me that the bull is probably waiting for somebody—that, most likely, I’m the only person here alone. Suddenly feeling shy, I push off the bar and head up the side of the room to continue exploring.

An array of BDSM contraptions line the north wall: a giant wooden X, stocks, benches with straps, and whips and chains hanging on hooks. To my right are more beds and couches, almost all full of people now. There’s more moaning and more thrusting... I’m not sure where to look or even whether I should look at all. It seems like on every bed there are backs rounding, feet lifting, and mouths gasping.

At the back of the room, a small crowd is gathering, and I walk over to see what they’re looking at. There are two small rooms against the back wall with big windows at the front.

The first room looks like a doctor’s office, replete with an examination bed and what looks like medically-related props on a counter—beakers, stethoscopes, and speculums. Beside the bed, a woman in a plastic suit and holding a riding crop has her high-heeled foot planted on the back of a naked man lying on the floor. I slowly walk past, looking over the heads of the onlookers as she digs her heel in.

The next room has a bigger crowd in front of it, too many people for me to see over their heads, but this room has windows on two sides. When I round the corner, where there is only one couple watching, I have a clear view into the room.

What I see there makes me audibly gasp.

The room is a copy of the one beside it, but in this one, a woman is on all fours atop the examination bed, her vinyl dress hiked up to her waist so that her pussy is displayed to the front window. And standing beside her and running his hand over her bare ass… is David.

I take a step back, skirting the light that spills out from the window for fear that David might see me. Even knowing my face is hidden, seeing him like this, in flagrante delicto, is shocking enough to spike my anxiety.

While at the same time heating my blood.

He’s essentially naked, dressed in nothing from the waist down except a leather codpiece, and his face is only partially obscured in a mask that covers his forehead, cheekbones and hair. In fact, his mask is what inspired my own costume. When he showed it to me last week, he unknowingly gave me the idea of how I could sneak into the club. Unlike mine, his mask barely disguises him, but David isn’t hiding from anyone. He’s the king of the castle tonight, proudly playing among his loyal subjects, reveling in his element.

I remember vividly the dinner I had with David and Nick all those months ago. Mostly, it’s Nick I remember—the intensity that burned in his dark eyes as he watched me, the shocking moment I broke the rules and put my mouth on him. But with a sudden jolt, I remember now how David’s hands felt on my body, his long cock that tapers at the end, and the feel of it on my tongue.

In all the months we’ve been living together, I’ve never exactly thought of him in that way, although I’m not blind to his charms. He’s attractive and fun… and a little too confident, as I like to remind him. But we’ve fallen into this dynamic that’s so much like father and child that what I’m feeling right now seems decidedly twisted.

The air goes out of me as I watch his long fingers trail down the woman’s bare backside and between her legs. He strokes her pussy softly with one finger while he spanks her with his other hand. Her face, which I can see in profile, contorts, her lips moving with prayers I can’t hear, and her pleading expression makes my breath come faster as I imagine what it must be like to be her. To be bent over like that, on display for all of these people, while David’s fingers edge her closer to orgasm.

After a little while, the couple beside me moves away, and for a moment, I’m alone, standing in the dark, free to watch David unseen as he strokes and rubs the woman on the bed. My heightened yearning to feel what she feels is ratcheting up in time with her arousal, so much so that when I suddenly feel a hot breath on my neck it gives me shivers all over my body.

“It’s hot how she shows herself to us, isn’t it?” asks a low, deep voice. I turn my chin and look over my shoulder to see the thick, muscular arm of someone behind me and the rubber horn of a bull mask tilted down towards my ear.

It’s him.

The bull.

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