Watched, Twenty Stories Up

He is already in the chair when she comes out of the bathroom. She had asked him to sit there, had said it in the afternoon with her eyes on the kitchen counter rather than his face, and now the asking is done and he is simply present — jacket off, forearms on his knees, watching her with the particular stillness of someone who has been told to wait and has decided to be good at it.

The room is dark except for the city. Forty stories down, King Street holds its usual theatre, the light from a thousand lit windows pressing up through the glass behind him so that he sits half in silhouette, half in that particular amber-grey that Toronto casts on winter nights. She cannot fully read his expression. She had not planned that detail, but she is glad of it now.

The glass dildo is on the white duvet where she set it before she went to shower. She had placed it deliberately, centered, the way you'd set a prop before the curtain rises. It catches the city light along its length — a cold, clear object that has been waiting as patiently as he has.

She stands at the foot of the bed and does not move immediately. The silk robe is light against her shoulders, barely there, and she is aware of the exact temperature difference between where it touches her and where it doesn't — the small gap at her sternum, the air on her collarbones, the hem resting against the top of her thighs. She has been composing this moment all week. The sentences she rehearsed are gone now. What remains is the fact of him watching.

Her hands find the sash at her waist. She does not untie it yet.

The wanting has a specific texture tonight — not urgency, but precision. She is aware of the weight of the robe across her shoulders, the way it will fall when she lets it. She is aware of the glass object on the bed, its density, the particular cold it will hold until it doesn't. She is aware of him.

She breathes in. The exhale comes out longer than she intends, unfolding into the silence before she has decided to release it.

She reaches for the sash.

The silk gives with almost no resistance, the robe parting at her waist, and she lets it open without shrugging it off — a sentence begun, not finished. She sits at the edge of the bed, the white duvet cool under the back of her thighs, and she reaches for the glass.

It is cold. She had known it would be. The specific cold of it against her palm is still a small surprise — solid, heavier than it looks, the surface perfectly smooth. She holds it and looks at him across the room.

He has not moved.

She holds the glass and her knees are still together and the robe is still on her shoulders and the city is still pressing its light through the window behind him, and she understands that she is about to give him something she has never given anyone — not the act, but the composure required to perform it. The willingness to be watched doing the thing she has only ever done in the dark, alone, where no one could see her face.

Her right knee shifts, just slightly, the silk hem sliding against the back of her leg.

Across the room, he doesn't move. He is still exactly where she put him.