Voyeur

He likes to watch.
He sits across the room, his eyes on me, always on me, like hands, like heat.
One time it was the afterparty at the video shoot. He told them I was a sex slave, an object for their use, a fucktoy. I don’t know if he actually meant it…if he would have allowed any of them that wanted to use me to do so, to fuck me…but he let them hurt me.  And watched while they did it. Every time I looked up I saw his eyes on me, on their hands where they pinned me in place, on their fingers pinching me, on their laughing mouths as they teased me and taunted me and on mine as I whimpered, and moaned, and panted. As I kissed his friend and later, as I bit my lip to keep myself from giving in when one of them said, “Just tell me you want me to stop and I will.”  Because I am too goddamned stubborn to give in, to say the words. And I saw him laugh at me when I finally pleaded with him to make her stop (never actually saying the words, just a generic, “W, please? Please?” that I knew he would recognize for the plea that it was.)  And he did.  He knew what I was saying, what I was asking for.
He ignored it.  And just kept watching.
Recently it was in a more public venue. A club with a fetish night. An old friend showed up and I was conveniently tied to a beam overhead, unable to get away. I’m not even sure if a word was exchanged between them, or how, precisely, I ended up being the “whipping girl” for my friend, but next thing I knew, he was using all manner of implements on me.
And W watched from across the playspace. I saw the gleam in his eyes when mine met his, I saw the quirk to his mouth and felt his heat and excitement at having me used this way, publicly, drawing a crowd.
There are still other times when he is watching me once removed, through the lens of his camera, and once, a video camera. Impersonal, detached, a mechanical eye catching every move so that when I turn to look for him, seek reassurance from him, instead I am met with the cold stare of his camera, an insect under a microscope, no connection between us but that he is still, always, watching.
Sometimes I catch him watching me as he manipulates my flesh, as he twists or pinches or pulls at me; as he hurts me. He watches my face then. Watching for pain or pleasure or need or desire? Watching to catch that moment when pain turns to pleasure…and then the next when it turns back to pain again?  I am not sure what he sees in my face then, what my expression reveals.  I am only in the moment, as unable to read his expressions as I am sure he is able to read mine. Sometimes, in these moments, I try to catch his eye, to escape from being in my moment, in the middle of this space he has put me. I seek out his gaze to take me somewhere else, maybe into him.  Or to plead with him, with my eyes, to deliver me from whatever it is he is doing.  I wonder then what he thinks, as he ignores that plea, as he continues to watch me, spinning on the thread of pain on which he has placed me.
Sometimes it is as he pulls my pleasure from me, as he drags the orgasm out of me, reaches into me and pulls it from me, rips my body open with it, that I open my eyes to find his eyes on me.  I always look away, unable to face him seeing me in that moment of raw, piercing need, when I am clawing and begging for release like an animal and when I have finally reached that place where I don’t care who or what is watching, when I am finally, utterly and completely beyond myself.
And then there is the moment when I return to myself, when I am laying in his arms, spent, in that other place that I go to when he does the things he does to me, and suddenly I return to find him watching me.  Still.  Always, always watching.