Those Hungry Eyes

Once I came around the corner I could see the party, could feel the waves of the music and the lights pulsing out at me. It was a less than a minute walk from the edges of the building to the edge of the party itself, and yet there was such a palpable difference in the air between here and there.

Because the party didn’t stretch beyond its edges. Once the dance floor ended the light barely seemed to travel beyond it, a strict demarcation between one environment and the other.

But people were the common factor, they moved between one and the other and they mingled in the midst of the light and then settled into the darkness.

I could feel them clinging to the walls of the building like they were gargoyles but they weren’t. They were people too drunk or too high or too skeeved out by the party to want to stay in the middle of it. Instead they found quiet little places off the path where they could sit and chat or just watch, the latter being the ones that were drawing my attention right now.

Because from the moment I came around the corner it was clear that it was me that they were watching. Their eyes glimmering like two shining orbs in the darkness, flickering as they blinked while they followed my steps. Their heads turning slowly to watch me, making me feel like a thousand monsters in the darkness had their designs on me.

I didn’t dare look right or left. I didn’t want them to know that I knew. I kept my eyes on the party, concentrating on taking one step after the other and trying to ignore the little doubt in my mind that was telling me if I’d chosen the other dress that I wouldn’t be drawing all this attention.

The black dress was head turning, no doubt about that. With the short hem and the low cut front and the way it hugged the curves of my body I’d be turning heads, hungry eyes on me that wanted to undress me and find out what lay beneath.

But this one by contrast was really no better. So much worse in fact.

The long hem of it flowing out behind me and feeling like a train on a wedding dress even though it barely went beneath my knees. The way that it flung off of me, draped over my body so light that it almost emphasized it and left more questions than the other would have.

The eyes were still hungry but they had reason to question now. They had more space to wonder at me, to want to find me beneath it all. I could feel their gaze and almost sense their fingers twitching like claws ready to rend me to shreds all in the pursuit of consumption that I didn’t want to give in to.

Right?

I didn’t want to let them have me. The hot ball of need in my belly was just all my imagination just like those eyes were. The way I stepped and walked, shoulders back and head held high, wasn’t to press at the fabric and emphasize my curves and make them want me all the more.

The time I’d spent alone in my room had been enough to still my appetites, and coming here tonight wasn’t a mistake.

I could tell myself that, all of it, but whether I believed it was another story entirely.

Of course that was all crazy and I knew it. I was searching for some kind of justification or answer when in fact none would do.

After all I’d been wearing multiple layers when I first drew attention. Granted I was soaking wet at the time and they were clinging to me, but still I couldn’t ignore the fact that I was the one drawing the attention in this moment as I had in that one. That myself, that Emily, was the common factor.

She turned heads. She drew attention. She was the type of woman that people wanted.

It was what they wanted from her that scared me so. The very thought of it lancing deep into my brain and making me shudder with a feeling that I was having trouble understanding. Some kind of hot crawling heat beneath my skin, mimicking the touch they wanted to play on me.

The touch. The taste. The temptation. The intimate moments between man and woman and woman and woman and man and man and all of it focused on me. The centering of my body, of the body that I’m in, laid in repose and then stretched to my limits as they parted my thighs and…

It was all so much. The desires they had, the blatant need.

I could ignore that nearly inevitable outcome as much as I wanted but the basis for it was harder to deny. Fact was, I was the type of woman that people wanted and sooner or later I’d have to come to terms with and accept that. Ignoring it at this point would only lead to peril.

I stopped a few feet from the edge of the party, the sound so loud here that it made it difficult to stand. The blasts of bass were washing over me in waves, my eyes so wide open at the sight of the mass of people in front of me that I know I must be lending the appearance of a deer caught in the headlights and yet I couldn’t help it.

My hands clenched open and shut and suddenly I felt both under- and over-dressed and completely out of my element, questioning everything from what I’d chosen to wear to the makeup I put on. This whole world was so very different from me, so very foreign and new. I understood it, on some level, but that understanding gave me no comfort.

I felt out of place. I felt like I couldn’t do this. I felt everything and then when I heard that voice I knew that I couldn’t run, that chance had already passed me by.

With a chuckle they came up from behind me, “Well I was wondering when you’d get here.”

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