The unexpected neighbor
The half-dark of the auditorium, the low hum of the air handling, the enormous sound coming off the wall speakers — all of it put us in a particular frame of mind. The evening screening was practically empty; a couple of people down front, far below us, and nobody else. We had bought the last row on purpose. The kissing seats. We were counting on being left alone.
Then, just before the ads started, one more person came down our row. With most of the theater standing empty, this young man sat in the seat directly beside my wife, on the far side from me. The only thing between them was the shared plastic armrest.
Natalie gave me a look. I squeezed her hand once, without moving it, to tell her the evening had just gotten more interesting.
When the screen went dark and the film started, all of our attention quietly relocated to that unexpected neighbor. The flashes off the screen kept pulling his profile out of the dark — athletic, loose T-shirt — then dropping our row back into shadow. Natalie sat with her legs crossed in a short skirt, and the smooth line of her thigh was a few centimeters from him.
Around the twentieth minute, in the middle of a loud action sequence, he reached for the cupholder and let his forearm graze her shoulder in passing. Warm, brief, entirely deniable. She flinched, barely. I felt her fingers tighten in mine.
She didn’t move away. She didn’t slide deeper into my seat. She sat exactly where she was, watching the screen, and her breathing went a little deeper.
He read that silence correctly. In the dark, under cover of the special effects, his hand came down on her bare knee — no hesitation in it, no apology.
What the screen kept lighting up
Natalie went still. Her chest rose high under the thin blouse. A stranger’s fingers on her skin in a public room, even an empty one, lit her up instantly. She turned her head toward me and in her huge eyes, shining in the dark, I read the familiar familiar thrill of our private game.
He was in no hurry to take the hand back. His fingers tightened slightly, stroking the soft skin just above her knee, and began working higher.
He was bold but not rough. When she made no move to push him off, he slid his palm further up her thigh, dragging the light fabric of the skirt along with it. Every brush of his warm skin against her bare legs made her go rigid and hold.
She sat motionless, eyes fixed on the screen where bright frames kept changing, and her thoughts were nowhere near the plot. Heavy color came up in her cheeks. Her breathing went fast and shallow. She gripped my hand harder — sharing with me, delicately, precisely how far past ordinary she already was.
Then he took the whole thing over. His hand went higher and his fingers slipped under the hem of the skirt to the silk of her inner thigh. She let out a thin breath through her mouth, and her knees came apart on their own, letting him in deeper. He found the edge of her lace without fumbling for it.
I leaned forward in my seat, watching her face. In the flickering light off the projector I could see her lips part and her eyelids tremble. The contrast between the civilized setting — reclining seats, cupholders, a movie playing — and what was happening in our row made both of our heads swim.
Certain now that nothing was going to stop him, he moved the narrow strip of fabric aside and touched her, and she was already soaking. Her whole body jerked. Her hips pushed up into his hand before she could decide anything about it, and a low full sound came out of her chest and drowned instantly in the speakers.
His fingers went into her and started moving, slow and gliding. He worked her confidently and without haste, learning her reactions a fraction at a time, in rhythm with the cuts on screen. Natalie rocked her hips faintly, syncing herself to a rhythm nobody else in the room could see, and her fingers dug into my sleeve until the knuckles went white.
Down between the rows
At some point he leaned close to her ear and breathed against her neck.
“Get down. On the floor.”
His voice, arriving in the middle of all that noise, made her heart go. She threw me a hazy, pleading look, hunting for permission. I nodded — barely — and that was the last push she needed.
Carefully, trying not to make noise, she slid off her seat and went down onto her knees on the carpet between the rows. The high backs of the last row hid her completely from the few people down front.
He was already reclining, jeans open in one fast motion. He came out heavy and stiff, hanging right in front of her face, matte in the blue wash off the screen. Natalie held her breath a second, taking in the size of him — but her chest was moving so fast under the blouse that it settled the question. She wanted it.
He didn’t rush her. Before she could reach for him, his wide warm hands went up under her blouse and found her breasts through the thin fabric. She arched sweetly and a quiet sigh escaped her open mouth. He worked her insistently, in no hurry at all, squeezing her in his strong fingers until the nipples went hard under his palms.
The flashes off the screen kept catching it — her bare breasts swaying, firm and heavy, with every confident movement of his hands, the thin blouse whispering along with his fingers. I hung over the armrest, transfixed. The shameless pleasure my wife was taking from a stranger’s hands in a half-full public room drove my own arousal straight to the ceiling.
He bent lower, slid his fingers to her throat, and rasped: “Go on. Take care of me.”
She barely hesitated. She leaned in, lips opening carefully around the very tip of him, and then took him in deep and slow. A dull wet sound came up out of her throat.
Her willingness and those sounds pushed him past patience. Both broad hands settled on her head, fingers threading into her hair, and he took control of the movement. He began guiding her — gently, but without letting up — feeding her mouth a little deeper onto him with each stroke.
The sudden depth made her jolt, but she didn’t pull off. Her eyes shut instead, from the sheer edge of the pleasure going through her. She gave herself to his hands, letting him work all the way to her throat, taking every centimeter of him with a slow deliberate care. In time with those deep strokes, her bare breasts swayed under the blouse — quick, elastic, giving away exactly how far gone she was. He was breathing raggedly, holding her head, making her swallow him more greedily, and the soft wet sound of her obedience spread out into the dark.
The last twenty minutes
When he’d had enough of her mouth he pulled her up by the shoulders, gently but with no room to argue. Holding back in that position was clearly getting difficult for him. She rose obediently, eyes glittering, the short skirt shoved all the way to her waist.
He turned her with her back to him and sat her on the wide armrest, making her brace her palms against the padded seatback in front of her. In that position her hips came up high and she was completely open. My breath stopped in the dark — it looked obscene and it looked beautiful.
He moved in behind her and, without any further preparation, entered her in one smooth devastating stroke, all the way.
A long full sound came out of her that she only just managed to cover with her hand before it went to the whole room. Her bare breasts swayed under the thin blouse with each of his powerful movements.
He set a tight fast rhythm, holding her by the waist. The flashes off the screen washed their joined bodies in cold blue, then flooded them in hot red. Natalie dissolved into it completely. She dropped her head back onto the stranger’s shoulder and whispered in pieces:
“Yes — god, that’s deep — more, faster—”
She caught my burning stare from the seat beside her, and knowing her husband was watching her submit like this brought the whole thing down on her in an avalanche. The muscles inside her clenched around him in hard rhythmic pulses. He gave a low animal growl, drove into her a few last times, fast and brutal, and emptied himself deep inside her with one sharp exhale, filling her with a hot pulsing wave under the closing credits.