Chapter 12 — Panopticon #2
This time, she didn’t look away. She stared at the dark lens as if staring into his eyes. She held his gaze as her hands moved up her body, caressing her waist, sliding up her stomach, tracing the outline of her breasts without touching them directly, finally reaching her neck.
She tilted her head back, offering her throat to the lens, offering it to the man on the other side of the connection.
She moved her lips, making no sound, mouthing a single word for the camera:
Come.
She stood there for a moment, chest heaving, skin gleaming, her body vibrating with the audacity of what she’d just done.
Then she turned off the music.
Silence fell over the room like a guillotine.
Maya picked up the bottle of cream and left the media room. She didn’t run. She walked slowly, feeling the electronic gaze burning into her back until she passed through the doorway and entered the blind spot of the hallway.
When she reached her room, her legs were shaking so badly she had to lean against the door to close it.
She pressed her back against the white wood, sliding down to the floor.
Her heart felt like a war drum. Boom. Boom. Boom.
What had she done?
She had provoked the monster. She had invited the devil to dance.
But, God, how alive she felt.
For the first time in a week, she didn’t feel like a victim. She felt powerful. She had controlled his gaze. She had dictated the rhythm of his breathing.
She stood up and walked to the bed. The room lay in shadow.
Were there cameras here too?
Ethan had said the bedroom was private. But Ethan was a liar by omission. He had said “access.” He had said “I collect moments.”
Maya lay down on the bed but didn’t cover herself. She lay on top of the comforter, her silk pajamas gleaming in the moonlight streaming through the window. She felt exposed, and that exposure kept her in a state of feverish alertness.
She waited.
Every sound in the penthouse—the click of the air conditioning, the wind outside, the distant hum of the refrigerator—seemed amplified.
Would he come?
She had challenged him. She had invited him.
Ten minutes passed. Twenty.
The adrenaline began to mix with doubt. Maybe he hadn’t seen it. Maybe the camera only recorded, and he wouldn’t see it until tomorrow. Maybe he had laughed at her. Maybe he found her attempt to seduce him pathetic.
Shame threatened to return, cold and nauseating.
Then she heard it.
Footsteps.
Not in the hallway. Footsteps coming from inside the room.
Maya sat up in bed with a start, pulling her knees against her chest.
There was no one. The bedroom door was closed. The bathroom door was open but dark.
“Where…” she whispered.
“This room’s sound system is integrated.”
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. It filled the room, soft, deep, rich. It came from speakers embedded in the ceiling, invisible. It was the voice of God speaking to creation.
Maya looked up, searching for the source.
“Ethan?” she asked the ceiling.
“You dance well,” the voice said. There was a texture to his voice she’d never heard before. A hoarseness. A tension. As if he were gripping the microphone too tightly, or struggling to keep his voice steady.
“You were watching,” she accused, but her voice came out without venom, just breathless.
“I’m always watching, Maya. I told you. I take care of what’s mine.”
“It’s voyeurism,” she said. “It’s sick.”
“Maybe,” the voice agreed. “But you knew. You saw the light. And you didn’t stop. You didn’t cover yourself. You looked at me.”
There was a pause. The silence crackled with the static electricity of the open connection.
“You liked being seen,” he stated. It wasn’t a question.
Maya swallowed hard. Lying to him was useless. He saw the tells. He saw the truth.
“I wanted to know if you were there,” she admitted.
“I'm here. In the office. I'm looking at the monitor right now. I froze the image the moment you smoothed the cream on your neck.”
Maya felt her stomach clench. The image of him sitting in the darkness of his office, staring at a frozen image of her... it was disturbing and intensely erotic.
“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.
“What do you think I'm doing?” he retorted, his voice growing rougher. “I'm looking at my acquisition. Admiring the lines. The light. The chaos you bring to my order.”
“You didn't come,” she said. “I called for you.”
“I saw,” he replied. “I read your lips. Come.”
“Then why didn't you come?”
A sound came through the speakers. A trembling sigh. Or maybe the sound of a glass being set down hard on a table.
“Because if I come there now, Maya... after what I saw you do...
after seeing how you touch yourself when you think you're alone...
I won't be able to keep my promise not to force anything.
I'll walk into that room and finish what you started in the media room.
And I'll do it so hard you won't be able to walk tomorrow.”
Maya trembled. His words painted violent and sweet images in her mind.
“Maybe I don't want to walk tomorrow,” she whispered to the empty room.
A long silence from the other end.
Then, the sound of the bedroom door opening.
Not the physical door. The electronic door. The click of the lock.
Maya looked at the white door. The handle turned.
Ethan didn't enter. He stood in the doorway, a dark silhouette against the dim light of the hallway. He still wore his clothes from earlier, but his shirt was unbuttoned halfway down his chest, his hair disheveled. He held a tablet in one hand.
He looked at her on the bed. Moonlight illuminated her legs, the sheen of silk.
He didn't take a step inside. He respected the physical boundary, but violated all the others.
He raised the tablet. The screen glowed, illuminating his face from below, giving him a demonic, beautiful appearance. On the screen, Maya could see the frozen image of herself in the media room, her head thrown back, her hand at her neck.
Ethan looked from the screen to the real woman on the bed.
“I saw this, Maya,” he said, his voice raw, stripped of any artifice. “I saw everything. And I'm going to watch it again. And again. Until I've memorized every movement.”
He stepped back, beginning to close the door.
“Sleep well,” he said, with a tone of soft mockery. “If you can. Because I know I won't.”
The door closed.
Maya sat on the bed in the darkness, listening to his footsteps recede toward the office. Her body was on fire. Her mind was in tatters.
She looked at the corner of the room, at the smoke detector blinking its rhythmic red light. Camera or not? She didn't know.
And, God help her, she hoped it was.