Phantasma
She can look, but she can never touch.
So she looks, all the time, at the way people touch objects, each other, themselves. And if she has a type it's a transient attraction that is wholly dependent on her mood, something more general than man or woman, more specific than girl or boy. It's about the way a bare arm rests against the back of a chair, the way a hand clenches into a fist and crunches into a wall, the way fingers skate across naked flesh and if she concentrates hard enough she can feel the ghost of sensation echo in sympathy, empathy. . . other things.
This time it's a girl, milky white skin that's so fair she must prickle under the California sun and it's not something Gwen, with her olive skin, can really understand. But she looks so soft, everywhere, like the skin on the underside of Gwen's breasts or her inner thighs and it's partly what sparked her interest. She's got cheekbones that look sharp and pink lips that look plump and bee-stung and slightly wet and it helps, as she looks at her, that Gwen can imagine she's staring into her own blue eyes.
She's not a voyeur, not really, not by choice. But she'd blown through puberty over a decade ago and she has thoughts, fantasies, urges just like anybody else. Maybe more, because for her it's forbidden no matter how well she plays the part of femme fatale. She's sexually naïve; she knows that even if the people she watches never do. For all the watching she does, for all the vamping and the flirting and the skin-tight clothes, she doesn't know what it feels like to have warm lips against hers or how it feels to come against someone else's fingers, mouth, thigh, dick. So she watches and she imagines, sometimes that their fingers are hers and she can feel the rough stubble against a cheek or the straining tip of a breast under her palm. Other times she can only see the way they touch things, the force of a grip, the feather-light skim of palm, a foot that slides over a calf and she imagines what it would feel like, to have someone touch her like that. And then there are the best times, like this one, when body and mind get tangled up in her subject, lines of existence cross and blur and she's touching and being touched all at once.
The girl, Tara, if Gwen remembers her name right, is looking at her with eyes that are half-closed in a combination of embarrassment and lust. She's spread out on Gwen's bed, naked except for a pair of blue cotton bikini panties that Gwen would never even think about buying but they look perfect on her. Soft plain cloth against softer skin that is anything but plain, elastic biting slightly into the skin of Tara's belly and Gwen wants to feel what it would be like to slip a finger under the elastic, slide it back and forth over the reddened skin.
So she tells the girl to do it, and even in the state she's in, so close to being inside the girl's skin and under her fingers, she can hear how husky her voice has gotten. She sees the girl shiver in response and Gwen feels a shiver start at the base of her own spine, spread up until there are goose bumps on her arms that match the girl's and this is good, this is very good.
Tara works her index finger under the waistband and slips it along the skin underneath, low on her belly and Gwen can feel the tiny, fine, invisible hairs that stand on end at each pass, the way the change in pressure from dull and inanimate to warm and soothing makes their skin sigh with relief. Tara's breasts are rising and falling with her rapid breaths, the delicate skin of her chest flushing red as they become more excited and Gwen wants to go back to them, touch them again with more force than before.
Tara's free hand trails to her breast and she bites her lip as she pinches her nipple and Gwen doesn't remember telling her but she's not in her own skin anymore, doesn't feel the chair cushion under her because the sheets are there instead. Her nipple throbs, blood flooding back in as fingers release their pressure and she moans, or maybe that was Tara. Her clit pulses and she feels full, hot, and so very wet and things speed up, Tara touching her skin and fingering the sides of her cotton panties just long enough to slip them down on her thighs where they stretch and bite into her skin and Gwen feels the constriction, at the edge of her consciousness but it's the slightly thickened fluid that coats Tara's fingers as she strokes petal skin that has most of Gwen's attention.
The girl had captured her attention from the moment she walked into the bar. She was in Sunnydale for a job, had a chunk of time to kill before it was time to go, and the dingy bar was slightly less depressing than her empty hotel room. The girl had been sitting at the bar with an almost empty drink in front of her, running her finger over the rim of the glass. The way it skipped over the edge probably would have been enough to catch Gwen's attention even if she hadn't been mesmerized by the way her other hand had been clutching her forearm, nails making little crescent marks in the skin, tiny white pressure-points outlined with red. Gwen introduced herself and the girl, Tara, had smiled shyly and bought her a drink. A little small talk and she found out Tara had just broken up with her girlfriend, was sad and angry and a little bit drunk. A lot of flirting and Gwen had persuaded Tara to come back to her room, talked her into taking off her clothes, laying on her bed, and touching herself while Gwen watched.
Now they're both so close to coming and Gwen isn't just watching anymore, she's inside Tara or Tara is inside of her and it doesn't really matter because she can feel it. Her lips, the swell of her hip, her fingers against her clit and inside her pussy, touching, rubbing, slick and firm and anything but gentle as the tension builds. . .
Tara struggles to open her eyes wide, eyelashes fluttering with butterfly softness against her cheeks for a few brushes before she refocuses on Gwen and she parts her lips to speak. For a moment Gwen wonders whose voice she will hear tumble out of her throat, they are that close, she is that close.
"I want to watch you come with me."
And she does, hips rising off the bed, air cool, skin hot, a little grunt, a breathy exhale from between suddenly dry lips as everything clenches and releases, over and over, fingers pressing harder than before, firm, deep, drawing it out as long as possible until Gwen feels herself come back down. Separate. Sensation falling back into her body, planted firmly in the chair, and suddenly she can't feel the panties cutting into her thighs or cool air rushing over her nipples because she still has her clothes on and she doesn't usually bother with underwear. Her gloved hands have never left where they rest on the arms of the chair and the phantom touches she can still feel in every intimate plane of her body have been fueled by illusions, not reality. It almost seems like magic, the way she connected with the girl, the way she felt sensations in nerve endings that were not her own.
Tara opens her eyes and smiles at Gwen, reaches down to yank up her panties before turning onto her stomach and rolling a pillow under her. Her hair is fanned over her back and falls into her face and Gwen wonders what it feels like, so much straighter and finer than her own. She feels something empty inside her grow, because she can't feel Tara's hair, or the pillow under her breasts anymore and it's always like this, after the times when she becomes them. It's better, during, and worse, after. Gwen smiles and shakes her head as Tara pats the bed next to her.
She's already running late for her job and she can't get any closer, anyway.
She can watch, sometimes she can even feel, but she can never, ever touch.