Dark Xanadu (10 page)

Every month the four college friends got together for dinner, usually at some fern bar. Beneath the tacky mementos of no childhood in particular, they chatted about life and love, or lack thereof. Usually Stacy was the center of attention, either singing the praises of a new boyfriend or cursing the shortcoming of the old one. This time, however, it was all about Angela, and she wasn’t entirely comfortable with the attention. She didn’t have to mention that she got together with Kent again, but somehow that seemed like cheating given the tell-all tradition of the monthly meetings.

Stacy and Monica were both wearing light scarves around their neck, although it wasn’t cold out and the restaurant wasn’t over air conditioned either. That was probably the new fashion. They always paid the most attention to that sort of thing. Dee was still Dee, sipping her margarita slowly to make it last the entire evening, primly dressed in slacks and a blue blouse with a Peter Pan collar. No rescue was likely from that quarter.

“Well,” said Angela, drawling the word in an attempt to stall. “He’s good looking. Rich, or at least well off. He moved her from California, and he still has the tan to show it.”

“All over?” asked Monica.

They’d had the most intimate time, and yet she hadn’t seen him naked, or even with his shirt off. That probably required too much explaining. On the other hand, the reason she’d brought Kent up in the first place was to forestall another attempt at matchmaking, so if she gave the impression there’d been no sex involved, that might defeat the purpose.

“I didn’t see him all over. I wouldn’t know,” retorted Angela. “But we had amazing sex.”
Or at least I did. Or something.
It definitely counted as sex in her book, but did he feel the same way?

“A lights-off kinda thing, huh?” asked Stacy. “Well… I guess those can be okay. Did he have any special moves?”

“You could say that. But that’s it. No more from me.”

“Oh, come on, spill details,” said Monica. “We always do. Fair is fair.”

“You share details because you enjoy sharing,” Dee interjected, setting her margarita down. “Not because we drag them out of you.”

Angela suspected she’d done some dragging in her time, actually, but she wasn’t about to undercut Dee’s attempt to get the pressure off. The last two years, she’d been living her sex life vicariously through Stacy and Monica.

“You think this could turn out to be a regular thing, or was it just a one nighter?” asked Stacy.

She hadn’t gone there with any intentions except a single night of exploration. Now she was looking forward to the next evening together. Kent was going to pick her up shortly before the club opened Friday night. She could imagine doing all sorts of things with Kent, but settling down and having babies wasn’t exactly one of them. Her biological clock was ticking away, and she wasn’t getting any closer to a solution for that.

Stacy waved a hand in front of her face. “Earth to Angela.”

“We’ve got another date Friday night. Look, here comes the waiter.”

The waiter took their orders. They ordered the cheese sticks to share. Stacy, usually a salad-only person, ordered a steak, to Angela’s surprise. Monica ordered palak paneer off the international menu. Since everyone was turning over a new leaf, Angela decided she’d go with the curried chicken. The menu said Thai curry, and that meant “hot” to Angela, but the fern-bar version was probably going to be disappointingly bland. Only Dee got the same old thing, fish and chips. Dee had never been as weight conscious as the rest of them, so she’d never been part of the salad-and-diet-soda club. For all her apparent shyness around men, Angela suspected Dee was the most well adjusted of them all.

The waiter left, and for an awkward minute, there was silence. Apparently the quizzing on her love life was done. For a change, Monica and Stacy didn’t seem to want to brag about their latest, either, or even report in excruciating detail about a sex date with Morgan.

Monica and Stacy. She didn’t usually pair off her friends that way. Any two of them shared some things in common, of course. Monica, dark haired, curvy, always smiling on the outside. Stacy, thin and blonde, dead serious about her work as an architect, intense about life. She’d always been closer to either of them than to Dee, but now it seemed as if the two of them were a team, somehow. She supposed it had started when Monica introduced Stacy to Morgan, several months ago. They’d invited her to join the team, she supposed, but she’d turned them down.

“So,” said Monica, not smiling, “is Kent the guy you were with when you pretended you weren’t waiting for Morgan?”

Angela frowned. She’d not mentioned turning Morgan down, just said she hadn’t connected with him. Obviously, Monica had another source of information. Would Monica know if she lied now? “Yes. I’m very sorry, Monica, but Morgan is not my type.”

Monica frowned. “Not your type how?”

Her first thought was to describe the T-shirt and say that any man that concerned about his prick wasn’t for her. But she remembered she was supposed to be able to pick him out of a crowd, and that T-shirt had described the one part of him that Monica and Stacy had told her the most about. Too fat? Morgan hadn’t been fat, just pudgy and not really built. She wasn’t exactly thin herself. “A bit too pale.”

The old Monica smile appeared back on her friend’s face. “Ah. He is on the pale side, that’s for sure.”

Stacy nodded. “Yeah, he really is, isn’t he? Somehow, I’d not really noticed that as such, but you’re right.”

“You know,” said Dee, “picking up a thread from a few months ago when you were both talking about how old we are all getting…I somehow doubt that both of you dating the same guy, just because he’s an excellent fuck, is helping your quest for a mate.”

Monica grinned. “Oh, Morgan doesn’t mind if we date around.”

Stacy added, “It’s…well, speaking only for myself, my standards in a bedmate have gotten a bit higher. But it’s not like I’ve stopped looking entirely.” Her eyes narrowed. “So what have you been doing about your own biological clock, smartie?”

Angela wasn’t sure what surprised her most, hearing Dee so casually drop the f-word into a conversation or the venom in Stacy’s voice as she went on the counterattack.

Dee refolded her napkin. Angela watched her. For years Dee had spoken less of herself than the others, and they had acted as if it was because she had nothing to say. But no one lived without having anything worth sharing. Having carefully left the whole topic of BDSM and Dark Xanadu out of her revelations about Kent, she recognized a bit of herself in Dee. Dee, too, had things she was keeping to herself.

But if she was hoping for a hint, she didn’t get it. “I’m sorry I offended you, Stacy,” said Dee evenly when she looked back up. “I was just trying to remind you of something you once thought was very important.”

* * * * *

When she opened the door at seven-fifty Friday night, Angela couldn’t hide a look of disappointment. She’d bought a new black sequined dress, square cut in front, but low enough that her bra could push the top half of her breasts over the neckline. It was short enough that she felt extremely daring wearing no panties underneath, but with Kent to protect her, she wasn’t horribly worried. The only problem was, it wasn’t Kent who stood in her doorway. It was Brennan.

“Hey,” said Brennan.

“Oh, hi.” Angela blushed crimson, feeling half naked in front of Kent’s friend.

Brennan shrugged, his eyes flickering over her body for only a moment before meeting her eyes. “Kent sent me to pick you up.”

“I’ll go get a coat. Just a second.” She had a trench coat that went lower than the hem of the dress. That would at least make her feel like less of a floozy. Somehow in a minute the dress had gone from making her feel adventurous and daring to cheap and slutty. And if there was one thing that dress hadn’t been, it was cheap. She’d been so convinced that it was perfect that she hadn’t minded splurging when she’d bought it that afternoon.

“Sure, no problem. You look lovely, by the way.”

“Thank you.”

“Mind if I come in for a moment?”

Angela frowned to herself. She didn’t really want to be alone with a man she barely knew in her apartment, even if Brennan had been nothing but nice to her. But it’d be rude to say no. “Sure,” she replied. As he stepped in, she couldn’t help but blurt out the question that had been aggravating her. “Why didn’t Kent come himself?”

“Good question,” said Brennan, his frown mirroring her mood. “He said he was busy setting up, but there’s not much he can do there that I can’t do as well. He’s probably hatching some plan, though, and I suspect his plans involve you.” Brennan chuckled. “He’s really smitten. He’s lucky I’m an honorable man, though, since he’s having me play John Alden to his Miles Standish.”

Angela shrugged her coat on. She wasn’t a horribly neat person. Books were strewn across the coffee table in her little apartment, but the kitchen was clean. She wondered if Brennan would report back. “All right. Ready to go.”

“Mind if I ask you a question?”

Angela shook her head. “Go ahead.”

“Has Kent called you?”

“A couple times,” Angela said. And they’d probably caused a few lines to short, their conversations had been so hot.

“Any clue as to what’s going through his head these days? Besides, obviously, thoughts of you?”

Somewhat guiltily, Angela realized their conversations had been all about her. But then, Kent had taken control of their direction, right from the start. How he could make her feel hot—and submissive—over the telephone was beyond her. “Not really. Why?”

“He’s acting odd. Distant. Did he tell you about the mugging?”

“Who got mugged?” asked Angela.

“Hmm. Maybe it’s the boss’s story to tell.”

Angela could figure that one out. “Kent got mugged?”

“Yeah. Right outside the club, last Friday night. Kent’s like the last person I’d expect to get beaten up, too. He’s got a couple black belts, and he doesn’t look like a target, either. The guy ran off before anyone could get a look at them. Since then…I don’t know, it’s like he’s pushing us all away. He—” Brennan came to a stop and took a breath. “I’ve said enough. But Angela? If you could find out what’s on his mind, we’d all—Charles, Genna and I—we’d like to help.”

Angela frowned. “I’m not sure if I found out anything that it’d be my business to tell you.”

Brennan nodded. “If you can’t tell us what’s wrong, at least tell us what we should be doing.”

She didn’t get Brennan. He took delight in calling Kent “boss,” and now he was practically asking her for marching orders. Yet from what Kent had said Brennan was very much a dominant. Could guys really turn it on and off like that? She shrugged. She didn’t need to “get” Brennan. She was Kent’s girl, at least for the evening, and she’d do her best to “get” him instead.

“I’ll do my best,” she promised.

* * * * *

The party at Dark Xanadu had just started when Brennan and Angela arrived. Genna took her coat and gave a low whistle.

“Don’t worry, I’m not about to go bat for the other side,” said Genna in response to Angela’s frown. “But if anything could tempt me, it’d be you.”

Angela blushed. She wasn’t used to getting positive attention for her looks. At work someone always raised an eyebrow when she ate a donut from the break room. Her mom reminded her every visit that she might do a better job of catching a guy if she lost a little weight. Her girlfriends never said anything much about her weight, but then, they didn’t exactly tell her she looked hot either. But the admiration in Genna’s expression seemed sincere enough. “Thanks,” Angela managed to say.

“Kent’s waiting for you in his office,” Genna told her, and then turned to Brennan. “Charles is monitoring the floor, since he had fun last week. So you’re free unless something come up.”

“What about you?” asked Brennan. “When do you get to have fun?”

Genna shrugged. “You know me. I like schmoozing.”

Brennan’s frown showed that he didn’t really accept Genna’s explanation, but he didn’t press her further. He turned to Angela. “Have fun, Angie.”

She took that as a dismissal. Five minutes past eight, and there were already people at the play stations. One woman had shed all her clothes and was tied to the same X-frame she’d been at with Gerald. Gerald himself, at least, didn’t seem to be anywhere around. Amid the skimpy latex and leather outfits, Angela didn’t think her dress was particularly racy, but she noticed that there were definitely people watching her as she made her way across the warehouse floor. She was stable enough on her four-inch heels as long as she didn’t try to hurry, so she had to suppress her instinct to flee their gazes.

What would it be like to be displayed in front of all those people, as part of a scene? If it was with Kent, she decided, she wouldn’t mind a bit. In fact, she’d probably even be a bit proud to be seen with him. It was exactly the opposite of how she’d always thought. Proud to be seen half naked with a man? The girls who felt that way lacked self-esteem, in her opinion. And yet here she was. Right now, with Kent, it was different. No matter who had what clothes on, she knew she’d be showing him off at least as much as the other way around.