One Swinging Summer (22 page)

"OK, yeah. That sounds like fun."

When we walk in, the first section you pass through is shoes. They had everything, from tiny, barely there sandals to thigh high boots. Leather, suede, studded, ribboned, neon, anything you could possibly want. The only consistency was that each and every pair was mounted on a platform, with a three to five inch heel. Everything a fashion forward stripper could want.

Most girls love shoes, and I was no exception. With an open wallet at my disposal, and a very tall man who saw a few that caught his attention, I had a ball trying most of them on. Some were impossible to walk in, many were ridiculous looking, but all were a blast to wobble around in. I found three that I loved, and was trying to decide which to get, showing them one by one to Caleb.

One was a leather boot, knee high. The brown leather was so soft, it felt like a bomber jacket. That one would go with everything. The second pair was a shiny, patent leather heel that had 10 to 12 buckles, it looked slightly scary with a touch of S&M, and the third was a black heel that had little dark copper handcuffs and chains, but you really had to look close to tell that was what they were. That one could be an every night, multi-look heel, with just a quiet hint of bad-ass. I walked them all around the store for Caleb, trying to decide.

He was really getting into this shopping stuff. I felt like I was starring in a backward 'Pretty Woman' movie, where instead of Julia Roberts, who played the hooker, being classed up in a shopping trip with Richard Gere, I was instead being strippered up. It was fun, finding this wild side. I knew I had a bit in me, wearing corsets to a bar shows some balls, but I always tempered it. Classy with a hint.

He couldn't decide either, so we ended up with all three shoes. We bypassed the wigs, the bathing suits and the piercing area, and started looking at clothes. They had sexy nurse outfits, cheerleader skirts, a whole section on the school-girl theme, and some classier nighties and teddies. We paid extra attention to anything black, red, or otherwise of the vampire motif.

One good thing about a vampire theme is how easy it is to execute. It is so broad. You can be classy, trashy, or anywhere in the middle. You only need to add a set of teeth, which can be taken out ten seconds after you make your grinning entrance, or can be worn all night long. I went the classier route, and built an outfit from a black corset as a starting point. We ended up with an Elvira meets Morticia, with fangs. I do enjoy this part of these clubs. Where else can you do Halloween all year long, try on all these different personalities, and pretend that this Lady Ga-Ga meets Ke$ha partying is the norm?

I had a blast trying things on, it is more fun when you have an appreciative male audience to come out of the dressing room and spin for. And there is a built-in bonus in the fact that he gets to see all these different outfits, without me having to buy them and bring them home. Guys are visually wired for variety, so when you can provide the visual buffet, one outfit after another, in a dressing room, that keeps the costs down. More bang for your buck.

I was glad we had come, it was fun and light-hearted. Everything had become so serious and weird lately that I enjoyed the playfulness of shopping with Caleb. This shopping trip reminded me of why I was still hanging out with him. I felt like a Barbie doll, being dressed for a minute in each silly outfit, only to switch it out completely moments later.

We left the shop with two large bags stuffed full, and empty stomachs. We went to a new restaurant, one that was becoming quite popular. It served an odd combination of comfort foods that spanned a cultural divide. Their signature dish paired fried chicken and waffles, and was fabulous. The place was packed even on a Sunday evening, and by the time we got out of there, we had just enough time to make it to our movie.

We dragged our tired selves back to Caleb's late, and crashed after a fun, comfortable day. Monday morning when I sipped coffee on Caleb's back patio after he had gone to work, I realized that I had let myself fall back into the routine of staying here all weekend. I pondered how my plan to use Caleb for fun and see where things go was going, and I wondered in the silent stillness of the early morning what I had gotten myself into.

So far, weird, surreal and kind of hot was how I would describe our experimentation. We talked about everything a lot. We had stuck to our agreement not to be separated from each other in these clubs and not to have sex with anyone other than each other. The only one we didn't stick to was to take things really slow.

Michael and Kate have been going to That Other Club for way longer than us, and according to Kate, letting that lady suck on her boob the night that I did too was as far as they have gone. They always stay dressed and take any horniness home. Caleb and I, on the other hand, have already had fully covered and dressed sex on the couch of one club, complete with an intimate female joining us that Caleb touched and ate. And, we have also had fully naked sex in the other club, on one curtained bed in a room full of other curtained beds. Not really what one would call taking things extra slow and careful in this scene.

I took a hard, quiet look at what we had been doing, and decided that I was still OK with everything, but that maybe we should scale things back a bit. I wasn't interested in making The Lakehouse a place we visited often. It was far, expensive, and a bit wilder than I was prepared for, but I wasn't sorry we had gone. I figured if we stuck to That Other Club, kept our doings there light and fun and still stuck to only sex with each other, that we would be OK. I assumed that at some point, we would either lose interest in this new toy, or we would settle into a level of participation that we were comfortable with. I did enjoy the shadow box and the costume play.

I knew also, that if Caleb and I split up again, I had no interest in these places as a lifestyle. I had no want to find a husband in there, and had no plans to introduce any new, possibly serious relationship to this life. The jealousy issues alone would undermine any serious relationship in which my heart was involved. If I was deeply in love with Caleb, the lady joining us beside the couch a few days ago wouldn't have sat well with me. I had no idea how the married couples were able to handle this lifestyle, especially the ones who would completely switch partners for the night and actually have sex with people that they weren't married to. Often.

Playing the emotionally unattached way that Caleb and I were was one thing. Watching your spouse, whom you loved, fuck someone else just didn't seem natural. Women were so prone to be emotionally attached to the person they were sleeping with that it seemed odd in a marriage to be able to do this stuff. And I knew, deep in my heart, that I wanted the man I eventually married to be fiercely protective of me, not to hand me over willingly to let someone else fuck me. That just sat wrong in the pit of my stomach.

'So, why was I OK with this, now?' I asked myself. 'Cause it is new? Exciting? Is it the wrongness that I am enjoying? Or has none of this really sunk in yet due to the surreal aspect? The illusion of no real-world consequences doesn't usually last long, things usually have a way of coming around to bite you in the ass.' I reminded myself.

'Maybe it still will.' I thought as I got up from my reverie and headed into said real world for a week of work.

CHAPTER 27
IT'S MIDNIGHT CINDERELLA

The music pounded through me as I took another shot and hit the dance floor yet again with Maria and the rest of the girls from Caleb's table. I was having so much fun. I had done my makeup a bit more dramatically than normal and was wearing my new corset, both in preparation for the next club.

I laughed as I mentally compared myself to Cinderella. I also was waiting for the stroke of midnight, but my coach wasn't going to turn back into a pumpkin, or my footmen into mice. Instead, I would turn from mild mannered partier into a vampire, and my club would morph into a darker version of itself without even a bip, bip, boppity boo.

I grabbed Caleb as the music turned slow, and let him lead me all over the dance floor. I snuggled into him, enjoying the feel of his body moving against mine. "You look amazing." Caleb said.

"You ain't seen nothin' yet," I teased.

Kate slid up to us as the music changed again, I kissed Caleb before he left the floor, and I let Kate pull me right into the middle of the fray. Ah, yes, thrashing with abandon never felt so good. I love the nights that the driving beat of the music takes over for your heartbeat and drives the alcohol through your veins. "Are you about ready?" Kate yelled.

"Bring on the torrid flesh, I packed my fangs tonight." I yelled back.

We walked into That Other Club, already half lit and raring to go. I had changed in Caleb's truck, and I walked through the parking lot and in the front door in full vamp. The lady taking our cash gushed over our costumes. Caleb had even gotten into the act, adding a set of teeth to his tall, dark and handsome tonight.

Kate and Michael arrived just after us, and we left the men to deal with the money and the drinks, while Kate and I walked in together. My all black and Kate's hot red headed straight for the dance floor. Thankfully the place was packed and we just picked up here right where we had left off at the normal club.

After a few fast dances we went looking for the men. And the liquor. We found them both, together, at a table near the curtained room. They guys poured us a shot and we toasted to depravity.

They played a great song, and I headed up to the shadow box. I watched my shadow swivel and gyrate, and pulled my breasts up and out of the top of my corset. My nipples cut a sharp relief against the white screen, and I positioned them to full effect, rocking my hips to the beat.

When I hopped off the stage a few minutes later, fully covered, there was a small line for the box. I guess I started something tonight. I met Caleb half way across the bar, and stole his full shot glass out of his hand with a grin, right before he downed it. "Bottoms up," I said, emptying it with a wink.

"That's a spanking offense, stealing someone's liquor," he said sternly.

I turned around and wiggled my ass at him, and he gave it a loud smack. He threw his arm around me, and we walked back to our table to fill our shot glasses once again.

Hours later, I was hot, sweaty, happy, drunk as hell and had lost my fangs somewhere. I came out of the shadow box for the third or fourth time of the night, and joined Caleb at our table. Caleb leaned in and whispered in my ear, "How about your hot and horny ass joins me behind the curtain?"

I looked him up and down slowly and asked, "Can the rest of me come too?"

"Maybe more than once," he responded with a shit-eating grin.

"What are we waiting for then?" I asked.

Caleb headed that way and held the curtain aside for me. I grabbed the half empty bottle of liquor and took it in with me, thinking 'I've got a feeling that I'm not quite drunk enough for this.' I walked through the open curtain and sat down on an empty couch.

CHAPTER 28
WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS?

I woke up Saturday morning, in Caleb's bed. With no memory of how I got here, or of most of the evening, I realized as I tried in vain to pull at wisps of memories. I started to panic, and rolled over to wake Caleb up.

Oh, no. I shouldn't have rolled quite so fast. My head spun faster than my body, and I grunted out loud, nausea rolling in my throat in the opposite direction as the rolling in my head. Instead of waking Caleb I slid out of the bed, running for the toilet. 'Oh God, don't run. Hurry, hurry, but hurry slowly,' I tried to figure out which of the three toilets swimming before me was real. I aimed for the one I could touch, hoping I could trust my sense of touch.

"Oh good, you found the right room this time," I heard Caleb behind me. "A few hours ago you were leaning over the hamper in my closet, dry heaving. I tried to guide you in here, but you climbed back in bed instead."

"What? No." I gasped questioningly into the toilet bowl. The room slowed its incessant spinning, and I laid my head on my arms, not daring to leave this exact spot.

"Oh yeah, I was so grateful you didn't actually puke. That was a load of laundry I was not looking forward to doing."

I laughed, in spite of my misery. And regretted the movement immediately. "What the hell happened last night?" I asked him.

"You tell me, what do you remember?"

I tried to pull a coherent thought out of the swirling mists, and said, "I remember going into the back room, and sitting on the couch."

"OK, and then what?"

Shit, and then what? "I think I remember rolling out of your bed, and into your closet. Did I dry heave over your dresser too?"

"Yep, remember anything in between those two?"

"No, no I don't. Damn it, I have never blacked out before, never. Why don't I remember?"

"You had more to drink than I thought, you seemed fine all night. Do you remember leaving the club?"

"Maybe. Did I stop in the rest room?"

"Yes, do you remember the drive home?"

I tried to think, no, I remember sitting on the pot in a stall, standing up, flushing, leaving the bathroom. Then nothing.

"How about in the back room? You said you remember sitting down on the couch. Do you remember me joining you? Kissing you?"

"No. I remember walking past you, sitting down and taking a swig from our bottle. I remember there were two other couples in there, on the other couches."

"Do you remember wanting to lay down?"

I caught a swirl out of the darkness, "Kind of, on the floor, right? On that mat."

"Yes."

I tried to hang onto the tail of that swirl, and follow it. "People. There were people above me, looking down on me. Touching me, kissing me." And then nothing, again.

"Yeah, they liked you a lot. You were the life of the party."

"Oh, no. Oh God, did anything happen? I mean, did anyone... Did I have sex with anyone?"

"No. One guy tried, but you said no. Everything was gropey. Kissing, groping, tongues, fingers, but no sex."
Oh, fuck. I don't remember any of it.