The Space Between Us (34 page)

People in all stages of dress, mostly un, lounged or chatted in small clusters.

“Living room,” Harve said unnecessarily. “Donation box is right here. Cash only. Suggested donations are listed there on the sign. Kitchen’s through there—we have snacks, drinks, just put the cash in the box. If you want bar food, you can hit the bar downstairs. We have a full game room and dance club set up down there, too. Another game room out past the breezeway. Pool’s shut down, but the hot tubs are open. Bathing suits optional. ’Cuz this is our holiday party, we’re having a bunch of raffles, too. Great prizes. Big-screen TV and stuff. Tickets are five for five bucks.”

He gave us a broad, cap-toothed grin and handed us each a brochure. “Rules here. Any trouble, you give me or Len a holler, okay? Make yourselves at home.
Mi casa es su casa,
got it?”

Meredith nodded. “Thanks!”

Charlie and I murmured a thanks, too. He was already perusing his brochure, at least until Meredith nudged him to put it away.

“You’ll make us look like total newbs,” she hissed. “Jesus, Charlie!”

I linked my arm through his again. “It’s okay. I can give you the rundown. I don’t see many single guys here, though it’s hard to tell. But basically, you might be approached by someone asking to join you or watch. You can say no, and no definitely means no. If you want to join someone or watch, Meredith or I will ask, not you.”

Charlie appeared uncomfortable. “You know a lot about this.”

I shrugged, looking around. It was more up-front and in-your-face than The Compound had ever been, but then I’d never been allowed into the private adult buildings. “The internet is a wonderful teaching tool, Charlie. What can I say?”

“C’mon, let’s get some drinks. Charlie, put the money in the box.” Meredith was already moving toward the kitchen, which was just like any normal kitchen except the fridge had a price list on the front and another cash box on the counter.

Charlie thumbed out several bills from his wallet and shoved it in the slot. “Have you done this before, Tesla?”

I shook my head, still gripping his arm as we moved into the kitchen. “Nope.”

He paused to look down at me. “You just know?”

I shrugged and gave him a smile. “I know lots of things.”

“Because of your parents?”

I nodded. “They kept this stuff sort of distant from me and Cap, but you know. Kids pick things up.”

Charlie nodded in turn, looking around the combined kitchen and dining area. Meredith had already cracked the top on a beer and was chatting with a woman in a long red dress. She had huge breasts and nipples that poked out the front. She was gesturing to the man with her. He wore jeans, and like Harve, no shirt, but this guy was far more fit.

“Charlie, baby, you want a beer?” Meredith handed him one. “Tesla?”

“No, thanks.” I shook my head. “I’ll be the designated driver.”

“Good.” Meredith made introductions, me and Charlie to Steff and Kirk. She mentioned that Charlie was her husband but said nothing about my affiliation.

Steff’s smile crawled all over me and tried to eat me. “Hi.”

Charlie pulled me a little closer to him. “Hi.”

“First time?” Steff asked.

“You can tell, huh?” Charlie’s laugh was too loud.

Steff eyed him. “Oh. Definitely. But don’t worry, Charlie, by the end of the night you’ll forget you were ever scared.”

“I’m not scared.” Charlie tipped his beer to his mouth.

Steff’s smile was gentler. “Right.”

Then she turned her attention to Meredith, leaving me and Charlie to talk to Kirk. It turned out he was Steff’s guest, since single guys needed to be sponsored in. It was clear to me by the way she casually and without subtlety caressed his bulging crotch every so often that Steff and Kirk were fucking, but he wasn’t her husband or even her boyfriend.

“It’s great downstairs. Dancing and some games. And some private rooms,” Steff said. “You want to go check it out?”

“Absolutely.” Meredith grinned at us over her shoulder as she followed Steff, Kirk close behind.

Charlie hung back at the top of the stairs. His face was serious when he looked at me. The steady thump of a disco beat vibrated beneath our feet, and the stairwell swirled with colored lights. He had to put his mouth close to my ear for me to hear him.

“Tesla, are you sure about this?”

“We’re together, Charlie. It’s okay. I told you, nobody here will make you do anything you don’t want to do. It’s etiquette. I’m sure we’re going to see some people fucking or sucking,” I said. “But you don’t have to do anything you don’t like.”

“I like fucking,” Charlie murmured, his hands roaming over my body. “I like sucking, too.”

I laughed and wiggled away from him. “Yeah, I seem to remember that.”

Meredith was already dancing when we got to the bottom of the steps. She turned to us, her eyes alight with an excitement I hadn’t seen in her for a long time. She gestured, making a face when Charlie hung back.

“Nobody will make me do anything I don’t want to do,” he said. “Nobody but my wife, anyway.”

I pushed him forward. “It’s not
So You Think You Can Dance.
Just shuffle your feet back and forth. You’re only there for us to grind on, baby.”

He grinned at me over his shoulder. “I can manage that.”

Meredith greeted us both with beer-flavored kisses. “Dance with me, Charlie.”

He gave it his best shot, but there was a reason why he never hit the dance floor. Totally uncoordinated, but endearing, he moved his hips and his feet in opposite directions, while his hands went someplace else. I didn’t want to laugh at him, but couldn’t help it. Meredith, on the other hand, had turned around to shove her ass against his crotch, bouncing to the music, her beer all gone.

I needed a drink of my own. There was a bar in one corner, with a bartender behind it. He was actually fully clothed, which was a relief, since his cock was at garnish level and I wanted a slice of lime in my diet soda, nothing else.

I took a seat at the bar on a stool shaped like a hand. Very funky. Not very comfortable. It felt as if I might slide off if I wasn’t careful, something I fixed by shoving the heel of my shoe against the metal footrest and propping an elbow on the bar.

Charlie and Meredith were having quite a time. He was actually laughing, twirling her out and in again. He dipped her. When she kissed him, he kissed her back. She put her arms around his neck to keep him close. It would’ve been too much PDA in a public bar, but down here it was tame.

More leather couches like the ones upstairs lined the walls. Open doorways showed glimpses of rooms without any furniture, just mattresses on the floor and mirrors on the walls and ceiling. Closed doors probably had the same thing behind them, with the addition of couples, triples or other combinations getting their freak on.

Not that you had to be behind a closed door to do that. In one corner, lit sporadically by a whirling disco light, I spotted a woman on her knees busily sucking a man’s cock, while he slowly jerked the dick of the dude sitting next to him. Another couple fucked, the woman on the man’s lap, on a rocking chair in another corner. Most people, though, naked or clothed, weren’t doing anything dirtier than making out. Maybe some finger-banging. It wasn’t quite an orgy down here, though I had no doubt it could become one.

This was what Meredith wanted. Not satisfied with having both Charlie and me, she’d brought us here to…what? Be voyeurs? Or exhibitionists?

Or just to be unconventional?

“Hi.” The woman who took the seat next to me wore a short skirt that showed a lot of thigh, and a corset top, her breasts heaving out above, her belly plumping out a bit below. “I’m Jessica.”

“Tesla.” I took the hand she offered and shook it.

“Are you here by yourself?” Jessica gestured to the bartender. “Vodka cranberry and another of what she’s drinking.”

“Um…no, not really. I’m with them.” I pointed at Charlie and Meredith, still dancing and kissing. She had her hand on his crotch, rubbing. He didn’t look as if he minded.

Jessica’s perfectly arched brows rose. “Oh, really? You’re in a ménage?”

It sounded so formal when she said it that way. “Yeah. I guess we are.”

“Huh.” She watched them for a minute, then turned back to me with a smile so friendly and genuine I had to return it. “They look busy. Are you interested in some play with me and my boyfriend? He’d watch, only.”

She leaned a little closer. “You’re very cute.”

“Thanks.” It seemed polite to offer her a compliment; the truth was, she’d flustered me a little. Heat flushed my throat and cheeks. “I like your corset. It’s very flattering.”

She leaned back with a laugh. “New to this, huh?”

“This?” I looked around the basement disco. “Sort of. Not really. Yes.”

Jessica giggled again and shifted her hand-stool closer. “That’s so cute. But you’re not new to kink.”

“I guess not.” I’d never felt newer to it than just then.

“You like girls?”

“Oh, yes. Sometimes.” I looked involuntarily at Meredith. She’d backed Charlie up against one of the support columns. They were barely still dancing. I wondered if he was hard, then knew he had to be.

“So…would you like to go with me and my boyfriend?” Jessica gave a discreet chin jerk toward a guy at the end of the bar chatting with a couple in matching leather outfits. “His name’s Carl. Like I said, he’d just watch.”

“I…” I didn’t know what to say.

In all the talking we’d ever done, the three of us had never spoken about whatever the threesome equivalent of monogamy might be. We’d outlined rules about sharing time and space, but we’d never discussed loyalty. I looked again at Meredith and Charlie.

She was still dancing, but Charlie was laughing and shaking his head. He leaned against the support column as Meredith shimmied in front of him, but it looked as if he’d had enough.

“You want to go ask them, honey?” Jessica said. “We’re not really into a group thing, but if you want to check it out with your partners first, I’m cool with that.”

“I guess I…yeah.” I swallowed some soda to wet my suddenly dry throat. For all my blasé attitude about the rules in a place like this, and how to say no, I suddenly found it hard to just turn her down.

“Not interested?”

“It’s not that,” I told her. “You’re very pretty.”

She laughed and leaned close to press her cheek to mine, and squeezed me kindly before sitting back. “Oh, honey. It’s okay. You don’t have to worry about hurting my feelings. You shouldn’t do something that doesn’t turn you on, right? That’s what all of this is about.”

“Thanks. I was flattered to be asked,” I told her honestly. “I guess I’m not really into…swinging.”

“We have room for all kinds, hon. Me, I’m not so much into any of that dominance and submission stuff, but we get that here, too. Not as much as in some of the bigger clubs down toward Philly. We have mostly just swingers here. But you get some of that other stuff once in a while.” Jessica sipped at her drink and looked around for Carl, who was still chatting with the leather-wearing couple. “Bill and Sandy, for example. They’re into three-ways with another guy. Bill likes to suck cock. Carl, he’s not into other guys, but he and Bill hit it off. Play golf a couple times a month. They’re probably talking about baseball over there.”

“You come here a lot?” My stomach was rumbling. I reached for the bar menu, which was pretty standard. Wings, burgers, fries. “Are you hungry? Can I buy you something?”

“No thanks, hon. You go ahead.” She shook her head. “We come here just about every weekend. Once a year we go on a vacation with some of our friends, people we met here. Usually we go to Debauchery—it’s one of those all-inclusives. Really nice.”

I ordered a basket of onion rings. “Every weekend. Wow.”

Jessica laughed. “Onion rings? You really aren’t interested in hooking up, are you?”

I laughed, too. “I guess not. I only came because Meredith wanted to.”

“Uh-huh. That’s your lady? She’s sort of abandoned your guy.”

Meredith had found another partner. Kirk, the guy from upstairs. Of course she had; when had we ever gone out that Meredith danced alone? The difference was that all those other times I’d been the one watching her wiggle up on some strange man, and now Charlie was watching it, too.

I mumbled a goodbye to Jessica and moved across the floor to Charlie. I pushed up on my toes to kiss him. “I found you.”

He’d been staring at his wife dancing with the other man; now he looked at me with a small smile. “Was I lost?”

I took his hand. Our fingers linked. “I don’t think so. But I’m glad I found you, anyway.”

“I’m not a good dancer. I told her she should have fun.” Charlie looked again at Meredith, who seemed to be having a great time. Laughing, eyes flashing, feet moving in time to the beat.

Kirk put his hands on Meredith’s hips, bumping her ass against his crotch, and Charlie took half a step forward. I guess he hadn’t really noticed I was holding his hand, until that held him back. He glanced down at our linked fingers, then brought them to his mouth and kissed my knuckles.

“Looks like she is,” he said.

I didn’t look at her. I put myself in front of him, not to block his view but to give him a choice of something else to see. I placed both my hands on his shoulders, moving close. Moving against him.

“We’ll have fun, too, baby. Dance with me.”

“I told you—” Charlie said, but I hushed him with a kiss.

I gazed into his eyes. I put one hand on his hip, keeping the other at his shoulder, and I backed up a step so that he followed. The music was still thumping, hard-core and fast, but we didn’t have to move like that. Charlie and I moved slowly. In time with the music, but slow and smooth.

“You can dance with me,” I told him. “I don’t care if you step on my toes.”

I led him through a basic box step, then another, and though it didn’t match the music, it worked just fine.

“I’m dancing.” Charlie’s smile lit up the room, even if it didn’t fill his eyes with all its light. He kissed me, nuzzling softly, then said into my ear, “We’re dancing.”

Meredith and her partner were on the other side of the room, with lots of other dancers between us. I could see her as Charlie spun me in a small circle, but his eyes never left mine. I knew he saw her, though. Kissing that other man, letting him rub her all over. And finally, leading her by the hand toward one of those open doors.