CHAPTER 31

I suck down the last of my wine and put my glass on the bar. “Okay, let’s do this.”

“Are you sure?” Alma asks.

“Absofuckinglutely,” I reply, shoring up my resolve. “But you can’t watch me. That would just be too weird.”

“You can watch me,” she says with a grin.

“Even weirder,” I quip and loop my arm through hers.

I let my best friend, Alma, talk me into spending five hundred dollars of money I have no right to spend on a sex club. But the money has been paid, I’ve had a few glasses of wine, and I need to prove to myself that I am adventurous when it comes to sex.

You see… when your husband wants to separate because you’re a “little dull in bed,” it makes you want to do really bad things.

I’d moved back home to Nevada from New Jersey three weeks ago after Peter told me to leave our marital home. I’d like to say it was a complete shock, but it wasn’t. Things hadn’t been right between us for over a year. There was the fighting, which could get vicious because Peter doesn’t sugarcoat anything, and there were the hectic work schedules that exhausted me to the point I just wanted to drop into bed at the end of a twelve-hour workday. And yes, there was the fact it was just easier to lay on my back and let him bust a nut so I could just go to sleep, but I didn’t think those were things that would unilaterally lead him to call it quits.

There was no discussion.

Just a resounding “no” to my offer to go to counseling.

Hell, I even offered to go to sex therapy with him, but he said he needed space to figure things out.

God, I was confused, and pissed, and depressed, and when it became apparent he really wanted me to leave, it hit hard that my marriage was over.

Alma, my best friend since childhood, was there for me with open arms. Her apartment door was open as well when I arrived with my tail tucked between my legs, a small U-Haul full of boxes that represented almost eight years of married life, and three suitcases. Alma was thrusting a set of keys in my hand before I even crossed the threshold, telling me we were going to be best roommates forever and ever.

I had no family left in Nevada. My mom died during childbirth and my dad when I was seventeen, which meant my older brother Noel got custody of me for a little less than a year before I came of age. I left home at eighteen to go to college in Los Angeles, met and married Peter there, and made a home in sunny California.

It was a little weird coming back to Nevada. Noel lived in San Francisco, and sure… I could have gone there to crash with him and he would have loved it. But I needed a woman to talk to. Someone like Alma who I could shamefully admit to that my husband just didn’t find me sexy or thrilling in bed, and that’s why he kicked me out.

No way could I ever tell Noel that.

For the past three weeks, Alma has let me live with her rent and obligation free of doing anything other than moping around. I told her all the dirty details of my fall from marital grace, and she assured me Peter was the one fucked in the head, not me.

I didn’t believe her, so Alma had a more novel idea to get my head out of my ass.

She suggested I come with her to a sex club she visited on occasion called The Sinful Night Club. I was originally horrified at the idea of having casual sex with a complete stranger, but I was also strangely turned on at the same time. That told me that at twenty-eight, my ovaries weren’t dried up the way Peter implied they were. In fact, as I mulled over her proposition for a few days, I may have overheated my vibrator with fantasies of what it would be like.

Alma told me all about The Sinful Night Club and its various rooms where people could have guilt-free sex in an accepting environment. She explained that vanilla or kinky, one on one, or one on five were only a few options. I could be paddled or gang-banged if I wanted.

From her description, it was my fantasy waiting to happen, and eventually, I just said what the hell and decided to do it, although I was pretty sure it would only be vanilla for me.

Oh, and it helped that tonight is a masquerade event. Not only is it causal sex with a stranger, it’s also absolutely anonymous.

It was beyond fun getting ready. Alma and I picked out slutty dresses to wear, mine being nothing more than an electric blue tube dress shot through with silver thread that hugged every inch of my petite five-foot-three frame. Alma chose a slinky gold dress with spaghetti straps and a plunging neckline.

Best of all were our masks. Alma is a hair dresser, but she’s also insanely crafty in all things. Instead of a ready-made mask, Alma glued an elaborate design of sapphire blue feathers to my face, interlacing the ends of peacock feathers at my temples. She put my bobbed hair under a tight cap, and then glued feathers all over it as well. My green eyes, which I’d done heavy with smoky shadow, my nose, and my lips were all that were visible. The feathers even caressed my jaw and brushed down along the sides of my neck. It was exquisite, and I wanted to wear them forever and ever. I’d gotten several looks from both men and women, and I felt sexy, mysterious, and beautiful.

And I was going to get laid tonight and prove to myself—and that asshole Peter—that I had it going on in between my legs.

Alma leads me through the main room through a set of double doors and into a foyer with several hallways that lead to the various sex rooms. While I admire Alma and her open sexual nature, I make her promise me again.

“When I decide on someone, you’re going to leave the room, right?”

“I promise, Jasmine,” she says with a squeeze to my arm. “I know it’s going to be awkward enough; you don’t need your best friend watching.”

I stop and turn to face her. “Thank you. You know you’re the best thing to ever happen to me, right?”

“Right,” she says with a sharp nod. “Now let’s go dust the cobwebs off your hoo-hah.”

Laughing, she turns me to the right and we head down the hall that says The Silo.

This was my preference as she told me there were a few rooms in The Silo that had curtains that could be drawn in case I got a little shy and didn’t want people watching. I have no clue what my preference will be because I’m half expecting to bolt out of here the minute I get my first look at the debauchery.

When we walk in, my breath is sucked from my lungs as I look around.

People having sex everywhere.

On couches, on the floor. Standing up against the wall.

And then my eyes take in the glass-walled rooms on the perimeter of the circular Silo, and I suck in a hard breath. There’s a room with a set of stocks. A woman is locked inside while a guy fucks her mouth gently, and another has his face buried in her ass.

Another room has a man tied to a St. Andrew’s cross, getting his dick sucked by a man and a woman taking turns on him.

And still another room where there’s a mattress with a single couple getting their sixty-nine on.

“Hot, right?” Alma breathes into my ear. A shiver runs up my spine as my panties get drenched with a rush of moisture.

“Oh, wow,” I tell her softly. “I never could have imagined this.”

“See anything you like?” she asks me slyly.

And yes, I see a lot I like. I look around at the people, immediately noting several men staring at me and Alma hungrily behind their masks.

I’m so getting laid tonight.

And then, I see him.

Him.

A fucking god.

Wearing nothing but a pair of faded jeans that hang low on lean hips, above which rises a trail of dark hair that stops at his navel. He’s not the type of guy who struts around flexing his abs, but I could tell if he did, they’d be washboard perfection. Muscular chest and arms, but in a toned way.

Tanned skin.

No, not tanned… olive.

Exotic.

And that’s all I can see because he’s hooded. His entire head is covered in a form-fitting leather mask. It must be laced or zipped up the back, revealing only a pair of golden-brown eyes, full lips, and dark, longish hair.

“God, he’s magnificent,” Alma whispers as he walks from the opposite side of the room.

No, not walks.

He prowls, but not toward any particular prey. Arms hanging loose but swinging slightly in that confident way that says, “I’m the fucking shit and I know it.” The confidence exuding from him is sexy as hell.

He doesn’t look at anyone, just quickly walks down a short hall in between two of the rooms and disappears.

I’m slightly dizzy because I’ve forgotten to breathe, and I take in a shaky lungful of air. When I let it out slowly, I register abject disappointment that he’s gone.

“Oh, this is interesting,” Alma murmurs as she nudges me in the shoulder. I follow her gaze to one of the previously unoccupied rooms. It’s now lit up.

The masked man is in there. He’s all alone except for some type of furniture that’s covered completely in a silk sheet. Casually walking up to it, he takes the material in hand. He pulls it off not with a magician’s flourish, but slowly so the object is revealed.

And it’s a…

Well, I’m not quite sure what it is. He walks around it, blocking it from my view for a moment. People move toward the glass to get a better look. Before I know it, my legs are moving, too, and Alma follows me so we are standing right in front of the room, the sexy, mysterious man no more than five feet from us on the other side.

He is doing something with the contraption, and when he finally moves away to face the crowd, I vaguely register people gasping.

But my eyes are pinned on him as his gaze sweeps the crowd.

“Holy shit,” Alma mutters. “That is some freaky shit.”

My body jolts at the heat in her words, and I follow her gaze. My pussy floods with wetness at the sight.

At first glance, it looks like one of those portable massage chairs where a person straddles the seat and leans forward to put their face in a cut-out cushioned headrest. But there is no headrest, just an inclined padded bench that extends forty-five degrees away from the seat that’s meant to be straddled.

The seat, if it can be called that, is square, padded, and covered with leather, with a square opening in the center.

“What is it?” I ask.

“No clue,” she says, but then it becomes clear to everyone as the man reaches into a compartment attached to the side of the unit and pulls out a flesh-colored dildo that must be eight inches. It is so life-like I can see a thick vein running up the side.

He bends over, and my jaw drops as he hooks it onto a contraption under the seat, causing about four inches to poke up through the center.

There is no doubt in anyone’s mind now that seat is meant to be straddled by a woman with the dildo inside of her.

All I can think is, Who came up with this idea?

Next thing is, I wonder what that would feel like?

The man straightens. Still not looking at anyone, he fishes inside his front pocket where he pulls out a tube of lipstick.

He walks up to the glass window and starts writing words in reverse fashion so we can read them from our side of the glass.

Slowly, he spells out his message.

Anyone brave enough to come in here with me?

“I’m going unless you call dibs,” Alma says to me quickly, her eyes pinned on the man.

“Dibs,” I hurry to say, even though my blood pressure spikes when I realize I just committed myself.

She turns to look at me with a bright smile. “That’s my girl.”

About five women now push their way up to the glass, one of them literally knocking me to the side. I wobble briefly on my heels as the women raise their hands and start calling through the glass, “Me. Me. Me.”

My heart sinks as I realize that while I might be walking toward an adventurous orgasm, I’m going to have to compete to get there, and that is something I just don’t have within me. I’ve always been more of the wallflower and never the aggressor, and I can’t handle the rejection. Not after getting rejected by Peter.

I start to turn away when a loud knocking on the glass startles me into looking back.

The masked man is staring at me, his index finger pointed in my direction. He nods, turns his hand, and then crooks his finger, beckoning me in there.

I’m immediately filled with doubt and fear, and Alma must sense it for she calls out loud enough the guy has to hear, “She’ll be right there.”

He nods and turns away, then Alma has my hand as she drags me down the short hall.

“I can’t,” I practically screech.

“You can,” she growls. “You called dibs… and there’s no going back on dibs.”

Before I know it, she’s led me down the hall to the rear perimeter of the glass rooms. She opens the door, pushing me in so hard I stumble.

As she slams the door, she calls out, “I’m leaving. Find me in the Social Room when you’re done. If you can walk that is.”

With my heart beating so hard I’m afraid I’m going to die, I turn slowly around to find the man looking at me. He’s so much larger being in the same room with him, and my fear spikes higher.

“Panties off,” he says. “Leave the rest on.”

I stare at him, frozen.

“Panties off or leave,” he says, not in a mean or condescending way, but just in a matter-of-fact one.

When I look back on this moment, I know it will be a defining one for me. I think of Peter telling me that I just didn’t do it for him anymore. After a glance at the man who is already hard beneath the denim of his jeans, I make my decision.

I pull my dress up just high enough to grab my panties, and I shimmy them down my legs, kicking them free.

“Good girl,” he praises and holds out a hand.

My legs tremble as they move forward, but I place my palm against his. When his fingers curl around mine, engulfing me so completely, I feel an electrical spark of desire join the blood racing through my veins.

Without a word, he leads me to the contraption. I falter when I look outside the glass, horrified at the crowd gathered. Women glaring at me. Men looking like they want to devour me.

“The curtains,” I practically whimper. “Close them.”

He doesn’t answer, only pulls me right to the seat and growls his order. “Straddle it.”

My eyes shoot to his, and I see no patience within the warm brown depths. He’s so stern and intimidating, yet his eyes are glowing with a clear promise that this will be good.

Within them, I also see that the curtains are going to stay open, and I think I may have made a mistake.

“I won’t hurt you,” he says in a soothing voice.

“Promise?” I whisper.

“Straddle it,” he says again, this time with a gentle coaxing filled with promise.

“Oh, God,” I moan, but then I lift a leg to straddle the seat.