respectable, a fine name to endorse on the backs of paychecks. But “Elle” rang with mystery and resonance, conjured a slick wet alchemy of surrender and seduction.
For years now that name had been eagerly welcomed by the sort of clubs that are frequented only by those who knew where to find them; whose new members arrived only by invitation and discreet word of mouth; where no one was ejected to the streets for improper conduct, because everyone there knew precisely what everyone else had come for.
Her beauty and willingness to experiment were prized. She was almost tall, not quite. Her raven hair, when unbound, contrasted with her pale luminous skin and ripe lips in delicious nocturnal severity. She had a twenty- three-inch waist but could corset it down to eighteen. Men and women alike loved to wrap their hands around it, or nuzzle over the smooth tight curves on their way to the drenched heat between her thighs.
Tonight’s lovers were no exception, at times all six hands caressing her tiny middle, some lightly tender, others rough and groping with urgency. The club’s name was the Inner Circle and variety was everybody’s spice.
She’d spent the past couple hours as part of a foursome, one of her preferred configurations. Two men and two women — she found a perfect symmetry there, something intended by nature, along with the four winds and seasons, the cardinal points of a compass. The Inner Circle offered an orgiastic central room aglow with gauzy mood lighting, or more private quarters with plenty of cushions and sprawl, and they’d opted for the latter.
She filled her mouth with Daniel while Mitch filled her from behind; she cradled Jill, kissing her deeply, as the men traded off between the women’s legs; she and Jill tongued one another’s feverish clits while Daniel and Mitch were yet locked inside them; Jill straddled her mouth while holding her ankles wide … and in Elle’s broad experience you usually needed more men, because their glands betrayed them and they wore out so much sooner. Still, they gave their all, and she drank it with her mouth, cunt, anus. She cried out loudly, in cycles, pulled the others into her singly, as pairs, all three. She made a dinner of semen, a dessert of the musky dew on Jill’s swollen and petaled cleft.
And there was always so much silence when bodies fell still, unable to give or take any more. It always felt as if the world had just ended, and they all lay naked and wet in the ashes.
“You’re ravenous,” Daniel told her. Blond, well-toned, he lay in a sweaty half-curl near her side, reaching over with one finger to probe beneath the edge of the black corset. Jill and Mitch lay in their own raw exhausted tangle a few feet over. “I’d like to see you again.”
“You might,” she said. “I’m no stranger here.”
“So I understand.” Grinning, he elbowed closer, crawling like a soldier. “How long’ve you been coming here? Double entendre not intended.”
“Look, you don’t have to engage me in conversation, all right? I fucked you tonight, and I’ll probably fuck you again.”
He rolled onto his back, relaxed, unfazed. “I wish I was nineteen again,” he sighed. “I could come five times a night when I was nineteen. But the sad thing was, I was alone for most of it.” He peeked at her, hopeful. “Are you feeling pity for me yet?”
He was so obvious, and knew it, that Elle had to laugh in spite of herself. “You late bloomers, you’re so maudlin when you start dwelling on what you’ve missed.”
Daniel said he was valiantly fighting the pull of gravity, here on the downhill side of the sexual bell curve. Confessed he was thirty-five — coincidence, or karma? She was closing fast on thirty-five herself, but then weren’t they all, for the first or second or tenth time.
She let him talk, and he was pleasant enough without seeming possessive. A few of the guys in these places, in spite of their laissez-faire posturing, they nailed you once and it was as though they’d staked a claim. So she let Daniel talk, but already her thoughts were drifting ahead. Tomorrow night, or the night after … future nights at other clubs, wondering where she’d be, what she’d be doing, who she’d be doing it with.
Maybe at the Purgatorium, with the rings through her hardened nipples and chained to a leather belt while some hooded dominatrix violated her with a strap-on.
Or maybe with the Jezebel Society, where gangbangs were a specialty, and where, on knees and elbows, she could be triply penetrated while massaging a cock in each hand.
Or elsewhere, with company even more exotic, but always sure to wring more from the experience than her partners. It was a kind of challenge, something bone-deep and primal.
And she wondered if, wherever she’d be, after she was sated and lay breathing heavily, she’d once more start dreaming of the next time before the sticky fluids of that night had even dried.
Could you even completely look forward to that next time when you could so easily forecast your pose by its end? Even in private clubs like the Inner Circle, the Purgatorium, the rest, sex could get as routine and predictable as some fat suburban couple’s half-hearted hump scheduled for the second Tuesday of each month. It was only a matter of degree.
And she wondered if considering these things, in a room with three other nude people whose potent sexuality had just soaked the walls, meant that she was bored.
Figuring that, in the asking, she already had her answer.
*
A few days later Ellen came back from lunch, took one look behind the counter, and wondered if one of Jude’s facial nips and tucks had begun to unravel. The woman’s forehead appeared ready to burst veins.
“He’s … upstairs,” she said through clenched teeth.
Ellen frowned. “Who? Who is?”
“That … that
“Ohhh,” she said, and frowned again, more thoughtfully. “Was everything in place when he came in?”
Jude’s eyes widened, horrified at the very notion she’d have glanced down to check. “You see, you see — it’s types like his that make me think Affirmative Action is a terrible imposition on the rest of us. No telling what he’s doing up there.”
Ellen started for the stairs. “Maybe he needs help reaching a book. We don’t have elevators for the shelves, did you ever think of that?”
“You’re going up?” Jude clutched the counter, all bony white knuckles and maroon nails. “What if he has his willy out again?”
Over her shoulder, Ellen smiled with reassurance. “Then I’ll suggest he find a more appropriate bookmark.”
This befuddled poor Jude. Upstairs, Ellen began to check the aisles, the shelves older and taller and dustier up here, home to the store’s used and vintage and rare books. She’d always accorded a greater respect to the browsers who spent their time here.
She found him in fiction, as sturdy and vital in his chair as if it were an outgrowth of him. He sat engrossed in a book, not so deeply that he didn’t notice her approach. His face lit with a self-effacing smile, and she tried not to recall how it had looked the other day, self-pleasured and unashamed. And so powerfully attuned to his body. Not one in a thousand could get past his lack of discretion, and she supposed that finding this a simple matter made her the odd one as well.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
He pointed at the second shelf from the top. “Even chimps use tools to get what they can’t reach, but…” He spread his empty hands. “Eleventh from the left, if you wouldn’t mind.”
She stretched, pulled it down, looked over the cover before handing it to him. “De Sade,
His grin was apologetic, wholly engaging, set in a weathered ruddy face. A shock of hair tumbled over his forehead. “Loaned mine out and never got it back. Home feels incomplete without it.”
Ellen smiled back. Or maybe it was Elle this time. Elle in daylight, rattling at her prison. “Myself, I’m partial to
He seemed merely delighted, not surprised. “I’m sure we each have our reasons.” Vigorously, he patted
