by JA Huss
“Do you get invited here often?” he asks.
The salad and steak are served at the same time. And the filet mignon in front of me has my mouth watering. It smells delicious. My stomach is rumbling so loud, I’m sure the entire restaurant can hear it. But that question… “Invited?” I ask, not sure how to answer.
“You’re not married?” he asks, like he thinks he knows the answer, but maybe he’s wrong.
“No.” I laugh.
“Then you have to be a guest. It’s a gentlemen’s club, after all.”
“I… I never thought about it, I guess. I don’t come here,” I say, in way of explanation. “It’s a place I’ve become acquainted with very recently.”
I look around. Take it all in. Everything is in black and white. I know this bar is called the Black Room and the restaurant on the other side of the lobby is called the White Room. They are each named for the color of the marble on the floors. The brownstone facade is typical of building constructed in the late eighteen hundreds, but the inside is more art deco. The edges and curves that people love about that period are all over in the design of the bar and the inlay on the floors. In the furniture, even, I realize. The black leather booths have rounded tops and the tables in the middle of the room, which do not have white linen tablecloths like the ones along the window, have a pattern on the top that reminds me of Gatsby.
It’s opulent and excessive. Just like the men who run it.
“But I love the decor.” And I do. It might be excessive and opulent, but I like it.
I realize I never unwrapped my silverware. The white napkin is starched and creased into an envelope shape. It has a monogram on what would be the outside flap which reads TPC. Turning Point Club, I realize.
“You should see the rooms upstairs,” Matisse says, cutting his steak as I cut mine. I take a bite before I even process how to respond to that comment.
“Mmmm,” I say, enjoying that first bite of meat so much, I have to close my eyes. “That’s so good.” I laugh.
When I open my eyes and look at Matisse, he’s staring at me. “Would you like to see my room upstairs, Chella?”
Chella. Would you like to see my room? Would you like to go upstairs? Would you like me to fuck you tonight?
I swallow the steak and go stiff. Is that what this is? Did Smith set me up to fuck him?
I look around, and something, I’m not sure what, makes me look up.
There is Smith Baldwin. On that second-story balcony that Bric and Quin were sitting in last night when Smith escorted me out. He’s leaning on the railing with a drink in his hand. Smiling.
I put my silverware down and scoot out of the bench.
“I’m sorry,” I say to Matisse. “I’m really sorry. But I have to go. I just remembered that…” But I have no excuse but the truth. So I say nothing. Just walk out of the Black Room and make my way through the crowd of people in the lobby.
Why are there so many people here? It’s after one in the morning.
Why, Chella? You know why.
It’s a gentlemen’s club.
This is a sex club and Smith Baldwin brought me here to fuck his friend.
“Chella,” Matisse says, gently grabbing my arm as I wait my turn at the coat check. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything. I’ll take you home.”
“My car—”
“I’ll take you to your car.”
“No,” I say, pulling away so he has to let go of my arm. “I’ll get a cab.”
The girl comes with my coat, even though I never asked for it, and I slip it on and escape outside before Matisse can say anything else.
I stop on the wet sidewalk, the cool air washing over me. Small snowflakes stick to my face. Melt from the heat of my embarrassment.
The door opens behind me and I’m sure it’s going to be Matisse, but it’s not.
“My driver will take you to your car, Marcella.”
It’s Smith.
The driver is suddenly there, opening the door of the long, black car.
“Get in,” Smith says. “If you walk, I’ll follow you, and I’m pretty sure you don’t want that to happen.”
I get in, expecting him to get in with me. But he doesn’t. He closes the door, speaks to the driver, and then walks back inside Turning Point Club, hands in his trouser pockets, like this is just another task he needed to check off his list for the day.
The driver takes me to my car. I don’t even have to tell him where I’m parked. But I guess it’s easy enough to find out, if someone was stalking me.
Someone was definitely stalking me.
I get out of the car before the driver can open my door, and I’m inside my Mercedes breathing hard and confused before he can say anything. I turn the car on, check my mirror, and back out. The limo is still here. The driver backed up far enough to let me maneuver. But when I make my way to the garage exit, he follows me.
He follows me out onto the street. All the way to my townhouse on Little Raven Street. When I close up my garage, he’s still waiting. But when I get inside the house, go up one flight of steps in the dark, and look out the guest room window that faces the alley, he’s gone.
I check the front of the house too.
No one.
And then I do something I almost never do.
I set my house alarm.
Chapter Seven - Smith
Her house is huge. I’m surprised she needs so much space. It’s got five bedrooms, plus an office and what might be a library. That room is lined with custom shelves, but no books. In fact, there’s almost nothing personal about this place at all. It looks… staged.
Is she selling it? Does this furniture belong to someone else?
I do a quick search of her address on a real estate site, but no. Not listed for sale.
“Huh,” I say out loud as I take a seat in a low chair placed in front of the window that faces the brick-walled courtyard in the back.
I don’t know what to make of Marcella Walcott. Why did she agree to whatever plan Rochelle had? Why did she let Quin fuck her? Why did she come to dinner tonight if she was just going to walk out?
It doesn’t add up. If she wants to be Rochelle’s replacement—if, in fact, that was what Rochelle’s plan was—then why walk out on Matisse?
I could think of a lot of worse-looking men than Matisse. I think he’s good-looking. If I was into men that way, I’d fuck him. And he’s a goddamned celebrity in her world. She was gushing all over his work today. The smile on her face…
I sigh as the garage door rumbles open in another part of the house.
I could just ask her.
But not tonight.
I smile and get up out of the chair just as she comes bursting through a door in some other room. A few seconds later she runs past me, taking the stairs two at a time. Footsteps over my head as she goes into one of the guest bedrooms. One that faces the alley. A few seconds later she crosses the hallway—I can see her through a cable railing above—and goes into another guest room.
What the fuck is she doing?
I wait, listening. She’s breathing heavy when she comes out of that room and jogs up the stairs to the top floor where her bedroom is.
And that bedroom, wow. Talk about boring.
There’s a series of beeps as she arms the house alarm.
I smile again.
Because she just locked me in here with her.
I sit back down in my chair and wait her out, staring at an ugly-as-fuck orange accent wall that needs to find its way back to the Seventies where it came from. I wait and see if she comes downstairs to get something to eat. But she doesn’t. She gets in the shower. It’s a long one. So long I get bored and go upstairs to watch her through the clear glass. She’s got her eyes closed as the water flows down her face, her breasts, her legs.
If she opened them right now, she’d see me. But she doesn’t. Just stays like that, like she’s washing something away.
I shrug and step back into the bedroom,
casually looking through her drawers. When she turns the water off, I take a pair of panties out of her underwear drawer and push it closed. They are black lace. Boy shorts, I think they call them. The ones that ride up the ass cheeks. I like those, so I put them in my suit pocket.
I step out of her room just as she steps out of the bathroom. She misses seeing me by seconds. And then I go downstairs to wait. I sit in my chair and watch for her shadow on the stairs.
But the dim light filtering through from the third floor clicks out a few minutes later.
She went to bed.
I ponder this for a few minutes. Wonder if I should wake her. Let her know I’m here.
But what would be the fun in that?
I watch the clock for thirty minutes and when I’m sure she’s asleep, I go back upstairs and into her bedroom. I take a seat in another chair with my back to the window.
And I watch her. She has curtains on the window. But they are sheer, and white, and not closed. So there’s a little bit of light coming in from the moon, or some streetlamp. It’s enough to get a good look at her face.
She’s pretty. I noted it last night but watching her at work let me see her. She likes her job, she likes her co-workers, and she appears to be happy.
So why was she going along with Rochelle’s plan? Because I think it’s pretty clear at this point that Rochelle did have a plan. What it was, what it’s about… I have no idea.
I slip my coat jacket off and drape it over the back of the chair I’m sitting in. Then my tie. And once that’s situated neatly on top of the jacket, I start unbuttoning my shirt. It’s cold out tonight, and even though the heat is on in the house, it’s set low. So I leave it on, just open it up to expose my chest.
I unbuckle my belt next. It jingles a little and I watch her face closely to see if she’s a light sleeper. No, I decide, once I’m unzipping my pants. She’s not. My cock is hard when I grip it. And when I close my eyes and let my imagination take over, it grows even harder.
Rochelle, I hear myself saying in my head. Just the way Quin described it to me earlier today. I needed a good visual so I hunted him down at work after lunch and got the whole story. Did you miss me? Because I missed you. We need to renegotiate. Two weeks is too long.
What would I have done if it was my night instead of Quin’s?
I don’t think I would’ve mistaken her for Rochelle, that’s for sure. Marcella’s breasts are bigger, for one. And Quin said he grabbed them. He said he was kinda rough. For him, anyway. He pulled her hair.
God, I wish I had seen it. I wish I was there.
I open my eyes, my hand still pumping my cock as I play that scene over and over in my head. Trying to make it perfect. And when it is, I come on my stomach in the still silence.
I let myself breathe hard for several minutes, hoping she wakes up so she can see me here. Understand what I did. What I want from her.
But she is dead to the world.
I want to touch her very badly.
But instead I get up from the chair and walk out, silently descending the stars until I get to the bottom floor. I go into the bathroom and clean the come off my stomach and stare at my face in the mirror.
I look tired. I need sleep and a shave. But neither of those things are mine tonight, because I’m stuck here in her house. I’m not going to wake her up. And miss her reaction when she realizes I just spent the night in her house and she didn’t know it? I laugh. Out loud. Fuck that.
Marcella agreed to Rochelle’s plan for one reason and one reason only.
She’s a dirty slut. She wants to be with us. She wants what Rochelle left behind.
And the longer I think about it, the more I think about it.
When I’m walking back to my chair I note the thermostat. I kick the heat up a little higher so I don’t get cold, and go back to my chair in front of the family room window and consider calling Bric so we can discuss. But then I look at my watch and realize it’s nearly three in the morning. He’ll be up in a few hours.
I sit there in my chair, listening for her sounds. Snoring, or sighing. Or… shit, I hope for a little moaning. What if she plays with herself as she sleeps?
That thought is enough to get my ass back upstairs.
She’s kicked the covers off. In fact, it almost looks like she was thrashing around from a bad dream. Her fair legs are long. One is hiked over a pillow, which she hugs to her chest. I get my phone out and open the night vision app. Take some pictures. I never have a shutter sound on my camera, so all this is done in silence.
I have a lot of questions for Marcella Walcott, starting with her father, a US senator for thirty years. In fact, it turns out baby Marcella was born the first year he was elected. She spent her entire childhood being the daughter of Senator Walcott.
I found internet pictures of her up until age ten and then… she disappeared. I can only assume it was boarding school. But ten. Jesus. That’s young, isn’t it? There are no more pictures of her until she’s well into her twenties. Maybe just a few years ago, now that I think about it. She’s thirty. Her birthday is in February, so almost thirty-one. Those pictures online are all of her at the Charles Benton Gallery.
There are none with her father.
It strikes me as weird. Why no pictures of him with his daughter?
Maybe they just like privacy? Maybe her mother insisted on it. She died three years ago. The same year Marcella started her job at the gallery.
There’s a lot of gaps. Where did she go to school? She has a short biography on the gallery website. It says, Marcella Walcott is the daughter of US Senator Henry Walcott. She studied art history and curation and graduated with a PhD.
Usually after a biography rattles off credentials, they list a university. From Harvard. Or Princeton. Or wherever she was.
But not this biography.
“You have secrets, Marcella.” I say it out loud but she never even stirs. “And I’m gonna figure them out.”
I unzip my pants again, ready for another round as I stare at her half-naked body, so helpless and sweet, lying there in bed.
I imagine Bric this time. How he might fuck her. I’d pay money to see that. Watch him with his toys. His whips, his gags, how he can turn an ass cheek bright red with one, hard smack.
“Fuck,” I whisper, my hand sliding up and down my cock in long, slow strokes.
He got rough last night when we went downstairs. Not with Lucinda, she was busy and she’s not even close to his type. Some other wife or some other club member. They wear masks and no one talks about who they are. All I care about is the pussy. And the cocks. And the sweat. The slick sweat covering their bodies, dripping off their faces, red with exertion and lust. I like the way Bric grunts when he’s turned on. I like the way his huge cock fills them up and makes then cry out. I like the way he whips them until they have welts on their backs.
He’s sick.
But so am I. So is Quin. And so was Rochelle.
I’m betting Marcella Walcott is just as sick as us. I’m betting she walked out on Matisse this evening because she can’t admit it.
She likes the dark, I decide, coming on my stomach for a second time.
She likes the forbidden world we live in. And she wants to be a part of it, whether she realizes it or not.
I don’t bother going back downstairs to clean up when I’m done. Too fucking wiped out.
I just leave my eyes closed and drift off.
“What the fuck are you doing in my house?”
I open my eyes—or try to. The sunlight is bright today. The storm must be over.
“I said—”
“I heard you,” I grumble, sitting up a little straighter. My neck is sore as fuck from sleeping in this chair.
“Then answer me. I called the cops. They’re on their way!”
When I finally get my eyes to open and can properly see her, she’s holding a gun on me.
I laugh.
“What’s so funny? You’re a fucking pervert. An
d you’re gonna get slapped with a sex offender charge for this. Do you have any idea who my father is?”
I laugh again.
“Stop it!” She yells it. Loud. “And get out of my fucking house. Right now!”
“I can’t,” I say, looking down at the dried-up mess on my bare stomach. “You locked me in last night.”
“Locked you—” She stops to laugh. But it’s one of those how-dare-you laughs. Incredulous.
My dick is hard from morning wood and she does not miss this once I start playing with it.
“You’re sick,” she says, backing away. The gun is still generally pointing at me, but only half-heartedly.
“I have a question for you, Marcella.” I look her in the eyes as I say this, but my hands are busy tucking my still-erect cock back into my pants.
“Get out!”
“I will, just calm down. But I can’t get out until I’m put back together. And you need to let me out. I don’t know your alarm code. I didn’t expect you to arm it when you got home.”
“Oh, my God. You were waiting in here for me. That’s why you put me in that car alone, wasn’t it?”
I think about this for a second. “Did you want me to get in the car with you?” I laugh again. Jesus Christ.
“I’m calling the police if you’re not out of my house in thirty seconds. I’ll let you out from the bedroom control panel, just get up and get the fuck out of my house.”
“You said you already called them. Let me give you some pointers about lying, Marcella—”
“Get. The fuck! Out!”
“My question is,” I say, ignoring her theatrics. I stand up so I can tuck in my shirt and put on my tie. “Why did you refuse Matisse?”
“What?” She blinks a few times, like I’m an idiot and she can’t believe I even know how to dress myself. “He’s my fucking client, Smith. Why the hell did you assume I’d be up for something like that?”
“You let Quin fuck you. Why wouldn’t I assume you’re a whore?”