by K. A. Berg
Chapter Twelve
Matteo
Nerves rattled in my gut. Dessert had just been served, and it was time to move onto my after-dinner plans. Plans that Natalie had no idea of.
I’d spent weeks planning and researching and thinking about all the details. I’d hired a babysitter, made reservations, and vetted everything I could about where I was taking Natalie.
It was time to share the part two of the night with her.
Nat dug into the slice of triple-chocolate fudge lava cake and moaned around her fork. “This is so good. I really love that you did all this. Date night was a really good idea.”
Last week, we had our first Date night. We hired the neighbor’s daughter to come hang out with the kids for a few hours one night a week. During those hours, Natalie and I could do whatever we liked.
“This is only the first half.”
She paused, licking the fudge from the fork. “What else are we doing?”
“I have a surprise for you, and it requires an open-mind.”
She considered things for a moment then asked, “Are we going to a strip club?”
The waiter chose that moment to come by with the bill. He smirked and said, “Have a great night.”
I pulled enough bills from my wallet to cover the check and tip and tucked them into the billfold. “Nope,” I told her, stealing the last bite of the chocolate cake before she could eat the whole thing.
She eyed me wearily. “Where are we going?”
My tongue darted to the corner of my mouth and licked the bit of fudge there. “Do you know what surprise means, love?” I questioned.
She grumbled the entire way to the car.
“Some women would kill for surprises and date nights, you know?” I reminded her as I pressed the unlock button on the key fob.
She sighed as she sat inside and closed the door. “You’re right. It’s just you know how impatient I am.”
“Trust me,” I told her, starting the car. “You’ll see in fifteen minutes.”
Immersion was a private club a few blocks over from the city’s sports complex. I called every reference the owner gave me. I asked Derek to have his firm look over the NDA with a fine-tooth comb. He also was able to get his PI to dig into it to see if there were any legal issues, police reports, or complaints. Their record was clean, and the NDA was the real deal and enforceable by law.
That was what I wanted to know most of all. I wanted to make sure that no one would be able to reveal any personal information about the members. If I was going to take my wife to a fetish club, I wanted to make sure that if we saw anyone there, they couldn’t tell everyone about it without risking a lawsuit.
Immersion wasn’t a publicly known club. There was no listing for it in the yellow pages. There was no website. No Facebook or Instagram page. It was strictly a word-of-mouth club. I only learned of it because it came across my desk as part of a client’s portfolio. One of the owners was a client of my firm and I was the one who ran the numbers for adding it to his insurance policy.
The building was nondescript and looked like a regular factory on the outside. It was a production plant back in the day, but it had been renovated into a sex club.
“Is the surprise an empty building?” Natalie chuckled. “Where are you taking me?”
You couldn’t tell it was a club from the front. In the back of the building, there was an underground parking deck where the valet parked members’ cars. It helped keep identities more secure. Since members of the upper echelon of society came here and their cars were easy to tie to them, it was an extra layer of security.
“Ready to keep that open mind?” I asked pulling the car to a stop in front of the door as directed in my membership contract.
She nodded.
“The name of the place is Immersion,” I started, wanting to see if it rang any bells.
Natalie wasn’t familiar with it. “Okay, what is it?”
“A sex club,” I confessed. “Or a fetish club—I mean . . . I guess it’s the same thing either way. But this is a place where people come to explore their sexual fantasies and desires.”
It was a risk to have done this as a surprise, but I was anxious to see her reaction. Natalie could freak out, but I didn’t think she would.
If she didn’t want to do this, I would be totally okay with it.
“Wow, really?” Natalie asked, gazing up at the average, red-bricked building with amazement. “I didn’t even know we had one of these close by.”
“That’s the idea.” I smiled. “I’m pretty sure they’re all over, but in order to know where, you have to know the right people.”
She quirked a brow. “And how do we know the right people?”
I laughed. “It was chance.” I explained how I came to know about this place. “But don’t worry, I had Derek look over the paperwork and check to see if there was anything nefarious attached to the club .”
She gasped. “Derek knows?”
“He’s a prominent criminal defense attorney, love. Do you really think this is going to skew his view of us? People he’s known for a decade? Besides, I’m sure Norah has told him some of whatever you’ve told her.”
She nibbled on the corner of her thumbnail. “True.”
“Are you ready to go in?” I asked. “We are supposed to have our tour tonight.”
As we exited the car and waited at the door, I took Natalie’s hand and explained what we were doing for the evening. “One of the owners will give us a tour of the facilities and explain how the club operates.”
Immersion was owned by three men. Cole Masterson, Leo Hughes, and Max de La Cruz. Part of the membership process was meeting with each man. Cole Masterson called me after vetting my application. He asked a few questions including if I was planning to bring any guests, and then after adding Natalie’s information to the guest list, said I’d hear from one of his associates. Leo Hughes called to inform me my application was approved for probationary membership. I was assuming I’d be meeting Mr. de La Cruz today for the tour. He would go over how things operated, explain the rules, and so on.
The door opened and a large man in a black suit greeted us. “Mr. and Mrs. Collins, welcome. Mr. de La Cruz is expecting you.”
My assumptions were correct.
Nat gripped my hand as we went inside. The entryway was dark, but I saw the blinking red light of a camera in the corner by the ceiling. The large entry space housed three doors, and the man directed us to the one off to the left. “The door ahead is the exit. The door the right is the security room. Please follow me this way.”
Natalie’s hold on my hand tightened as we walked into what looked like a waiting room area. A sofa and two chairs sat around a table in the middle of the room. There were a few more doors, one of which opened and man in a navy suit exited. He extended his hand and smiled. “Natalie, Matteo, thank you so much for joining us here at Immersion. I’m Max de La Cruz.”
I took his hand in my free one. “It’s a pleasure.”
He winked as he moved onto Natalie. “I sure hope it will be.” Her cheeks pinked a bit, and she tucked her hair behind her ear.
“If you’re ready”—Max turned and walked toward one of the doors—“let me take you inside.”
There were two wings off the waiting area. One led to Max and his associates’ offices and a small clinic-like area for emergencies. The other led to the club itself.
My attention was focused more on Natalie’s reactions than seeing it all for myself.
On the other side of the door there was a vast lounge area. A bar was set to the left and took up a major portion of one corner of the room. In the far corner opposite the bar, sofas lined the wall, and groups of over-stuffed chairs sat around tables. A handful of people were already drinking and chatting, but most of them were watching the show that was happening on the platform stage in the middle of the room. A woman was bent over a bench of some kind, and a man smacked her ass with what I thought was a flogger.
/> “This is the main room,” Max explained. “This is the only bar, and we only allow alcohol consumption in this room. There is usually one demonstration a night. We like to think of it as a tutorial for some of the less experienced members or those interested in trying something new.”
Natalie’s eyes were bouncing all over the room as if she didn’t know where to look.
“We ask that no sexual acts, other than those on the stage, be performed here. Consider it almost like the landing zone, a place for people to relax and have a drink before and after visiting the other rooms.”
Max gestured at the hallway off to our right. “The layout is basically a figure eight with this room as the middle. There are two halls on both sides of this area, each one leads to a different section of the club and they connect on the other side. Let’s take a looksee, shall we?”
We followed him down a corridor lined with numbered doors. Some were open; others were closed. “These are regular rooms available for sex. The front sections are empty rooms you can use for play. We have some standard items available in all the rooms throughout the club.” He checked the items off on his fingers as he went. “Condoms. Lube. Wipes. Towels. Water.”
We continued walking. “These rooms are glory hole rooms, and what is and isn’t allowed is always marked on the whiteboards.” He pointed to one. “This is a straight female who allows vaginal penetration only.” He pointed to another. “This one is a gay man available for anal penetration.”
We reached the end of the hall and Max guided us around the corner. “This hall connects to the other on this side,” he explained as we followed him around. “In this section, we have the exhibition and voyeur rooms.” The walls were mostly glass. Some rooms had curtains drawn. Others had them open. There was currently a man licking a woman from behind in one. “The walls can be retracted to open the rooms to doubles if you’d like. These rooms work well for group play as well since they are larger. The specialty rooms have a variety of toys and apparatuses you can use. Paddles, floggers, and spreaders are the cabinet in the corner. Just make sure that you deposit whatever you used in the sanitation bins and please press the green button near the door on your way out. We clean the room between uses. We have dildos, anal plugs/beads, vibrators, and the such as well. Those are charged to your account and are yours to take with you when you are done.”
We walked down the hallway back toward the main room. “In this room”—he pointed to a door—“there’s a stripper pole. And the two across the way have sex swings in them.”
Natalie snickered, and when I glanced over at her, she winked and waggled her eyebrows.
“Sounds like something has someone’s interest,” Max jested.
I smiled at Natalie’s playfulness. “Seems like we know where we’re going to start.”
When we reentered the main room in the center, Max continued, “We have a dress code. No jeans. No sneakers. No hoods. Business casual to any degree of formal you’d like. Every new member starts off with a three-month probation period. If we see any type of behavior we do not condone or misconduct of any type, you will be removed from the club and your membership terminated. There are cameras in all areas of the club and every room, except the bathrooms. The recordings are kept on an isolated server and are automatically erased at the end of each day so long as nothing illegal has occurred, which has never happened. In the event something like that happening, the injured party may request a copy for legal purposes. We pride ourselves on being a safe establishment. We are membership only and have the best cyber security money can buy.”
Another one of the big selling points for me.
He clapped his hands and stopped in front of the third passageway. “This side has a much more sinful taste.” We started down the hall and most of the doors were open. “We have a suspension room. A punishment room complete with stocks.” Each room looked like a different version of the Red Room in the Fifty Shades of Grey movies I watched before talking to Natalie. “These have various devices such as a whipping table, spanking bench, and Saint Andrew cross.”
We rounded the corner as we did on the opposite side. “Down this hall, we have the theater rooms. There’s a wide variety of porn on demand in there. You can masturbate, have sex, or just watch.” He holds a hand off to the right as we get about halfway down. “We have a sauna room, a wet room for anything that gets messy, and the showers and lockers are down here. That pretty much rounds up the tour.”
Max walked us back to the bar. “Do you have any questions?”
Yes and no. I had a ton of questions but not for Max. I was more interested in Natalie and what she wanted to do. “Not at the moment, but I will definitely reach out if any arise.”
“Wonderful.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “It was great to meet you, and I hope you enjoy yourself while you are here.”
As he walked, a few people stopped him and there was small talk but none of that interested me. I turned back to Natalie. “So, what do you think?”
“It’s . . .” She trailed as if she were waiting for the words to come. “I can’t believe you set all this up. It’s unbelievable.”
“Unbelievable bad or unbelievable good?”
“Good.” She smiled. “Undeniably good.”
It was the answer I was hoping for, and my lips pulled into a wide smile. “Want to try that sex swing out?”
Her eyes lit up, and she nodded eagerly. “Absolutely.”
Chapter Thirteen
Natalie
For two days, my time at Immersion stayed prominent in my mind. It was there, and it wanted to be acknowledged with all the other things happening in my life.
Really, all I wanted to do was call my two best friends and tell them all about it. One thing I learned about exciting things happening in your life was that a major part of the fun was sharing that excitement with loved ones. When it came to my sex life, Norah and Pen were the only ones who would share in my excitement.
Except, I had to fly out that morning to meet with a few people about the gallery location crew in Portland. We opened in two months and details needed to be finalized before the major work could be started. I spent yesterday finishing some last-minute things at the Seattle gallery and then had to prepare everything for two days away from home that I hadn’t had time to call or see either of them.
At lunch, I texted them that we needed to have a FaceTime call because I had something to tell them. As soon as I finished up my meeting and returned to my room, I ordered room service and jumped into the shower. Half an hour later, I was wrapped in a plush robe, as I munched on the bread that came with my dinner and sipped a glass of Pinot Noir.
The sound of my ringing phone filled the room as I waited for the call to connect. Norah and Penelope’s face joined mine on the screen.
My voice was sing-song-y as I smiled at them. “Hey!”
“Don’t you look comfy,” Pen lifted her glass up in “cheers”.
I snugged farther into the robe and the super soft chair as I nodded my agreement. “ I am. This thing is so thick. It’s unbelievable.”
Derek popped in the screen for a moment as he brough Norah a glass of wine. “Hi, ladies,” he called out as he kissed Norah’s cheek.
“Now that I’ve got the essentials,” she said before she paused and took a sip from her glass. “What’s got you demanding a meeting?”
Pen’s head bobbed. “Yeah, what’s up?”
I bit my lips between my teeth and try to contain my smirk that wanted to creep out. Tapping my finger on my chin, I pretended to think about what I wanted to tell them. “There’s so much to tell.” I giggled, knowing that what I was about to tell them would really knock their socks off.
"Tell us, bitch.” Norah laughed. “You know you’re dying to say whatever it is so do it.”
She was absolutely correct. The words burst from my mouth. “Matteo joined a sex club.”
Penelope squeaked. “What?”
Norah gasped. “No way! Did
you go yet? What’s it like?”
I nodded a bit enthusiastically as the wine sloshed in my glass. “It’s hard to put into words. It’s a combination of a bar, dance club, and motel. I’m not allowed to tell you much, but it was amazing.”
“What did you see go on there? I can’t imagine how much shit you saw.” They asked a bunch of questions about things that happened there, and I answered what I felt I could; things like were people just having orgies all over and did people crawl around on leashes. Respectfully, neither of them asked which club or who I’d seen there.
“So, what have you done there?” Penelope asked as she popped a couple of grapes into her mouth.
“We’ve only been there the one time so far,” I told them. “We didn’t see too much, but we did try out the sex swing. I think going there should become a regular part of date night.”
Norah leaned in, intrigue coloring her face. “Did the swing live up to all the hype?”
The ache in my core could still be felt when I moved in certain ways. I relished it. “It was a great time.”
Great wasn’t the most accurate word to describe using that swing. Maybe something along the lines of spectacular would have been better. If I closed my eyes, I could easily picture the way Matteo’s fingers clung to the straps holding me in as he used them to swing me on and off his dick.
A pensive look overtook Penelope’s features. “What else is on your list? We never asked that during our last conversation.”
“We don’t have an actual list, you know?” I chuckled and took a drink of my wine.
Norah scoffed and lifted her brows. “Yeah, you do. Maybe not a physical one, but you definitely have a mental one.”
“Come on, tell us,” Pen encouraged, excitement livening her tone.
“Well, we’ve talked about a few things we want to do . . . ” I paused, wondering for a moment if my friends were going to think about me any differently after we had this discussion. Rational thinking flew back in, and I remembered that these women would love me if I shaved my head and took up a career as a mime.