The cleaners, with whom Joe was currently sharing gossip, were almost done. The area dedicated to the strip club was decorated in an elegantly ornate palette of crème and gold and bronze. Pillars of faux bronze guarded the sides of the booths where patrons could purchase a lap dance, and comfortable crème, faux suede chairs surrounded burnished gold tables in front of the polished bronze stage that was punctuated with chrome poles. The effect should have been gaudy, but the simplicity and lack of ornamental fussiness countered the overtly rich décor.
As Andy walked up to the bar, Joe saluted her with his cup, and one of the House Mamas she employed to look after the day-to-day business of the strip club walked in through the door that led to the rest of the building. Jacqueline Montrose had more of the look of the girls that worked the poles than the woman that managed them. She was tall and willowy, a natural blonde with eyes almost as dark as Josiah’s. She was in her late thirties, but her flawless skin and open expression regularly led people to mistake her for much younger.
Andy preferred to manage the dungeon. It required her specific skill set. She’d been working as professional dominatrix for years, since college. For fifteen years she’d been perfecting the art of punishment for pleasure. She still took clients, but she no longer booked her diary through the whole day.
Andy didn’t employ staff who waited around all day for any John Doe off the street to walk in. She had a collection of professional dominants and submissives, who offered their services on an appointment-only basis at the dungeon, and gave her a percentage of their fee in return for the use of the safe, clean and managed facilities. Andy had clients booked for the day, but she knew none of her professionals would be in.
“Hey, boss.”
“Hey, Joe. You have a good Christmas?”
Jackie was carrying two white porcelain cups with steam wisping above their rims. She handed one to Andy. The richly bitter aroma of Kenyan roast rose with the vapor.
“Sure did.” He beamed. “Mama cooked up a storm.” Her huge bear of a doorman was a mama’s boy through and through. If she hadn’t personally seen him deal with drunken and abusive members of the public without flinching, she almost wouldn’t have believed him capable of doing the job.
Andy smiled, both in appreciation of the coffee, and of Joe’s enthusiasm. She took a sip and turned to Jackie. “Thanks for the java. You have a good day?”
“So-so.” Jackie made a rocking motion with her flattened palm. “Family. You know how it is.”
“Say no more.” Andy groaned in sympathy.
“What time’re you starting today?” Jackie asked.
“I’m booked at ten, one and four. Guess no one’s spinning the line about working late today.”
“Anyone else in?” Joe asked. The strip club wouldn’t open for business until two p.m., but Andy had decided that there was a good chance they’d need his presence early today. In the meantime, he could look after the door at the rear of the building, which was generally used by visitors to the dungeon, who usually didn’t want to advertise their proclivities.
“Nope, just me.”
“Quiet day, then?”
“Hopefully. Yesterday was too quiet. I guess the holy rollers were all off celebrating the birth of the baby Jesus, but I’ll bet they’ll be back full of festive fire and brimstone today.”
One of the advantages of setting up her business so far away from the commercial district was the lower rent. The downside was that a higher percentage of the buildings near hers were unoccupied. In their wisdom, the city officials had worked with the owners to provide a subsidized rent scheme to attract entrepreneurs into the vacant properties, so that they would not be continually vandalized.
It had been a nominally successful scheme, but not all the new occupiers were in the entertainment industry. One of the buildings had been rented out to the First Church of Christ, an evangelical group who seemed to have developed a personal vendetta against Andrea and the Pumpkin Patch. They had declared their intention to turn the tide of iniquity in the area. The Pumpkin Patch wasn’t the only strip club on the block, and she didn’t advertise the dungeon services openly, but the evangelicals had found out about it anyway, and had singled her business out for their attention.
On a good day, the congregation walked past in twos or threes, shouting bible quotes and insults. On bad days they got their placards out proclaiming the Pumpkin Patch to be Sodom and Gomorrah, the home of Lucifer himself, and the gateway to hell. They patrolled the street, and did a good job of scaring customers and clients away.
Joe gulped down the last of his coffee. “I brought a big box of mama’s pastries in. Once word gets ‘round, it should motivate the cops to come a little quicker if the prayer bunnies get frisky.”
Andy laughed as she finished her own drink. Jackie held her hand out for the empty mug. Andy handed it over.
“Hopefully. Well, guess I better suit up.”
“You could stay as you are. You look hot,” Jackie suggested. Joe nodded his agreement.
“Thanks, guys, but no. Today’s list requires wipe clean. And no one who is on the roster today warrants the Loubies.”
Andy left Joe and Jackie chuckling and pushed open the door to the rest of the club. It opened into a small hallway. A door led to Jackie’s office and the dressing room that the strippers used. There was a fire escape door which could only be opened from the inside, and which was generally the entrance of choice for people who had booked a session in the dungeon. There was a discrete button on the wall outside it that set off a buzzer both in Jackie’s office and by Joe’s position on the street door, so that either of them knew when a client was waiting to be granted entry.
Andy started up the flight of stairs that led from the hallway to the first floor. At the top of the stairs was a stylish reception area with a small desk that was never manned and a leather couch. Another button on the desk set off a bell in Andy’s office. The setup was designed to be inaccessible to curious gawkers. Andy was only interested in entertaining people who were serious about their peccadilloes.
Beyond the desk, a door opened into another hallway, not unlike a motel corridor, but decorated in much better fashion, maintaining the color scheme from the strip club below. There were several doors set into the walls lining the corridor. Most led to the working rooms. One room was laid out in the style of a traditional dungeon, with hooks in the wall, benches, a St Andrew’s Cross, and a bondage bed, which was basically a four-poster bed with some extra framing and metal hoops screwed into the frame. Another was set up in the manner of a hospital room. It was painted in a generic, institutional green, with a linoleum floor and medical bed accompanied by wheeled metal trays and stands. A third room was set up as a schoolroom, complete with desks and a blackboard. The fourth room had been decorated as a normal, if sumptuous, bedroom. At the end of the corridor was the door that Andy was aiming for, the one that led to her office and the dressing room.
Andy double checked the large, leather-bound appointment book on her desk. She didn’t trust the internet to record details of client’s appointments and preferences. Some wealthy and influential people regularly walked through her door; the last thing she needed was for some acne-ridden teenager looking for their fifteen minutes of fame, or a journalist hell-bent on getting an exclusive, to hack into her system and reveal such intimate details.
On this day her clients all had comparable needs, no need for any costume changes. Andy changed into a black dress, although that made it sound ordinary. The shiny black plastic zipped up at the back, which was a struggle on her own, but she managed it. It hugged her body, stopping just below the cheeks of her ass. It was sleeveless, with a deep neckline that exposed a lot of cleavage. The snugness of the dress negated the need for her to wear a bra, but she kept her black satin thong on. She wasn’t running that kind of establishment. There were no exchanges of any fluids and no penetration in her club. If a client needed to orgasm, they did it by their own hand, or not at a
ll. The dungeon skirted close to several legal lines, ones regarding assault as well as pandering, but strictly-enforced rules kept everyone out of jail. Andy completed the day’s costume with a pair of thigh-high, black patent boots with a sharply pointed toe and wicked spike heel.
As she would be using the boudoir room first, Andy did a check to make sure that everything was as it should be. The professional that used the room had the responsibility for cleaning the toys and equipment afterwards. Andy organized the laundry, and the cleaners that tended to the downstairs of the club also took care of the basics in the rooms upstairs as part of their daily ritual.
Satisfied that she had everything she would need to hand, Andy returned to her office to wait. At exactly ten a.m., a deep buzz informed her that her client was right on time.
~o0o~
Several hours later, Andy was rubbing her boots with a wet wipe, even though they’d just been thoroughly licked by a lawyer who liked to spend an hour every week being shouted at and demeaned. He didn’t want physical chastisement, only verbal abasement, a relatively easy gig. She could still feel the stretch in the muscles of her right arm from the paddling she’d delivered to the chef that had been her first client. He always came in early. He worked at one of the most prestigious restaurants in the city and had a thing about cooking lunch for the great and the good with his ass paddled pink.
There was a firm knock at the door. Andy knew from the weight of it that it was Josiah.
“Come in.” She dumped the wipe in the trash basket under her desk.
The door opened and he stuck his head around without coming all the way in. The strip club was open for business now; he wouldn’t linger.
“Thought you should know, boss, the prayer bunnies are out in force. Looks like the whole damn church set up camp outside. I called the cops and promised them baked goods, so they should be here in five, but if they don’t arrest ‘em then it looks like we’re in for a slow day.”
“Fuck,” Andy spat.
The constant attention of the churchgoers was beginning to have an adverse effect on her business. Andy loved the building she was in; it had taken years to build up the reputation of both clubs, and the building itself worked perfectly, but unless the church up and moved, it was beginning to look like she was going to have to, otherwise she’d be paying out rent on a strip club that no one could get into, and a dungeon that no one wanted to get into. Discretion was a primary concern to her clients, and a complement of raving nutballs was the polar opposite of discreet.
“Okay, thanks, Joe. Let me know if the cops can’t run them off.”
“Will do, boss.” Joe disappeared to keep an eye on the situation.
Andy relaxed in her plush desk chair until it was time to set up the room for her third and last client of the day. This lady, a highflying CEO, liked to be chained and flogged. Her husband knew and approved of her desires, but there was still care to be taken. She had to be able to sit at the head of her corporate table without wincing. Squirming maybe, but not wincing.
With her last client thoroughly satisfied, Andy cleaned the equipment that she’d used, replaced it in its storage compartment and tidied the room. There was a small shower room off the dressing room, and Andy made use of it before she changed back into her own clothes. Once downstairs she could see that business was slower than she would have expected. She made a detour to Jackie’s office. She didn’t take a seat inside; she wasn’t planning on staying.
“Have the holy rollers rolled off yet?”
“Most of them,” Jackie replied with a heavy sigh. “There’s still a handful outside. The police threatened them with disturbing the peace, so they’re not shouting, but they’ve still got their little signs. It’s putting folks off.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. Unless they do something like damage the building, the cops can’t do much. Not even for Joe’s mama’s baking.”
“Okay. Call me if we have a problem.”
“Will do.”
Andy left the club by the back door. The churchgoers knew what she looked like and she wasn’t in the mood for abuse. She did take the opportunity, when she could, to take a look at the goings-on in front of her building. Oh, fuck her sideways with a popsicle stick, they’d even brought lawn chairs. They were just sitting there with their pieces of cardboard proclaiming hellfire and damnation in front of them. As she watched, Andy saw people hurry past her establishment, only to disappear into one of the other, un-picketed, strip clubs at the end of the block. Double fuck.
At least they’d left her car alone. One time she’d come out to find that it had been completely covered in a mixture of wallpaper paste and flour that Andy had supposed some witty fuck thought looked like semen. She slumped in the driver’s seat, momentarily lost for a course of action. She was pissed the fuck off with these people. Who the fuck were they to tell her or her clients what they should or shouldn’t do? She felt tense and helpless and frustrated.
She needed to get out and do... something. She wasn’t a submissive by nature, nor was she a dominant in her sexual life, she preferred more flexibility depending on her mood and the moment, but occasionally she wanted to let go of all the responsibility and just be. She could go out and get blazingly drunk, but she didn’t fancy dealing with the hangover the following morning.
But thinking of drinking turned her mind to a different track, to the bar from the night before, and the guy, Chiz. He’d been a good fuck, a really good fuck. And he was easy on the eyes, head shaved almost smooth, just a velvet buzz of fuzz, dark blue eyes, and muscles that begged for her to dig her nails into them.
Suddenly Andy knew exactly where she was going to get her release.
Chapter Four
Chiz was wary when there was a knock on his motel room door in the early evening. He’d called Samuel earlier in the day, just to let him know that he wasn’t in a ditch somewhere. It was either check in or know that Samuel would set Crash, his pet geek, on Chiz’s trail to find out where he was using the information superhighway. Making contact early on meant he could get away without being specific about his location, at least for a while, and for however short a time, he wanted to keep that feeling of separateness.
So he knew that his visitor was unlikely to be one of his brothers. He doubted the manager would bother him. He picked his gun up from the nightstand, checked the clip, and thumbed the safety off before he took a look through the peephole.
Elmo was probably the last person he expected to see through the fisheye lens. He had been sure that had been a one-time deal, and yet here she was. He clicked the safety back on and tucked the gun into the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back before he opened the door. He was shirtless, and the metal was cold against his skin.
“Hey. You feel like some company?”
“When it turns up at my door lookin’ like you, doll, I ain’t gonna say no.”
Surprised, intrigued, and more than a little excited, he stood back and motioned her into the room with a sweeping bow. When he’d opened the door, Elmo had looked tense, a tightness around the eyes that gave the lie to her smile. Chiz figured most people wouldn’t have noticed, but he’d invested a lot of time in learning the little nuances of expressions and tone that told him more than words could. Her smile widened, though, as she crossed the threshold, and Chiz chalked the reserve up to trepidation.
He looked her over as she stepped inside. Damn, but she really did look good. It looked like she was dressed for the office, or some nerd’s wet dream of how a woman should dress for the office, a tight blouse showing plenty of cleavage and tight skirt showing the sweeping curve of her hips. He almost groaned and went to his knees when she walked past him and he spotted the seams on her nylons. Fuck, he hoped they were stockings. Stockings would be sweet. And the shoes, he had an intense and very urgent need to have those sexy heels scratching the shit out of the small of his back.
“Lonely, doll?”
“Maybe. Thought you might be
.”
“You worried about me?” He must have made an impression. She certainly had.
“Not especially.” She motioned at his back with a careless wave of her hand. “I figured you can take care of yourself.”
Ah, so she hadn’t missed that he’d been carrying the previous night. She was observant. Chiz shrugged, pulled the gun out and replaced it on the nightstand.
“So, you came for a bedtime story?”
She grinned at that. “No, I came for a fuck, but if you’re not interested...?” She shrugged.
Not interested? Not fucking likely. Surprised? Yes, definitely. He wasn’t used to women who looked like this, confident, refined, civilian women, throwing themselves in his path.
“Oh I’m interested. Just wonderin’ if I’ve got myself a stalker.
He watched anger flash over her features. “You know what, this was a bad idea. I thought maybe we both needed to take the edge off. You’re here for whatever you’re here for, vacation, whatever. I’ve had enough of the shit I need to deal with, and I’d like to fuck, relax, maybe get some Chinese food, and maybe fuck again. I’m not looking for a ring and a dress, and I like animals I’m not going to boil your bunny.”
Breath on the Wind Page 4
