by Doucette, G
Mr. Mocha noted Lindy’s wandering gaze.
“I’m envious,” he said. “Aren’t you?”
“Of him? Or her?”
“Of both of them. Of their lack of shame. I can’t decide if it’s more fun because they know we’re watching or if it’s just more enjoyable when it isn’t secret?”
“Sex isn’t exactly a secret.”
“Of course it is. We do it in the dark, quietly, behind closed doors.”
Lindy’s hand had left his knee and was fiddling with the buttons on his shirt. This seemed like a completely inappropriate thing to do but the less she thought about it the more okay it seemed.
“I see your point,” she said. “I’ve recently come to the conclusion that maybe one of the reasons I’m single right now has to do with what was going on with us, in the dark behind closed doors.”
“Is that so? Here.” He started unbuttoning his shirt for her. There was no undershirt. His bare chest looked sculpted.
“Thanks,” she said. “You really work out, huh?”
“Only for the last few years, but yeah. I got up one day, looked at the beer gut I was starting on, and decided not nearly enough gay men were hitting on me at parties. So what happened with you and your ex behind that closed door?”
“I don’t know. We never talked about it.”
Mr. Mocha’s collar had a chain dangling from it. She started fiddling with that, and wondered if he knew what it was supposed to signify, then wondered why she was so unreasonably turned on by having it in her fingers.
“The more I think about it though,” she continued, “the more I wonder if we just wanted different things. Not sexually. Well, yes, sexually, but not just sexually. Hey, can you take off your shirt?”
She gave the chain a little jerk when she asked. He probably didn’t notice.
“Sure,” he said. He slipped out of the shirt to reveal muscular, broad shoulders, with a tattoo on the left one. She sort of wanted to be held by those arms, and hoped he felt the same.
“Is that Tweety Bird?”
“It is. There’s a long story behind that. I’ll tell you sometime. So go on. Unless you want me to take off something else first.”
“Go on?”
“Your ex. We were talking about him.”
“Yes right.” Lindy really didn’t want to think about Michael any more but that was where they were. “I think we drifted apart, and there wasn’t enough going on in the bedroom to keep that from happening.”
“You weren’t having sex?”
“We were, but we weren’t.”
The couple on the other couch had managed to get out of all their clothes in the minute since she’d last checked, distracted as she was by Mr. Mocha’s upper torso and Tweety tattoo. The girl was a lithe, pale white little thing with small breasts and a tiny waist. Lindy could see her ribcage when she leaned back to breathe, and the muscles of her thighs when she squeezed herself around the man on top of her. He was also slender, with skin darker than Mr. Mocha’s mask. He had one hand lifting her tailbone so only her shoulders and head were touching the couch. It seemed all of their muscles tensed in time with each other, and like they had all night to work on that orgasm together.
Mocha was right: envy was exactly what she was feeling. Among a lot of other things.
“I mean, we were having sex,” she said. “But I don’t remember enjoying it as much as that. Not even in the beginning. I mean, look at them.”
He did look, but only for long enough to get her point, after which she took his right hand and put it on her left breast. He looked surprised—as much as either of them could register surprise under a mask—but not unhappy with this development.
As much as they had talked about not being the sort of people to do the very thing Lindy was starting to push them toward, Mr. Mocha didn’t appear at all reluctant.
“That’s terrible,” he said. “Not the breast, I mean your story. You need some better sex in your life, Ms. Burgundy.”
“I think you’re right.” She wrapped the chain from his neck around her hand, and gave it another pull. “I like this chain on you. Why don’t you try that hand under the dress?”
“Yes ma’am,” he said.
He slid his hand under the dress and pulled the left strap past her shoulder, and uncovered her breast.
The world didn’t end. Nobody gawked, or pointed, or much saw it other than Mr. Mocha. They could, but somehow that didn’t matter to Lindy any more.
She thought back to Olive, and how sitting next to her felt a little bit like being near a live electrical wire. It was the buzz of sexual tension that was in every part of the club, and Olive was in tune with it. Lindy hadn’t been, but she could feel it, and had been trying all evening to ignore it. She couldn’t any longer.
“Is that okay?” Mocha asked, regarding her newly exposed nipple.
“Yes,” Lindy said. “Yes, it’s really okay.” She jerked the chain. “Now help me out of this dress.”
He tilted his head and smiled. “Everyone will see.”
“Yeah, fuck it. Let’s do this.”
Lindy had no idea what was really going through his mind: whether the trepidation he’d expressed earlier had been genuine but was being overcome, or whether this entire thing had been an act to get her to relax. They could have been two nervous newcomers working their way through an understanding of the club toward a point they both wanted to reach, or not, and she decided she didn’t care one way or another. When it was over, she would never see Mr. Mocha again, and he would never know who she was. She could have whomever he decided he was going to be.
What he decided to be was an eager lover. With his left hand he pulled the other strap down off her shoulder, and then both her breasts were uncovered. His hands were rough; she decided he must do a lot of work with them. Carpentry, or something outdoors. The skin was thick and callused, not soft like Michael’s.
Stop thinking of Michael, she thought.
She pulled Mocha forward and kissed him aggressively on the mouth. He had been leaning forward and over her, but with the kiss she guided him back to a sitting position on the couch, and then she stood between his legs.
Now everyone in the room who wanted to could see her and her breasts. A few did. She could feel their eyes.
Don’t cover up, she thought. Nobody knows who you are. It doesn’t matter.
The dress had a zipper in back. She let go of the chain and reached around to undo it, and then let Mr. Mocha pull the dress down to the floor. She kicked it aside.
In the middle of the room, a man in a dark mask stopped what he was doing to look her up and down. She was, save for the G-string, shoes, mask and gloves, utterly naked.
The part of her that had sat in the cab afraid to put on the ridiculous mask, that blushed when the driver had gawked at her legs, that tried to run when she walked past the second floor curtain… that part of her gave up and either fainted or died.
Look at me, said a new voice.
Mocha caressed her thighs and hips with strong hands while remaining where he was on the couch. He was waiting for her to tell him what to do next, she realized.
He did know what that chain was for.
She ran her fingers along the crew-cut hair on his head, and leaned forward. “Take them off of me,” she said.
Without a word, he slipped the mandatory G-string down to the floor. She stood back again, her hand still on his head.
Across the room, dark mask had come closer for a better view.
Get a good look.
He was joined by a woman, and another man.
She was ready to tell Mocha to lick her, the way Olive promised to, but there no longer seemed to be enough time for it. The low hum of arousal had become far more urgent in the past minute, and she was ready for something Ms. Olive couldn’t have provided.
Lindy knelt down and unbelted Mr. Mocha, and then got him out of the club-issued underwear. He helped without being told, which was a good idea
, as he was fully erect and might have been harmed if she’d torn the pants off on her own. Also, he needed the time it took to extract a condom from one of the pockets and slip it on.
He kissed her hard on the lips. “We have an audience,” he said.
“I know.”
“Do you want me to—”
“Just shut up.”
She knelt forward, opened her thighs and straddled his erection, and pushed herself down on top of him. She gasped, and just flat-out stopped breathing for a few seconds as he drove into her. Then his hands were on her hips and butt and squeezing, guiding her up and down.
She could see the other two on the couch behind them, still going at it, working at an almost frantic pace, nearing the end. The girl was trembling through what was undoubtedly not her first orgasm of the encounter. Lindy could almost feel what the girl was sensing, and then a gushing avalanche of a release as her own orgasm snuck up on her, completely by surprise.
This, Lindy thought, as she squeezed Mocha tighter, this is what I’ve been missing.
She held on tightly until the first wave was over.
Her partner was making good use of those impressive ab muscles, flexing and thrusting up in time with her, driving deeper and hitting that spot, that itch she’d been feeling all night, the one that had exploded once already. He seemed to want to touch every part of her, with his hands, with his tongue, with everything, while she wanted to order him to do something—bite her nipples, lick her ear, something, it hardly mattered as long as he obeyed—but she couldn’t speak. All that jogging she’d been doing every morning and she was out of shape for this.
But it was okay because he could feel her lagging and had started to take charge, and that was just fine with her. He wrapped one of his strong, strong arms around her waist and pulled her tight. His other hand gripped the back of her neck, and then he pushed with his hips and picked her up by the groin. She wrapped her legs around him to keep their balance and also to cope with the violent second orgasm he’d just given her. She was still having it when he got her flipped around and on her back. Her shoulders landed on the armrest of the couch, her breasts jutting into the air and no doubt looking spectacular for the many onlookers they were pointing toward, her head dangling over open air beneath them.
She was still coming, unless it was a third or fourth one, she couldn’t tell any more. The muscles of his lower back and butt writhed beneath her legs, her ankles locked behind him. Her right arm was intertwined with his left, his left hand still latched on to her neck. It was the only thing keeping her from falling over, it seemed, even as his right arm continued to squeeze her waist.
Once it was clear they had found an ideal balance point between their bodies, he pulled out of her, and stopped, held himself out for something like forever, and then slid back in. Slowly. Very slowly. He was strong, and steady, and it never felt like he was going to lose control and drop her, but his initial thrusts were gentle, and fully in control. He was holding back, slowing them down, working back up toward something for them to share together.
Harder, she thought. She wanted to grab that chain again, but not badly enough to risk unbalancing them. And the command never made it past her lips.
He was teasing her. Every time he pulled out it seemed an eternity before he pushed back in again. Each absence made her tingle, and each return brought her right to the brink, each time a little bit closer but not over the edge. She felt like all it would take was a gentle breeze on the right body part and she would burst like a balloon.
When he picked up the pace again Lindy basically forgot to breathe. He was driving so hard and so fast into her that it was a legitimate wonder they didn’t either break the couch or push themselves right onto the floor. She spent most of that few minutes before he came with all of her muscles locked, stretched to the limit of her strength and dexterity. Something snapped and broke loose inside of her, an orgasm that had to touch every nerve in her body before it faded.
And when he came it was like he found a new reserve of strength. His hips locked and lifted, which raised her hips and then—with the help of his arms—her whole body. He squeezed her as tightly as he could, as if it was possible for his climax to punch a hole through her. And he made an adorable, high-pitched gasping sound, and held on until he was done.
Then he let her down, slowly, and pulled his arm out from behind her hips.
“Good?” he asked her quietly.
“Yeah, I’m good,” she said.
“Cool.”
He pulled out of her, rolled over, and sat back on the couch, legs splayed, her feet resting in his lap.
She stayed where she was, pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to move for a little while and hoping nobody minded.
A few seconds later someone was handing them towels. She looked up to see the dark-mask man from halfway across the room. Up close the mask looked purple. She thanked him. He nodded without speaking and produced a water bottle for her, then left.
“Wow, the service here is pretty good,” she said.
Mocha laughed.
“So,” he said. “I don’t know if you know this, but I was really looking for a conversation. That was a whole lot better, but… I don’t know, I just wanted to say that. I wasn’t on the make or whatever we call it nowadays.”
“You mean you didn’t want to have sex?” She tried to sit up, decided it was too much work, and lay back down again.
“No, that’s not what I meant.”
“Good, because if that was you being reluctant, non-reluctant you would probably kill me.”
“I mean I’m not the kind of guy who does this kind of thing. I guess.”
“As we already established. And I’m not that kind of girl, either. But as it turns out, Ms. Burgundy is that kind of girl. And Mr. Mocha is definitely that kind of guy. And I’m okay with that.”
* * *
It was difficult to say how much time she and Mr. Mocha spent together because while in the club there was no real communication with the outside world. The windows were all blacked out, there were no clocks, and when she started asking other guests what time it was, she discovered the people with watches had been asked to leave them at the door along with the phones.
It seemed like a long time. When they weren’t making out or actively having sex—against a wall one time, another in a bean bag, a third time on one of the rugs on the floor in front of a fireplace—they were talking about sex and a lot of other things about their lives. They shared nearly everything except their real names, or anything that might connect them to the rest of the world.
They were being mindful of the rules, but that wasn’t what stopped them from exchanging that information. Sharing too much would have meant Ms. Burgundy went back to being Lindy, and Mr. Mocha to whatever his real name was, and it felt like that would ruin everything. Like the whole reason this vacation from their lives was working at all was because they were pretending those lives didn’t exist to the people wearing their masks.
Not knowing what time it was, or how long the party went on, or what time of day it was, all meant when Lindy fell asleep she didn’t know when it happened or for how long. What she did know was there were significantly fewer guests there when she awoke—sprawled on a futon on the fourth floor, not certain how she had even gotten there—and Mr. Mocha wasn’t one of the guests, so far as she could tell.
She was also profoundly hungry, which was perhaps the best indication that it had been very long indeed since she’d ventured outside. So she gathered what she could. Her mask was still on her face, and the choker on her neck, but her G-string and gloves were nowhere to be found. More importantly, she still had shoes and her dress.
She wandered down the stairs alone, as quietly as she could so as to not disturb the many sleeping clubbers, until she reached the first floor.
Mr. White was sitting at the table at the bottom of the stairs, looking exactly as proper as he had when she first walked in. She wondered if he had stay
ed on the first floor the entire night, greeting people and getting their stuff, and if so what he did when there wasn’t anybody to greet.
It was only one of about a thousand questions she had about Mr. White and Club Himeros. But before she got around asking any of them there was the welcome discovery of food: a plate of croissants and an urn of coffee were resting on the table. It was exactly what she needed. Without even a hello to the host she sat down and dove in.
The coffee was still hot, and the bread still fresh, which was amazing. She was pretty sure it was at least early afternoon, so it hardly seemed possible for these things to be true.
“Thank you,” she said, between bites. “This is great.”
“You’re welcome,” Mr. White said. He looked highly amused with her. “I hope you enjoyed the evening.”
She had no access to a mirror—there weren’t any upstairs, even in the bathrooms—but imagined she was quite a sight. Her hair was a tangle, and she thought it likely the mascara under the mask had managed to run down her cheeks. There were two or three fresh bruises on her arms and legs, one bite mark and a couple of scratches. The dress, remarkably, remained without stain or tear, and the shoes were only a little scuffed. Still, she had to have been a sight.
“I had a wonderful time, thank you.”
“I’m glad. We have a car waiting out front for guests.” He lifted, from his lap, her clutch and jacket. “Whenever you feel ready to leave, the driver will take you where you wish.”
“Wow, that’s… that’s really fantastic, thanks.” She was certain she had an awkward cab ride waiting for her, along with an awkward wait for that cab. A private car was a perfect solution. There would still be the awkward walk up the stairs to her apartment, but maybe it was late enough in the day for Mrs. Bell to be having her nap.
“There is one thing I wanted to ask before I leave,” Lindy said. “There was this guy, he was… well, he was Mr. Mocha. We really hit it off, and I was wondering if you could help me out.”
“You mean, you wish to reach out to him out there.” He said it in a way that suggested he never, ever personally went out there, like zombies were roaming the streets or something.
