Red Hot Obsessions (181 page)

This fiery drink cascaded into her mouth like a numbing, syrupy waterfall. She stared at the amber magic in the glass. Regular whisky was harsh and had an aftertaste of formaldehyde, so this delicious, wonderful drink could not be whiskey. “Oh, my.”

“You like it?” Wulf smiled at her, still rubbing his warm thumb over her hand.

“It’s amazing.”

“I thought you might enjoy it.”

She sipped the glistening firewater again, savoring the sweet burn. “That’s fantastic stuff.”

Wulf leaned back and watched the show, sipping his drink.

Down below, on the main stage, the big man in the center of the spinning circle of rainbow girls flopped his rubbery cock out of his pants.

“Oh, my gosh! He just exposed himself!” Rae blurted.

“Yes. It’s not so different than the party a few weeks ago.” Wulf regarded his drink instead of the show.

She whispered to Wulf, “This is the entertainment?”

“It is what people come here for.”

Rae knocked back the rest of her drink and tried, in vain, to look sophisticated. “You don’t want me to do this, do you?”

“No.” A finality in his voice suggested that he might have added, not even if you wanted to.

Wulf beckoned a waiter and pointed to Rae’s drink. “With still water, this time.”

“Yes, sir.” The waiter meandered around the other tables, taking orders. Through the dark, Rae saw other couples at dinner tables necking or scrutinizing the entertainers over the railing.

The two women had untied each other’s bikini tops, and the bits of cloth and cord lay at their bare feet. One of the women was sucking the other’s tits. Rae’s own boobs grew heavy in her bra.

The rainbow girls kneeled around the man in the middle. He shoved his cock into each girl’s mouth in turn, thrust a few times, then moved on to the next girl.

The girl in the pink sundress teased the immobile man, who stared straight ahead. She fluttered her hand over the bulge in his pants and caressed his chest. His crossed arms twitched.

The crowd roiled around the stages like storm-tossed water, dancing and cheering.

Another drink had appeared in front of Rae. She asked Wulf, “Are you having another?”

He gestured with his glass. “Still working on my first.”

His other hand still held hers. His warm palm and fingers wound around her hand, and the knot of their hands rested on the table between them.

Over on the left stage, the man roped to the chair stared at the ceiling as the woman lowered herself over his dick. She inched down, then lifted herself as the crowd around her shouted.

Rae sipped. The whiskey was the same, but the dilution separated the flavors. Caramel and fruit flavors, maybe apricots, slid over her tongue. She held up the glass. “Wow. This is great.”

Wulf squeezed her hand. “I’m glad you like it.”

Rae peeked over the balcony again. Just as the stage below them came into view, the girl in the pink sundress struck a pose with her back to the burly man she had been teasing.

He snatched her and threw her across a triangle contraption. The girl’s skirt fell over her head, hiding her top half and her face. Her naked ass was perched in the air. The man wrenched his pants open, spread her butt cheeks, and crammed his dick into her ass.

“Oh my gosh!” Rae said and hopped up to look. She grabbed the railing with both hands and realized that she had unclasped her hand from Wulf’s, which she hadn’t meant to do.

Rae watched the man drag his dick out of the woman’s butt, then force it back in again.

Wulf stood beside her. “While this is all choreographed,” he told her over the music, “there is a safe word in case any ad-libbing occurs. You’ll notice several security men around each stage.”

“This is insane,” Rae said. She stared at the man anally fuck the woman. “This is like Tijuana.”

“No, they do entirely different things down there.”

“I can’t believe this is legal.”

Wulf shrugged. “Permits for anything may be obtained, if you know the correct people.”

The burly man slapped his hips against the woman’s pink-skirted ass, fucking her ass deeply.

Rae wasn’t sure if she was horrified or turned on, but watching the man slide in and out of the woman’s ass made her pussy heat. Even her backside grew sensitive. She asked, “Do you watch this every week?”

“Not often anymore.” Wulf’s bright blue eyes lingered on her face. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Already? It’s only been, like, an hour. And they’re,” she gestured helplessly at the orgy on the stages, “clearly just getting started.”

Wulf stood and reached for her hand. “Let’s go.”

Rae took his hand, and Wulf led her between the people dining at the tables, out a side door, and through the corridors of The Devilhouse toward the parking lot. Rae dodged into the ladies’ locker room to grab her purse and bundle her street clothes together. Hester would have a fit if she caught Rae coming home in the wee hours, wearing an evening gown.

~~~~~

Out of The Devilhouse, Into the Fire

Rae met Wulf in The Devilhouse’s parking lot. Lampposts spilled cones of light into the night, barely illuminating the lot. All the shiny cars that had gleamed in the sunlight now huddled near the lampposts. Shadows played between the cars and near the walls.

When she had talked to Jeff the Security Guy a couple days ago, he had mentioned that black SUVs usually flanked Wulf’s car while he drove home. She waited for one to drive up, but Wulf tugged her hand toward the darkness. He reached for her squashed clothes and carried them for her, even though she felt silly letting him do it.

They walked through the cool spring night toward the back of the parking lot, where Wulf clicked a remote to unlock a low-slung silver sports car.

Rae looked down. The top of the car came only to her hips. “What is this tiny thing?”

“A Tesla Roadster. It’s a bit tricky for us taller people to enter.” He opened the long passenger-side door for her.

Rae bent over to peer inside. The seat was so low that looked like it must be bolted to the asphalt under the car. “You fit in there?”

“It’s bigger inside than it looks.” He smiled wryly. “The perils of peer pressure. Come on, then.”

Rae stuck one leg in the car, folded at her waist, tried to tuck herself through the door but then pulled back. “You’re sure?”

“I’m five inches taller than you are, and I have the pedals.”

Rae touched one foot to the floor inside, bent sideways, and slithered into the car. Good Lord, she did fit. “Okay. I’m in.”

He shut the door. Inside, the car smelled like Wulf’s cinnamon and lavender cologne, so, like sex. The skin between Rae’s thighs heated.

Behind her, there was no back seat, just shield-shaped plaque mounted to the wall behind the seats. It read, Founder’s Series, 6 of 27.

Wulf slid in the driver’s seat like he had melted into the car.

The leg room for both seats extended so far under the hood that Rae’s long legs stretched comfortably, which meant the engine up there must be tiny. The car was obviously built for show, not performance.

Around them, the car was still. Traffic from the road in front of the Devilhouse purred.

“Aren’t you going to start it?” she asked.

“It’s on.” Wulf put the car in gear.

Rae had expected an engine roar, but the car silently pulled out of the parking space, like it was coasting with the engine off. Gravel crunched under the tires.

“It’s electric,” Wulf explained and drove out of the dark parking lot and past the long garden area.

The seats were almost as stiff as the suspension. The ride kind of felt like her cousin Craigh’s souped-up Mustang that he, no kidding, dirt track-raced for pink slips.

Wulf turned the car onto the nearly deserted main street. The streetlights ahead shone green like a string of Christmas lights receding into the darkness. The sports car was so low that Rae felt like her butt was dragging on the street.

She asked Wulf, “So it’s like a Prius?”

Wulf glanced at her and twitched one eyebrow.

Gravity slammed Rae back in her seat, mashing her chest and arms. Hyperdrive whooshed. The sodium streetlights blurred together and became a glowing yellow stripe like stars at light speed and Rae held on for dear life. “Holy-Jesus-what-are-you-doing!”

Wulf smirked just a little as he let off the accelerator and coasted down to the speed limit. “It’s not like a Prius.”

Rae was still holding onto the seat behind her head. “It sounded like a spaceship! Like a fighter-plane spaceship!”

“It does produce a distinctive sound,” Wulf agreed.

“It felt like a roller coaster! I think I have a headache.”

Wulf nodded. He was still smirking.

“Who peer-pressured you into buying it?” Rae unclenched her fists from the leather seat.

Wulf glanced at her. “A friend.”

“A girlfriend.” She could not seem to help herself.

“No.” He dallied a moment, then said, “My housekeeper.”

Of course he had a housekeeper. Rae wondered if she was a hot young housekeeper sex slave from Columbia or something. “Oh.”

“Rosamunde has been the head of my household staff since I lived in the Confoederatio Helvetica.”

Rae felt stupid but she asked anyway. “Is that Switzerland?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then.” Yeah, she still felt dumb. She should have looked that up, too. She had never heard of a Tesla car, either. Must be one of those European cars, maybe Italian.

Wulf said, “Rosamunde has taken an interest in the environmental movement. Quite a few of our vehicles are at least hybrid. We have several all-electric cars like this one. Rosamunde meant for me to drive some matchbox of a car, but I bought this Roadster instead. The roofs of the house are lacquered with solar panels. She insisted on installing a kitchen garden in the courtyard. Also, if you would be so kind, please compliment the salad greens tonight.”

“Okay.” Rae could barely listen to him because, now that they weren’t speeding toward certain flaming death anymore, images of that brute fucking that pink-dressed woman’s ass replayed themselves in Rae’s head, which was a welcome change from what had been replaying in her head. “I don’t mean to change the subject, but you said that I should ask questions about the show.”

“Of course.”

“This sounds stupid.”

“Please proceed.”

“Okay.” Rae swallowed, and her mouth still tasted like that smooth whiskey. The whiskey had sped straight from her empty stomach into her blood stream, and she was a little drunk. “Was that guy having anal sex with that woman?”

Wulf’s pale eyebrows rose even though he watched the road while he drove. “Yes.”

Rae wasn’t sure what to follow that up with. “That’s,” she cast around for a word, “unusual.”

“At least one of the stages usually incorporates anal intercourse.”

That wasn’t what Rae meant, but she should not pursue the subject. “Do you usually watch the anal one?”

He glanced at her, then resumed looking at the road. Streetlights illuminated his face as they passed overhead. “I don’t usually watch the shows.”

“Why not?” Rae wanted to crawl under the seat and she couldn’t believe where the conversation was going, but she could not seem to leave it alone, and there probably wasn’t more than half an inch of clearance under her seat anyway. “Men are supposed to like porn. Visual stimulation, and all that.”

“That’s true, but The Devilhouse has been in business for over five years, so that’s two hundred and eighty-one Saturday nights, though I travel, so I have missed sixty-four of them.”

“So, it’s all, ‘Been there, seen that,’ for you now.”

“That’s accurate.”

“Even anal sex.” Which was definitely on Rae’s will-never-try list. She hoped it wasn’t on Wulf’s deal-breaker list.

Wulf spun the car around a corner, and Rae leaned into her seat belt. “Yes.”

“Even like that guy being tied up and the woman screwing him.”

“Yes.” His tone lowered and became more reticent.

“Even like the guy in the middle getting a blow job from the rainbow girls.”

Wulf nodded. “After one has been exposed to a place like this for some time, such as over some years, the sex act loses its emotional intensity. One seeks extreme physical experiences because common ones become routine. One doesn’t feel anything, any more.”

So he didn’t feel anything emotional during sex? Not even with her?

She sure as heck felt all kinds of stuff.

Maybe she shouldn’t.

Rae glanced at him. Yellow streetlamp light flashed over his face. The expression in his blue eyes seemed serene, as always, but Rae thought a bit of sadness lurked behind his resignation.

“It is like a chef preparing food,” he said. “Yes, he is aware that the purpose of food is to allay hunger and nourish the body, but after years of mastering the basics, one either loses interest or delves more deeply into the art of the experience. Have you tried molecular cuisine?”

“No.” It sounded like something she would need a prescription for.

“We’ll have to remedy that. The first time that you have a liquid pea spherical raviolo, the experience is astounding. After a few times, you realize that it is not much different than, and in some ways inferior to, eating peas.”

“Okay.” Rae watched the strip malls slip by. They had entered the northern, better part of the city. No gauche signs obstructed the view of the glittering shops. She couldn’t even tell what any of them were.

Evidently, she had a lot of problems reading signs of things that she really ought to know, like whether someone had no emotional involvement.

“In our example, sex becomes art,” Wulf said, “an intellectual challenge, but it is intellectual, and thus a cold pleasure.” Wulf paused. The muscles on his angular face didn’t move, and he didn’t seem to be searching for the correct word, just gathering himself. “I had not felt anything, for years.”

“You don’t feel anything with me?”

Wulf didn’t look away from the road stretching beyond the windshield in front of them toward the black mountains on the horizon, but his lips parted and he inhaled a quick breath like the first faint gasp after a gut punch. He held it, held it for too long, and the air sighed out of his body.

He took a normal breath and said, “That’s not what I meant. I meant, before.”

“So you do.” Oh, she so wished she could shut up. If she couldn’t shut her mouth, she should just open the door and crawl away into the night.

“Yes. I do.” His voice sounded like something was sitting on his chest and he couldn’t draw a proper breath.

She was twisting the emotional knife here, and she needed to stop. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that.”

“The comment begged the question.”

Which kind of let her off the hook.

She said, “I’m sorry that you’ve felt like that. It sounds lonely.”

He glanced at her. “It’s not a complaint. That would be disingenuous.” Wulf watched the long, dark road, driving carefully enough, though fast, but he seemed to be musing. “I had never planned to open a sex club.”

“What, all that was an accident?”

“I invested in it as a silent partner. I joked with friends about intimately managing my investment, but I assumed that I would never set foot in The Devilhouse after it opened. I was living a quiet life in Chicago, managing investment portfolios and indulging in sport and past-times.”

Rae watched the houses slipping by outside the car window. “But then you saw the benefits of being an owner-operator.”

“That’s good. I’ll have to use that. No, the scoundrel who had pitched the project absconded with a good portion of the initial investment, and then the real estate market declined. The building was already prepared and the opening date set, so we cast the contractors and opened on schedule rather than abandon the project.”

“So it was just a financial decision.” The neighborhood they drove through became more residential, though the houses retreated farther from the road. Fences rose around them.

“Originally,” he said. “I had never managed anything like a nightclub before, so I assumed that I would go out with guns and trumpets, but it’s doing quite well. I probably should hire someone to manage it at this point.”

Wulf turned onto a side street. A steel gate blocked the road. Wulf pressed a button on his visor, and the gate slid aside.

“You live here?” she asked.

“This is the community entrance to the Apache Tears Ranch development.”

“Oh.” The city was divided up into districts based on the old cattle ranches that had once divvied up the valley. The Apache Tears Ranch District was high-falutin’, as everyone knew. Rae hadn’t even heard of a gated housing development in there.

Wulf drove the low sports car down a road lined with prison walls out of a dystopian movie, but Rae was too polite to mention it.

Wulf spun the wheel and pulled the car up before another steel fortress gate. He pushed another visor button, and this steel gate slid back just like the first one.

Surviving a murder attempt when you were eight years old must mess with your head. The screaming blond child flashed in Rae’s head again, and she winced. Good Lord, their poor mother must have been frantic.

They drove up a long driveway. Floodlights cut through the night, and the blazing lights pouring down made it seem like a sky-blocking spaceship had appeared above them. Between the spaceship-car, the dystopian walls, and what looked like the blinding lights from a mothership hovering above them, Rae’s world had been jolted from under her feet.

They pulled up to a single-door car garage. Wulf pushed one last button on his visor, and the garage door swung up. The commonplace garage door was a moment of normalcy in Wulf’s alien world.

When they pulled in, fluorescent lights flickered on. Five identical black SUVs stared down at the little silver sports car in the huge garage.

Rae had sounded like a rube enough for one evening, so she resolved not to say anything else stupid.

The garage around them fell like it was descending into a sinkhole.

She grabbed her flipping heart. “Oh, my gosh! The floor is moving!”

Oops.

Wulf smiled at her again, and Rae smiled back weakly.

He said, “Just wait a moment.”

The floor rose under the Tesla sportscar, lifting it.

Rae tried to look sophisticated and bored with such extravagance, but she ended up peering out the side window at the insanity of the car elevator.

The car floated through a circle cut in the low ceiling. When they were even with the next floor, the elevator swiveled ninety degrees. Rae grabbed the handhold on the door. A green light above them flashed. Wulf drove the car straight ahead into a parking spot on the second floor of the garage.

“That was cool,” Rae said, like a country hick.

Rae must have had some astonished expression on her face because Wulf said, “Perhaps I should have parked in front of the house.”

“No, really. It was cool.”

“One more thing,” Wulf said. “I don’t discuss the office at home. A few men in my personal security detail go between the house and the office, but most people here are unaware of my hobby.”