“No cell phones,” Mfune said. “Got it.”
The cashier put neon bands on their wrists and said, “We close at four a.m. tonight, but last call is at three.”
“Good crowd?” Amé asked.
“Very sexy,” the cashier said. “Have fun, and please, no means no.”
“Always.”
Amé led the way through plush red curtains and into a vast space decorated as if it were a fantasy harem encampment in the desert, with palm trees and murals of sand dunes and oases on the high walls. Below them stood arabesque tents, all gold and black, some with their curtains open to reveal beds, and others already closed to wandering eyes.
Two large gilt birdcages hung from the ceiling. In them women writhed against each other, oblivious, it seemed, to the crowded floor below them, where fifty or sixty provocatively dressed people danced and pulsed with the techno music.
To the left there was a long bar crowded with hard drinkers and lascivious friends. Within moments of Mfune and Amé entering Le Chanticleer Rouge, couples and single women began offering to buy them drinks and teasing them about what could be enjoyed inside the tents.
Amé turned them all down, saying, “We’re voyeurs for now.”
The truth was that they were looking for someone. Ten minutes later, they spotted her at the satellite bar upstairs, drinking a salt-and-pepper martini. In her forties, with short silver hair and a long, lithe body clad in a pearl-colored pantsuit, she was watching a writhing group of people in a room with glass walls.
“Ready?” Amé asked.
Mfune nodded. “Let’s do this.”
They sidled up next to her and ordered drinks. It didn’t take long for the woman to take her eyes off the orgy and glance their way. The instant she did, she turned fully toward them as Amé had suspected she would. Based on her surveillance, she knew that the woman liked black men and bisexual white women.
“My, my,” the woman said. “And who might you two be?”
Amé pursed lips glossed ruby red and smiled. “Lynette and Nico. And you?”
“Lourdes,” she said. “I’ve never seen you here before. First time?”
“First time for Nico,” Amé said, squeezing Mfune’s hand. “Not for me. I used to come here regularly with my lipstick girlfriends.”
“I’ve done that too,” Lourdes said softly as she raised one eyebrow. “So fun.”
The captain said, “You’re quite beautiful, Lourdes.”
“And you, Nico, are the definition of a man’s man.”
“You have no idea,” Amé said mischievously.
Lourdes’s eyebrow went up again. “C’est vrai?”
“Shockingly true,” Amé said, and pressed back languidly against Mfune, who beamed to expose that gold tooth.
“I must say, you two have made me rather breathless,” Lourdes said, setting her drink down and fanning her face. “And my skin-look. It’s gooseflesh.”
“We could solve that,” Amé said, “and any other problem you have.”
“And I yours,” Lourdes said, beaming. “Shall we go someplace private?”
Chapter 42
LOURDES TRIED TO lead them into the dungeon, but Mfune said he’d feel better in one of the tents. Amé found an empty one at the back of the club.
She let Lourdes and the captain enter the tent first. Glancing about, she saw no one else in the immediate vicinity-at least not in the visible vicinity. As Amé let down the flaps and tied them shut, she heard the smack of a paddle on flesh from the tent to the left, and cries of orgasm to their right.
She turned and saw the king-size bed with fresh sheets, and the sex swing above it hanging from a cable that ran down through a hole in the tent peak. Lourdes was finishing the last of her drink and eyeing Mfune hungrily.
“Do you like textures, Lourdes?” Amé asked, sinuously stroking her black gloves one against the other.
“I like everything,” Lourdes said. “Engage my body. Engage my mind.”
“I guess that’s a yes.”
“It’s a definite yes,” Lourdes purred. “What did you have in mind?”
“We want to worship you,” Amé said.
“You’re our goddess tonight,” Mfune said.
“You don’t know how right you are,” Lourdes said huskily, as the captain moved behind her and pressed his hips against her back. She trailed her hand along the side of his leg.
Amé sandwiched the woman. She and Mfune caressed Lourdes through her clothes until she was trembling with desire.
“Show us how beautiful the goddess is,” Amé said, standing back.
Lourdes did a provocative striptease that left her naked except for her backstrap high heels.
“You are a goddess,” Mfune said.
“I want to see you too,” Lourdes said.
“Not yet,” Amé said. “Lie back, Lourdes. Lose yourself in pleasure.”
The woman hesitated, but only for a moment before scooting onto the bed and looking at them saucily. “I have to admit, being naked like this and you both in your clothes is a total turn-on.”
“Just you wait,” Amé said.
Mfune walked around to Lourdes’s feet and began stroking them with the gloves, moving his hands slowly up her calves and pressing her knees apart.
“God. Kiss me there,” Lourdes whispered.
“Not yet,” Amé said, climbing onto the bed behind her. Reaching over Lourdes’s shoulders, she caressed the woman’s breasts. “Lie back now and shut your eyes. It will heighten your senses, make your climax more powerful.”
The captain’s gloved hands were massaging Lourdes’s inner thighs now, and she gave in completely, sliding back off her elbows so that her head came naturally into Amé’s lap, where she sighed with contentment and closed her eyes.
“You don’t know how much I’ve needed this,” Lourdes said.
“We see that,” Amé said, looking at Mfune as he moved his gloves higher.
Amé waited until Lourdes’s hips began a slow, sensuous squirm of anticipation, then reached over for one of the pillows.
With the naked woman’s eyes still closed and her mouth slightly parted in pleasure, Amé brought the pillow smashing down on the woman’s face even as Mfune pinned her legs and hips to the bed. Lourdes almost immediately began to fight and writhe. Her arms shot up, grabbing for Amé.
Her hands wrapped around the fabric of the black gloves covering Amé’s forearms and tried to tear them apart. She was strong, but Amé was stronger and threw her full weight onto the pillow even as Lourdes began to scream and whine. Muffled by the pillow, however, the noises sounded no different than other cries of ecstasy and spasm echoing from the tents all around them.
A little more than a minute later, Lourdes’s struggles lessened, and then she collapsed. They held her there long after the tension and the spirit had left her.
“Check her heart,” Amé whispered as the people in the tent to their left started paddling again.
Mfune reached up, rested his hand on her chest a moment, and whispered, “She’s finished.”
Only then did Amé allow herself a long exhale. She lifted the pillow to find Lourdes’s mouth slack and her open eyes dull and still.
“You’re a martyr to the cause,” Amé whispered. “You’re a hero, Lourdes.”
“Let’s get busy,” Mfune said. “We’ve got a lot to do.”
Twenty minutes later, after peering out a slit in the tent flap and making sure there was no one wandering this part of the swingers’ club, they exited quickly. Mfune carried the sheets in a bundle under his arm. Amé drew the flaps of the tent shut, with the Do Not Disturb sign still up. They walked away knowing that under the rules that governed the Red Rooster, no one would enter the tent before closing, and that was hours away.