The Space Between Us Read online

  “Thanks. I was flattered to be asked,” I told her honestly. “I guess I’m not really into…swinging.”

  “We have room for all kinds, hon. Me, I’m not so much into any of that dominance and submission stuff, but we get that here, too. Not as much as in some of the bigger clubs down toward Philly. We have mostly just swingers here. But you get some of that other stuff once in a while.” Jessica sipped at her drink and looked around for Carl, who was still chatting with the leather-wearing couple. “Bill and Sandy, for example. They’re into three-ways with another guy. Bill likes to suck cock. Carl, he’s not into other guys, but he and Bill hit it off. Play golf a couple times a month. They’re probably talking about baseball over there.”

  “You come here a lot?” My stomach was rumbling. I reached for the bar menu, which was pretty standard. Wings, burgers, fries. “Are you hungry? Can I buy you something?”

  “No thanks, hon. You go ahead.” She shook her head. “We come here just about every weekend. Once a year we go on a vacation with some of our friends, people we met here. Usually we go to Debauchery—it’s one of those all-inclusives. Really nice.”

  I ordered a basket of onion rings. “Every weekend. Wow.”

  Jessica laughed. “Onion rings? You really aren’t interested in hooking up, are you?”

  I laughed, too. “I guess not. I only came because Meredith wanted to.”

  “Uh-huh. That’s your lady? She’s sort of abandoned your guy.”

  Meredith had found another partner. Kirk, the guy from upstairs. Of course she had; when had we ever gone out that Meredith danced alone? The difference was that all those other times I’d been the one watching her wiggle up on some strange man, and now Charlie was watching it, too.

  I mumbled a goodbye to Jessica and moved across the floor to Charlie. I pushed up on my toes to kiss him. “I found you.”

  He’d been staring at his wife dancing with the other man; now he looked at me with a small smile. “Was I lost?”

  I took his hand. Our fingers linked. “I don’t think so. But I’m glad I found you, anyway.”

  “I’m not a good dancer. I told her she should have fun.” Charlie looked again at Meredith, who seemed to be having a great time. Laughing, eyes flashing, feet moving in time to the beat.

  Kirk put his hands on Meredith’s hips, bumping her ass against his crotch, and Charlie took half a step forward. I guess he hadn’t really noticed I was holding his hand, until that held him back. He glanced down at our linked fingers, then brought them to his mouth and kissed my knuckles.

  “Looks like she is,” he said.

  I didn’t look at her. I put myself in front of him, not to block his view but to give him a choice of something else to see. I placed both my hands on his shoulders, moving close. Moving against him.

  “We’ll have fun, too, baby. Dance with me.”

  “I told you—” Charlie said, but I hushed him with a kiss.

  I gazed into his eyes. I put one hand on his hip, keeping the other at his shoulder, and I backed up a step so that he followed. The music was still thumping, hard-core and fast, but we didn’t have to move like that. Charlie and I moved slowly. In time with the music, but slow and smooth.

  “You can dance with me,” I told him. “I don’t care if you step on my toes.”

  I led him through a basic box step, then another, and though it didn’t match the music, it worked just fine.

  “I’m dancing.” Charlie’s smile lit up the room, even if it didn’t fill his eyes with all its light. He kissed me, nuzzling softly, then said into my ear, “We’re dancing.”

  Meredith and her partner were on the other side of the room, with lots of other dancers between us. I could see her as Charlie spun me in a small circle, but his eyes never left mine. I knew he saw her, though. Kissing that other man, letting him rub her all over. And finally, leading her by the hand toward one of those open doors.

  “Hey, hon, I guess I got my answer.” Jessica bounced next to us, hand in hand with Carl.

  “Yeah, I—”

  She smiled and shook her head. “Don’t worry about it, hon, it’s all good. Though maybe you’d better catch them. Once the door’s closed, you’re not supposed to knock or anything. But they went in the lookie-loo room. You can peek in on them through the glass, if you want.”

  Charlie stopped dancing, not caring that we were jostled by the people around us.

  “Right. Right. Thanks,” I said.

  “She just…” Charlie shook his head.

  “It’s what we came here for, remember?” I didn’t like it, or the way Meredith had gone about it, but it was true. “C’mon.”

  A narrow, dark hall led around the back of the private rooms. We stopped at a small set of steps that led to nowhere, sort of like bleachers, directly across from the panel of clear glass in the wall.

  “Look, Charlie.”

  I already knew what I was going to see. Together we peered through the glass. Because we were higher, we could see everything in the room. The shelves, the mirrors on the walls. The mattress on the floor.

  Meredith and Kirk.

  His shirt was open, but not off. His pants undone. Meredith had pulled up her skirt, her panties tossed to the side. She straddled his face, her clit pressed to his mouth as she rode his face. She’d pushed her shirt up, her bra down so she could tug and tug at her nipples. Even from this distance I could see how tight they were. How hard. She twisted them, her head thrown back so her hair hung down almost to her ass.

  She rocked her pussy against Kirk’s face. His erect cock bobbed, held in one fist as he used his other hand to caress her ass. Once again I was watching her through glass, and I didn’t need to hear her to know how she sounded.

  Charlie made a small, low noise in the back of his throat and slid closer to me on the step. The only light came from the window in front of us. I felt the touch of his fingertips on my knee, and when I didn’t protest, a little higher. I looked at him; he looked at me.

  No matter why we’d come here, we were still together.

  Meredith ground her clit on the stranger’s stroking tongue as her fingers twisted, twisted her nipples. Her mouth opened. Her eyes closed.

  The feather touch of fingertips on my thigh. Higher. Urging my legs to part. A soft stroke over the lace of my panties, then another. Nothing pushy or fierce. A touch so slight and unobtrusive I could ignore it if I wanted. Small pressure on my clit. Pressing.

  Stroke. Press. Stroke.

  I drew in a breath. The air around me smelled of perfume and smoke and sex. The step beneath my ass was hard, unforgiving, not a place to relax, and that was fine because every muscle in my body had gone tight and tense and taut.

  Waiting.

  I watched as Meredith moved off Kirk’s mouth and dropped on her hands and knees, her ass in the air. As he got behind to fuck her, nice and slow and deep and hard. I knew how that felt. She shook, mouth stretched in a cry I couldn’t hear but didn’t have to. I knew how she sounded when she came.

  My body didn’t shake or move. I didn’t sigh or groan or gasp. I came in silence, bursts of exquisite and torturous pleasure exploding inside me so hard I had to blink away floating specks in my vision. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, there was Charlie.

  He cupped my cheek, his kiss soft. Sweet. He pressed his forehead to mine. “I think it’s time to go.”

  Chapter 38

  Charlie was very quiet on the ride home.

  Meredith, always chatty but even more so when she was drunk, couldn’t shut up. She rattled on and on about “The Ranch,” how much fun she’d had, how we should totally go back. She stumbled when she got out of the car, her clothes in perfect order but her lipstick smeared and her hair a mess.

  In the house she kicked off her shoes and went straight to the kitchen sink to draw a long glass of water, which she downed right away. Charlie took his time to hang up his coat. Mine, too. He picked up Meredith’s shoes and lined them up neatly by the back do