Saturday 9th June 2018

It was a long walk down the street, past the long strip of bars, clubs and low-end stores and eateries. Following behind Jill’s shapely swaying ass, it struck me how this long walk was some kind of a metaphor for the long walk we’d been on as a couple this last year. I knew the literature-loving part of Jill would have laughed at the thought, probably finding a way to top my joke with one of her own.

But Jill was walking a little too far ahead of me for me to call out to her, so I just kept the thought to myself and concentrated on enjoying the percussive click-click of her heels and the swinging of her ass as she wiggled just a little more than normal, a sure sign she was excited with the way the evening was developing.

Since Luther and his girlfriend, Dee had first landed on our doorstep at six-thirty that evening, I’d not really had a chance to talk to Jill. We’d been hustled along and entertained in equal measure. We’d enjoyed fine food and drink in Luther’s first place, so I could hardly complain. Just like each time we’d met him before, he’d proven entertaining company. But as I’d listened to his stories and jokes, a part of my brain was wondering why he’d latched onto Jill and me.

Jill’s an attractive woman, so I got that bit, but he seemed happy enough in his relationship with Dee and hadn’t really made an overt play for Jill. So I was left with this nagging question as to why he was paying so much attention to Jill and me. And I wondered if tonight might provide a few answers to this nagging question.

Jill’s giggly and slightly drunk laughter pricked my quiet bubble of thoughtfulness. Listening to her loud giggles as she walked arm-in-arm with another man, I could hardly believe how much our marriage had changed this last year. How my sexy but staid and conservative wife had transformed into the woman I saw before me. Still my lover and best friend and mother of our children, but now also enjoying a side of life she thought had passed her by forever, as she came to the end of her college life and we settled down to married life.

My wife was walking about five yards ahead of us, clinging tightly to Luther’s left arm as the two globes of her ass wiggled and swayed under the tight fabric of her skintight turquoise dress. As I walked and watched, she squeezed a little closer as she laughed at another of Luther’s outrageous club stories. Seeing the way she flicked her hair and looked across at the story-teller, I could tell she was attracted to the man who was our host. Although she’d tried to hide it, I’d seen the sure signs of that attraction on each of the previous two evenings we’d met up, each time, Jill’s ability and desire to hide it reducing the more we drank and just chilled with our new friends.

But my mind wasn’t in some kind of pity-party mood, because like any good host, Luther had provided for me. As Jill giggled and clung tight to his arm, I had Dee doing pretty much the same thing, the warmth of her body and ample chest giving me a warm tingly feeling, making me feel like a nervous adolescent, wondering how this evening might end. My mind was thinking back to Gemma, the last woman I’d been with other than Jill. Before everything had gone sideways. When Jill and Chris got too close, and Chris asked Jill to leave me and head to Los Angeles with him.

The high-end booze we’d enjoyed with the meal was doing nothing to help me keep a clear head, or to piece together the swirling confusion of feelings and emotions I was feeling. My cock was slowly filling just as my heart was feeling light and happy at the feeling of Dee by my side and the expectations of what might be.

But this was finely balanced by the bittersweet pain and butterflies I was feeling as I stared jealously at Jill laughing and flirting with her new gentleman friend, feeling like a guy once again looking down over the edge of the precipice, with all of the recent traumatic feelings and memories this brought flooding back to the surface. The glands in my shoulders were alive and raw, fully in fight-or-flight mode. Normally an invisible part of my body, they suddenly throbbed to life as they pumped neat adrenaline into my bloodstream, electrifying every little corner of my body and prepping me for what the evening might bring. My gut felt hollow, like I’d not eaten for a month, acids swirling and gnawing away as fear and excitement mixed like a deadly cocktail.

I closed my eyes and tried desperately to clear my thoughts, wondering if I had it in me to slow things down or move the evening in another direction, hoping a deep breath might help, but it hardly made a difference. The only difference was, it alerted Dee to my confused state. Her fingers inter-twined more tightly than before, her hand stroking my cheek as she looked into my eyes.

“Are you okay with this, Dave? You know, we don’t have to do this. Not if you don’t want to. It’s just you and Jill seem really nice folks, and we know from Josh you like to party. But, you know, if you’re not ready, you want to slow things down a bit, that’s fine as well …”

Dee’s words trailed off as she held my gaze, her serious look slowly turning up into the slightest of smiles as she took in my silence. “But looking at your old lady, if I’m any judge, she doesn’t want to slow anything down tonight. My sweet man has worked his magic, got her well and truly under his spell,” she smiled in her gentle Southern accent, all the time looking at me to judge my reaction, seeing enough of my schizoid hesitation to tease and nudge me just a little more.

“But honey, seeing the way your sweet wife’s looking at my man, there’s only one way that thing’s going to end tonight. So if that’s not something you’re ready for, you better say something sooner rather than later, if you get me,” she smiled and warned in the same breath.

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I felt a little like minor royalty or some B-list celeb as the two huge black guys on the door smiled nervously at Luther and then the rest of us. I stared up at the flashing neon lights announcing the club's name, ‘The Pink Cabaret’, as one of the two doormen unclipped the rope for us to jump the queue and enter the club. We enjoyed the stares we received from the various other groups waiting patiently in line while we got the A-star treatment.

Once inside, the first things to hit me were the wall of sound and the dazzling and disorienting effects of all the banks of lights, the sound deep and jarring, the lights each different and doing their own thing. Flashing colored bulbs with their strobe effects, pivoting searchlights moving around the walls and ceilings worked in tandem with so many bass speakers that seemed to make my inner organs vibrate.

My eyes slowly adjusted as I let Dee pull me through the crowds, Luther and Jill ahead of us but only just visible amongst the throng. The heat and humidity were overpowering, not surprising as there must have been three or four hundred excited party-goers soaking up the atmosphere and leaking animal humidity into the already hot Miami night.

It was quite an effort to cut through the crowd, but finally, we reached a door just to the side of the main stage. Dee pushed it open and pulled me through, my ears happy that things were even just a little more subdued and more normally lit. The room was filled with more girls than I could count, many in various stages of undress.

Luther had boasted that he ran a better type of club, one that looked out for the welfare of the girls and the punters, true to the ethics he’d lived by in the military. And even as I recovered from the shock of seeing so many attractive and scantily clad women, I couldn’t miss the way so many of the girls seemed delighted to see Luther and Dee. Their smiles and hugs reminded me of kids visited by a favorite aunt or uncle. Luther and Dee made the polite introductions, but understandably we were on the sidelines as the girls babbled away talking to their favorite aunt and uncle about everything under the sun - about kids, college and exams, brothers and sisters. About pretty much anything except the job they were there to enjoy – not mentioned, but an ever-present backdrop which they all knew was needed and necessary to pay the bills. To pay tuition, pay for kids' clothes and medical bills, and to keep Luther in the style which he’d become accustomed to living.

But the girls didn’t seem to mind. Looking at the faces, even through the high-pitched laughs and conversations, the faces I saw told me that the girls here had seen plenty of hard times and sadness in their lives. But the way they looked at and spoke to Luther and Dee told me they saw them as friends and benevolent allies, the club providing a slightly better way of making a living than the alternatives.

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We must have spent more than half an hour in there, as Luther did his slightly weird Father Christmas and protector role all wrapped in one. By the end of it, I was almost inured to all the bare bosoms and thong-covered asses and pussies. But finally, the last cheek was kissed and the last question asked, and I saw Luther ushering Jill towards the same door we’d entered through.

Dee smiled a teasing smile as she saw the look on my face as Jill was ushered away. “Come on, Casanova. Let’s get you out of here before your eyeballs pop out of your head and your heart explodes as you wonder where my sweet man’s taken your naughty little wife.”

I found the answer to this question barely a minute later as Dee pulled me by the hand up a well-hidden set of stairs and we ascended up towards the gods of the club – the area up high amongst the lights and other hidden equipment, where you could look down as lord of all you surveyed, and where it was just about quiet enough to hold a normal conversation.

No surprise that when Dee pulled me into the little room, I saw Luther and Jill snuggled next to each other on one side of a large horseshoe-shaped red velvet seat. The two of them looked deeply into each other’s eyes, engrossed deeply in some conversation. Seeing me and Dee out of the corner of his eye, he gave an almost imperceptible nod for Jill’s benefit to let her know they weren’t alone anymore, and then he turned to me with a large and confident grin.

“So, Dave, man. What do you think? Isn’t it just like I said? Happy girls. Happy punters. And a little cash factory for me, just proving that doing the right thing pays off in the long run.”

Dee pulled me by the hand so we were sitting next to Luther and Jill on the crushed velvet seat, Dee next to Jill with the two of us guys bookending the foursome. Luther and Dee made most of the running in the conversation, talking both about the club and how they’d developed it and also about some of the more interesting and noteworthy dancers. As they talked about the dancers, it was doubly clear to me how they both really cared about the girls that worked there.

My mind was going back to some of the stories that Luther had told about some of the shitty and horrible things he’d seen in warzones around the world. Often the women and young girls were the one’s worst affected, with equality being nothing more than a faraway Western idea in most of the places he’d fought.

Listening to him talk, I got the distinct impression this place and the other clubs he ran were some kind of belated antidote, an antidote to all the times he’d seen terrible things and been unable to do a damn thing about the suffering and injustices he’d had to helplessly watch. Maybe it was only a small place and a small thing, but I got the feeling he’d created a little corner of the world for himself where he’d do his damnedest to engineer just a little bit of hope and redemption. Both for him and the girls, many of whom had sad backstories which had brought them into the world of exotic dancing.

This probably sounds too maudlin and depressing, and that would be wrong because the conversation was mostly light and airy, full of shared details of the ‘real’ lives the girls were building for themselves in the hours they weren’t dancing. The deeper part was me was listening and second-guessing where all of this had come from. Sitting and thinking, I watched my equally quiet wife, wondering what was going through her mind.

Her expression was a strange mix, sometimes engaged and excited as she seemingly hung on every word that Luther said. At other times, just a tiny bit tired and blank from the booze as she listened to Luther and Dee talking. She was holding hands with Luther and looking between him and me as the conversation went on, no hint of guilt or nervousness at the way the evening was developing, despite neither of us having discussed anything like this. A relaxed acceptance and anticipation may be inevitable given the boundaries and rules we’d shattered step-by-step this last year.

As Luther continued telling me about a dancer called Amber, who was about Jill’s age and who he’d helped escape from an abusive relationship with her ex-con husband, Dee started whispering something in Jill’s ear, winning a series of giggles and a look of disbelief from Jill, who was no longer looking at me or Luther, all her attention focused on her new friend Dee.

Having dropped whatever bombshell she’d dropped into Jill’s ear, Dee just held Jill’s gaze and smiled as if daring her to reject or question whatever it was she’d just told my wife. Jill’s head started to give the tiniest of nods, her lips turning up in the barest of nervous smiles. Winning some kind of battle or agreement from Jill, Dee’s smile was broad and victorious. Turning to Luther, “I’m just taking Jill downstairs for a few minutes. To show her where I used to dance. Why don’t you bring Dave down in a few minutes, honey?”

Luther didn’t say anything. He just smiled and nodded his head slightly, the club-owner and group alpha giving his woman his agreement to whatever she had planned. Dee pulled Jill past Luther and the other end of the horseshoe as the two of them excitedly headed back towards the stairway back to the throbbing music and stages of the club. Before I had a chance to react or say anything, they were gone from sight, just the back of Jill’s shoulders and then her head visible as she obediently trotted down the steep stairs.

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With the lubricant of the two girls now gone, for a few moments there was an awkward silence between Luther and me. Luther just stared at me in a friendly but non-committal way, as if egging me on to be the first to speak.

With the girls now gone, I felt an unstoppable pressure building in me, knowing it wouldn’t be long until I asked the question that had been on my mind all night. I continued to stare at Luther, not confrontational, more of a statement of equality and controlled assertiveness, counting to ten and feeling my confidence growing, memories of my L.A. discussions with Chris somehow flooding my head and giving me extra strength. Finally, I cleared my throat and took the conversation where it had been headed since we’d first met, when Jill had calmed things and introduced me as her husband, breaking off the hot dance they’d been sharing.

“Tell me, Luther, what exactly is it you want from Jill and me? This is the third time in a week you’ve gone out of your way to spend time with Jill and me.”

He looked down into his glass, staring for a few seconds before looking back up. “That’s a fair question, Dave. And I like to be straight with people. And I like to think that you and me, Dee and Jill have the start of what could become a great friendship. So I’ll level with you.”

We stared at each other, while I waited for him to make good on his promise.

“It’s like this, Dave,” he started, now looking right at me.

“I’m a complex guy, and I’ve got three hobbies in life. Making money,” he smiled and gestured at our surroundings up high in the club he owned. “Putting right some of the wrongs I’ve seen, trying to unbreak some of the horrible things I’ve seen. And last, but by no means least, sex and exploring human sexuality.”

I sensed that he’d well and truly lowered the drawbridge and was about to share with me about himself and what his game was.

“Dave, man. You and me are about the same age. I like you. You’re smart, funny and with a good heart and integrity that shines through. And Jill and my girl Dee are only a few years apart. And Jill’s the female version of you, only easier on the eye,” he chortled more to himself than me. “And truth is me and Dee don’t have many true friends, and I was hoping we could become ‘playmates’,” the last word said with a smile that left nothing to the imagination.

Grinning broadly, his natural charm and salesman’s patter was on full power. “I know that you and Jill have been ‘playing’ for a few months now. And I know she’s having a bit of fun with Josh and Freddy. But I thought you guys might be in the market for something a bit more mature. A bit more three-dimensional than just letting your sweet lady get her brains banged out by a couple of young guys like Josh and Freddy…

“What do you think, Dave? And in case you’re wondering, me and Dee are sound, so while I like playing, I have no intention of trying to cause any trouble or steal Jill away from you. I won’t pretend I don’t know what happened with you, Jill and Chris, and I want you to know I ain’t anything like that. I hate guys like that. It goes totally against the whole code I’ve lived by all these years…

“So, what do you think, Dave? You think we could be friends? Maybe play a little? After all, I’ve seen the way you look at Dee. And I know she really likes you, and that she can’t wait to get you in the sack. And trust me, when that sweet girl of mine’s done with you, you’re going to have more than a smile on your face. Hell, you’re hardly going to be able to walk when she’s finished with you. But boy, will you be smiling from ear to ear, and then some... ”

They say a salesman, however good, can’t sell you anything unless you’re in the market and want to buy. And from the changing expression on Luther’s face, as he laid it on thick about Dee, I knew that he knew he had me hooked. My own face gave it away, the way I lapped it up as he reeled me in. My mind was already painting vivid pictures of what Dee’s body would look like naked. What her big boobs would feel like between my lips, what they’d look like swinging back and forth as I fucked her from behind, or she sat atop me riding away for all she was worth. Or what her lips would taste like as we enjoyed the excitement of the entrée before the full-blown pleasure of the main course.

Although I’d said nothing, Luther knew he had me where he wanted me and that the deal was done. He raised a glass, waiting patiently for my slower and more hesitant wrist to raise, our glasses finally clinking as a strange feeling of excitement and fear settled on me.

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Luther led me back down the stairs and he asked me if it would be okay if we walked around a little to talk to some of his people. See how things were going, that kinda thing. So I spent the next few minutes acting like his semi-mute wingman as Luther toured his little empire slapping people on the back, listening to their gripes, small and large. I kept half an ear to these conversations, but mostly my mind was focused on the various dancers who were plying their trade, rising and falling, gyrating and showing their wares as they used the various poles and stages to entertain and persuade the patrons to buy that extra bottle or shell-out for a private dance.

The women came in all shapes and sizes. Some young, some pushing or past thirty. Some white, some Latina and some very pretty black girls. Some petite and flat-chested, pretty faces making up for a lack of curves. Others very well-endowed, either by nature or thanks to some silicone help.

With my blood well and truly fired up by the company of Dee and then the recent conversation with Luther, I was as horny as hell and possibly salivating as these various dancers gave me more than normal attention – seeing as I was with their boss. As I was feeling a bit too self-conscious to openly ogle and enjoy some of the younger girls, Luther caught me staring at a very attractive older Hispanic dancer. He smiled, telling me that her name was Amber, the woman who he’d told the story about earlier – the woman with the abusive ex-con husband who he’d helped escape from her husband’s clutches.

He shouted in my ear that if I liked what I saw, he could arrange for her to join us for a private dance later, adding with a mock sad look that he could do this, but that Dee would likely not forgive him as she had her sights set on me. He added a final joke, that maybe when the initial blush had worn off, Dee might be prepared to share me with Amber. What a thought!

Satisfied that his rounds hadn’t revealed anything untoward and had kept his troops on their toes, Luther took me by the arm and ushered me towards the back wall that contained the door to the dressing rooms.

But instead of going through the door to the dressing rooms, he guided me to a different room, a room that contained three large sofas and a small stage right in the middle of the room. As Luther shut the door behind me, I was taken aback to see that we weren’t alone in the room. As the bright lights and strobes lit the air and the swirling dried ice, I was just about to make out the faces of Josh and Freddy sitting next to each other on one of the sofas.

Sat on the other sofa were Byron and a guy who I recognized but struggled to place. His name and role came back to me when Luther addressed him as Malcolm and asked him who he’d left on the door. He was Luther’s head of security for the club, and from his fearsome size and the look on his face, I could see why Luther rated him so highly.

Luther got me to sit on the empty sofa and disappeared to a small hidden bar to pour everyone drinks, before taking his place next to me on the sofa. I’d barely taken my first sip when a hidden announcer broke the silence.

“Gentlemen, for your entertainment tonight, we’re pleased to announce the newest member of the Pink team. Give it up and give a big, Pink welcome for a lady who’s a little shy but who’s promised to show us all a good time. Gentlemen, for your delectation and pleasure, Luther is pleased to introduce you to Dee’s new friend… the one, the only, the stunning Jade…”

(Thanks to cbears52 for his careful and timely editing.)