Beautiful Stranger

room décor every couple of weeks. Our goal is to keep things fresh for our clientele. You’ll find a variety of scenes going on as you walk down to the rooms.”
    I glanced to Sara and wondered how, beneath the mask, the sweet midwestern girl was taking all of this in.
    The host continued, “Shows begin at ten, and go until midnight. I’m told your room is Six. Given that this is your first event, you should feel welcome to watch the other exhibits for a bit before deciding whether you would like to participate.” He smiled. “I’m also told the owner would very much like to add something a bit more intimate and sincere to the regular rotation. We’ve never had an exhibiting couple who looks at each other the way you do.”
    I felt my eyes go wide, and beside me Sara shifted closer. I could feel the warmth of her thigh against mine. I was truly on the verge of exploding with my need to feel her.
    The waiter bowed slightly. “But please do not feel any pressure.”

    At ten, the lights in the hallway illuminated a warm gold. Other patrons around the main room shifted, finished theirdrinks, stood slowly. But Sara grabbed my hand and jerked me out of my chair.
    The hall was at least twenty feet wide, with seats and tables near the windows looking in on the rooms. In Room One, the first room on the left, a young, muscular man stood in the corner wearing jeans and no shirt. On the floor, on all fours, was another dark-haired man with a horse tail extending from an anal plug. The man standing in the corner lifted a whip and cracked it loudly in the air.
    Sara’s hand flew to her mouth, as I pulled her farther down the hall, murmuring, “Pony play, darling. Not for everyone.”
    Room Two had a beautiful woman, alone and naked on the couch, just beginning to masturbate to pornography being projected across the expansive wall opposite her.
    Room Three had an enormous, pale man in the tragic Melpomene mask, preparing to take a gagged woman from behind. Beside me, I could sense Sara grow more tense.
    “This looks . . .” She gestured vaguely to the strangely fascinating scene.
    “Adventurous?” I suggested. “You have to understand that people pay a lot of money to come here. They don’t want to see things they can see on the telly.”
    I put my hand to the small of her back and reminded her, “Another thing you can’t see on the telly is real intimacy.”
    She looked up at me and then her attention dropped to my mouth. “Do you think we’re really intimate?”
    “Do you ?”
    She nodded. “When did that happen?”
    “When has it been anything other than intimate? You just wanted to ignore it.”
    She blinked away, but leaned into my side and we started walking again.
    Room Four had three women, kissing and laughing as they undressed each other on a gigantic white bed.
    Room Five had a man binding a woman up with rope, while a bound and gagged cuckolded man watched from the corner.
    “We’re going to be boring,” she whispered, eyes wide.
    “You really think so?”
    She didn’t answer, because we’d arrived at Room Six, which stood empty. Without even looking to me, she slipped around the end of the hall to where we could enter the rooms from the rear.
    The door handle to Six turned easily, and Sara stepped inside.
    After a few moments, our eyes adjusted, and I could make out a bar in the corner and a huge leather couch with a low coffee table in front. Even in the darkness, the room felt very much like a corner of my own living room, and I suspected with a jolt that it was a replica of that space.
    Without thinking to ask Sara first, I flipped on the light. I was right. Cream walls with deep walnut trim, a wide black couch, and the same plush area rug I had picked up inDubai. Tiffany lamps decorated the two small end tables. The room was far smaller than my living room, which I used for large events, but the similarity was undeniable. The giant window through which people could observe us was framed by drapes, just like those at my flat, but from where we stood, it just looked like a window looking out upon a blank darkness.
    Johnny had been to my house only once, but in a single afternoon he’d transformed a room in his club for me, no doubt assuming it would be familiar to us both, maybe put us at ease. He would have no idea that Sara had never actually been to my flat.
    “What’s wrong?” she asked, walking closer and, realizing she could touch me in here, wrapping her arms around my