Confluence of Hedonists #3

He rides the elevator upwards, his back resting lightly against the mirrored wall at the rear of the car, a chilled bottle of Taittinger cradled beneath his right arm. The women stand in front and on either side of him, facing away towards the brushed metal doors. No one talks. Words would be superfluous, no matter what their civilised pretences. They all know where they are going, know why they are going there.

He looks above the women’s heads at the green digits of the floor display: 2, 3, 4, 5. The ascent slows to a cushioned stop, and the doors open with a hum upon the sixth floor. Catherine steps out into the hallway first. She turns back towards them, waiting, rich scarlet lips curled into an enigmatic smile. She told him once that her favourite shade for an evening of adventure was Lady Danger. Is this it?

“Is someone going to lead the way?” she asks. Her eyes take them both in; they linger on his face for the briefest time.

He understands both of her messages. Overtly, this is the final confirmation of her desire. No hesitating. No turning back. If you want out, her gaze says, let the lift doors close between us. But I’m ready. The covert communication … he doesn’t dare dwell on that. Not right now.

Before the doors have a chance to hiss shut, Laura walks out of the elevator and joins Catherine. He follows a second later, an intense burst of relief and excitement that he didn’t have to lead his wife out flooding through him. He turns right down the long corridor. He’s pleased to find that the card key doesn’t shake in his hand as he slips it into the door lock.

The room is bathed in warm semi-light from the table lamps they switched on when they booked in. Catherine saunters over to the writing desk, looking around the suite as she crosses the thick carpet. She moves with the languid grace of a cat.

“It’s a lovely room,” she says. She shrugs off her tailored jacket and unselfconsciously drapes it over the back of the chair. The uppermost two buttons on her silk blouse are undone, and as she settles herself on the plush sofa, he steals a glimpse of smooth, ivory cleavage, and a hint of lacy brassiere. He glances at his wife. Laura looks back at him from where she stands beside the sofa. Her expression is a mixture of accusation and appetite. He’s unable to discern which is the dominant emotion.

He opens the Taittinger with a muffled pop, smothering the cork with his hand so that it doesn’t career across the room. He’d had to ask the concierge to have a set of flutes brought up to the suite. He fills three of the glasses with a mixture of champagne and fizz, hands one to his wife who’s still standing, and the other to Catherine.

He retrieves his own glass. The seat next to Catherine waits to be filled. Two matching chairs face one another from either side of the sofa. Laura sits down in the one on the left.

Damn.

He masks his disappointment, walks over to the desk and turns on the iPod he’d set up when they’d booked in. The screen radiates an electric blue glow. He selects the ‘Erotic Occasions’ play list, and the sound of The Golden Palomino’s To A Stranger oozes from the diminutive speakers. He adjusts the volume down a touch, then carries his champagne across to the other chair. He lifts his glass.

“To new friends. And new experiences.”

The women raise their glasses. “New friends and experiences.” Catherine’s voice still holds an appropriate note of anticipation. There’s no such tone carried on Laura’s words.

The champagne is deliciously chilled. He savours it for a moment, lets it sit against his tongue, then swallows greedily. He drinks some more, then carefully places his glass on the low coffee table.

They’ve been here before, Laura and he, and this has always proven the most awkward part of the dance for them both. So close to the prize, and yet unable just to reach out and seize it. Perhaps it’s something that fades with greater experience, he thinks, not for the first time. And immediately, there’s that familiar caution, like a dark echo: perhaps for some people, it never fades at all.

He looks from his wife to the empty seat beside Catherine, and then back. In the past, he’s always relied on Laura to set the pace for this part of the ritual, and not through any sense of apathy or arrogance. Her control of these final steps has always served to assure him of her readiness, that she’s wanted all that was to follow. Without her genuine desire to participate, it would mean little to him.

But all of those past encounters have been with couples, never with a single woman. He’s keenly aware of the variance. Couples offer natural balance: two sets of desire edging forward to blend with two more. Two and one lacks that symmetry. The geometry requires different handling, a subtle shift in skills. Are they capable? He looks at his wife? Does she really care? And Catherine, the expectant guest. What if they stutter now? How much grace will she afford them before she loses faith?

A blast of wind at this point will bring the house of cards down around them.

The silence becomes so thick, he’s considering the most gauche words he can conceive - Well, this is awkward, isn’t it? - when Laura finally speaks.

“So you’ve never been with a couple before, Catherine?”

The question surprises him. Laura is rarely this direct when it comes to sex. The question seems to catch Catherine off guard too. She places her glass down slowly, buying time, and then says, “No.” She smiles, pushing the puzzlement aside. “I’ve wanted to, for a very long time. I seems like I’ve been waiting forever. But I never met the right people, or the timing was never right, and-”

Laura gets up and takes the empty seat on the sofa. “But now you’ve met the right people, haven’t you? Now the timing’s right?”

Catherine’s smile cools at the hint of rancour in Laura’s voice. It’s subtle, but it’s there. For a moment, he thinks of interceding, then stops himself. There would be no point. It would have been better if this had happened earlier, but if Laura was going to blow, nothing in this room would prevent her.

He sits back, mentally wincing, his belly crawling with fear and uncertainty.

Catherine shifts awkwardly in her seat, as though struggling against the urge to withdraw. “Yes.”

Laura tilts her head. “And why is that?”

“Honestly?”

“There’s not much point in anything else.”

Catherine looks to her left, directly at him, and then turns her gaze back to Laura. “Because of him. The timing’s right now because of him.”

“My husband?”

“Yes.”

Laura looks at him herself. “Why? Are you in love him?”

Catherine’s laugh is brief, sharp. There’s no smile to marry up with the laughter though. Laura’s eyes become flinty.

“Are you mocking me, Catherine?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why laugh?”

“Because you thought I was in love with your husband.”

“And you’re not?”

“No. I’m in love with my own husband.”

Laura shakes her head. “Then why are you here?”

Catherine smiles again, a warm, gentle smile this time. “Because I want to experience; to touch and to taste and to know the desires of others. Because my husband doesn’t want any of those things. And because talking with your husband helped me accept that for some of us, there’s too much adventure in the world to sit watching it pass by.”

Laura picks up her glass and drains most of its contents in a single draught. “And now you want him?”

“No.” Catherine leans forward, softly puts her hand on Laura’s bare knee. She slides closer on the sofa. Now there’s little more than a foot of space between them. He’s spellbound, aware that the rawness in his midriff is easing, that the bitter tang of defeat in his mouth is fading away.

Catherine leans forward until her mouth is only inches from Laura’s. “Now I want you both.”

Their first kiss is patient, delicate. Their lips do little more than brush together in languid sweeps. He feels himself beginning to rise already.

How quickly things change.

The women pause, draw back fractionally from one another; he sees the hint of surprise in Laura’s liquid green eyes. For a few seconds, they regard one other in silence, and then Laura leans forward, instigating a second kiss. This time the connection is deeper, more thorough. His wife strokes Catherine’s hair back from her face, lets her hand fall to the other woman’s shoulder, fingers trailing down the outside of her arm. Catherine shivers, inches closer, deepening the connection.

He sips from his glass with satisfaction. The role of voyeur has always pleased him. Long ago, he expended a good deal of energy on trying to fathom a definitive explanation as to why. Now he’s learned not to care about the why. He’s content to accept the fact that it simply is.

He settles himself more comfortably in the chair, watching his wife’s artful fingers as they descend along the front of Catherine’s blouse, unseating each button effortlessly. Laura opens the silk, eases it over Catherine’s smooth shoulders. It falls down her arms almost silently. Catherine’s bra is cream lace, cut in Balconette style. The dark halos of her nipples are easily discernible through the delicate tracery of the cups. His mouth waters as one of his wife’s manicured nails trails across the centre of one rising peak.

Catherine gasps, her eyes fluttering closed. Laura takes the opportunity to lean in again, pressing her lips to the side of Catherine’s throat, eliciting another gasp of pleasure from their guest. He remembers a time when Laura could never have been so bold with another woman, when she could not even have conceived of seducing a woman with such grace and guile. His own eyes close as he recalls that first, breathless encounter; the almost stifling room, the flickering candlelight, the smell of aroused sex, man and woman. And at the centre of it all, Laura’s trembling uncertainty swept away by the first, glorious sight of the blonde’s nakedness, by the blonde’s cunning fingers and her artful tongue.

He opens his eyes. Laura’s lips are stitching kisses along the slender ridge of Catherine’s collar bone. Her hands are cupping Catherine’s full breasts, and he watches enviously as his wife moulds them to her grasp. He tries to imagine how it would feel to have Catherine’s hard nipples pressed against the centres of his palms. He thinks of the first time he saw her naked; a three-quarter length glamour shot, taken by her husband on an adventurous day. They’d been talking via email and messenger for a month when it arrived in his inbox. He already desired her mind and her passion. With one glimpse of that photograph, he found himself hungering for her flesh as well.

A gasp of delight brings him back to the now. Catherine’s bra has joined her blouse upon the floor. Laura bows her head, exploring the fullness of her partner’s curves with her lips. Catherine lays back against the arm of the sofa, content to be the subject of the feast. Laura takes full advantage, squeezing Catherine’s breasts until the hard, pink nipples stand prouder than ever, swirling her tongue about the peaks with such deliberate lasciviousness, that his cock feels as though it is ready to tear through his trousers.

“Oh yes,” Catherine sighs.

Laura suckles on one nipple as her fingers slip down to the waist of Catherine’s skirt. The zipper crackles as it descends, and Catherine raises her hips to assist. Her skirt slides down her thighs with a silken hiss. Her panties are cut from the same cream lace as her bra. His gaze narrows as he notices how the material cleaves to the lips of her sex. Catherine notices his attention, holds his gaze wantonly. Then she looks down at herself, at the woman nuzzling and caressing her breasts, and a look of incredulity comes over her face.

“I can’t believe this is finally happening,” she whispers.

His wife looks up into the eyes of her newest lover. “Believe it,” she says. Without hesitation, she deftly hooks her fingers into the waistband of Catherine’s panties, and eases them down her legs. Catherine’s legs seem to open so naturally. Warm light gleams against the denuded softness of her mound, of her labia. The lips of her sex are parted, and he spies a hint of glistening pinkness within. His cock aches to the point of pain. He wants to unzip himself, to stroke himself slowly. He resists, settles for resting a hand over his crotch, hard flesh straining against his palm.

Laura strokes Catherine’s calf, kisses the inside of her left knee, then the beginning of her inner thigh. Each subsequent kiss lands a little higher. As she kisses her way along Catherine’s left thigh, she’s lightly running her nails along the inside of her right. Catherine shivers feverishly with each kiss, with each inch the other woman gains. If she’s fighting to maintain some semblance of control, it’s a war she’s already lost. He sees it clearly, the desire coursing through her, irrepressible, overwhelming her. He saw the very same thing in Laura, the first time the blonde kissed his wife’s damp mouth, stroked her expectant cunt with a virtuoso’s touch.

And then Laura’s lips press against Catherine’s bare mound, and Catherine gasps, a long exhalation of delight. She shifts against the sofa, her legs opening a fraction wider. Laura’s hands rest atop Catherine’s thighs, and she runs her fingers lightly across them as she traces the perimeter of Catherine’s sex with the tip of her tongue. Another gasp of pleasure, longer, deeper, more decadent. Laura’s hands slip inwards, fingertips resting against Catherine’s labia, easing them apart. Then her tongue flickers out, softly, lashing exquisitely across Catherine’s shining clitoris, again and again and again. Catherine cries out, beyond mere gasping now, rolling groans of gratification that thrill his ears.

It doesn’t take long. How could it? So much anticipation, so much tension, so much desire. When Catherine comes, her body shudders with an intensity he’s not seen in an age. He wonders if her cries of climax can be heard in the rooms on either side of them. He thinks of men, women, couples, their ears pressed eagerly against the cool plaster as Catherine’s orgasm rises and explodes, becoming aroused by the sound of her obvious pleasure. The possibility is so enticing.

Laura looks over her shoulder at him. Her green eyes are gleaming; her mouth is a damp slash of scarlet.

“Do you plan on sitting there all night?” she asks. “Or are you going to come here and help me pleasure this woman?”