Unbound (31 page)

“Grace,” he says when I remain silent, coming toward me and stopping right in front of me. He’s so close he could touch me if he stretched out his hand, but he doesn’t. Instead he smiles appealingly and I can see the tiny missing corner of tooth, which I find so unbelievably delightful. He wants me to come with him. He doesn’t want me to pick the other alternative and leave.

I remember what Sarah said. Jonathan has already made a lot of women very unhappy. But that I might, just might have a chance of getting through to him. That I mean more to him than he wants to admit.

I knew there were sides of him that would be foreign to me. That getting involved with him was a risk, and that I was in danger of getting my heart broken. But it was my heart that wanted to take that risk that still wants to believe there’s something more between us. My heart is just not ready to give up yet.

Reluctantly, with a queasy sensation in my stomach, I return his smile.

“OK then. Let’s go the club tonight.”

It’s just before eight when we arrive at the white townhouse in Primrose Hill. Jonathan gets out first and puts up an umbrella before helping me out of the limousine. It’s cold and drizzling and I’m freezing in my summer dress and thin coat. But perhaps that’s because of my nerves, not the weather. Jonathan looks at me. “Are you ready?” he asks, and I nod. I let my gaze slide over him. He’s wearing black again today—a trench coat over his shirt and pants. It’s also black. We walk up to the wrought-iron gate together beneath the umbrella. The gate opens for us and closes behind us again, and we walk along the paved walkway to the entrance, which is on the side of the building.

In the last few hours, I’ve asked him a lot of questions about the club, and I now know a few things about it. I know that the number of members is restricted and that the selection criteria are strict. They take great care to protect the club’s zone of privacy at all times. Nothing must leak out and no one who’s just nosy and wants to sniff around will be let in. The unbelievably high membership fees guarantee its exclusivity. And that’s what it’s all about, according to Jonathan—guaranteed anonymity and discretion.

A camera installed above the black lacquered front door flashes red, showing that it’s taking our photo, as Jonathan turns the old-fashioned brass doorknob. After only a few seconds, a blond woman in an expensive dark gray suit opens the door. Her hair has been tied back in a severe bun and she seems cool and reserved.

“Good evening,” she greets us, letting us in. The door locks behind us quietly.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but definitely not this understated elegance. The reception hall is softly, obliquely lit and contrasts with the shiny white reception desk the blond woman is now standing behind. The matte beige of the walls, interspersed with brown wooden panels reaching all the way to the ceiling, along the expensive dark brown carpet give the room a cool yet very welcoming, understated feel. Two pale, fabric-covered designer armchairs look inviting to sit in, yet they look as untouched as if they had just been delivered. The blond seems to know Jonathan, but she eyes me a little skeptically, without being rude about it. She takes a small plastic card from Jonathan and runs it through a card reader, after which she hands me some densely-printed sheets of paper. “It’s a confidentiality agreement,” Jonathan explains, grinning. “I believe you’re already familiar with those.”

I don’t bother to read everything through carefully, I just skim over the bullet points and I get quite a surprise. I’d really be in big trouble if I divulged anything I witness or experience here in any form whatsoever. I wasn’t planning to reveal anything, so I sign and hand the papers back to the blonde, who nods in satisfaction.

“You can go in now,” she says, handing Jonathan two keys with elegant wooden labels hanging from them, clearly engraved with the numbers 11 and 12, together with two black masks. They are narrow, simple, and made of a soft, shiny material.

I would like to ask what both things—keys and masks—are for, but somehow here the rule seems to be that you should speak as little as possible, so I let it go. In any case, I’m too nervous to focus on any one thing for very long.

“Please go in,” the blond says, indicating a door opposite the entrance, which leads into the interior of the house.

As we walk up to it, I’m holding my breath because I have absolutely no idea what could be behind it. Jonathan seems to notice how tense I am and smiles as he opens the door. A moment later we’re standing in another hallway with a curved staircase leading up to the upper floor. The room has been decorated quite differently from the entrance, much more strikingly. The doorframes, wall panels, and stairs are made of very dark, almost black wood, which heightens the effect of the floor and ceiling that displays striking, mirror image patterns of black and white lines. The pattern on the floor was made with black and white marble and is rather delicate, while the ceiling is crossed by broader black and white beams. The big ceiling lamp and the balustrades are accented with gleaming, golden brass.

A man in a livery uniform appears in front of us almost immediately. He takes our coats, which we’re still wearing, and my purse. Jonathan also hands him the two keys the blond woman gave him. A second man in a similar uniform appears briefly on the stairs above, but disappears again almost immediately.

“Who are they?” I ask Jonathan, when we’re alone again. “They’re here to make sure that our stay is as pleasant as possible and to bring us something to eat or drink, if we’d like. And if,” he looks at me, “you want to take off an article of clothing, they make sure you find it again in cubicle 12 in the changing room over there,” he points to a door beneath the stairs. “You don’t have to worry about anything.”

“What if I’d rather not be naked after all and they’ve already cleared away my things?” I ask.

“Then you can take one of the robes they’ll offer you,” he explains.

“Pretty cool service,” I say, shrugging my shoulders.

“But expensive enough too, I assume.”

Jonathan laughs. I preferred not to ask exactly how much it costs to be here. It would probably shock me. But at least now I understand why Claire didn’t stand a chance of getting past the black lacquered door. She probably didn’t even make it through the gate.

I take a deep breath. “What happens now?”

“Come with me.” We head for the second door to the right of the stairs, but before opening it, Jonathan hesitates. “Do you want to put that on here?” he asks, holding out one of the masks.

“Are you going to?” I want to know.

“Yes, I always do. You don’t have to wear it, but you can if you like. Lots of people do, actually everyone does. It’s more exciting that way.”

Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad thing to be able to hide behind the mask a bit, I think, and pull it on. The fabric is pleasantly soft, and it fits comfortably, and isn’t at all tight. When Jonathan puts his mask on too, I realize what he means, and a shiver of arousal runs down my spine for the first time. He looks mysterious with his blue eyes shining behind the dark mask. Suddenly the thought that no one can recognize me and that everything I do here will be anonymous seems very exciting.

Jonathan opens the door and we walk through it together. In the long corridor behind, the lighting is more subdued than in the hallway. The marble floor continues here, together with the dark wooden panels. Various doors open off the hallway, but they are all closed and there’s no one to be seen except a uniformed attendant. Jonathan seems to know where he’s headed, and leads me to a room at the end of the hallway, opening the door.

I’m amazed to find that it’s quite different from what I was expecting. It’s a very ordinarily furnished room—a library. OK, it’s not that ordinary, it’s absolutely top of the range. The room is surprisingly large and the high walls are almost completely covered by pale, elaborately decorated wooden bookshelves reaching up to the ceiling. But the most striking object is an enormous marble slab, black interspersed with white lines, in the middle of the wall to our left, with a fireplace at the bottom. A modern painting of a couple embracing is hanging above the fireplace, providing a splash of color. To the right and left of the fireplace, the bookshelves don’t reach all the way to the floor, leaving room for two niches with built-in seating nooks. On the wall to the right, halfway up, there’s a spiral staircase with an ornate brass balustrade similar to the one in the entrance hall, leading up to a minstrels’ gallery. The two high lattice windows let in light, but their panes are made of a kind of milky, opaque glass.

There’s an enormous stone table in the middle of the room, much larger than the one at Jonathan’s house and shaped in a very unusual, distinctive way, with legs that make it look like a geometrical figure. There are chairs too, but only four of them—although many more people could fit around the table—and there’s a very elegant, dark brown leather couch between the windows.

And we’re not alone anymore. A couple are leaning against the stone table, kissing each other passionately and unselfconsciously. The man is only wearing pants. He’s blond with pale, almost white skin. His muscles aren’t as well developed as Jonathan’s, but he’s certainly easy on the eyes. The woman, who I estimate must be in her late twenties, like the man, is wearing very expensive red lingerie. She has long brown hair and is significantly more tanned than he is. She has a very athletic, toned body, but she’s curvy at the same time and has an impressive bosom. They are both wearing masks, like us. At first they don’t notice us, but then the woman opens her eyes and looks at us. But she goes on kissing her partner, as if our presence didn’t bother her at all.

I’m so absorbed by the sight of the two of them that I don’t notice that my hand is clawing at Jonathan’s until he pries open my fingers and takes me to one of the niches next to the marble fireplace. The wide window seat has a soft cover and cushions, but it’s also very low, so I slip out of my shoes—the highest stilettos I own which I put on specially to help me work up the courage for this experiment—and draw in my legs. There’s a good view of the couple at the stone table from here.

“Do the two of them want us to watch them?” I ask Jonathan quietly.

“That’s why they’re here. That’s the attraction,” he answers, pointing to an armchair in a corner, which I hadn’t even noticed yet. There’s a blond woman in a kimono sitting there. She’s alone and is wearing a mask too, but she’s not watching the couple at the table, she’s watching Jonathan and me, which startles me at first. But then the brunette moans aloud, making me look back at the couple again.

They’re not standing at the table anymore, they’ve gone over to the couch and the woman is lying down on it. She’s propped up on her elbows, watching as her partner kneels over and frees her breasts from her bra. When he takes her nipple in his mouth, she throws her head back, visibly enjoying it.

Wow, I think, it’s much more arousing than I would have thought. The sight turns me on so much that I can feel myself getting wet and my hand wanders to Jonathan’s shirt again. I want to feel him, the way the woman over there is feeling the man, I want him to do the same thing to me, so I start unbuttoning his shirt and then slip it off him.

“Do you like watching them?” Jonathan asks. He’s bending forward, kissing my neck and running the tip of his tongue over my skin up to the place behind my ear, which immediately makes me lean back and pant out loud, because it feels so lovely. “They’re watching us, too,” he says. “Does that turn you on, Grace?”

His hands caress my breasts gently through the thin material of my dress and my nipples harden and reach up toward him. I look at him and when he smiles at me, my heart stops for a moment because he looks so unbelievably good and at the same so strangely mysterious in his mask. And because I desire him so much, I want him, here and now. “Undress me,” I whisper and smiling, Jonathan pushes the skirt of my dress up and then pulls it over my head and releases me from it. I’m wearing a black lace bra and matching panties, the best I could find, and Jonathan’s expression confirms that they look good, which gives me confidence. I feel his hands on my body and I want more. I climb onto his lap to get closer to him, still observing the couple on the couch. The woman is lying on her back now. Her legs are bent and the man is holding onto her lower thighs, lying with his head between her legs. She’s breathing hard and you can tell from the expression on her face that she’s about to orgasm.

When she moans loudly and writhes around on the couch with trembling legs, a sensual tingling feeling runs through me and I turn to Jonathan again and kiss him passionately and deeply. He returns my kiss with greedy force and for a moment I lose myself in it, forgetting where I am, completely focused on him.

Then he pulls away from me and stands up. He slips off his pants, kneels down and takes off my panties. As he’s doing it, I glance at the blonde woman on the other side of the room who’s still sitting in the armchair staring at us with a blank expression. I realize that she’s watching us, not the other couple—perhaps she’s been watching us the whole time. The thought is both frightening and arousing at the same time. I pull Jonathan toward me again, because I need him close to me, and take my eyes off the woman and look over at the couch again.

The man has turned the dark-haired woman over and pulled her up onto all fours. He’s sitting to one side of the couch, unwrapping a condom and sliding it on.

“Where did he get that?” I ask, astonished.

Jonathan stretches out a hand and opens a small compartment in the side of the niche. It contains an entire selection of condoms.

“You’ll find them everywhere here. They’re obligatory.” He grins. “While we’re at it …,” he says, holding a package out to me. He’s shown me how it works and I’ve already had a little practice, so I managed to unroll the thin rubber skin over his bulging cock, which is pressing upwards toward my hands. I feel an unbelievable desire for it.

“Ooohh,” the woman on the side of the room moans and, when I look over at them, the blond man is entering her from behind, thrusting into her so hard that her breasts swing forward. He’s placed his hands on her hips and keeps pulling her back toward him, taking her wildly, which she seems to really enjoy.