“Rae is doing exactly what she has always wanted to do,” Kharon said. “And if you ask me, I think you should leave her to that. But since you are so persistent…I will give you this last chance to talk to her. But you must do one thing first.”
“Anything,” Mark promised.
“Then here is what you must do,” Kharon said. “One of my people is waiting for you downstairs by the peep-show booths inside the building. His name is Dan, and he will be near Booth 13.
“You must go downstairs and do exactly as he says. He will show you a film. At the end, if you still want to come to NightWhere, Dan will escort you to me.”
The line abruptly clicked off.
Mark pocketed the phone and looked at the door to the porn shop again, as he took a deep breath.
Adults Only.
“Here comes one now,” Mark said, and reached out to open the door.
It was warm inside the store. After standing around in the chilly night air outside, the smell of Pine-Sol and the warmth of humid heat were good. A thin guy with crazy hair and rectangular glasses stood behind the bar scratching a lamb-chop sideburn repeatedly. Mark nodded at him and walked down an aisle of Amateur DVDs, browsing idly at the pale breasts and pink nipples that flashed out at him from all of the covers. On the back wall of the store was the sign for downstairs.
Peep Shows 25 Cents, it said, with an arrow pointed south.
“Going down,” Mark murmured and headed towards the stairs.
The stairs had once been white tile, but now they were just grey. Smears of mud and scuffs from black heels all but obscured the original color. But it was the smell that really told Mark he was descending into the bowels of a porn shop.
The stairwell smelled of old cum and mildew. At the bottom of the steps, Mark turned a corner and the fluorescent glare of the upstairs shop cut off. The hallway below was like another world-a slumbering place. The light was dim, the shadows long. Mark walked to the end of a short hall and found a display with a small lamp aimed over the glass to illuminate the movies that were on display in the booths that lined the adjoining hall. Behind the glass were rows of DVD cases with channel numbers listed above them. If you went into a booth and plunked in your money, you could tune the TV to watch titles like Bosom Buddies and My Wife’s Breast Friend.
Mark looked behind him, down at the line of open doors. The peep-show cellar was oddly quiet tonight. Odd because the evenings were usually when these kinds of places filled-with guys stopping into the porn shop for a quick stroke or blow job after work before they returned home to their harpy wives. Everyone needed an orgasm once in a while. Even if it was a solo flight.
But tonight the peep show booths were all but empty.
Except for one guy, who was pacing down at the end of the corridor.
Mark turned away from the DVD case. The guy at the other end of the hall was here for him. Had to be. There was nobody else here. He took a deep breath and walked towards the man. The numbers on the doorways on the right side of the hall were going up-7, 9, 10, 11-he knew instantly that the guy stood in front of 13.
Of course he did.
Mark walked up and held out his hand. He forced himself to be totally over the top.
“Hi,” he said. “Are you Dan?”
The man turned and flashed a smile through two pale lips. He was bald, and his eyes looked grey in the dim light. He wore black leather pants and a black T-shirt. His skin looked sickly white in contrast to his outfit. He raised an eyebrow and nodded. “Mark?” he asked.
“Yes,” Mark said. Dan did not accept his offered handshake.
“Take off your clothes,” Dan said.
“Huh?”
“Strip,” Dan said. “I want you to drop all of your clothes, and then I want you to step into Booth 13 and watch a short film. Either do that, or get out of here.”
Mark balked, but before he said anything, he remembered his conversation with Kharon. He knew that this was a test…he either did what he was asked, or he would not be seeing Rae again.
Swallowing once, Mark pulled off his shirt and dropped it to the long-stained and dirty floor. Then he kicked off his shoes, unbuttoned his jeans and dropped them to the floor as well. He pulled his wallet out of the back pocket and stood there in socks and underwear in a hallway in front of the strange pale man.
“Naked,” the man said. His face was completely devoid of expression.
Mark turned to the side and slipped off his underwear, kicking them off to lie on top of his jeans.
“I’m not taking off my socks,” he pronounced, thinking of the scum that had come upon this floor on a regular basis for God knew how long.
The man held out a gold coin. “Watch the movie,” he said. “Then tell me if you still want to go to NightWhere again.”
Mark nodded. Part of him wanted to scream, No matter what you show me, I want to go back to NightWhere because I need to find my goddamned wife!
But he refrained.
Instead, he took the coin and stepped into Booth 13. He closed the door and pushed the coin into the slot. Instantly, the TV monitor came to life, at first showing a naked blonde on a hotel bed, lying back and mouthing for the camera with fat, sensual lips, “Do you want to know what I could do to you? Call me, at 8-6-6…”
But then the scene changed. The advertisement faded out and a darker room took over the screen.
Suddenly, the TV scene looked a lot more amateurish. A lot more real. It showed a man, chained to a stone table. The guy was youngish, thirty-something. His hair was dark, and his face warm and instantly likeable. Maybe he was Italian, maybe Greek, but his dark, wide complexion somehow telegraphed that this was the kind of guy you’d be friends with on the first conversation.
Mark wondered about the chains around the guy’s wrists and ankles, but the guy looked happy; his eyelids fluttered, and his cock was clearly hard. A big cock, from the way it lay across his belly.
Why was he smiling? Mark wondered briefly…and then that question was answered, as a sensual hand reached into the film frame.
The woman ran her hands up the chained man’s arms until they covered his wrists and then she leaned her face in as well, so that she was visible on the screen.
Mark recognized her instantly. He’d had a suspicion just from seeing her hands.
The woman leaning over the chained man’s body was Rae.
He wasn’t terribly surprised to recognize her, given the circumstances that had landed him naked in a porn shop video booth.
What was surprising was that…Rae was holding a knife.
A moment later, he quailed as she lifted the blade above the man’s chest, but she didn’t suddenly plunge it down to stab his heart; instead, she lowered the knife slowly and used it to etch her initials in blood across the man’s chest. And then she set the knife aside and began moving her crotch in a rhythmic motion on top of the man, clearly turned on by the blood.
Mark felt himself grow hard, watching his wife grind atop the chained man’s hips. He had always found something incredibly exciting in seeing his wife with another. He could never have lived their swingers lifestyle if he hadn’t. The need to always feel someone new was Rae’s, but he couldn’t say that he hadn’t enjoyed watching the results.
Mark watched as she lay her chest against the man and rubbed her nipples in the blood of her name. Then she raised herself back on her knees, still grinding her pussy down on the man’s groin, drawing his cock in and out of herself. Apparently being cut made her “victim” hard as well, because she was clearly enjoying his erection.
Mark’s hand unconsciously gripped himself as he watched Rae fuck. He rubbed himself, enjoying her obvious, unbridled excitement. He moaned slightly when she opened her own mouth, approaching orgasm thanks to using the man beneath her.