Page 14 of Doubling Down

“It was instructional. We needed a, um, live volunteer—preferably an experienced submissive. Rick and Max were there instructing us the entire time.”

“Who was the other volunteer?”

“One of the other subs at the club. She’s also very spoken for. She’s got two lovers as well. One’s a Dom, the other…” Jude looks at Simon. “What would you say Adam is?”

Simon snorts. “The best kind of deviant, because he let us use him as a guinea pig too, though we let Brit and Michael take over once we got him strapped in. He’s a switch.”

I’m too distracted to ask them to clarify what they’re strapping someone into because I know that name.

I frown. “Who is Brit?”

“She’s Casey’s college roommate. At least she is now. I don’t think they were when she started coming to the club.”

I feel like I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole, because the Brit I knew was a friend at Stanford. I lost touch with her, but I know she was from New York, though she grew up in the City whereas I’m from the Lower Hudson Valley. Brit was always a quiet, graceful girl who hid a wickedly dark sense of humor behind her perfectly coiffed exterior.

I tilt my wine glass to my mouth, only to find it empty, so I hold it out. “I need more. In fact, why not open another bottle if you have it, because shit’s getting way too weird tonight.”

“Weird how?” Simon asks.

“Well,” I say, accepting a refill when he tilts a freshly opened bottle over my glass. “I’m pretty sure I know Brit. Brittania Vale is her full name, isn’t it?”

Two sets of eyebrows shoot up and the twins share a look. “How do you know?”

“Because she was at Stanford. We shared a few classes freshman year. She’s from the City, so we had a lot in common. Then she transferred back here after some tragic accident that killed her mom. Now you’re saying not only is she a member of Whitewood, but she’s also Casey’s roommate at Columbia? And you’ve probably seen her naked.”

I take a long swallow from my glass that lasts until it’s empty. I let out a soft belch, then hold the glass out for more. Simon narrows his eyes, but refills it anyway.

“That’s all true,” Jude says, a cautious note to his voice. “But it’s much more complicated than that.”

“No,” Simon says. “It isn’t complicated at all. Sarah, look at me.” He sits on the edge of the coffee table facing me and gently extracts the wine glass from my hand. “What we do at the club is a job. We take it very seriously. Casey does too, and so do Max and Rick. It isn’t about getting our rocks off with crazy orgies or anything. There are strict rules we always follow, and one of them is that no one lays a finger on anyone else without their explicit consent. When you walk into one of the rooms upstairs, you know what to expect.”

“I think you’re going to have to see it for yourself to get it,” Jude says. “If you hadn’t run away tonight, we would have showed you how things work.”

“Just explain to me what you get paid to do, if it isn’t sex. Because that’s what Casey said she does there… gets paid to have sex while people watch. Is that what Brit does too?”

Simon takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “Yes, that’s what Casey does with Max and Rick. Brit… they’re more complicated. I think her Dom, Michael, is filthy rich, so they still pay for a VIP membership. Part of their kink is performing. They pretty much do whatever they want, while Casey’s trio sticks to a choreographed routine, sort of like a Disney show.”

I snort, because he did not just compare a sex show to the fucking Hoop Dee Doo Revue.

Jude snickers. “Okay, that’s a bad analogy, but we’re not a part of that. We don’t have our own submissive. We don’t perform. The only scenes we’ve been involved in were private. We’re still learning, and the six of them have been happy to teach. What we actually do has evolved over the years. We started out as handymen, shadowing Rick and helping him fix things at the club. When he started teaching us how to fix some of the equipment, we started innovating and designing our own pieces. So what we do now mostly involves installing and testing new equipment. Casey, Brit, and their guys just help—they’re our testers. We mostly watch and learn. The most contact we have with the girls is when we need to adjust straps and cuffs, and stuff like that.”

I tilt my head, fixating on the way his mouth moves when he talks, because once he said “equipment,” my mind went places I’m certain must be well beyond what he meant. One of the most vivid memories I have of our weekend alone was when they dug out some old toddler bouncy swings from the attic and turned them into a makeshift sex swing. We had so much fun with that, until one of the straps broke in the middle of one of our more enthusiastic rounds of sex. After that, they shoved the whole thing back into the box and into a dark corner behind my old baby clothes. It’s probably still right where they left it.

“I want to see,” I say, though I’m not sure my tongue is working. My head has gone fuzzy in the last few minutes, and all I can think about is being strapped into an adult version of that bouncy swing while the twins fuck me.

“Okay, I think you’re done for the night,” Jude says, peeling my fingers from around my wine glass and handing it to Simon.

“Show me the bouncy swing,” I whine.

Simon chuckles. “I think you got through to her.”

“Tomorrow, sweetheart. Right now, the only thing you need is to sleep off all that wine.”

I reluctantly let them lead me to the bedroom, where Jude pulls me onto his lap in an armchair while Simon sets up a place for us to sleep. I’d happily crawl into one of their bunks, but that’s not good enough for them.

I’m surprised when Simon pulls a large drawer out from beneath the bottom bunk and reveals a huge roll of foam. He proceeds to lay it out in the middle of the floor, then throws a set of sheets and several blankets on top. It’s not the thickest mattress, but it’s firm and sturdy, and more than enough to sleep on. The best part is that it’s king-sized, so there’s room for all three of us.

Simon grabs all the pillows off their beds and tosses them down, then I slide off Jude’s lap and sprawl in the center of what now looks like a big nest on the floor. I’m drunk and happy, and let out a long sigh when they strip naked and join me beneath the blankets.

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