Odalisque

“You should have gone too. Must be fun to watch your wife with another woman.”

Mason shrugged. “We’ve been married six years now. I’ve seen it a million times. What are you drinking?”

Kai flagged down the waitress for a vodka tonic, then listened as Mason launched into a scathing deconstruction of the night. By the end Kai was laughing so hard he could barely breathe, as Mason re-enacted both the male and female roles from the opera they’d watched.

“The food was good anyway, wasn’t it?” Kai asked.

“Oh hell, the food was delicious. Speaking of delicious, your odalisque seemed uncharacteristically cranky tonight.”

Kai wagged a finger at him. “I don’t think she approves of you keeping secrets from your wife.”

Mason snorted. “Oh yeah, that would have been a scene, if Jess had found out she was an odalisque I’d been seeing behind her back.”

Kai stirred the ice in his drink. “You know, she’s going to find out eventually, Mace.”

“Yeah, yeah, she’ll find out. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. So really, Constance disapproves? She told you that?”

“She didn’t have to. I know her well enough by now to tell. You said yourself she looked cranky. I don’t think she liked having to pretend for your sake.”

“Hm.” The idea seemed to puzzle Mason. “I love pretending. Anyway, she’s a sex slave. She doesn’t exactly have a moral high ground to stand on.”

“Oh, but she does, my friend. Constance is all about honesty and frankness. She follows that damn odalisque code obsessively. With religious zeal.”

“And I’m sure you’re fucking her with equally religious zeal, so why don’t you just shut the fuck up and stop whining? Oh, that reminds me. Jess wants to organize a scatter party for New Years Eve, and she wants to hold it at your house.”

“Oh, yeah? Nice of you to let me in on the plan.”

Scatter parties, one of Jess’s favorite perverse pastimes. A group of couples showed up, scattered, and had sex with whomever they ran across. Kai had been to a few in the past. He always hoped they’d be exciting and erotic, but they were usually more awkward than anything. Kai shrugged. “I guess it’s okay. I don’t have any plans yet for New Years. Who’s she going to ask?”

Mason shrugged. “Let her handle that. She knows all the beautiful people. She won’t invite any gremlins.”

“I wasn’t worried about gremlins. I’m more worried about how many people are actually going to be fornicating in my house.”

“Well, what do you want to cap it at?”

“I don’t know. Some reasonable number.”

Mason chuckled. “Jess is never reasonable. How about we tell her eight? Eight couples. Too many? Me and Jess, you and Constance, and six beyond that. I know Jeremy and Nell are itching to get out and swing a little now that they’re back in L.A. And maybe the sheik and his odalisque...”

Kai gave Mason a suspicious look. “Who’s planning this? You or Jess?”

Mason held up his hands. “I swear, it was her idea. But I might have encouraged her. Some of us have to get by in life without odalisques. It’s not fair, you know.”

“You get plenty of use out of mine.” Kai punched at the lime in his drink with his fingertip. “And not everything about odalisques strokes the ego. Constance is very insistent about the fact that she only cares for me as her owner, for instance. She never lets me forget it.” Kai clamped his mouth shut. He had apparently had quite enough to drink. He was getting sloppy. And bitter.

“Huh? Hold up.” Mason looked befuddled. “Are you saying you want her to care about you as more than her owner?”

“Well, no. I mean… Look, the whole thing has just been--” Again, Kai shut his mouth.

“What?” Mason prodded. “Better or worse than you expected?”

“It’s not better or worse. It’s just not what I expected, and I’m not sure…”

Mason’s eyes went wide. “She’s not doing it for you? Really? When you shelled out a million bucks?”

“No, it has nothing to do with her. It’s--it’s probably my problem.”

Mason blew out a breath. “I’m sorry, man. That really sucks. Can’t you, I don’t know, exchange her or something? Try another girl?”

Kai sighed. “Let’s just drop it, Mace.”

“But--”

?

??Why don’t we start talking about you and Jess’s problems then?”

“Fine, I’ll drop it.” Mason hunched over his drink. “Hey, if you’re just going to hang out here boozing and bitching, mind if I go up?”

Kai looked sideways at his friend. “Without me?”

“I don’t need you there to get hard, bro. No offense.”

“No, that’s not what I meant. I’m not supposed to give her to other men if I’m not there to supervise.” It wasn’t really a hard and fast rule. In fact, Kai was pretty sure he’d just made it up. He was jealous that Mason could still look at Constance like some commodity to be shared. Mason was the one who should have gotten an odalisque. He would have been great at it. He wouldn’t have been fighting himself, like Kai, to stay in the right mindset.

Kai rubbed his forehead and gave Mason an exasperated look. “It astounds me that someone with such a hot wife is always sniffing after my girl.”

“Ah, but my wife is not here, and your girl is.”

“Constance is probably sleeping.”

Mason rolled his eyes. “If you don’t want to share, Kaivalyan, man up and say so.”

Kai wanted to say so, but another part of him wanted to prove to himself that he could be as matter-of-fact about Constance’s status as Mason was. As Constance was herself.

“Okay,” Kai said, draining the last of his drink. “But only a quick fuck. No big play scenes. I’ve had enough theater for one night.”

“Spanking?”

“No, you pervert. What’s wrong with you?”

They stumbled into the hotel room in the dark, and before Kai could stop him, Mason shook Constance and startled her. Kai knew Mason didn’t realize how deeply she slept without the intrusion of sounds. Kai watched Constance, hoping for some kind of overt reaction. Distaste, resentment, indignation. If she had reacted with any kind of negativity he could have sent Mason away with a clear conscience, but she turned and opened her body to them before she was even fully awake. Mason was naked in a heartbeat, rolling on a condom and sliding into bed behind her.