She nodded. “I think the location had been open about a month before I started. You weren’t much more than the main floor at the time.”
“Yeah,” I pointed across the wide expanse of furniture and mood lighting to where the pool was featured in the middle of the area and Penny’s eyes followed where I pointed. “We didn’t have the pool then. That didn’t come in until a few years later.”
Penny sniffed the air. “How do you manage to keep it from smelling like a swimming pool in here? I would expect it to be like the indoor pools I’m used to swimming at when I go to the YMCA.”
“Simple, but not a lot of people know about it. We treat the pool with a different sort of chemical. It isn’t chlorine, so it doesn’t have that typical pool smell. We thought burning nostrils might take away from the ambiance.”
Penny laughed and nodded. “Good call. It looks natural like an artesian spring just came up right in the middle of your club.”
“Good, that’s what we were going for. You know, a sort of grotto feel to the thing. There is a small grotto if you get in the water and swim just around that corner. You should go for a dip sometime.”
I saw her glance toward a couple engaged in some pretty heavy petting by the pool’s edge and she looked back at me, unsure.
“Not into the watching then?”
She shrugged. “It’s new for me.”
“Here you go, Pete,” Celeste said as she placed my whisky in front of me on the bar.
“Thank you. We may be back a little later.”
I touched Penny’s elbow lightly and we moved around the room, sipping our drinks.
“So this is the main floor. You can see this is where a lot of the action gets started.” It was already starting for one man and a collared girl on a sofa. They were kissing and his dick was out, the girl’s hand wrapped around it stroking him in long, deliberate motions. I paused to make sure Penny was watching. There was color growing in her cheeks, likely because of the drink, but I had no doubt the atmosphere was having an effect on her. “Does it turn you on?” I asked as I leaned in closer to her ear, speaking low.
I could see that she was considering carefully how to answer this question, but also that she was shifting where she stood. No doubt she was already growing wet. I could see the tip of her nipples pressing hard against the thin fabric of her black cocktail dress.
“It’s fucking hot. You were right. I don’t know how you manage to be around it all day.”
I shrugged and pulled her a little closer to me so that we were standing with our hips pressed together, side by side.
“I told you, I can call any of the collared girls in anytime I want. They’re obliged to give pleasure wherever it’s wanted.”
“Do you do this often?” She said, looking up at me with those crystal blue eyes, bewitching me with the light that they caught in the dim room. There was a challenge in her question like she was asking more than whatever the words held at face value.
I shook my head. “Not anymore.”
She was quiet as we watched the girl let go of the man’s cock as she straddled him, taking his stubby thickness inside her. The collared girl began to rock and writhe on top of him, whether it was for show or for real, she was doing a great job of making him believe he was the only man in the room right now and she was letting him know she was enjoying the hell out of what he had between his legs.
“Why not?” Penny asked almost absently as she watched the spectacle on display.
“It’s not what I’m looking for right now.”
That broke the spell as she looked back at me. “What are you looking for then?”
I took a deep breath, searching for an answer I wasn’t certain I was ready to give her yet. Maybe this was something I’d let her uncover for herself. Or maybe she had no business of knowing it and I would let it lie. Why did I feel any compulsion to open up to this no-name reporter? Sure she was good to look at and we would have a great fuck eventually, but we weren’t going to date. We would get this series of interviews over with and then that would be the end of it. She wasn’t the sort to join the club and I had been able to tell that much from the start with her. There was something about her that was still just a little bit timid regarding what we did here. I wondered what her level of experience was and if she had ever had a man who knew what he was doing to her. She was the kind of woman who deserved to be loved right, to be worshipped, to be fucked until she couldn’t remember her own name.
?
??Something else. Some kind of x-factor. I’ll know it when I see it,” I said as I took her by the hand and led her up the grand staircase to the second floor, and then higher to the rooftop terrace restaurant.
We sat enjoying the rest of our drinks up there, looking out over the city as the night sky replaced the orangey glow of the sunset. It was clearer than usual and although there weren’t many stars to see above New York City thanks to the lights of the area, it was a striking scene to take in with the skyline spread out before us.
“You’ve got a great location,” Penny said with a smile on her face as she looked out into the night. “It’s sort of on the outside of where you might expect a place like this to be. The industrial area gives it a different sort of sense of…I don’t know, almost isolation? But it was clearly a good purchase. There are many other clubs going in at places like this that used to be factories and packing plants.”
I nodded. “I’ll be honest with you, we got the place at a steal of a price and that was the main reason we decided on it finally. But that last evening, the last time I came to look at the property before we put a bid in, I came up here on the roof, which was nothing but scrap metal and crap at the time. I have no idea what they were doing up here before we came along but it was a mess and pretty dangerous just to walk around. That last time I was up here I waited to come up until after the sun had set. It was about this time of year and the skyline was just lighting up. First time I had seen it from the rooftop of this place and it took my breath away. I imagined what it would be like to have a restaurant up here, offering a different level of privacy to our members. It’s a great view on it’s own, but tell me…what else do you notice about? Imagine that you were a member and tell me what you would think being up here.”
She thought for a moment before speaking. “I think it would make me feel like…I was out in the open air, enjoying something that I had only been able to indulge in down in the darkness for such a long time.”