“So do I. You knew what toll this arrangement would take on what we had. You knew what it would mean, but at the same time, you wanted what you wanted, and that’s always been the bottom line, hasn’t it? Do whatever it takes to satisfy your wants and needs and damn the consequences.”
“Listen, I didn’t call you looking for a fight,” he began.
A peal of her laughter belched forth without any lilt of humor. “Sorry. It’s just that, if you think it over, that’s kind of funny. Given the circumstances. Anyway, you want to tell me important things, then show up next month at the place and do what you have to do. You remember where the place is.”
“Yeah, I remember where it is.”
“Great. Right now I’ve got to go freshen my lipstick and climb back between Alphonse’s legs. That man likes him his brown sugar, don’t you know. Unlike some men I know, black women are still good enough for him.”
Eryq cursed the unbidden visual that accompanied Ananya’s closing remark, one involving her caramel-colored perfection mashed beneath a hairy Mediterranean club member named Alphonse. It seemed that for everything that had changed between Eryq and Ananya, one thing remained constant: his wife was still peerless and unrivaled when it came to twisting the fucking knife.
“You don’t care who suffers, so long as it’s dark meat you’re riding, do you?” Eryq asked, storming naked into their bedroom one month later. They were to visit the club that evening, where Eryq would participate in one of the quarterly tournaments responsible for bringing him and Rosalind together.
“Where is all this coming from?” she asked, noting the strangeness of his facial expression. It was that of a man who didn’t know where he was or how he’d come to be there. Damn Ananya for always knowing how best to push his buttons.
“I’m talking,” he said, tossing the comforter and sheets from the unmade bed, “about you and your husband joining the club, coming there looking specifically for a big, dumb Negro.” Eryq climbed onto her with a deadness behind his eyes usually reserved for men to whom he was about to hand a thrashing.
“Your husband never had to fight for you,” he told her, shredding the nightshirt she wore, “and when he finally did, he lost. He lost you to a big, bald-headed nigger with a big, black dick for you to spin on. Isn’t that how you planned it? So how does the rest of the fantasy play out? When do we get to the rough stuff?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rosalind insisted, pulling away from Eryq’s advance.
“Is this what it’s all about? Is it this right here?” he asked, grasping his cock at its base and dragging her toward him. “Is it all about this? Come on, sister! Admit it! Admit it!” He punctuated each demand by slamming his naked body down to spear her sex and drive the air from Rosalind’s lungs. Pelvic lunges of mounting savagery ground her protests into odes to his cock delivered through chattering teeth.
“You’re a fine one to question anyone’s motives,” Rosalind told Eryq a short time later, bouncing wildly astride his hardness. “You think anyone believes you don’t attend every event hoping to spy a new piece of Caucasian or Latin or Asian ass waltz in on the arm of some man who you can’t wait to take apart? Don’t crucify me just because you lust as much as I did for experiences neither of us had ever had, and I’m the only one of us honest enough to admit it to myself.”
“Fuck you,” Eryq grunted.
“Yes, you are, and you’ve loved every minute of the past six months, haven’t you, shithead? We were only supposed to have three, but you’ve so relished playing schoolyard bully under the guise of defending your white queen’s ‘honor.’ Don’t lie that you haven’t. I’ve loved it, too. Having a strong, able lover fight for me and win. I’ve exploited the hell out of it.” They rolled. Rosalind found herself on her stomach.
Lord Eryq’s helmet kissed Rosalind’s lubed anal pore. His unceremonious entry, the curl of his spittle-flecked lips, the mounting depth of his lunges, testified to his growing disdain for this woman who was not Ananya. Not to be outdone, Rosalind punched her fingernails through Eryq’s mattress and flung herself backward against his crotch, affirming the mutuality of the sentiment.
“Nothing’s ever made your ‘big, black dick’ as hard as that, has it?” she shrieked, feeling Eryq collapse fully onto her, rutting riotously. “Handing down beatings to any unenlightened soul who you thought didn’t understand us as a couple!”
They came together in ecstatic agony, each one’s orgasm fueling the other as they lay clinging to one another like first-time lovers fearful of being swept apart by the tempests ravaging their flesh.
“What are we, by my estimation?” Rosalind gasped, echoing his question from weeks ago as they lay panting. “Sugar, we’re a good old-fashioned grudge fuck waiting to happen.”
The “club” had changed locations three times since its inception two years ago. Tonight found it underground, in the basement of an abandoned warehouse on the east side of town near the river.
Membership was by invitation only. The first rule of the club was that there was no club. The club was a myth fashioned by church shills to smear the swinger’s lifestyle. The club was an urban legend inve
nted by sex-hungry teenage boys. The club was anything that kept news of its existence from leaking to the wrong person and bringing it under suspicion of the unenlightened.
Eryq and Rosalind descended into the club’s arena, a gymnasium-size room with poor lighting. Posted signs directed ladies to one side of this room, where folding chairs awaited, and men to the other. To the ladies, an open bar offered assorted libations. Eryq fingered the plastic disk in his back pocket, the one bearing Rosalind’s name.
Their host, a middle-aged African-American gentleman wearing a graying beard and a simple turtleneck and blazer, took the stage to open the evening. By this time, nearly a hundred married couples stood present. A lot of these, Eryq noticed, were new meat. When the host spoke, he was brief, because tiresome rule recitations took time away from the main attraction.
“Welcome, guys and dolls,” he sang, “to this evening’s main event: ‘Come Out Swinging,’ where we don’t sweat the petty things and don’t pet the sweaty things, at least not on-premises. If you’re here, then you know the drill. Fellas, the object is simple: fight to the last man and leave with his tag in your hand. Make sure that your most recent swapmate’s full name is legible on the plastic disk hidden on your person. Remember, three months is a long time to go with some other dude balling your baby, so either defend these with your life or surrender your sexy wife. And as always, the rule stating that no weapons of any kind are to be used or misused will be strictly enforced. Gentlemen, you may begin.”
A maelstrom of fists and feet. With their wives watching, every husband present threw himself into a bare-knuckle brawl in which he engaged every three months; one that would determine, by his successful capture of an opponent’s plastic disk, whose wife he would spend the next three months making love to.
Their host spoke again as blood and sweat flew. “Don’t forget that our next social will be Turnabout Night. That’s right, sisters, it’ll be your chance to fight for your right to hard lays as only your neighbors’ husbands can deliver them, so come out swinging.”
Eryq located Alphonse and dove at him, prepared to bring Ananya home to stay.
Emma’s Triangle
Tigress Healy