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“Oh, Mistress, we would treat you so good. You’d love it so much you’d want to do it every week!” Dax chimed in, resting his chin on her shoulder and wrapping his arm around her waist.
I expected rejection. It wasn’t the first time we’d asked her to join us for a meal or even just a drink. Margaux preferred to see us exclusively at the club, a standing Wednesday night, and whenever the club put events on during the weekend. Dax and I had spent many evenings at the bar or out to dinner trying to unpuzzle the complex labyrinth that was Margaux.
I looked at Dax, who appeared to be holding his breath. He knew the drill. Margaux’s usual “why ruin what we have when it’s so good,” excuses.
The silence dragged on for what seemed like long moments. If she spent this long in silence, surely she was contemplating the possibility. Finally, she rewarded the two of us with a resigned sigh.
“My friend Rae wants me to meet her new boyfriends, Fraser, and Leo. Friday night, at seven, The Girl and the Goat. Do you know of it?”
Everyone knew of The Girl and the Goat. The chef had won one of those cooking competitions some years ago and she rocketed to celebrity status in the loop and beyond. It was, without a doubt, a fantastic place to spend a few hours convincing Margaux we could bemore.
4
I’d spent every day at Club Sin since accidentally crossing paths with Mistress Margaux. We hadn’t exactly “crossed paths.” Since she stomped across the lobby and up towards the second floor, in a pair of fuck me boots and a teddy that had me jerking off every night just to give me some relief.
Whisper revealed on Friday that Margaux only occupied Room 20 on Wednesdays. I wouldn’t be able to see her again until the following week. Occasionally, I discovered she also would haunt the club on open member days or parties that occurred on Saturday nights, but Whisper didn’t recall seeing her at any of late.
I told myself that the curiosity piqued only because the interaction had been so brief. She was a curiosity. That was it. Once we met, face to face, I’d be over it. Whatever this feeling I had, not quite an obsession but more than a curiosity, would fade.
“Gideon! C’mere brother! Shit, it’s been too long!”
My brother Casey startled me out of my ruminations. The word brother was a loose description of our relationship. I’d been a foster kid nearly all of my life. Casey’s family was the family I’d wished for most of my childhood. They had placed me with his family at fourteen. The state never released me, so his parents could adopt me. Eventually, I aged out of the system. They adopted me so that I could go to college, have a place to live, a soft place to land when life chewed me up and spit me out.
Casey was a fancy architect living in New York. Occasionally, his work brought him to Chicago. He always made a point to catch up. Regardless of how busy his days were, or how much shit I had going on, these dinners were sacrosanct.
“Too long.” I agreed. “I need to be better about going home.”
Casey hugged like a bear just coming out of hibernation. Hard, fierce, nearly choking the life out of you. He was the closest thing I had to a big brother, and I’d let him hold on as long as he needed.
“When’s the last time you were home?” Casey asked me.
“Gosh,” I blew out a breath, “It’s been at least a year. I keep meaning to book a flight to Kansas and then something always comes up.”
I had more to say on the subject, but at that moment, a familiar woman walked through the glass doors. Gone was that satin teddy and fuck me boots, and in their place was an elegant sleeveless dress also in the same midnight blue she wore at the club. The color really looked spectacular on her. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
“Are you expecting someone?” Casey asked, turning in his chair to see who caught my attention. “Gideon, do you have agirlfriend?”
The wordsI wishnearly tumbled from my lips. I didn’t even know the woman, yet she pulled at something deep within me.
“No, she just looks like someone I know.”
We placed our drink orders and chatted while we waited. I couldn’t stop visually checking in on my new obsession. Clearly Mistress Margaux was not one who liked to be kept waiting. In the few minutes since she’d arrived, she’d checked her phone at least a dozen times. My phone displayed six fifty-four. I guessed she had a seven o’clock date.
No sooner did I put my phone back to sleep, did a woman with two men in tow rush through the door with loud greetings and expressions of the time since they’d seen one another. They stood chatting endlessly while they waited for a table to become available.
“Have you talked to Mom and Dad lately?” Casey asked, reminding me how rude I was being to my brother.
“To be honest, I’ve been working on getting all these last details together for this project I’ve been working on. It’s been at least three weeks, I think.”
I know he didn’t intend to make me feel guilty. Casey was the most understanding and affable person I knew. However, our parents weren’t exactly young anymore. I really should try to be better.
I worked as a consultant for Foster programs. Having gone through the system, I knew the ways to improve it. People paid me stupid money to come evaluate their programs and tell them where the problems were and provide suggestions on how to fix them. I’d been working really long hours compiling my research.
“Oh.” Casey replied, taking a long drink from the craft beer he’d ordered. “So they haven’t called you in the last say week?”
“Casey, what’s going on? You’re acting really fucking strange.”
At seven on the button, two well-dressed men joined Margaux’s little group. From the way they regarded one another, I assumed those must be her “little pets” that Whisper told me about. I think she mentioned their names were Lazlo and Dex.
