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I couldn’t believe my ears. “Ta-table… 12?” Just saying that had the heat licking out from my centre, making my knees shake and my already slick pussy purr.
Oh God, no! Not 12, I’m not ready for that.
“12,” she reiterated, in a tone that could cow the God of thunder. “He’s waiting.”
It was the epic clash of ice and fire. The cool edge to her tone crashed over the warmth in my centre.
Nodding again, I darted around her, so desperate to be out of my alcove and her sight, before she changed her mind, that I only just caught myself as I stepped out into the main smoking room. The close call earned me a hissed tisk from Demeter. Graceful, I hastily remind myself.
A maiden of the Olympus club is always graceful, and ready to serve.
Set amongst the heights of Midtown’s numerous high-rise buildings, the Olympus Club was New York City’s best kept secret. The exclusive Gentleman’s club of the city’s elite. The den of vice and skulduggery. A house that catered to any and every pleasure. There was just one rule. Discretion.
The patrons valued their privacy and the secrecy the Olympus Club assured. Any member or maiden, regardless of wealth or position, status or connections, discovered discussing Olympus, would immediately be branded ‘excommunicado’.
The smoking room rang to the song of chinking of crystal and soft girlish giggles.
It was a masculine place. The furnishings were all deep, rich, hardwood and leather. Leather so supple and deeply padded that the management liked to joke they should arrange a contest to test it against a baby’s bottom and a Labrador pup’s fur, just to see which was softer. Original Picasso’s and Monet’s, Van Gogh’s, and one that looked suspiciously like a ‘liberated’ Da Vinci, adorned the timber panelling. However, the greatest hidden treasure was the ‘trillion dollar’ view overlooking the cityscape, commanding views across Times Square and all the way downtown.
It took every last ounce of my self restraint not to succumb to the lure of the floor to ceiling window that made up the smoking room’s outer wall as I slid around the frolicking patrons. One little look and it was as if all of New York knelt at my feet. I dare say that was the idea. Nothing stroked the egos of the mighty more than being made to feel like gods.
If nothing else, it was a long way up from my parent’s place in Washington Heights.
Dionysus, the barman, looked up at me as I approached the bar and presented me with a serving tray decorated with sterling silver filigree.
“N-number 12,” I said, my voice still a little shaky at the prospect.
God, get a grip girl, he’s just a man.
By the way he moved so expertly towards a specific bottle, I had no doubt he knew exactly what to serve each patron. Though a most impressive number of decanters and bottles stood at the ready, they were just a fraction of what the Olympus’s cellar had to offer, and he filled a tumbler with scotch, adding just a single cube of ice.
If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn there was just a hint of a smirk to his lips as he placed the glass on my tray. Then he returned to his station, so I put it out of my mind.
There was no point dwelling on such things. Dionysus was practically an institution at the Club. He knew all the stories, all the skeletons hidden away, and not just those figurative ones. He wouldn’t say a thing, even if I called him out and asked what was so funny.
As if I didn’t already know.
All around the smoking room, patrons of all ages and shapes sat in the high-backed armchairs like they had been poured into them. Outside these walls, these were the cream of the crop, the living embodiment of Mrs Caroline Astor’s four hundred. Businessmen and actors, politicians and bankers, lawyers, financiers, landowners… old money and new. Within the Olympus Club, however, and away from the prying eagled-eyed paparazzi, they could be true to themselves and embrace their more dark and primitive impulses.
Some drank Diamond Jubilee whiskey and smoked Gurka Cigars. Some gambled, either with cards, or the lives of their employees, moving them as they would pawns on a chessboard. And some enjoyed the benefits of their personal attendants.
I only half saw them as I pass by, the clash of white on black amongst the crowd, a tangle of limbs, bodies writhing upon a bulging chair. Hair ruffled and cheeks flushed. The tailored garments they’d ensured were immaculate in front of the cameras, like peacocks presenting their tail-feathers, and that no doubt cost more than anything I could earn in a decade, carelessly dishevelled, with buttons undone, ties loosened, and other articles cast away while the culprit wiggled her fine derrière in his lap.
None of it was full-on sex. Even here, few members would be so brazen out in the open. Regardless, they made no effort to hide their activities as I passed by; the tray raised over my head and the silks of my uniform fluttering with every step.
Then again, why should they? I was only a maiden.
As the ancient gods would disguise themselves as men and women to walk among their subjects, to see but be unseen, so the maidens of the Olympus Club would dress as such. We hid our faces at all times, behind half-masks of our namesakes. Our bodies dressed in a uniform of half transparent silks that showed off as much skin as possible while keeping the necessary parts covered. On the premises, we left our names behind. Here we were servants, the gods of old, who made the world and now live upon it solely to serve.
I am just a servant of the house. I fetch and serve drinks, but at least the money’s good. And there are the fringe benefits…
Table 12 was called a table only out of courtesy. In fact, it was nothing more than a little square side table to one of the better armchairs. The occupant sat half-cloaked in shadow, eased back and reading a small leather-bound book with one hand. Unlike all the other members, he was dressed smartly casual, forgoing his usual contemporary suits for a pair of khaki chinos and a crisp pale blue polo-shirt. The buttons were undone, just hinting at the chiselled muscles beneath in a way that made me long to explore that rugged physique.
Amongst this den of predators and alpha dogs, he was at ease and in his element. The top male, the only one with no need to prove himself.
“S-Senator…” My voice trembled around the word. Just being in his presence affected me, put me on edge.
My breath caught in my throat as his eyes darted up to fix on me, scrutinising me.
