Selena Kitt - The Sybian Club

But who? And why? Tasha sat down on the stool, meeting Ashley’s puzzled eyes with her own wide, frightened ones, and realized that the question, “Now what?” had never before been more forefront in her mind, for more reasons than she could count.

“Well, look who’s home – it’s the Sybian Queen!”

Tasha gritted her teeth, whirling around at the sound of her neighbor’s voice. A six foot privacy fence separated their property and that of the Patterson’s. Ray Patterson’s head popped up over the top and he grinned down at her.

“Hello, Ray.”

“Champagne?” He raised his heavy eyebrows and grinned. “Having a party?”

Tasha hugged the bottle closer to her chest. She hadn’t seen or talked to him in the twenty-four hours since he’d dragged his wife away from their Sybian group party in a huff, and in the mystery and confusion of she and Ashley discovering the camera hidden in the basement, she had almost forgotten about her contentious neighbor.

“I liked the last party at your house we were invited to.” Ray was still talking, as if she had responded. Tasha bit the inside of her cheek and tried not to roll her eyes. The man had strong-armed his way into an invitation, and now he was claiming she invited him? “How about we have a private little party…” He lowered his voice and leaned over this fence slightly, his eyes dropping to the front of her blouse. “Just you… and me… and that little girlfriend of yours.”

Tasha swallowed hard and straightened up. “And what would your wife have to say about that?”

Ray laughed out loud, his teeth flashing white in the twilight. “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”

“I don’t cheat on my husband.” She turned her back to him and started toward her own side door. Ray’s next comment stopped her.

“So, that means hubby knows what you two are up to while he’s at work?”

“Excuse me?” She stiffened, facing him again. Her heart was beating too fast in her chest and she took a deep breath. “What are you talking about?”

“Hey, Mrs. Ryan from across the street came up to me the other day asking about you, ya know.” He changed the subject smoothly and Tasha frowned at him. “She kept asking me about all the people going in and out of your house all the time-wanted to know if you were selling drugs or something.”

She blinked at him, stunned. It had never occurred to her that her neighbors would even notice, let alone assume…

“I told her you weren’t.” He reassured her with a wink. And then said, “But I could have told her the truth.”

“And what…” Tasha swallowed, forcing the tremble from her voice. “And what, exactly, is the truth?”

He crossed his arms over the top of the fence and leaned his chin on them. It looked like a casual thing, but Tasha saw the glint in his eyes. “I think you at least have to have some sort of a license for this thing you’re running out of your little basement, you know…” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, and it was such a phony gesture that Tasha would have laughed – if he hadn’t followed it up with his next comment. “I wonder if it would be legally considered prostitution?”

“The Sybian Club is not illegal,” she insisted, hoping her stiffened spine and haughty demeanor belied any of her sudden doubts. “And even if you wanted to tell the authorities about it, I’m sure they’d be interested to hear that you made a visit to my little basement with your wife and had a great old time.”

Ray held his hands up in a warding-off gesture, chuckling. “Hey, I’m not threatening anything here…”

“No?” Tasha softened a little but her eyes pinned him narrowly still, watchful, waiting.

“No… see… I was just wondering…” His smile turned up at the corners, his gaze dropping again, this time to her short hemline and the tall boots she wore. “If you and your girlfriend wanted a little company in the afternoons?”

She couldn’t believe his arrogance. “If we do, I’ll let you know.” She turned back to the house, ignoring his last remark.

“You do that!”

Her cheeks felt hot as she set the bottle of champagne down on the table and she was glad Max wasn’t in the kitchen. She needed a few moments to compose herself. It was the camera that had made her forget all about her neighbor, she realized. Ashley had known right away who that camera belonged to.

“Your husband’s been watching us,” Ashley had whispered as they left the room. They both whispered, at Tasha’s insistence-she didn’t know if the camera picked up audio or not.

The thought hadn’t even occurred to Tasha before the words were out, but there it was, and she knew it must be true. Who else?

“I don’t-” Tasha wanted to deny it but found she couldn’t.

They sat at this very kitchen table that night, she remembered, each of them ironically wearing one of Max’s t-shirts which Tasha had retrieved from his drawer, and talked.

“Are you mad?” That was the first question Tasha asked her and she couldn’t believe the relief that pulsed through her when Ashley shook her head. She said her next question more to the air than to Ashley, “Why hasn’t he said anything?”

“I think he’s scared to tell you he knows.” Ashley sighed over her mug. Tasha had made orange tea, partly because she knew Ashley loved it, partly because she was incredibly restless and it gave her something to do, but more because she loved watching her girlfriend warm her hands around mug. They looked so small and delicate.

“You really think… he’s been watching us?” Tasha rested her chin in her palm, her eyes searching, intent on the window, as if she could see through it to Max in his hotel room. There was only darkness there and a faint glimmer of her own reflection. Was he trying to catch her at something? Was he just curious about what went on in the Sybian room when he wasn’t there? The latter she wouldn’t put past him… but the former? Max was a straightforward sort of guy. If he knew something, if he felt slighted by her, she knew he would say something. So why hadn’t he?

“I know he knows.” Ashley’s words were almost swallowed by the mug at her lips, her eyes downcast to the table. “He told me so.”

Tasha stared at her, open-mouthed. “He… what?”

Her girlfriend tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear and cleared her throat. “A few weeks ago… remember when we were working on the site?”

Tasha nodded, feeling as if she was doing so in slow motion. Ashley had mad computer skills, she discovered, and had re-vamped the original Sybian Club web site. They had chat rooms, forums, a blog, all sorts of interesting toys to play with now in the cyber collection. They were even applying to be a Sybian dealer.

“He stopped me on my way out to my car that night.” Ashley’s eyes still stayed focused on the table, where she traced her finger around the wet ring her mug had made. “And he told me he knew about us.”

Tasha stared at her. Max knew? Max knew, and he had approached Ashley instead of her?

“Was he mad?”

Ashley shook her head, spreading the wetness on the table in a back and forth pattern now. “He told me he was okay with it… he said… he said he could see how much we… cared about each other.”

Tasha considered this, weighing it against what she knew about her husband. It was true, he didn’t have a possessive bone in his body. They’d talked about opening up their marriage in some sort of polyamorous capacity, had even taken steps toward doing it, putting ads on adult sites looking for another woman. It was a whole other world, they discovered, and bi-women who wanted to be with couples were apparently very rare – so rare, everyone wondered if they really existed and sardonically dubbed them “unicorns”. It was either laugh or cry, she supposed. When they didn’t have any luck finding someone, and Max’s job had begun to take more of his time, and Tasha found her new interest – Sybian porn – the idea had just sort of dropped off the radar.