Ninth Chapter: Trouble at the Mall
When Helen served our breakfast the next morning, she was full of praise for our courageous behavior the previous evening.
"The way you two abandoned yourselves to your lust in front of a bunch of rather conventional people was quite remarkable," she commented. "Just imagine what you might be capable of if you got together with a bunch of people who bring their own sense of adventure to the party," she returned to the subject of including other people, more specifically some of her friends, into our sex life.
"Have you ever thought about having two cocks inside you at the same time?" Helen tried to waken Cathy's interest in other partners.
"Why stop at two? I can handle three," was Cathy's response.
I wasn't sold that easily on the idea. I wanted to know more about who they were. What were the women like? How did they compare with Cathy and Helen as far as looks and sexual appetite were concerned?
Helen was not upset, nor dissuaded, by my reluctance. "You'll soon have a chance to answer all these questions for yourself," she promised.
To my surprise, this morning wasn't 'business as usual' and 'I'll see you downstairs in fifteen minutes'.
"After yesterday's performance, Cathy deserves a small present - or even a big one - as a sign of recognition. Don't you agree?" Helen asked me.
I heartily agreed, but confessed at the same time that I was hopeless and lacking imagination when it came to buying presents. Cathy would have to come along and select something she liked. I would gladly foot the bill.
"Alright, I'm going to give you the morning off so you can go to the mall and buy something nice for Cathy."
So, after we had finished our breakfast, we both got ready to go to the mall. I felt really strange to put on the street clothes I hadn't been wearing for some time and Cathy confessed that she too was feeling weird to be fully dressed.
I had suggested that Cathy choose a nice dress, one which both looked elegant and made her figure appear in the best possible light, but she told me that she had gone right off clothes. Instead she dragged me into this up-market jeweler's.
This was the kind of place I would never set foot in on my own. Not because I'm a hopeless tightwad, although my stinginess may also play a role, but mainly because it was the kind of place where I don't feel welcome. Everything about the shop screamed, 'Don't bother us with your ugly presence unless you have a cool million sitting in your bank account, ready to spend.'
It made me think of the story about a lady walking into Tiffany's in New York City and asking for the price of one of the items displayed in the window. According to the story, the sales assistant answered, "If you need to ask what the price is, Madam, then it's probably too expensive for you."
Along with the ostentation of the furniture and the rest of the fittings came the snooty arrogance of the staff who were looking down on all but the most wealthy of customers. The sales assistant - she was nothing more than a snotty-nosed girl with an attitude - didn't bother to ask us what we were interested in. She led us to one of the tables, asked us to take seats and offered a choice of hot and cold beverages. Only then did she inquire how she could help us.
"We would like to see what you can offer us in the line of nipple clamps," Cathy said matter-of-factly.
This took even me by surprise. Had I known that that was what Cathy wanted as a present, I might have told her that this was definitely not the place to go. But now it was too late.
The girl was visibly shocked by Cathy's request. She lost her air of superiority for a moment. Her face blushed visibly. "Nipple clamps?" she stammered. "I'm sorry Madam, we don't carry this type of accessory in our stock."
The initial shock wore off soon and she recovered her cool arrogance. "Maybe you'll have more luck if you try the sex shop at the far end of this wing."
I didn't like the condescending tone in her voice, or the way she gave herself airs of superiority. I won't have anybody look down on my wife.
"Is that where you buy yours?" I asked the salesgirl.
She turned towards me and looked at me as if she were going to slap my face. Quite clearly, my suggestion that she might own or use nipple clamps was the most insulting thing anybody had ever said to her.
As soon as I had asked my question, I realized that since I had entered this shop I had only thought of her as a stuck-up sales assistant. I hadn't treated her like a woman. In other words: I hadn't made any attempt to undress her with my eyes. 'It's never too late,' I told myself and had a closer look at her.
She was young, most people would say attractive. Her breasts were safely tucked away in her all-white bra under a brilliant white blouse. The rest of her body was hidden behind the table but I remembered that her dark skirt ended just below her knees and that she was wearing shoes in a matching blue. The name badge on her blouse read 'Ms Audrey Simpson-Stone'.
'Even her name is pretentious,' I thought. But then I felt a little sorry for her when I imagined how she must have suffered when her schoolmates worked out that the initials of her name spelt the word ass.
I could notice the slight up and down movement of her breasts inside her blouse as she breathed. The poor girl had probably never experienced what it's like to wear nipple clamps. She had probably never been spanked or whipped. She didn't know what it's like to climax from pain. Sex with her wouldn't be very satisfying. I was better off with Cathy and Helen. And maybe Helen's suggestion that we needed to meet people who understood our desires wasn't that far from the truth.
"A sex shop, how exciting!" Cathy exclaimed after we had left the jeweler's. "Maybe we can find some new toys for Helen."
As we walked along the corridor towards the place where we expected to find the sex shop, we noticed Sue, Bill's wife, coming in our direction. She seemed to be furious. Somebody - or something - had clearly upset her. I was sure she would soon tell us who, or what, had got on the wrong side of her.
It suddenly occurred to me - albeit much too late - that her state of agitation might be connected with the previous night's poker round. Had I thought about this possibility earlier I might have been able to pull Cathy out of the line of fire.
"How dare you show your face amongst decent people, you cock-sucking slut?" Sue's right arm swung her handbag, aiming at Cathy's head. The oncoming missile missed Cathy by a whisker - she had ducked just in time - but Cathy couldn't escape the verbal abuse Sue hurled at her.
"If Stan wants you to behave like a cheap whore, that's no reason to corrupt other men as well. Keep your hands off my Bill!" Sue screamed, taking another swing at Cathy. A few shoppers who had been passing stopped to watch.
It had taken Cathy a while to realize what Sue was so upset about. Once she understood, she went on the counter-attack. "It's not my fault that you don't know how to please a man. If you're not willing to do him this little favor, it's no wonder he's getting his fun somewhere else."
Sue seemed to have run out of arguments, and resorted to another physical attack on Cathy. I managed to step between the two women to prevent Cathy from being hit. More shoppers stopped, wanting to know what was going on.
Sue appealed to them for support. "This slut has destroyed my marriage and probably another two in the process. How can we let this filthy bitch pollute our air, how can we patronize the same shops as she. I'm going to boycott any shop which accepts this piece of scum as a customer, and any right-minded citizen will do the same."
Cathy wasn't going to let Sue get away with this kind of abuse. "This madwoman is as frigid as a freezer. Her husband has finally realized that things don't have to be as dull as they are in their marriage - and now she blames me for it."
"Marriage isn't about indulging in unnatural acts like the ones you committed last night. I knew that you were a pervert the first time I set eyes on you."
More and more curious onlookers joined the crowd. The recent arrivers asked the ones in front what this was about and those who had watched the scene from the beginning gave them their version of the story.
Sue turned to me. "You disappoint me, Stan. For some time I thought that you were better than the rest, but it seems I was wrong. It looks like all men are the same, one filthier than the next. How can you stand idly by while your wife performs these lewd acts with your friends? How can you let them ...?" She didn't finish her sentence.
"It's probably all due to that chink woman you've got staying with you. The husband of a friend of mine has connections to the FBI. He says they've already got a huge file on her for being involved in a secret organization. They're only waiting for her to make a wrong move, then they're going to lock her up for good."
Sue was too upset to give a congruent account of how she found out, but from what she said I gathered that Bill had come home, slightly drunk, and had demanded that Sue suck his cock. When she refused, as always, Bill had told her that Cathy did suck cock. Sue's reaction had been that she didn't care what happened between Cathy and her husband. Besides, boasts of this sort by half-drunk men couldn't be readily believed and should be taken with a large pinch of salt.
This had provoked Bill into telling her that he hadn't been talking about Cathy and me, but about Cathy sucking his cock. Sue's reaction to this was predictable. She had given Bill the third degree. She had interrogated him until he told her what had happened that night and the evening of the previous poker round. However, it seems that Bill hadn't told Sue about my personal involvement in last night's events. At least Sue didn't mention anything about that, and I'm sure she wouldn't have missed the chance if she had known.
In the meantime, Cathy hadn't been idle. She told the crowd her version of the story. That this was a free country where everybody could do within their four walls what they damn well pleased. That women had an obligation towards their men, and if they didn't fulfill them, they had only themselves to blame when the men looked somewhere else.
Sue wasn't going to let Cathy win the propaganda battle. "Let's run these perverts out of our shopping mall, let's run them out of our town. There's no room for scum like this in our community," she pleaded.
The crowd surrounding the two shouting women had taken on such dimensions that it attracted the attention of the shopping mall's security staff. Two of them arrived, accompanied by two police officers. I didn't want things to get worse than they already were. Obviously, sucking cock, even if it belonged to another woman's husband, didn't constitute a violation of any law. But I wanted to spare Cathy the embarrassment of having to explain this fact to those police officers. I took her by the arm and led her out of the circle of onlookers towards the exit where our car was parked.