THE PANAMA CLUB: Pas de trois // Chapter 9

Both his subjects looked in awe. Two gorgeous and wealthy people on the brink of something. They’d found some inner strength to bring them to the edge of the precipice, but now they waited with great anxiety for him to instruct them to step forward. Alvaro in his expensive suit, London in her in-season Gucci dress, the enormous engagement ring on her finger. Most likely fake. Casco Viejo may not be the slum it was two decades ago, but no one with any sense would enter the old city at night with a ten-million dollar diamond on their pretty little finger.

He let them twist in awkward anticipation for a long, dreadful moment. Then he said to Alvaro, “Turn out that light, please,” indicating the switch on the wall.

Alvaro obeyed—which was interesting. Alvaro’s demeanor could be capricious. In one moment a brash and cocky hundred-million dollars a year athlete, in the next a young man who fancied himself a street thug, known to throw fists at the drop of a hat. And then others, like now, bringing his beloved London into this den of obvious iniquity, submitting in a sense to his own curiosity, and, Ballard surmised, a whole lot more.

Alvaro pushed down the light switch in its ornate gold faceplate and the room went dark but for the glowing chandelier hanging from the ceiling. 440 crystals shaped like the diamond Alvaro put on London’s finger. He waited for everyone’s eyes to adjust to the new dim. The edges of the room were hidden in darkness, but they all knew where they were. They knew they were in a 300-year-old mansion built by a Spanish sugar baron. Now it was a place for the kind of play best done in private. A club where only the wealthiest would gather and explore their darkest fantasies, weaknesses, fears, and forbidden pleasures. He said to Alvaro, “What time do you have?”

Alvaro checked his Rolex. “Quarter after.”

With perfect timing a soft feminine knuckle rapped on their chamber door.

Ballard said to Alvaro, “Would you let them in, please?”

***

London’s heart wedged in her throat, its rapid beat pulsing at her collarbone. She watched Alvaro do what Ballard told him. Watched her husband-to-be move to the door and open it. The light in the hall wasn’t much brighter than this room, but it fell on the shape of a short, muscular woman with a wild mane of black ringlets.

The woman said to Alvaro, “Are you going to let me in?”

The woman’s accent was part American, Brooklyn or the Bronx, Spanish, and pidgin, and full of confidence.

Alvaro flashed the woman a smile but couldn’t hide a certain nervousness she’d never seen in her beloved’s eyes before. He stepped back with the door to allow the woman entry. The woman entered the chamber and Alvaro closed the door behind her. Light from the hall shut off, now the front of the woman’s face and chest bathed in amber crystal chandelier light. She was a beautiful Latina with dark smoky eyes and red-painted lips. There were tattoos on a calf and her arms. She wore a black dress with a taffeta skirt that bounced and rustled as she walked. She passed Alvaro and moved nearer to Ballard, who extended a hand and smiled.

“Good evening, Genesis.”

The woman only chuckled in her throat and smiled, catlike and all-knowing. Ballard said to her, “These are the two I told you about.”

Ballard took the woman’s shoulders and guided her to turn and face her and Alvaro, bracing the woman in front of him and smiling at them over her shoulder. The woman exuded striking confidence that London envied. She wished to have that sort of power, that kind of self-assuredness. She’d had her own reputation in South Africa of being a confident woman. Some called her a stuck-up bitch behind her back even. But this woman named Genesis had a different air. A mysterious and dangerous aura, and one that was darkly sexual.

The woman said, “I recognize them.”

Ballard smiled wider. “But you know the rules.”

The woman—Genesis—rolled her eyes and clucked her tongue.

Ballard chuckled and said, “For their benefit, please, Genesis.”

“Of course,” the woman said dramatically, then faced them again, adjusting her expression to a more serious one. “You’re just two people on the first step in a long journey. I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know your names.”

Ballard said, “House rules.”

Genesis reassured them. “House rules, si?”

Alvaro looked London’s way and their eyes met.

The first step on a journey to what?

Of the two of them, it was only her who was expected to answer that question. What was the journey? Alvaro had his path. Alvaro knew who he was. It was her, it was London Perry who had brought them here tonight. She pursed her lips and extended a hand to Alvaro and he held it.

Ballard said, “This is a step forward tonight. An introduction. Are you ready?”

***

Alvaro’s heartbeat galloped in his chest. The introduction of the Puerto beautiful Puerto Rican woman was unexpected. Totally unexpected. The whole walk to this chamber—as Ballard called it—he’d anticipated that London would be the subject. Ballard had said it at the table over tequila.

Inner demons had fought with him over what he would be prepared to submit. The whole while something tumbled near the back of his mind that he didn’t want to address. Although he wouldn’t face it, now he realized he’d been one-hundred percent sure that he would share London tonight. While he should feel relief, he didn’t. There was unexpected disappointment. He’ squashed that feeling with forced happiness, applying it like plaster to a crumbling wall. Disappointment would have to be something he dealt with later. He pushed it all aside to accept the here and now, saying to Ballard, “What did you want to show us?”

Ballard still leered at them from over the Puerto Rican woman’s shoulder. He said to the woman named Genesis, “They are intrepid, wouldn’t you agree?”

Genesis purred and smiled. “I like them,” she said.

Ballard said, “I want to show them something.”

Genesis licked her upper lip with a pointed pink tongue, narrowing her eyes on Alvaro, looking him up and down from face to crotch. London’s hand twitched in his. Ballard snapped Genesis around to face him so quickly the confident woman yelped. But she complied, turning around and going to her tiptoes in her high heels. The woman’s calf muscles bulged and a tattooed snake squirmed down to her ankle. The shoes she wore were expensive. She purred again, looking up into Ballard’s eyes. Ballard said, “You’re beautiful,” stroking his thumb along the woman’s sharp jawline.

Genesis purred again and closed her eyes. Ballard stroking stopped and he gripped the woman with a sharp tug at the back of her neck. “But you know it.”

“I do,” she said, her voice squeezed

“You’re prideful.”

“Shouldn’t I be?”

Ballard smiled. He stroked the backs of his fingers along her cheek

***

London watched Ballard begin to control this confident woman the way he’d done to her in the dance studio. Doing it with his eyes, the timbre of his voice, and the movement of his large but graceful hands. He stroked the woman’s cheek, smiling, staring into her eyes, and London got the impression that he stole something from the woman. Sucked it out of her through his powerful gaze. The woman’s posture slackened. The tense bulging muscles of her calves and thighs softened, and she sagged into Ballard. For a dreadful moment, London was sure Ballard would kiss the woman. Put his lips to hers. A spike of jealousy eased its way up inside her rib cage toward her heart.

What the hell would that be for? Why would she be jealous that Ballard would kiss this woman during his bizarre demonstration? She would soon marry the hottest bachelor in the world. A tough, talented, brooding bad boy who made $100 million a year and had a body they put in magazines. She gripped Alvaro’s hand tighter and moved even closer until the heat of their upper arms and hips touched. It was as if they both watched a movie where they knew the woman shouldn’t go in the scary house alone, that’s where the killer was.

She whispered to Alvaro, “What’s he going to do?”

Alvaro’s eyes flashed in her periphery but he didn’t answer.

As if hypnotized, Ballard guided Genesis with his hand kept on the back of her neck, and Genesis shuffled toward the foot of the black leather apparatus. Ballard had her face it, then stood behind her again, both of them facing London and Alvaro. He said to them, “She’s too prideful, don’t you think?”

Alvaro nodded and licked his lips.

London said, “I like her.”

Alvaro didn’t want them to think he didn’t like her, and he agreed. “I like her, too.”

Though Genesis’s eyes were closed, she flashed a warm smile.

“You would. You’re permissive, your wife is prideful. And that’s why you’re both here,” Ballard said, hands on Genesis’s shoulders and rubbing down to grip her upper arms. Then the hands disappeared behind Genesis’s back and unzipped the woman’s dress. Her bosom sagged in the dress’s loosened bustier.

Ballard’s hands returned to Genesis’s shoulders, stroked down her upper arms, but this time hooked two fingers into the bustier’s cups and tugged them downward. Genesis’s breasts bounced and jostled until the cups touched her waistline. Her breasts were large and perfectly shaped, her midsection trim and muscular. The woman began to sway, rubbing her backside against Ballard. And again, the sight of the woman doing that spiked jealousy inside London.

Alvaro’s hand was hot and damp. Her beloved man also aroused by the awful spectacle. More jealousy spiraled. It exposed to her her own selfishness. She wanted to be the center of attention. She wanted to be the one who all the mens’ gazes fell on, the one who all the men desired.

But at that strange thought, Alvaro was moving, letting go her hand and slipping in behind her, his hands on her shoulders now, the way Ballard had done with the Latina woman. A racy thrill tightened her nipples, imagining Alvaro undressing her and revealing her bare breasts to Ballard and the woman. Maybe Alvaro understood her better than she thought. Maybe he had synched with her needs, responding to Ballard’s demonstration and acting out what she didn’t know she desired so badly.

“This is so crazy,” Alvaro whispered in her ear as Ballard instructed the topless woman to lower her dress. The woman pushed the skimpy dress down her hips, then stepped out of it, still wearing her heels. She wore no panties and sported a sexy patch of black pubic hair, wild and unruly, while the rest of the woman was tailored and pampered.

Alvaro pushed his crotch into London’s ass and she could feel the hard column of his rock hard cock. A warm sheet of desire folded over her and her heart raced faster.