Foreign Tongue by Vanina Marsot Read Free Book Online

they left, I waved good-bye. Madame Véronique owed me big time: I had a hunch some bad boys needed spanking.
     
    We left after a round of espresso. In the car, Francis asked, “Shall I drive you home?”
    “Yes, please. Unless you want to go out clubbing,” I joked. He maneuvered out of the parking spot and slid his eyes over to me.
    “Depends on what kind,” he said. “I know a sex club nearby.”
    I felt a slight shock, a rattle, like when you hit your funny bone. I didn’t say anything, wondering if he was putting me on.
    He wasn’t. “It’s in a medieval building in the Marais. Very posh, with a restaurant, disco, and a few orgy rooms,” he continued. Now I was perturbed. “You can watch,” he added. “You don’t have to do anything.”
    “So, it’s like a porn movie but more erotic?” I asked.
    “Sometimes less erotic. If the people aren’t particularly attractive, for instance,” he said, shifting gears.
    “Ah,” I said, studying his profile. I’d heard about these sex clubs, or private libertine clubs, as they were sometimes referred to, but I’d never been invited to one. It sounded so much better in French, libertinage —like it has a philosophical or political element, something that links it more to the racy eighteenth century rather than the seamy 1970s. No way in hell was I going, but it occurred to me Francis had some interesting knowledge. “How does it work?”
    “The women rule. It only happens if a woman wants it to happen. For instance, someone—a man, or a woman—might make a gesture, and depending on your reaction, things would go from there. Like this.” He ran his thumb down my bare arm. It was casual and insinuating at the same time, as if he’d licked me instead of touched me.
    “I have a girlfriend in Paris, Ariane. She and I almost never have sex, but she loves going to this place, it turns her on. The last time we went, she ended up in a ménage à trois with an Italian stud and his girlfriend. I can tell you one thing, whether you have an orgasm at the club, or with me, or by yourself later on, it will blow your mind,” he said. Then he giggled. He was like a horny bulldog puppy, happy and ready to hump furniture.
    “I don’t think so,” I said.
    “You’re curious, admit it.”
    “No one’s ever invited me to a sex club before,” I confessed, wavering. Hell, I didn’t know ordinary folks could go—I thought they were reserved for card-carrying denizens of some secret underworld. I could actually go to a sex club this evening, I thought, toying with the idea. I was curious. I could just watch.
    “It’s right there,” he said, pulling over and pointing to a building with a valet parking attendant.
    I laughed. It was a fake, tinsel laugh like, Oh, aren’t I sophisticated? It was a laugh like, Isn’t it interesting to imagine that I might actually contemplate going to a sex club in Paris? Francis turned to look at me. I opened my mouth to say no.
    “When was the last time you surprised yourself? Did something wildly out of character, just for the hell of it?” he asked.
    There it was: la phrase qui tue, literally, the sentence that kills, an arrow to the heart or, more likely, my self-image.
    “I can’t remember,” I said, answering truthfully. I didn’t often do unpredictable things: I’d gotten on a plane to Paris, after all, not Ushuaia or Ulaanbaatar. I looked down and traced a pattern in the thin silk of my dress, trying to conjure up another version of myself, someone adventurous and fearless, even reckless. It was seductive, this flirtation with another me. Before I could think it through any further, out rushed “One drink, and we leave the second I feel freaked out.”
    “Done,” he said.
     
    Inside, Francis shook hands with a doorman in a long black coat, then paid an entrance fee at the counter and took my elbow. We went down a stone stairwell, the rock cold and slightly moist to the touch, to a large room. I eyed the buffet, with