The Freyja Club

Lily expertly navigated her big Mercedes 450 SEL sedan through the mid-morning Paris traffic despite the heavy rain that was falling from the angry black clouds that covered the city. I had a ten o'clock appointment with a realtor in Argenteuil and Lily had decided that she should come along. As I watched her drive, I couldn't help but notice the confidence that she displayed as she masterfully shifted the car's five-speed manual transmission through the gears without any perceivable loss of power and easily weaved from lane to lane as we crossed the city.

I had come to Paris almost a week ago with the ostensible purpose of negotiating the purchase of a French company in our line of business but while here I experienced one life-changing event and I was now possibly dealing with another. The first was the woman who sat next to me. In an incredible four days, I had gone from just meeting Lily to being convinced that I was in love with her. The second was why we were heading to an appointment in Argenteuil.

Two days ago, my CEO called me with some disturbing news. They had discovered some unusual movement in our company stock and there was some concern that we ourselves might be facing a hostile takeover. For a variety of reasons, I believed that the threat, if that's what it was, was likely a European-based company and I convinced David that I should stay in Paris and use my contacts to ferret out any information about my suspicions without the burden of trying to do so with trans-Atlantic phone calls across six time zones.

David was putting one of our three corporate jets at my disposal and it was scheduled to arrive in Paris tomorrow along with my personal assistant Meredith and her husband Ralph along with Pete, our Chief Financial Officer, and two management trainees. I needed to set up a temporary office that could deal with the call volume that I expected would result from our inquiries and that's why Lily and I were weaving our way through Paris' notorious traffic.

I had christened our little operation "Pegasus" after the winged horse of Greek mythology. In one epic story, Pegasus allowed the hero Bellerophon to ride him and defeat the three-headed monster Chimera. I likened our effort to Pegasus because while we ourselves wouldn't thwart any potential hostile takeover, we'd put the people who could in a position to do so.

On the way, Lily asked me why I was so convinced that the possible hostile takeover threat was probably one of two companies that I'd told her about. I replied that takeovers were usually driven by one of two objectives; to expand a business or to gain value from undervalued assets. I used the example of Carl Ichan, who in 1978 took a controlling stake in Tappan, a company in the consumer appliance business. He sold off some of the company's assets and then negotiated the sale of the rest of the company to Electrolux. It was estimated that Ichan had made three million dollars from the deal. In our case, I didn't think our assets were undervalued relative to the price of our stock, so I didn't see any big incentive for a corporate raider. That meant that someone might be looking at us as a way of expanding their business. If that was the case, I thought there were only three possible candidates. One was a Japanese company, but a hostile takeover was a very alien concept in Japanese business culture and I highly doubted it could be them. The other two possibilities were a Swiss company headquartered in Geneva and a German company in Hamburg. Hence, my conclusion that the potential threat was coming from Europe. Lily smiled as she followed my train of thought and just said another possibility was that God had arranged the whole thing to keep me with her. I silently admitted that given the incredible recent events, Lily's idea couldn't be dismissed.

When we arrived I was presented with seven properties that the realtor had said she thought might fit our needs as a short-term rental, but from the pictures and descriptions she showed me, I wasn't thrilled about any of them. They were all in newly constructed high-rises and seemed cavernous and sterile, not at all the small office that I envisioned that would facilitate easy and quick communications, not to mention having the need to still furnish and equip the space.

I was prepared to leave disappointed when Lily drew my attention to a property that was posted on the wall. It was a storefront and the neon sign above the doorway said 'Agence de voyage.' Even with my limited French vocabulary, I knew that meant 'Travel Agency,' and I guessed Lily was making some kind of joke. But she drew my attention to the description which she translated for my benefit.

I had just assumed that the property was outside on a street somewhere, but Lily said that, no, it was located inside on the mezzanine level of the Hôtel de la République, an upscale hotel that I knew was out near Le Bourget near the N2. I'd never stayed there, but I knew some people who had. In many respects, it was a peer of the five-star Hôtel Barrière in Enghien-les-bains where I was staying now. Lily had the realtor pull the listing and I could finally see what Lily had immediately appreciated.

It seemed that the firm had just gone out of business earlier in the week, and the hotel had confiscated all of the furnishings and equipment to compensate for several months of unpaid rent. The relator thought that, if I wanted, the hotel would leave everything in place.

The hotel had a grand lobby rising about three stories above the ground floor. A mezzanine surrounded it on the second level occupied by various stores. The travel agency was located in one of the corners and the view from the outside just showed two large inward swinging doors that during business hours opened the establishment to potential clients, but otherwise there wasn't any visibility into the property. The pictures of the inside looked promising. There were four cubicles with desks and phones, a small private office, what looked like a break room, and a conference room with a round table and about six chairs. I liked it immediately and that was before I considered the advantages of being located in a hotel. There wouldn't be a need to commute and restaurants and parking were taken care of, not to mention that there was a Metro station half a block away. Plus, given its location, there wouldn't be any need for Vic and Don, our pilots, to be in a different location since we would be close enough to the airport. I looked at Lily who had been watching me consider the possibilities and she just stood with her arms folded and an expression on her face that seemed to be saying, "See."

Two hours later I signed a month-to-month lease with the hotel manager, reserved five rooms in the hotel starting tomorrow night that could be extended on a week-to-week basis at a nice discount, and got a promise that the property would be cleaned, and telephones and fax connected by Tuesday. I told him that he needn't bother removing the neon sign or the travel posters that were on the walls, but I didn't explain that it was because I was anticipating the perverse pleasure I'd get in the future when I'd relate how we conducted our little operation out of a travel agency.

Unfortunately, by that time it was mid-afternoon and Lily had to leave to get ready to go to the Freyja Club where she worked as a hostess, so she gave me a memorable goodbye kiss and left me to finish my preparations for the arrival of the team. I told her that I'd drop by the club later just to "keep her company," but since every woman in the establishment would be wonderfully naked, she was skeptical that "keeping her company" was my only motivation.

The last thing that I needed to do was rent some vehicles. It was fortunate that there was a Eurocar office on that same mezzanine level where the travel agency was located, so I rented a couple of Citroën BX coupes on monthly leases, and a Peugeot J9 van just for tomorrow since I would have six passengers, their luggage and some files that I'd asked Meredith to bring when I picked everyone up at Le Bourget.

All in all, it had been a productive day. I had been hopeful that I'd have resolved the temporary office issue, but I knew that trying to accomplish things in unfamiliar territory would be a challenge and I realized that I wouldn't have been anywhere close without Lily's perceptive assistance. While it would be impossible for my love for her to increase, my admiration for her abilities certainly did.

I drove one of the Citroën BX's back to my hotel. It was still raining buckets and it had been a while since I'd driven a Citroën and even longer since I'd driven in Paris. The front-wheel drive took a little getting used to as it had a tendency to oversteer and the yellow headlights that are required in France were equally disconcerting, but I made it back in one piece. When I got to my room, I found a fax from Meredith that the ETA for tomorrow's flight would be eight p.m. Paris time. The plane would be making a refueling stop in Reykjavík, Iceland, which would break up the seven-hour flight, but I anticipated that everyone would be beat by the time they arrived since their bodies would still be on Eastern Standard Time which would be two a.m.

I had considered checking out of the hotel and just spending the night with Lily, but the hotel number was the only one that allowed anyone to reach me with a message, so I knew that until I could get back to everyone with an updated point of contact that I needed to keep the room and its access to the outside world. Of course that 'real world' consideration would not, in any way, keep me out of Lily's bed tonight.

It was just those thoughts that I had in mind when the telephone rang and it was the very subject of my lustful imagination. Lily was pleased to hear of all the progress that had been made after she left, but she seemed brimming with excitement about something else that she said she couldn't share with me yet. The reason for her call was to ask me to come to the club around ten p.m. She wouldn't share with me why that exact time was important, but I suspected that it might have something to do with her duties. I knew that on any given evening, most members who were likely to come were already in the club, and Lily wasn't chained to her post to greet their entrance as would be the case earlier in the evening. The thought of Lily, loose in the Freyja Club was enough that I had to reach down and adjust the position of my cock that had gotten uncomfortably constrained.

Actually, Lily's suggestion was fine with me. Over the last four days, between her and the need to deal with the potential takeover threat, I had only gotten about half my normal amount of sleep so I glanced at the clock on the bed stand and decided that four hours in the bunk would be more than welcome.

Since my days in Vietnam, I had developed an ability to awaken at any time without the need for an alarm clock, but I set one anyway. True to form, my eyes opened a few minutes prior to the annoying buzz and I padded to the bathroom for a quick shower and a shave. I dressed in khaki slacks, a red silk shirt, and my navy blazer and soon I was in a cab headed to the Freyja Club. I had decided that I would probably be leaving with Lily, so I left the Citroën parked at the hotel.

After negotiating the normal entrance security protocol, I opened the Viking Door, and somewhat to my surprise I was greeted by a wonderfully naked hostess, but it wasn't Lily. The raven-haired beauty that stood behind the dias was a woman whose silver tiara identified her as Gabrielle. I seemed to recall that I had seen her before but as a waitress in the restaurant.

Gabrielle was about five-seven and a hundred-forty pounds and looked to be in her late thirties or perhaps early forties. Her black curly hair surrounded and framed the delicate features of her face. She had expressive brown eyes and pouty lips that I imagined would look wonderful ovaled around my cock. Her body was well proportioned with nice tits that had just begun to sag, edible nipples surrounded by irregularly shaped areola, and a curvy body that had the beginning of a stomach "pooch" that some women develop as they grow older. I didn't see her pussy until she stepped away from the dias, but no man would fail to appreciate the shaven flesh that curved deliciously between her legs.

She greeted me by name and even though it could have been from just looking at my profile that was displayed on her computer monitor, it felt more personal than that, just as if she had been expecting me. Gabrielle smiled and told me that Lily had asked her to stand in for her and with that she asked me to follow her. She led me to a door nearby that I knew led back toward the area where Danielle's office was located, but that's not where she took me.

Danielle was the club's managing director and was the woman who had processed my initiation into the Freyja Club a year earlier. She was a statuesque blonde woman in her early fifties and I had had the privilege of fucking her twice, most recently four days ago when she and her husband Phillippe had taken me to dinner the night I'd first arrived. Later, he excused himself and just asked if I would be so kind as to return Danielle when I was finished with her. Well, Phillippe didn't get her back until the next day.

Gabrielle stopped short of Danielle's office and instead ushered me toward a door that I was more than familiar with. It was the room that Danielle used to evaluate the sexual compatibility of potential new members and it was there that I had first thrust my straining cock between her purplish vaginal lips. When she opened the door I immediately recognized the king-sized bed that was the focus of the room's furnishings. A large stained glass window that had colored panels with representations of carnal acts and was artificially lit from the inside dominated one wall and two tasteful figure studies of women, one blonde and the other brunette hung on either side of the bed. Both seemed to glow from interior light and I thought they were museum quality. I knew they were not photographs as was obvious from the lacquer paint, but the detail was fantastic. When I had first seen them a year ago, I had idly wondered about the models, but now I recognized them both. The blonde was Lily and the brunette was Gabrielle. The painting of Lily had the same "Mona Lisa" smile as the portrait of her that hung in her apartment and I recognized that both had been painted by the same artist.

The room was not unoccupied. Lily and Danielle each sat on one of the room's two loveseats and were sipping wine that by its color was either a rosé or one of the new white zinfandels. Both women were dressed in black sheer satin and lace baby doll chemise and black heels. Since both were blondes, their hair presented a nice contrast to their all-black attire. I sensed Gabrielle step back and close the door behind her as Lily put down her glass and rose to give me a nice welcome kiss. Since we were technically not in the club proper, it was obvious that the "iron rule" that all ladies be naked was not in force, but it didn't seem to matter. I was immediately aroused by the bodies and the attire of both Lily and Danielle which confirmed the old saying that sometimes more is better.

Danielle welcomed me by name and seemed genuinely glad to see me. I was relieved, since the last time we had met, I had inserted myself in a club situation that I probably shouldn't have and Danielle hadn't been happy. By the look on her face, it appeared that bygones are bygones and she was giving me the warm smile that I remembered.

Lily continued kissing me during Danielle's welcome but quickly pulled me to sit next to her on one of the love seats. Danielle filled another glass from a bottle that sat in a chiller bucket on the table next to her and handed it to me and the three of us toasted "sante."

Lily was gently rubbing the hair on the back of my neck when Danielle began to speak.

"Lily has confided in me that she's fallen in love with you and I'm led to believe that the feeling is mutual." I nodded and saw that Lily did too, as Danielle continued. "If so, I'm thrilled for both of you. Lily is my oldest and dearest friend in the world, and I know that she's told you that we have also been lovers, but not just me, but with Phillipe also." Lily had told me that along with a rendition of other men and women with whom she had shared her body in a long mutual confessional that we'd shared a couple of nights ago. It hadn't mattered to me because Lily then went on to say something that still resonated in my brain. I could remember her words almost verbatim.

She had looked deeply into my eyes and had said, "I am not the same woman as I was some years ago. I have come to realize something important, something that I need to share with you." Lily had paused to wipe away a tear and I thought that whatever she was trying to say was coming from deep in her soul. Then she continued, "I first came to know Danielle when she was hired to run the back office of the law firm where I worked. I immediately recognized what a superb boss she was, but not only that, what a wonderful person she was too. One night, after work, we had gotten a little tipsy and Danielle had driven me home. That night we became lovers. I had never made love with a woman before, but it was the first step in what I call my liberation."

"A couple of months later Danielle married Philippe, and I first became aware that they had agreed that their marriage would be open. Each was free to take other lovers. Danielle confided that she knew that both she and Philippe were far too hedonistic to limit their sexual expression to just each other. After she explained that the strength of their marriage lay in the fact that they were free of the gilded cage, I came to realize that I wanted that too."

"Later, I learned about the Freyja Club and Danielle recruited me and I was blown away by the experience. Every evening I see people who freely share themselves with others in every conceivable way. Oh, some do it in a way that I personally find unappealing, but more often than not the couples that I see seem to be happy and secure in their relationship."

Lily's voice grew more confident as she continued. "Right now, I want you, and only you, but I know that feeling won't last forever. I have not only read your profile that comes up on my computer, but Danielle has shown me the background check that was done and I know that you are the same kind of person as me. I want you to know that no matter where this relationship goes, you will always be free. We can share our bodies with others, but our souls will always be joined."

It had been a revelation. Like Lily, I was aware of Danielle and Philippe's open marriage, but I had another role model; I had a torrid four-year affair with a woman named Jennifer who had the same arrangement with her husband Steve, so I had seen how two couples that had made it work. All that was necessary was to reject jealousy and possessiveness.

I remembered that I had taken Lily in my arms and said "I didn't know how God had allowed her to come into my life, but I was ever-so-happy that he had."

Back in the present, Danielle looked at the two of us and continued. "I have told Lily that from the first moment I met you, I knew that you were special. You are, next to Philippe, the most satisfying lover I've known. Your infuriating curiosity sometimes drives me a little crazy and I've told you that you need to be more careful, but Lily tells me you are "soul mates," and I can see the truth of that myself. We have talked about how I can show you that I totally approve and Lily and I have decided that this might be the best way." With that, Danielle rose to her feet as did Lily and the two women fell into a sensuous embrace.