Odalisque (2 page)

“Jessamine.” Mason’s voice was a warning. Kai had never seen Mason try to rein Jessamine in, and as expected, Jessamine didn’t fall into line. She waved a hand at her husband and leaned closer to whisper in Kai’s ear.

“We call him the sheik because he recently purchased an
odalisque
. Can you believe it? So depraved.”

“What the hell is an odalisque?”

Mason tugged on a lock of her hair. “Jess, that’s supposed to be a secret.”

“I won’t tell him the guy’s real name.” She turned back to Kai. “He’s nobody you’d know anyway. Some spectacularly rich textile magnate. He bought a se--”

Mason pulled his wife down into his lap and clapped a hand over her mouth. “I think you’ve had a little too much to drink, darling.”

Jess wriggled, pressing back against her husband, and whispered something behind her hand. Whatever she said, it must have been potent. Only Jessamine could make a hardened playboy like Mason Cooke blush.

“So, you never answered my question,” said Kai. “What’s an odalisque?”

Jessamine exploded in ribald peals of laughter. Mason pushed her to her feet and steered her toward the door.

“Google it!” she yelled over her shoulder. “Odalisque. O-D-A--” Again, Mason muffled her voice and waved farewell to Kai with his other hand.

Kai watched them go, jotting a note on his napkin as the string ensemble sat down to play another set.

*** *** ***

It was almost a week before Mason was free to meet for lunch. Kai glowered at him over Mexican and margaritas.

“I searched for the word ‘odalisque’ and all that came up was a bunch of crap about slaves and harems. Tell me you and Jess haven’t entered the slave trade. This ‘sheik’ friend of yours isn’t involved in human trafficking, is he?”

Mason made a face. “I knew you’d suspect that.”

“My sister works for Amnesty International, for God’s sake. You don’t want her in your face about it. If this ‘sheik’ friend of yours is holding a human being against his or her will--”

His friend silenced him with a look. “Do you really think we’d get involved in human trafficking? Really? Jess is a thoughtless and maniacal pervert, but I doubt even she would stoop so low.” Mason almost said more, then busied himself rearranging the nachos in front of him.

“Spill it,” Kai ordered.

Mason swirled a broken chip in a bowl of salsa, thought a moment, then started to talk.

“Okay, you know my wife somehow finds the weirdest, most freakass people in Hollywood. Without fail.”

Kai nodded in agreement.

“So a couple weeks ago she got invited to this guy’s house for a party. We’ll continue to call him the sheik, shall we?”

“Why not?”

“So this ‘sheik’ is a single guy, dirty dirty rich. More money than he knows what to do with, but lonely as the day is long. He’s not a sheik at all, he’s from Indonesia. He owns a company that manufactures luxury fabric for designers and fashion houses. Velvet, silk, cashmere, high quality wool for gentlemen’s bespoke suits. This is all he does. No social skills, no polish. No skills at picking up girls or protecting himself from women who are out to take advantage of him. But he wants someone, you know, to fulfill his...needs.”

“Of course he does.”

“So he took his fistfuls of money to France and acquired something called an odalisque.” Mason paused, frowning. “Not some
thing
. Some
one
. A woman.”

“Like a mail-order bride?”

“No. Nothing like a mail-order bride. Not a wife or girlfriend or escort or whore, not anything like that. He told Jess about this
Code d’Odalisque
, this lifestyle these women adhere to, which basically amounts to being a sexual slave to a man. Not for play scenes or kink. As a divine calling type of thing.”

Kai snorted. “A divine calling? I see.”

“Yeah, I know. I showed up expecting some brassy fake-boobed slut from the Valley, you know, some kooky kinky sex thing. But it was...”

Mason stopped and looked away, took a drink from his margarita and put it down, then leaned closer, suddenly animated.

“Kai, I can’t even explain this shit to you. We got to the party. There were maybe five other people there besides me and Jess. All guys. And there was this girl, this odalisque. I don’t even know her name, but I will tell you, my friend--she knocked me dead.”

“Beautiful?”

“Beautiful doesn’t cover it.” Mason waved a hand. “Beautiful, graceful, all that, but so much more. She was like some...otherworldly creature. When you touched her, she reacted, and if it was acting, it was really, really good acting. She took on the whole room, all the men and Jess too.” He stopped and looked around, lowering his voice. “I’m talking blowjobs, ass, pussy, face shots, double and triple teaming. She was fucked and fucked and then fucking fucked again and she took all of it with this incredible sensual poise. I can’t explain it. It was like...we were the ones doing the fucking, but she was the one in control. We all left that night completely in love with her. No, not in love. We were in
adoration
.”

Kai watched Mason, surprised. His friend wasn’t normally given to exaggeration and flowery speech. The odalisque must really have been something. “I’m sorry now you didn’t invite me along.”

“You know, if I’d known, I would have. But I expected a typical gangbang scene.”

“A
typical gangbang scene
? Jesus, what do you and Jess get up to after hours? I’ve never participated in any gangbang scenes, typical or not.”

“Are you judging us, Mr. Whips-and-Chains? Because everyone knows you’re heavy into the kinky stuff.”

Kai choked on a mouthful of refried beans. “Everyone who?”

“Jessamine knows. Which means everyone knows. But who cares? This is L.A.”

“Well, there’s kinky stuff, and then there’s gangbang scenes with a sheik and his exotic French sex slave. So you said there’s some code?”

“Yeah, the
Code d’Odalisque
. You can find it online. It’s pages and pages long and so fucking hot it’ll burn you. I got halfway through and had to stop because I was getting lightheaded from nonstop jacking off.”

“Too much information.”

“Sorry. But seriously, it’s fucking hot. These women literally exist to accommodate cock. They live for it. They do whatever their owner desires sexually. Whatever. Nothing of a sexual nature is off limits.”

Kai was going to start masturbating himself in a moment. “Really? Nothing? What about stuff like...”

Mason smirked knowingly. “Your kinky stuff? Hell yeah. Whatever you like. They are purely sexual. They shimmer with it. Like Jess, only submissive and open to whatever you wanted. This girl at the sheik’s...she was there to be used, and she
wanted
to be used. She
craved
to be used. That was the hottest thing. They’re pleasure slaves. They’re...specialized.” Mason imbued the word
specialized
with so much lewd, lascivious emphasis that Kai started to laugh.

“So when do you and Jess get your own odalisque?”

“Oh, Jesus Christ. She’d already booked the fucking tickets to France when they told her odalisques only served men. They said I would have to be the one to acquire one, and I don’t particularly care to. Oh, Jess was spitting nails, but I don’t want the responsibility. I already have Jess to wrangle, you know? I told her she had to be content playing with the sheik’s odalisque.” He smiled at Kai. “And yours, when you’ve picked her out.”

Kai shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Didn’t the whole thing start in your part of the world? Didn’t they have slaves and harems in India?”

“They had slaves and harems everywhere once upon a time. And I’m only half-Indian.”

“You’re Indian enough, you handsome motherfucker. And rich enough too.”

Kai held up a hand. “Don’t try to talk me into it. I’ll fucking do it, and I shouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“First of all, this is not legal or realistic. People cannot actually own sex slaves--”

“No, it’s an arrangement. A rental. Year-to-year, in the sheik’s case.”

“Literally? Year-to-year?”

“Apparently, half the money goes to an account for the odalisque to utilize upon her retirement, a quarter goes to the agency that places them, and a quarter goes to charities dedicated to the obliteration of human sex trafficking.”

“Okay, now you’re making this shit up.”

“I’m not making it up. This is all on the level. Consensual, monitored, legitimized, more or less. Sort of like taking on an au pair or a foreign exchange student.”

“Except you don’t use your au pair or foreign exchange student as a no-holes-barred gangbang sex slave.”

Mason got a glazed look in his eyes. “I’ve always wanted an au pair.”

“You don’t have kids.”

“Yeah, that’s the problem.”

Kai pushed his plate away. “Well, thanks for the most arousing and utterly ridiculous conversation of my life. If nothing else, this would make a great movie plot, this whole odalisque thing. You should pitch it to your director friends.”

“You want the guy’s card? The odalisque agent? I forcibly removed it from Jess.”

“No, I really don’t.”

“It’s right in my wallet.” Mason reached for his back pocket and somehow Kai couldn’t summon the impulse to shake his head. Mason fished out the embossed ivory rectangle and held it across the table.

“I’m not taking it.”

“Take it. I don’t want to argue with Jess about it anymore.”

Kai swiped it from his fingers and looked down at the card’s tasteful, subtle design.
Maison Odalisque
,
Agt. Sebastien Gaudet
, and a phone number. “He doesn’t have email? A website?”

Mason chuckled. “These kinds of arrangements don’t take place over the Internet. If you aren’t rich enough to get on your personal jet and fly to see Monsieur Gaudet face-to-face, you aren’t rich enough for one of these odalisques.”

Kai tried to bite his tongue, but the question burst forth anyway. “How much? How much did your sheik pay?”

“The math is straightforward, my friend. One flat mil a year. One million for a willing, horny, erotically trained cockslave at your beck and call for three hundred and sixty-five days.”

Kai smiled. “A bargain.”

“I think so,” said Mason, looking down at his phone. Kai could see his friend’s sex-siren wife on the phone’s display background. “I happen to think there’s no price too high to pay for sexual contentment. Sexual adventure, even.” Mason looked back up with a grin. “Life is short, don’t you think?”

Kai didn’t take a private jet. He didn’t actually have a private jet, but he did have a lot of money, enough to manage a million if it came to that.
If.
He was on a fact-finding mission, though, that was all. He’d phoned Sebastien Gaudet and found him personable and well-spoken. The man had reassured Kai that it was perfectly fine to fly over just to look around and ask questions.

And Kai had a lot of questions. First and foremost, what the hell he was doing flying to the French countryside to visit a manor where they trained odalisques.

Odalisques.
The unfamiliar, grandiloquent word sounded almost as silly as the idea of buying a woman’s favors for a year. He didn’t know whether to be alarmed or excited by the fact that he was pretty much living out the plot of some contrived porn novel.

He hadn’t told Mason anything about this trip. Or Jessamine, or Satya, his women’s-rights-crusading sister who would bite off his head and chew it to pieces if she knew he was even considering acquiring a sex slave.

No, Kai hadn’t told anyone the specifics, only that he was taking a much-needed vacation to France for a week. God, he had shitloads of work to do. Why was he doing this?

Because all you do is work. And you’re lonely. Your wife gutted you and you’re not capable of surviving another relationship anytime soon.
Why let a woman in, why try to get to know her when it would inevitably end up where his marriage had ended up? Betrayal, bitter accusations, humiliation.

An odalisque might be the answer to all his problems. If things worked out, what a wonderful lifestyle it would be. Sex--hot, willing sex-- whenever he wanted it. However he wanted it. Quick, slow, raunchy, affectionate, nasty, endless, kinky or vanilla, upside down or up in a tree or rolling down the side of the mountain he lived on. Kai would lead and she would follow obediently, because that was her code, according to what he’d read. Submissive, available, enslaved to his cock by choice.

He would buy--or rent--her services, and bask in her loyalty and patience, her subservience and admiration, all sandwiched in between marathon sessions of depraved sex. Best of all, there wouldn’t be a lot of emotional minefields to tiptoe across to get to what he wanted. He could lay her down and lose himself and not waste what little free time he had on relationship issues.

By the time he got in his rental car in Paris and started on the hour-long trip to Maison Odalisque, he’d gone from feeling embarrassed and skeptical to feeling almost jubilant. He’d made an embarrassing amount of money for someone in his mid-thirties, and in this one thing, he would spoil himself. If he found the right girl, if he found the whole odalisque thing to his liking, he would plunk down a cool million without a second thought. If even half his lustful daydreams came true, a million would be a small price to pay.

In this state of hopeful elation, Kai arrived at the Maison. He shook off creeping jet lag and produced his passport in order to be buzzed through an arching iron gate by a stone-faced security goon. The house certainly gave an appearance of respectability. He’d half expected to arrive at a ramshackle dive and be robbed and left for dead, but the impressive edifice of Maison Odalisque communicated wealth and fastidiousness, not danger.

It was more than a house, actually, but not quite a mansion. There were twenty or so windows just on the front, and six imposing columns. Around him, rural fields and forests glowed with the gold of a late winter sunset. A long cobblestone drive circled to the front of the house.