“I LIKED HOW THE swim coach took the heroine from behind in the swimming pool.” Jasmine fanned herself rapidly.
The other ladies smiled, eight in all, each one fondly remembering that particular scene from the book.
“Ooh,” said Cynthia, “the way he yanked off her bikini and bent her over the side of the pool. It was so ... so ... manly.”
Exactly. All the ladies agreed.
“And then when the other swimmers came out of the locker room and saw her there naked. Oh my God,” said Layla, her face tinged with a red glow, “I would have died of embarrassment.”
“Not me,” said Jasmine. “I’d do just what she did — tell them to line up and wait their turn. I wouldn’t want too many of them falling on me at once. I’m not some gangbang Wonder Woman.”
Half of the women laughed and the other half responded with varying levels of semi-scandalized expressions. No one in the club ever admitted that their guilty little fantasies might be something they’d like to act out in real life. They generally prefaced comments about erotic scenes with phrases like, “Not that I’d do what she did,” or “It’s not something I’d want my husband/boyfriend to do, but ...”
This was a meeting of The Ladies Naughty Book Club, not a gathering of free-loving swingers. All of the women present lived perfectly respectable lives, some of them married, some dating, some neither. What they had in common was that they loved dirty books, and they were not, in real life, sexually adventurous. A stolen kiss from another girl in college, or letting a boyfriend feel them up at a movie theater was the extent of their experimentation.
These nine women (and a number of others who weren’t present that night) had come together and formed the LNBC after reading a popular erotic novel and discovering their shared interests through a book lover’s web site. They met once a month, sometimes more often, to discuss new group reads, all of them spicy, sexy romances with commanding alpha-male heroes and spirited heroines.
It was great fun. For a while. As time passed, however, they found that their tastes for sexier delights expanded the more they read. What had once seemed too hard-core and scary, became titillating, enticing them to broaden their choices of erotica.
They developed an increasing tolerance for smutty delights. And now here they were, more than two years after the formation of the club and their latest group read was titled “Nancy Trains the Swim Team,” an explicit, multi-partner novelette. It wasn’t naughty; it was pure smut. Okay, it was a gangbang. One woman and lots of men, all at the same time. Downright steamy stuff.
The ladies loved every minute of it, even Layla, the youngest and most reserved member in the group.
And now the group’s norms had shifted again. Jasmine had opened everyone to the idea that she, if no one else, had contemplated doing something sexually outrageous in real life. Not just in daydreams. In real life.
“You don’t mean that, Jasmine,” Layla said. “You could never actually do anything so, so you know.”
“I don’t know.” Jasmine tapped her blood-red nails on the arm of her chair. “I’ve been thinking more and more that I just might want it. I mean, why not? I’m single, successful, attractive enough to have my pick, more or less. Why not live it up while I can? I just turned thirty. Life’s short, ladies.”
Several women nodded, Cynthia among them.
“If I were single,” Cynthia said, “and didn’t have kids, I’d feel the same way. Come on, you guys. Admit it. Part of the fantasy of reading these books is imagining being the heroine. What if you could do more than imagine? What if you had the balls to actually do it?”
Jasmine leaned forward in her chair. “My point exactly. We could do it. All of us, even if you’re married.”
Margie, a happily-married woman in her mid-forties, held up her hand. “Not me. That’d be adultery. I don’t cheat.”
“Me either. Or, only in my mind with pretend lovers in books,” Cynthia said, a wistful note in her voice.
“It wouldn’t be cheating if your husbands agreed to it,” Jasmine said.
This brought on an uproar, and no insignificant hilarity. The ladies agreed that the idea of asking their husbands to let them take part in a gangbang was laughable in the extreme; it wasn’t even a remote possibility.
After the chuckles faded away, Cynthia looked to Jasmine. “But just because some of us are out of the mix, doesn’t mean you are. If you did it, you could tell us about it, and we could live vicariously through you.”
Margie rolled her eyes. “This is a book club, not a true confessions sex club.”
“That’s right,” said Layla. “We read about sex. We don’t actually do it.”
The women broke out into chuckles and teased Layla about how there were members of the group who, gasp, actually did have sex.
Layla blushed. “You know what I mean. I meant, we don’t do the crazy stuff that goes on in these dirty books. It would be nuts. Dangerous probably.”
“Not necessarily.” Jasmine looked at each member in turn. “What if we could have a second club? A place for acting out our fantasies, not just dreaming about them.”
“Yeah,” said Cynthia. “We’ve read about it, and now we go do it. Or, you do it and tell us about it. Instead of a book report, it would be a real sex report.”
Jasmine nodded. “Something like that. I propose we start living our fantasies. For real. Starting right now. We could begin by arranging our own group encounters. What do you say? Who else wants their own gangbang?”
Silence fell over the room. No one spoke for several minutes, each woman contemplating Jasmine’s call-to-arms. Some of them, their eyes wide and flitting from one member to the next, would have liked to step up, but didn’t have the nerve. Some of them had the nerve, but were in committed relationships. Layla had neither the nerve nor a prior commitment.
Freya, an unattached, attractive redhead in her late twenties, showed interest in Jasmine’s request. “Even if I wanted to do it, and I’m not saying I do, I wouldn’t know how to go about it. I mean, it would have to be safe, and controlled. Where would we find the men?”
Margie snorted. “Finding the men wouldn’t be a problem, I’m sure.”
Jasmine agreed. “I’m thinking about that, and I have a few ideas.”
“But they have to be the right kind of men, and I don’t just mean looks. Safety first. If you could manage that, I might be interested,” said Freya. She looked surprised with herself and backtracked with, “I mean, if you could work out the details maybe. I don’t know.”
“Gee, that’s clear as mud.” Jasmine laughed. “Anyone else?”
One other woman, a quiet, buxom blonde in her early forties named Pamela, raised her hand. “I might be. If I didn’t have to find the men. I’d be too embarrassed.”
Cynthia raised an eyebrow. “You’re comfortable letting a bunch of men have sex with you, but you’re too shy to ask them to do it?”
The question brought on another round of titters and exclamations until Jasmine called for order.
“That’s okay, Pamela,” said Jasmine. “Maybe I could get together a regular crew sort of, of interested men for us to pick from. I’m already thinking of who I can ask. Come on, there has to be more than just Freya, Pam and me. Step up, ladies.”
Everyone else shook their heads. No, they didn’t want to be in a gangbang, but they all liked the idea of the three braver members going through with it.
“You go first,” Margie said to Jasmine. “You can report back, tell us all about it. If it goes okay, then who knows, right? Others might want to.”
Jasmine glanced around the circle of women. “Okay then. I’ll go first. I’ll find the men, too. We’re going to do this thing. Every one of us. Even you, Layla, before we’re done.”
Layla shook her head, looking a little pale.
Cynthia patted Layla’s leg. “Don’t worry about it, sweetie. No one’s going to make you do anything.”
Jasmine sighed. “Of course we won’t. But let me tell you, girl, this could be the opportunity of a lifetime. Who knows what we’re capable of?”
“So, what’ll we call this new club?” Jasmine continued. “I’m thinking ‘Gangbang’ something.”
“Oh, not gangbang. It’s so ... so dirty-sounding,” Layla said.
“That’s why I like it,” Jasmine said.
“I hate it,” another member chimed in.
“Me too. It’s tawdry,” added another woman.
“Tawdry and sexy,” Cynthia said.
“Never mind gangbang, then,” Jasmine said. “We need to find a name we can all agree on. Think of something else.”
They were quiet for a few moments. The few ideas some of them tossed out were immediately rejected as either being too boring or not having anything to do with the actual club. They tossed around a few more uninspired ideas until a quiet voice cut through the chatter.
“The Fantasy Guild,” the voice said.
The women turned and looked at Layla, the girl behind the voice. She shrugged.
“Perfect!” cried Jasmine. “If anyone overhears us saying the name, they’ll just think it’s a fantasy book club, or like a video game group. It’s perfect.”
The others agreed readily. Layla smiled and waved aside their enthusiastic acceptance.
“The Fantasy Guild it is then,” Jasmine said. “Some members aren’t present. They’re seriously going to be p-o’d that they didn’t come tonight.”
“That’s okay,” Cynthia said. “I’ll call and fill them in on everything. For now, I think Jasmine should be the acting president of the new club. What do you all say?”
Everyone agreed.
“Good.” Jasmine’s expression sobered. “I accept the position of acting president. And I offer myself as the test subject of the new club. I’m going to go out and get myself in a gangbang, or,” she winked at several members, “fantasy group encounter, if it’s the last thing I do!”
The ladies smiled at one another. Jasmine was a beautiful, powerful woman, and they had no doubt that she’d get precisely what she wanted, no more, no less.
“And then you’ll come tell us chickens all about it,” said Margie.
“Exactly,” said Jasmine.
The club members hadn’t been this excited in a long time. Someone they knew was going to live out the fantasies they had only dared read about.
It was a heady, exhilarating evening — the night the Fantasy Guild was formed.