Swinging in Amsterdam (At the Swingers' Club, #1) by Polly J Adams Page B

for the early evening now. The tables outside the bars were crowded here, and the streets were alive with people: couples, groups, even families, just walking along and taking in the sights. Just behind Selena, a coffee shop painted in vivid graffiti gave off that distinctive marijuana aroma so heady you just had to stand outside and take a deep breath to get a bit of a buzz going.
    Across the canal there was a row of glass doors, each with a lingerie-clad woman standing behind it, trying to catch the eye of anyone passing by. As Selena watched, a middle-aged guy in a gray suit stopped at a half-open door and started to talk with the woman inside. After a minute or two the door opened wider, he stepped inside, and a blind came down over the glass.
    “How long do you think he gets?” asked Martin. He’d clearly been watching the same encounter.
    “Shall we wait until he comes out?”
    They laughed, stood away from the railings and walked on. Now there were more of the famous glass doors. The women came in all varieties, and all ages, it seemed. As Martin and Selena walked, the prostitutes kept making eye contact, smiling, posing.
    “You fancy?” asked Selena.
    Martin laughed and answered, “Do you?”
    “Some, yes,” she said. “I hadn’t expected them to be so hot.” She’d never hidden from Martin the fact that one of her previous relationships had been with a woman. She always said that she didn’t care what gender someone was: if there was a spark, there was a spark. She’d often told Martin he could easily have been a woman, and he knew exactly what she meant.
    The wide paved area around the Oude Kerk was fringed with bars, coffee shops and more glass doors. Even the church itself had glass doors around its flanks.
    They looped around and headed back down the other side of the canal. After a few minutes they paused outside a small theater. Its neon sign read LIVE PORNO and LIVE SEX SHOW, and photographs of its shows festooned the walls outside.
    “Hey, hey,” said a big guy in a leather jacket. “Live sex show, best in Amsterdam. We have a couple of seats left. Show starts soon. You wanna see what they’re all talking about?” The guy patted Martin on the shoulder, and went on: “You wanna make the lady happy, right? I got you special deal. Normally it’d be a hundred euros just for the tickets, but you’re young and in love – I give you two tickets, a free drink each, all for eighty euros.”
    §
    The cramped stairwell opened into the back of a small theater, rows of red velvet cinema-style seating ranked before a stage concealed by a long black curtain. The walls were decorated with classical-style murals of naked men and women, their limbs all out of proportion and their poses awkward and unnatural.
    “This is weird,” said Selena.
    “You don’t say?”
    About half the seats were occupied, and Martin and Selena took seats at the end of a row in the middle. Selena took a long drink from her plastic cup of beer and looked around. There was a loud and excited group of young women over at the front on the far side, wearing tiaras and sashes and false breasts. The rest of the audience was made up of small groups, couples and lone men, one of whom was taking photos of the murals.
    “You feeling horny?” asked Selena.
    “Not remotely. You?”
    She reached down and dragged her nails up his thigh, before brushing her hand across his crotch. Those thin linen pants didn’t leave much to the imagination.
    “Not yet,” she said, drawing her hand back across a new hardness. “You regretting not staying in the hotel?”
    He put an arm around her, resting it along the back of her seat. There was something about the way he did that, the way it emphasized his strength and drew her in... It was a subtle and unusual turn-on, but it always worked and he knew it.
    “We can always make our own entertainment,” he whispered into her ear.
    Just then the background music became louder. The curtains drew