High Life: Where Angels Dare

[Author's note: Alice is married to James, a professional football player who has found himself at a loose end after retiring from the sport. After attending a charity auction in which she was outbid for her own husband, Alice and James have been blackmailed into service by Jodie and her upper-echelon friends. They have no choice but to do her bidding, letting Jodie pimp James out to clients, otherwise she will release the videos she took.

However, Jodie didn't reckon with them falling into an unlikely friendship with one of their clients, Ophelia (Fee) Raine (HL09). Fee and her husband Barton have been helping Alice and James collate the evidence they'll need to bring Jodie and her little empire down.

This story is part of the Midnight at the Lost & Found Author Challenge.]

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WHERE ANGELS DARE

Alice got out of the back of the car, followed by Fee. The alleyway was deserted, but even so, she felt vulnerable and conspicuous. The driver's side window came down and James poked his head out.

"You good?" he asked.

"I'm freezing," Alice replied, hugging herself.

"No, babe, you're hot."

"Jesus, James, how can you...?"

She faltered, staring at her husband's face as he broke out into a grin.

"Bastard," she muttered, "I should have talked you into this instead."

James shrugged, smiling, "Oh, yeah, and how would that have worked? A celebrity football star attempting to walk around incognito. Yeah, I'd have totally been able to pull that off in there."

"We could have found you a mask," Alice countered, playfully.

"I'm too good looking."

"And modest. Maybe Barton could have found you a full gimp hood. I reckon there's still time, the night's young."

James laughed, flashing white teeth.

"You two done? I've got nipples like rivet holders, and it's not from seeing your delectable rear," Fee called out from behind her.

Alice turned to her friend, eyebrows cocked.

"Where on earth did you get that from?"

"Sailors."

"Really?"

"Fuck off Alice, what do you think? I'm bloody freezing in this, let's get into the club."

Fee had wrapped her arms around herself too, dressed almost identically. The two women faced each other in the alley. Fee reached out her hand and Alice took it.

"You both look amazing," James commented.

Alice gave him a look over her shoulder as Fee led her away, saying, "You promise you'll stay right here, okay?"

"Yes. We're going nowhere. If you hit an issue, I'll be in there in thirty seconds."

"Mask or no mask."

"Alice, if you're in trouble, fuck the consequences."

His expression became serious. Over his shoulder, in the passenger seat, Barton nodded. Alice nodded back, feeling the eyes of the two men on them as they watched their wives line up at the back entrance to the Lost and Found.

On the door, a large Pacific Islander stood guard in a black suit with an incongruous pair of black rabbit ears mounted on his head. He looked the women up and down, the tattoo on the side of his face wrinkling as he smiled.

"Not leaving much to the imagination there, ladies," he remarked. "I don't recall seeing you before."

Alice felt her cheeks flush and she glanced towards Fee. Her friend raised her chin defiantly, rolling back her shoulders, straightening up. Even so, her head barely came up to the big man's chin.

"We heard it was fancy dress," Fee said.

Alice and Fee were wearing matching outfits, sewn by Fee herself. When she'd first shown Alice what they'd both be wearing for the fancy dress event at the Lost and Found kink club, Alice had baulked, shaking her head violently. But Fee had talked her around, taking her through her reasons, until finally Alice ha acquiesced to the other woman. Besides, she'd told Alice, you're going to look so hot in this.

Standing in front of the doorman in the darkened alleyway, hearing the thud of music coming from inside, Alice didn't feel hot: she felt naked. The theme of the event was Alice in Wonderland, and given the reason they were there, Fee had dismissed the idea of coming as Alice, or the Cheshire Cat, or any of the main characters. They needed to be low-ley, anonymous, for what they needed to do.

Fee had instead dressed them both in sheer body stockings, with matching knee-high stiletto boots. Over Fee's crotch was the trefoil shape of the suit of Clubs in black satin, inverted so that the middle lobe was pointed downwards to shield her pussy through the semi-translucent stocking. Another club was stitched to her chest, the side lobes shielding her nipples. The design was repeated on her back, offering some measure of modesty over the cleft of her bottom. Her blonde hair was coiled up into a tight bun.

Alice was dressed the same, her crotch hidden behind a red heart. On her chest, an inverted red heart swept down from a point in the middle of her cleavage to encompass her breasts. Her blonde hair was curled up also in a tight bun. She felt Fee's hand descend to the red heart sewn over her rear, resting there lightly as she faced up to the doorman.

"We're a pair of cards. She's the deuce of hearts," Fee said.

"I kinda got that," the doorman replied wryly.

Fee approached him with wide eyes, "And I'm the two of clubs, baby."

"I'm absolutely certain you are. Come in, it's chilly out here, eh?"

Fee grinned as the big man stepped aside. She placed her hand on the red heart over Alice's bottom and gave her a little push into the warmth and the shelter of the club.

"You can remove your hand now," Alice murmured to her.

Her words had the opposite effect. Fee cupped her buttocks and then gave a playful squeeze.

"You are just way too cute, Alice. You're making me think awful thoughts."

They stepped into an enclosed space at the foot of a set of stairs, lit only by a single bulb. There was a man here, big and dark like the man on the door.

"Not been here before?" he asked.

"No," Alice replied.

"Okay, in that case, a few points of order. The playrooms are upstairs, and they're open to everyone tonight. Respect personal space. The main party is through that door, which means you need one of these."

He held up a set of wristbands to them.

"Choose your adventure, ladies," he told them.

"In what way?" Alice asked, puzzled.

"Choose how you want to play. Red means you get left alone. Green means open to play, Amber means only with consent."

Alice frowned at the choices. She pointed at the latter two.

"What's the difference between green and amber? Surely, they both need your consent?"

"Ah, yeah. Okay. No, green means you are looking for fun on your own. It's called free use. Amber means they have to ask your partner for permission to have fun with you."

"Partner?" Alice echoed.

Fee selected a red wristband and wrapped it around her wrist.

"Yeah, Alice, partner."

Alice watched in consternation as Fee took an amber-coloured band and wrapped it around Alice's wrist.

"There, now if you want to have fun, you just ask me and I'll let you play."

Fee flashed a little sultry smile at her.

"If you're a good girl for me, that is."

Alice's mouth opened, but Fee's hand was back in its position, spread across the red heart over her bottom, directing her towards the large door from which the music and the noise was emanating. Alice found herself being led onto the main floor of the Lost and Found. Fee brought her lips close to Alice's ear,

"Good girls get rewards, Alice. You're a good girl aren't you?"

"Fee...."

"Fee? Maybe it should be Mistress, tonight."

"Fee," Alice insisted, "Let's just concentrate. We've got a job to do."

They stopped in the doorway and Fee turned to face her friend.

"I know, Alice," she replied, "I'm just fooling."

"I'm not. We have to be on the lookout."

"Yeah, about that, uh, what are we looking out for?"

Fee took a step forward, passing through the doorway. The music hit them like a wave, then the sticky heat of the packed throng. There was a wall of bodies in front of them, dressed in leather and latex and lace, or just showing bare skin, with studs and hoops, chains glittering, fur, masks, boots.

"Anything suspicious," Alice muttered.

Fee surveyed the tumult in front of them.

"Yeah," she replied, "Good luck with that."

---

Ophelia Raine was never one to take things lying down, and tonight was no exception. Fee had a mission, and she was here to execute.

The flirting with Alice was merely to distract herself from what they were here to do. Plus, the blonde woman's face had betrayed her emotions as Fee had poked and prodded. She'd allowed Fee's hand on her rear, allowed herself to be tagged with the amber wristband, exhibiting all the signs of being the submissive partner. As Fee pushed her way through the crowd, she found herself wondering idly what it would be like.

Fee's husband had welcomed Alice and her husband James into their little arrangement, setting everything up for Fee to be able to satisfy her urges with Alice's muscled slab of mancake. Fee had noticed how Alice watched them as James fucked a woman who wasn't his wife, the need burning in her eyes even as her man climaxed inside Fee. Alice needed it, like Barton did, but for different reasons. Barton wanted to give Fee something he was unable to, ever since the accident that left him in the wheelchair. But Alice needed it like she needed air, like Fee needed Alice to watch her, feeling the eyes of the woman whose husband she was fucking on her. She had seen Alice, sitting there staring in the dark as Fee rode James to a staggering orgasm. Fee had watched from the corner of her eye as James' wife fingered herself to her own secondary climax. Alice was so close to acknowledging it, that she needed to be the beta female, but she was deep in denial. To Fee, who had embraced her own submissive side when Barton had taken control early in their marriage, it was plain as day.

Jodie had set the two couples against each other, using the threat of blackmail as a sword suspended above their heads, but the opposite to what she intended had happened instead. Far from setting them at each other's throats, they had bonded unexpectedly, deeply, forging an alliance against Jodie and her insidious web of miscreants. That was the reason they were here, tonight.

Barton had caught wind of the event at the Lost and Found, mentioning it over breakfast. Fee had given him a little smile, and made a joke about acting up in public, but she had seen his expression and dropped the brat act. He'd seen the event for what it was: the last hurrah for the one place in the entire city that all the people who preferred an alternate lifestyle would gravitate to. From Jodie's perspective, it would be a goldmine for her operation. It would be too tempting to resist sending someone into the party. A few pictures, a brief snippet of video, and she would have a whole new set of targets for her web of blackmail and coercion.

Barton had made the case over breakfast, but it had been Fee who had suggested bringing Alice and James in, specifically Alice. Regardless of the fact that Barton would be in a wheelchair in the crush of the club, his face was known: one of the city's top neurosurgeons and also Person of the Year would be spotted. Similarly, James was far too recognisable, only recently retired from professional football. It had to be Fee with Alice as backup, the two women able to move anonymously through the club.

Unless Jodie was here herself, of course. That would blow everything wide open. They had to chance that Jodie would send a pawn into the fray, someone as anonymous as Fee and Alice, able to wander freely. Looking out at the sea of faces, that didn't make it easy. If Jodie's spies were here, they could be anywhere. Fee kept moving.

Across the floor, she caught a glimpse of her counterpart doing the same, circling in the opposite direction around the Mad Hatter's table set in the middle of the space. Alice gave her a look across the room and shook her head. Maybe they weren't here, Fee thought, maybe Barton was just being paranoid. Then she saw something through the crowd that made her stop.

There was a little space between the end of the bar and the raised stage where a large mirror frame and a weathered leather pommel-horse stood. The pommel-horse was spot lit, ready for the people gathering around it to begin, casting the dead zone into shadow. A girl stood there in an Alice costume, looking up at a man. His back was turned to Fee, but as she advanced, the strange feeling that something was amiss began to grow. It was the girl's body language that gave it away, the way she was staring up at the man. Then her head drooped, her blonde hair flopping forwards to hide her face. The man gathered her in his arms and began to murmur into her ear. She stood there passively, arms dangling slackly by her sides.

Fee's heart skipped, and she looked around for Alice. The other woman was nowhere to be seen, and Fee considered briefly whether she should try and find her, but then the man tilted the girl's head back, staring down into her glazed eyes. Fee had seen that look before, she knew what caused it, the reactions of the person being drugged. Alice had looked the same, back at Fee's house. James had had the same vacant expression. Now it was happening to someone else, right in front of her, in the middle of a packed club. Fee strode forward, dispensing with backup.

"Hey, you okay?" Fee asked as soon as she was within speaking distance.

The man's head snapped around towards the intrusion, alarmed. Despite her fears, Fee grinned at him, thinking: gotcha, fucker.

"We're fine," the girl replied.

"Sure? I kinda saw you...."

"No, I'm fine, uh, Cam was just...."

Fee hesitated, looking back to the girl again. She was staring back nervously, like she'd just been caught out. The glazed expression was gone.

"Uh, look, sorry," Fee found herself stammering, "I thought I saw something. I just... you know, girls stick together."

"I'm fine, really. Just takes me a minute to get my head straight."

"Mina," the man cautioned.

Fee's curiosity got the better of her.

"Straight from what?" she asked.

"Mina," her companion repeated.

"It's okay, Cam."

Mina turned her attention to Fee, smiling bashfully, then explained, "I've been Bree all night, and Cam was just switching me back. I think he'd had enough of the nympho bimbo."

Fee shook her head slowly, muttering, "I have no idea what any of that means."

"He hypnotises me," Mina confessed, "And Bree comes out. She's like, uh, how do I explain? Like my alter ego. I go into a trance and then Bree wakes up."

"It's her kink," Cam interjected, "Well, one of them."

Fee looked from one to the other, asking, "And you trust him to do that for you? To let him into your head?"

"Uh huh. I trust him completely."

Fee was silent for a moment, watching them. Clearly, they were playing their own little game. They weren't the people Fee was looking for, it was a false alarm. But still, it seemed outrageous that they could play like that. Curiosity got the better of her.

"I didn't even think hypnosis was real," she said.

"It's as real as you make it. Cam's gotten pretty good, plus it works exactly because I trust him."

"And you like it."

Mina gave Fee a shy smile.

"Yeah," she confessed, "He can make me feel almost anything."

Fee found herself smiling back at the blonde woman in the Alice costume, happy in her own little world with her man.

"Look, hey, sorry for barging in," Fee replied.

Cam nodded at her, and said, "No problem. Better you said something than just walked by, even if it was innocent."

Mina nudged him in the ribs.

"When have you been innocent?" she scoffed.

"Good to have you back, Mina. Your other half was wearing me down."

Fee found herself backing away as the two lovers began to bicker playfully, feeling herself surplus to requirements.

"Have a good night," she said, then slipped back into the crowd.

They were getting nowhere, Fee thought to herself. There were hundreds of people here, all up to their own little games. Spotting Jodie's spy amongst them was proving to be like finding the needle in the haystack. She edged around a group of people and found herself in front of the stage. A woman swept past her and ascended the stage, trailed by two couples.

She was dressed as the Duchess, wearing a stiff leather corset that displayed her ample cleavage, constraining her voluptuous curves. A mane of red hair spilled out from beneath a dazzling tiara cocked at a rakish angle on her head, flowing down her back, directing Fee's eye down the woman's spine, from the high, stiff leather collar, to the exquisite hook-and-eye arrangement of the corset, and at last to the rounded curve of her well-proportioned bottom in a dark purple dress, flashing wickedly spiked heels. Once she was on stage, she turned, waiting for her entourage to take their positions on either side of her, before raising her voice. Fee noticed that they were all wearing red wristbands.

On stage, the man dressed as the Mad Hatter bowed low to her, announcing, "Mistress Candice is here to dispense her wise justice. You've already seen how Mistress Rose deals with unruly submissives. I think we're in for a treat."

The Mad Hatter bowed again to Candice and presented her with the microphone. She gave him a saucy wink.

"I do appreciate a man showing the proper respect," she told him, then turned to face the crowd. "What brings you before my royal majesty tonight?" she called out imperiously.

The man to her left stepped forward and spoke, "Mistress Candice, we have a matter to settle and would request your adjudication."

He grinned, placing his left hand on the shoulder of the woman next to him. Beneath the stage's spotlight, Fee caught a gleam of gold on his ring finger. The woman wore a matching ring on her finger. She looked up nervously as her husband spoke.

Both couples were young, in their twenties, the men each smiling while the women eyed each other nervously.

"By all means, please, elucidate."

The man cleared his throat and raised his voice for the crowd to hear, calling out, "Slave Rachel has been accused of a transgression of the slave code, attesting that she was superior to Slave Farrah. She attempted to put slave Farrah in her place, when only her owner, Master Stark, has that right."

Candice's eyes widened in mock consternation. Around Fee, people gasped. Candice turned to the crowd, playing the room with relish.

"Is the court adjourned?" she called out.

There were cries of approval from the audience. Candice turned to the man on the other side of her.

"Master Stark, would you like to call witnesses for the prosecution?" she intoned, gravely, her eyes twinkling with mischief.

Stark was the tallest of them, towering over the Duchess and the diminutive, athletic blonde woman standing next to him. Farrah looked up at her Master, waiting for him to speak.

"I would like to give my evidence, yes."

Candice nodded, "Please, Master Stark, make your case."

The crowd fell silent, waiting for him to begin. Fee scanned the faces, but all attention was now focused on the pantomime playing out on the stage. Stark drew himself up, dwarfing his beautiful blonde partner, settling a reassuring hand on the wronged slave's arm.

"My case is simple. Slave Rachel is guilty."

The crowd roared approval. Candice raised her hands to calm them, then turned to the other couple.

"Master Amon, Master Stark has made quite frankly one of the most airtight cases for the prosecution I've ever heard. Is there anything you would like to present to this court in defence of your slave?"