Lucky Fierce Vibes

It was Dave's idea that we should all chip in together on a Christmas present for Katie, but Susie's idea of where we should go shopping the weekend after Thanksgiving.

"It's modeled after a place I used to go with my girlfriends in Shibuya," Susie said, her eyes shining with delighted anticipation. "For a two-drink minimum, you get an hour to try out all the toys!"

"Are you sure she wouldn't like a nice sweater, maybe?" I asked. "We could order her a nice sweater."

We were walking through the downtown shopping district, looking at all the windows lit up with their Christmas displays. There were mannequins dressed up in stylish party dresses and long leather coats, presents wrapped in red and green with cream silk bows hanging from the ceilings, Christmas trees flocked with white and wrapped with twinkling lights, with shoes and gloves and hats hanging from them. Christmas songs blasted from every corner, clashing into cacophonous chaos in the chilly air above our heads: "Baby It's the Last White Christmas Shoes" sung by tortured angels.

"She has sweaters," Susie said, eyes never straying to the dazzling displays around us, moving so quickly I had to jog to keep up. "What she doesn't have is a rechargeable Kiwami Ten Double Impact Vibrator."

"Does she need a Kiwami whats-it?" I asked. "I mean, she's got me and Dave ..."

Susie rolled her eyes but didn't slow her march.

"You boys are perfectly fine at what you do," she said, "but sometimes what a lady needs is seven piston patterns, a silicon clit-licker, and enough charge to last over an hour at maximum speed."

"You sound familiar with this product," I said.

"You better fucking believe it," Susie said with a laugh and increased her pace even more. "I've read every review, seen every teaser video, read all the chat threads about it in Japanese and English. This is the toy the world is waiting for, Jim, and it's exactly what Katie needs."

Since the night Katie had invited Susie over for dinner to satisfy her curiosity about the arrangement of our throupledom — she stayed on past dessert and breakfast and joined us for a late lunch after a long nap tangled up in our sheets — she had been as likely to spend the night in one of our beds as not, practically the fourth pillar of our little polycule. Susie had also lost a lot of the shyness that held her back that first night, especially around Katie. Our Katie is a little bit of a whirlwind — well, a lot, really — a dynamo of insatiable sexual hunger, and she can be intimidating if you're not used to that kind of energy. It's the reason our throupledom started in the first place: Dave was tapping out in the sack too soon for Katie, and she decided one night to enlist my cock for the second string, and the arrangement suited everyone well enough to work out the kinks. And oh, there have been some very nice kinks ...

Compared to Katie, Susie is a demure and bashful lady of manners; but compared to 95% of women I've met, she's doing a good job holding her own in our beds. She may not make the same demands as Katie, but she knows what she wants, and she gives as good as she gets: her tongue work is second to none, and all three of us — me, Dave, and Katie — have no complaints about her innate oral skills. And besides being a fun partner in her own right, Susie has also taken some of the pressure off me and Dave when it comes to keeping Katie satisfied: we can catch up on rest and let our cocks recharge while Susie keeps Katie humming.

So I suppose it's not that surprising that Susie had a working knowledge of this Kiwami unit with all the speeds and gizmos. She's a big gadget fan herself — she always has the latest phone and newest apps, she installed all sorts of "smart" stuff around the apartment so we don't have to even get out of bed to start the coffee, turn off the lights, or close the blinds, and she brought over a box of complicated kitchen equipment so I could prepare her vegan meals exactly the way she likes them. But I still didn't get why we couldn't just order one; it was cold, there were crowds, and the Christmas music was drilling holes in my head.

"You need to see these things in action," Susie said, as if in answer to my unspoken question. "And they've got models I've never seen before — what if the perfect toy for Katie is one we've never experienced?"

"How different could they be?" I mumbled under my breath. Luckily, Susie didn't hear me over the assault of Christmas cheer all around us.

Susie suddenly turned off the main boulevard and down a dark side street. Only a few feet from the glittering bustle, we plunged into darkness, with the ominous stone walls of old warehouse buildings looming over the narrow sidewalk. Susie didn't glance at the street signs or addresses and didn't slow her steps as she marched halfway down the block and turned into a cobblestone alley.

There was a single pink light glowing at the end of the narrow alley. As we got closer, I could see that it was a small neon sign, shaped like a glowing pink four-leaf clover, with the words "Lucky Fierce Vibes" in a curvy, playful script. Under the neon was a metal sign, illuminated by a small bulb below it, that read, "Ring the bell (if you can find it!)"

"Well, here we are," Susie said, stopping at the heavy black door at the end of the alley. She took out her phone and shone its flashlight around the door and walls and even up toward the stone window ledge above it. "But shit, where's the buzzer?"

I stood beside Susie and ran my gloved hand up and down the stone doorframe. Off to the side, I found a rounded depression, a dark nook where you might stand a little statue or flower vase.

"Shine your light over here," I said.

Susie swung the light toward my hand, and we both let out a laugh when we saw the nook. It was shaped like a vulva, wider at the bottom than the top, with graceful curves forming rich shadows within the space. I slipped off my glove and ran bare fingers along the smooth stone lips and tickled the point where the wings met at the top. That's where I found the bell — a moaning sound played from some hidden speaker, the neon sign flashed wildly, and the heavy black door opened, revealing a stone staircase leading up toward a red light bulb a storey above us.

"Nice job," Susie said, going up on her toes to give me a kiss on the cheek.

"I've had lots of practice," I said.

"Oh, don't I know it!"

I followed her up the stairs, my eyes on the tick-tock sway of her narrow hips under her skirt, and I felt my cock thickening in my trousers.

There was another door at the top of the stairs, but it swung open before Susie could reach out her hand to knock on it. Behind it was a smiling Asian girl in a blue vinyl dress and pink bobbed wig. She gave a little curtsy, leaning forward so her ample tits threatened to escape the confines of her costume, then turned on her heel and motioned for us to follow. The way her ass swung from side to side as she walked down the brightly lit hall toward a frosted glass door, I would be hard pressed not to follow her. Susie playfully jabbed her elbow into my side when it was obvious where my eyes were focused, but she seemed equally intrigued by our hostess.

On the other side of the glass door was a brightly lit bar, all polished chrome and sparkling glass, in stunning contrast to the dark and claustrophobic passage we had just taken. Neon tubes in pink and blue and yellow cast shimmering shadows on the gleaming surfaces. The shelves behind the bar were laden with bottles in all colors, shapes, and sizes; and interspersed among the bottles were dildos, upright on their bases, in an even more dizzying range of colors and shapes. Some were bent at a sharp angle, some were straight and tall like ships' masts. There were purples and golds and reds and blacks, bulbous heads like giant mushrooms and sleek silver bullets like streamliner trains. Susie smiled at me and pushed my gawking jaw closed with the tip of her finger.

"It's like heaven," she whispered.

"Welcome to Lucky Fierce Vibes," our guide said, curtseying again.

Susie said something to her in Japanese, but our guide responded with a puzzled look, so Susie shrugged and said, "We want the full tasting menu."

The hostess handed us a pair of books with shiny metal covers, "Lucky Fierce Vibes" and the clover logo laser etched in curling script. Inside were photographs of alternating sex toys and cocktails, with manga heroines and cartoon tentacles cavorting among the offerings. I found it alluring and confusing at the same time, and flipped back and forth among the colorful pages in awe.

"We offer a guided tour of our most popular toys," the hostess said, "paired with a flight of craft sake — that's our most popular experience. There are also individual toy demonstrations and signature cocktails, offered a la carte."

"What about the self-guided tour?" Susie asked, winking at the hostess. "My friend and I are looking for something special for our lover, but we can't be sure she'll like it if we don't try it out first."

"Well, with our guided tour, your experience expert will demonstrate all the features of your selection in a private room, where you can see the effects offered by each toy."

"I don't want to see the effects," Susie said, standing at her tallest with her shoulders back, "I want to feel them. How do I know your guide isn't going to pull a Meg Ryan on your most expensive model, and when I get it home, my lover gets no buzz from it at all?"

"I assure you," the hostess said, hands on her hips, "our guides are bound by the highest ethical standards. Our reputation as the premier purveyor of adult pleasure depends on our honesty and integrity." Her chin quivered a little as she said this, and her dark eyes burned with indignation.

"Back home we could try them all," Susie said, her own hands on her hips, "there were no surprises when you made your purchase."

"Susie, babe," I whispered, putting my hand on the back of her neck and my lips close to her ear. "This actually sounds like it could be fun. It's a little different, but different is good."

Susie let out a sigh and rolled her eyes, but she relaxed a little. I put my hand on her waist and she leaned into me.

"Ok, fine," she said, a gruff tone in her voice that I normally heard only if I had to make a substitution in one of her more complex vegan recipes when she came for dinner. "We'll take the guided tour, with the sake flight. We'll start with the Kiwami Ten Double Impact Vibrator, deluxe edition."

Twenty Years