Natalie had arranged the tryst beforehand with Thane. Her whole idea of a swinger’s costume swap party at an inn to celebrate Halloween was to get Thane’s pants off—or in this case, his kilt off, as he had come as a Scottish bagpiper. He had such good, firm legs that Natalie had wanted to run her hands up under that kilt to check out the “do they or don’t they?” legend as soon as he entered the door. She refrained, though, there in the hall with all of the others surrounding her, including her dopey husband. The most she permitted herself while she was whispering her directions in Thane’s ear and patting him on a nicely-rounded butt cheek was that she had some bags she wanted him to pipe when they were alone.

The logistics for the party were simple. Their swingers club had rented an entire inn for the weekend with more than enough bedrooms for their purposes and had doubled the asking price to have the inn staff disappear for the entire weekend. Natalie was in charge of arranging the pairings, and she had placed numbered buttons in four baskets: His for her; hers for him, his for him, and hers for her. The dance floor in the lounge would do nicely later in the evening for the “one for all” crowd, which wouldn’t need buttons. Even with all of these baskets, there were often hers who wanted a him and him and there were a whole lot of hims who would prefer a her and her, but, as usual, these folks would be left to make their own arrangements.

Theirs were a very civilized club and didn’t force anyone to pair up with anyone who didn’t attract them, although they were a very picky club too, and hadn’t included anyone who wasn’t extremely attractive in their membership. Most of the enthusiastic partygoers this weekend had made sure they would be attractive by going with a minimum and/or provocative costume choice. The first part of the evening was devoted to dancing and swirling about to the tune of an all-girl’s band, decked out as cat women with their perky rouged-nipple breasts exposed. Natalie herself had gone to great pains to find and audition the band, and had spent several hours monitoring their practice.

During this early evening time of testing and “shopping,” couples would match buttons, make determinations, and either take a room key off the desk in the front lobby and get on with the pleasure of coupling or trade buttons in the baskets to test their luck in enhancing their pairing. If they went with the shared key, they could withdraw from the party with their matching number for as long as they wanted—returning and depositing their buttons in the baskets again as they pleased when their time upstairs was finished.

Natalie, of course, had circumvented the system that she herself was supposed to be monitoring. She had kept a button for herself and had slipped Thane the corresponding numbered button when he had entered the inn. He had palmed this when he ceremoniously dove for a button in the appropriate basket. The two of them then went through an elaborate search of the party room for the one with the matching number, feigned great surprise when they matched numbers, and pretended to spend some time deciding whether each was acceptable to the other. Well, in fact, they barely managed to contain themselves for thirty seconds before they were in a clinch on the dance floor and she was discovering that something under the kilt was very large, cylindrical, unsheathed and throbbing and he was discovering that at least this ice skater-for-the-evening used very flimsy, moistened material under that flouncy butt-twitcher of a skirt she was wearing.

Natalie and Thane were still in a clutch when the band broke for a break and the two of them agreed that they had established their right to be paired off and headed for the lobby. They selected a key and were checking the room number, when one of the band members pulled Thane aside and started talking to him about some sort of problem with the sound system that they assumed was his responsibility to get fixed. Thane waved Natalie on her way, saying he’d be up as soon as he’d sorted this inconvenience out.

Natalie went on to the room, stripped off her skating outfit, and sat on the edge of the bed, facing away from the door, her attention arrested by the setting sun behind the mountain she could see through the bedroom window beyond the balcony.