Gage and Iona were going to a nightclub on the surface of Callisto. The club was called The Crater and it was dug out of a hole in the pink light district in the city of Mitsina. The truth was that Gage would not have been caught dead in such a place if Iona hadn’t requested it. It was a members-only club, which meant that the place had no front facade. In order to find the place, you had to meander your way through a labyrinth of pink rock palaces of lesser repute than a place like Sleeping Beauty Inc., find the secret door, knock the secret rhythm, say the password, and get in as quick as you could.
Iona had visited the place on a wide array of occasions since it was one of the hot spots for the ultra-rich that she had been expected to entertain. From what Iona knew of the place, it existed more to give the rich people the thrill of visiting an underground club than that anything truly grotesque happened there on a regular basis. However, that didn’t mean that debauchery wasn’t on the menu. It just meant that it was legal.
When Gage and Iona left the Cannonball III, she had done everything she could do shy of electrocuting him to get him to wear normal clothes. However, her pleas fell on deaf ears. He wouldn’t listen and instead wore the skintight bodysuit/body armor he wore when he went to sleep in his personal sleeping chamber aboard the Cannonball.
“I never wear a space suit when I go into cryostasis. What’s with that gear?” she complained.
“Yes, it’s all fine for you, but if the ship malfunctions, you are not expected to fix it or rescue any merchandise onboard. I have to do both things and I cannot do my job properly if I’m in my jam jams.”
“Did you just call me merchandise?”
“Yep. I did.”
“Why?” she asked through tight lips.
“It’s to dehumanize you,” Gage answered without hesitation.
Iona smacked her lips together and huffed. “I’m a princess to Sleeping Beauty Inc., but I’m not a human?”
“The instructions aren’t stupid. They tell you to do it that way in every manual. For one thing, it stops pilots from being squeamish about selling girls into slavery, even if it’s temporary and voluntary. For another, it’s easier to talk about what happened aboard a vessel that was lost if you don’t say, ‘I lost the princess to the void of outer space.’ It’s much nicer to say, ‘I lost the merchandise.’ When that sort of thing happens, it’s usually not the fault of the pilot anyway.”
“I see. Well, at least you look good in that suit. Please tell me you plan to leave the helmet behind.”
Gage looked at the suit. It fit very well and it made him look good because outfits that highlighted a man’s muscle groupings were always in fashion, no matter how much time passed when he was asleep in space. It was dark silver and blue. The silver was the plates that were stiff like armor protecting his forearms, arms, pecs, hips, thighs, calves, and every other place. The black was a mesh almost like chain mail that bent at his flexible parts like his elbows and knees. It did make him look a little like a robot, but the suit wasn’t so unusual that people didn’t know it for what it was.
He grabbed the helmet.
Iona groaned. “You’re going to wear the helmet, aren’t you?”
“Only until we get back to the Cannonball III.”
“Why wear it at all?”
He started rattling off excuses in quick succession. “I’m too gorgeous. I’ll steal the spotlight from you. I don’t want to steal any prospective customers from you. I’m not taking contract offers from randos. I don’t want you to look at me. Comparing me with your prospective buyers will only ruin your resolve since I’m so much better looking than all of them. I want to look more intimidating than I would look in normal clothes. It makes you look more important to have me dressed like this. Who has a bodyguard like this?” He paused his jovial rant, waiting to see if she bought any of the excuses he had listed. “Do any of those reasons tickle your fancy?”
She let out a resigned breath. “You’re right. With that on, you look like an incredibly serious bodyguard. And you’re right again that you’re ridiculously attractive, mouthwatering even. I just didn’t know that you knew you were. You always act like you’re oblivious to your chiseled jawline and daydream blue eyes,” she said with a little mockery in her tone.
He looked at her squarely. “I’m at odds with my face, but I know I have it.”
“Don’t you like the way you look?” she asked, taking his arm between her fingers and doing up the snaps at his wrist.
Gage hesitated. “I imagine most people would like to spend some time separated from the way they look just to get some perspective. Would people still like me if I looked differently? Would I still like myself if I suddenly had a different face? How much of my love for myself is based on my face?”
Iona chuckled. “It’s not your face anyone’s looking at.” She ran a hand across the armor plate that covered his butt.
“Why stop there?” he chided. “Touch wherever you want. When I’m wearing the armor I can’t really feel it and neither can you. Does the feeling of the silver plate excite you?”
“About as much as it does to run my hand over the front grill of a brand new helocarrier.”
Gage swallowed. Doing something like that excited him quite a lot. Watching Iona do it would have probably got him going more than her grabbing his butt in his suit. Someone grabbing him didn’t do anything for him.
“Okay,” he said as he slid the helmet on.
The helmet was particularly marvelous because it was impossible for someone watching him to see which direction he was looking. That meant he could look at Iona as much as he wanted without rousing any suspicion.
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Iona was ready to go and she looked like the starlet she could have been in another life. Her pink hair was swept away from her face in a way that made sure it was out of her face, secured in a bun on the left corner of her head with ringlets spilling down far enough to brush her shoulder. Crystals and beads sprung from her messy bun and hung from metal wires above her head giving her a slight halo effect. The makeup on her face was pink and white in horizontal stripes across her face. It made the line of her black eyelashes a miracle above the striped blush.
She wore a black trenchcoat. It was covering the costume she planned to perform in. She had a pile of them she had delivered to the Cannonball III once they returned to Callisto. She modeled each one for Gage. It was not against the conditions of the contract, but Gage felt that he should have made a rule against a thirty-piece lingerie show that he was forced to watch and choose favorite pieces.
She was tempting him.
When he sat down for it, he thought that it wouldn’t turn his head. He hated the physical display of a person’s assets. It disgusted him. However, unintentionally, he had let his guard down and found that he had a lot of opinions about which outfit would work the best for Iona’s purposes. It also helped that he knew exactly which man Iona was hunting–Dante.
By the end of the exercise, Iona had been annoyed that Gage had been so businesslike about the selection and not more interested in ripping it off her. She did not need to say so. Her expression showed it all.
He had not had the nerve to say, ‘You won’t get me in bed this way. I’m not sexually attracted to traditional seduction methods. They’ve been used against me to hurt me too many times.’
Besides, he didn’t want to give her any tips.
Once they made their way through the pink rock labyrinth to The Crater, Iona didn’t bother with the front door to the club and went straight for the back doors. Once inside, she greeted the manager, Frikzen, with a smile and a handshake. He smiled back at her and parted a curtain to show her what she had come to see.
“Dante is right there. He came with an entourage of three women,” Frikzen explained.
“Should I be worried?”
“I wouldn’t be worried if I were you. Nothing in this world is more beguiling than what you can’t have,” Frikzen replied.
Iona threw off her coat and tossed it at Gage, who caught it. She was wearing an elaborate wrap dress over her costume, which she planned to remove once she was on stage. Before she began her performance, it was imperative that she pass Dante, show him what he was missing close up, and then take the stage.
Gage looked out at the club over Iona’s head. It was arranged like a traditional club from hundreds of years ago. There was a crescent-shaped bar that covered the back wall. Then there were rows of tables on a higher platform, then circular tables closer to the stage which covered a wall. The only thing that was edgy about the arrangement was the floating tables. They weren’t really floating. They were elevators in old-fashioned cages that were raised to the height the people inside desired. The people in the elevator shafts got the best views of the stage.
On the stage, there was a male performer who sang shirtless and pulled on the front of his pants to give the audience the best view of his eight-pack.
Gage swallowed. He had been forced to do that sort of thing. He’d had his pants torn to the floor more than once.
Looking at the jewels on wires on the top of Iona’s head; they made her look pure, like an innocent creature. He couldn’t help but wonder if she knew what she was getting into. It was only one performance, but people who saw these types of performances tended to want to see another. He ran his hands over his armor and felt sick at the idea of taking it off.
Suddenly, Iona took his hand in hers and pulled him forward. He went along with her. It was his job to make sure she was safe. He stiffened, let go of her hand, and followed her.
She made a beeline for Dante, her gaze elsewhere. It was Gage’s appearance that alerted Dante of Iona’s arrival.
He stepped forward, large and angular. “Iona!” He greeted her like she was an old friend.
Gage remembered that she said she used to be his father’s trainer.
Dante threw off his three other escorts with a curt nod that sent them all scurrying to the bar. Then he placed his fingers on Iona’s bare shoulder and skimmed her body with those two fingers until they were resting on the swell of her hip. Then he glanced at Gage as if to get permission to touch her further.
Gage shook his head in the negative.
Iona took his hand off her hip herself and held Dante’s hand delicately between her fingers. “How are you, my dearest one?” she asked in a voice Gage had never heard her use before.
Gage did a double take. Was that Iona who had just spoken? It didn’t sound like her. It didn’t sound like her voice, all cute and motherly, like a little girl who was suddenly taking care of Dante because his comfort was the highest priority of her mind.
“I haven’t seen you in ages,” she went on. “I’ve worried about you since the last round of bidding. Are your girls taking proper care of you?” She was alternating between tracing the lines on the inside of his palm and glancing up at his face in innocent micro peeks. “Are you properly cared for?”
Dante smiled. “They’re alright, but they’re not like you.”
“I used to work with Georgina. She’s a sweet model. You have such delightful taste in women,” Iona continued.
Her act suddenly got a lot more interesting to Gage. Iona wasn’t going to insult them? Instead, she praised them?
She continued in a rapturous little girl voice, “I don’t know the other two, but they are so beautiful. Like buttercups sitting in pearls. I love them!”
No wonder she was always sick when she got back to the Cannonball III if this was how she acted when she was working. It was so against her personality, she must have been exhausted.
Dante was whispering in her ear then, but Gage just needed to turn up the volume on his suit and he heard everything through the speakers in his helmet. “They’re nothing compared to you. When will you let me win the bidding to get you? You must know I would rather have you. Tell me what I have to do to beat out the benefits the helocarrier company gives you and I’ll let those girls go… for you.”
Iona’s eyes were pleading almost begging as she returned his greedy stare. She hooked her fingers around his neck and brought his ear close to her mouth. She whispered, “You have to bid higher.” Then she kissed him.
It was very obviously the first time she had laid her lips on his.
His reaction was sudden and spontaneous.
She had laced her lips with a drug that brought sudden ecstasy to her kiss. It was called rush. Gage knew it well. It had been used on him many times. It brought a sudden gush of happiness so intense that the happiest moments of Gage’s life had been when he had ingested a lick of it. It was the sort of thing that made him distrust happiness that wore off quickly because rush wore off very quickly. It was illegal, but they were in a place where those lines were blurred.
Iona wasn’t hoping that Dante wouldn’t realize what was happening. She was clearly hoping that he would recognize what was done and like the spunky nature of it. If she was going to win him, her plan was to attack him on all fronts.
First, she was reminding him that she was very nurturing. Second, she was giving him a taste of what she was like as a woman and how satisfying she could be. Third, she was going to get up on the stage and show him what a good trophy she could be.
It wasn’t a question of whether or not Dante would bid on her. It was a question of how much he was willing to bid.