Gage was back in the pilot chair in the cockpit of the Cannonball III. Through the flight deck windows, he saw Callisto floating like a piece of jewelry on the throat of the universe. The moon was stone gray with tiny points of light all over it. Originally, all those lights had been white, but with the colonization of Callisto, some of them now shone pink and yellow. The view almost murdered him with its beauty.
On the way back to the ship from The Crater, he had unconsciously licked his lips so many times that he’d made them sore. He had some stuff he could put on them in the infirmary if he was proactive enough to get off his butt. Except he wasn’t feeling proactive. If he got up, he’d pass Iona’s room and he knew she’d want to debrief with him before he put her to sleep for the trip to Europa. He didn’t want to talk to her yet.
He wasn’t ready when she came into the cockpit, wearing a white satin housecoat and wooden sandals.
He swiveled in his chair to face her. “What did you think of Dante?” he asked in a dull voice.
“Ah… he was how I remembered him,” she said noncommittally.
“Hmm. I’ve never heard you talk the way you spoke to him before. Is that your secret for earning the big bucks? You talk to the men in that little girl voice that makes each man feel like he’s the biggest man in the room because you’re so little and feminine? He has to be smarter than you? Stronger than you? He’s the man and you’re nothing more than an accessory to his vanity?”
Gage made his accusations and glanced at her. She was smiling. She had skin as thick as dragon scales. She was proud of her little deception and her ability to let whatever terrible thing was happening roll off… even his insults.
She giggled. “It’s worth a lot of money to make someone else feel like they’re in control. I have to thank you for what you did tonight. You were heroic!”
“Your act won’t work on me,” he said coldly, swiveling out of her sight. “I’m not like those guys. I don’t need to be in control.”
She came around and leaned against a bare panel in the controls of the ship and looked earnestly into his face.
He caved and told her his side of the story from earlier that night. “You had clearly taken too much rush. Either you accidentally took a double dose, or you didn’t give Dante enough when you kissed him. Whatever happened, you were still taking it when you went onstage. I would have kissed you before you went on if I hadn’t been wearing my helmet. I got changed and hoped I wouldn’t cause a ruckus if I had to catch you. It seemed like it went pretty smoothly.”
“It went very smoothly,” she said softly. “Thanks for kissing me. You never slip me the tongue when you wake me up. It was awesome. Can you…”
“No. I cannot slip you the tongue when I wake you up on Europa. Putting your tongue in someone’s mouth when they’re waking up from cryostasis is revolting. Buyers are warned not to do that in the manual issued by Sleeping Beauty Inc.”
She slipped her foot out of her sandal and rubbed her toes against his boot laces. “Can you slip me the tongue before I go to sleep?”
Gage let his head loll back. “What are you doing?”
“I’m asking for what I want. I’m not playing games,” she said, the expression on her face was earnest.
Earnestness did go a long way with Gage when nothing else went anywhere, but more than turning him on, it reminded him that she was a person. And then it reminded him he had a job to do. He still had to do her quarter physical. “Are you hurt after your tumble?”
She winced and nodded. “I’m a little hurt, here in the shoulder where I caught the silk,” she admitted.
“Okay, then we’ll go to the infirmary and I’ll work on it.” He got up from the chair and led her to the medical room.
He turned on the lights and scanned her arm. At least, she wasn’t making up her injury, which he worried she might do.
“Lie down. I’ll massage a cream into it. The cream will help you heal when you’re asleep. Take your arm out of your sleeve and lie down on the table.”
She did as she was told.
He retrieved the cream and warmed it between his fingers before placing a hand on her.
“It would help me if you could tell me why you’re rejecting me,” Iona suddenly said as she obviously found it difficult to relax.
He thought for a moment before he answered. “All my relationships have been under painful circumstances. The kind of love you’re hoping for isn’t something I know the blueprint for. Sometimes, I had to do what I was told even if it was intolerable. Sometimes, I wasn’t treated like a human.”
“Did you ever fall in love?” she asked.
“No. The only thing I ever learned about love was how to love myself. Normally, I’m really good at it. The best part about it is that I don’t take these kinds of contracts anymore. I’m only tolerating this because I like you.”
Gage’s eyes went wide. He hadn’t meant to say that. He rolled his eyes and kept rubbing.
“You like me?” she blurted.
“As much as I like anyone,” he replied drolly. “If that contract had come from one of the other girls, I would have turned it down.”
“Surely, if you like me, a little fooling around would be good for you,” she said excitedly, attempting to get up from the table and almost flashing him.
Gage pushed her shoulder down and got her back on the table. “Don’t start.” He rubbed her shoulder so well that she temporarily forgot what she was trying to talk to him about and he successfully derailed her. “Why don’t you tell me your plan for Sherman?”
“There’s nothing to that. There’s going to be a show at Sleeping Beauty Inc. headquarters on Europa. He’s going because it’s been confirmed that he’s replacing Jessica. I’m already slated to be the second girl down the catwalk.”
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“I thought you didn’t want help from Sleeping Beauty Inc.?” Gage reminded her.
“I do if it’s Sherman. I don’t want to marry him. I want to legally lift a bunch of cash off him and as you said before, Sleeping Beauty Inc. is completely happy for me to do that. He’s not the type of man who would understand a contrived meeting. He knows the deal and he’s going to the show to see what models are for rent. Have you ever been to a model show before?”
He nodded though Iona couldn’t see it. “Yeah, it’s different than a fashion show because they aren’t showing the clothes, they’re showing the people under the clothes. I’ve done a few.”
“What did you wear?”
“Mostly I was displayed in my underwear, sometimes something more like metal booty shorts, and once I was asked to walk the catwalk completely naked.”
Iona gasped. “Did you do it?”
“Yeah, but I was shocked four times for noncompliance before I gave in. I wasn’t working for Sleeping Beauty Inc. when that happened. They don’t display their models naked because they want the profit. You know, that whole idea that if you want to see up a model’s skirt, you’re going to pay for it.”
“Why did they want to see you naked?”
Gage didn’t have to answer that, but he wanted to. “They wanted to show that I was identical to the other models in every way.”
“Were you being sold en mass?”
“Yes.” His voice was quiet in the infirmary.
Abruptly, he finished massaging the cream into Iona’s shoulder and arm. He helped her up and took her through the steps of the quarter physical.
“Nakedness really doesn’t mean the same thing to you as it does to other men,” she commented as she hopped down from the table. “It’s something more precious and yet cheaper, isn’t it?”
“I suppose that’s a good way of describing it,” he said kindly.
“And if I dropped my robe right now, you wouldn’t feel like jumping me? You’d just feel sort of sad that I was giving something precious away so cheaply, wouldn’t you?”
He swallowed and looked away. “Don’t drop your robe.”
Iona fingered the edges of her white satin like she might drop the robe at any second.
Gage was about to protest when a white signal started blinking from the corner of the infirmary. “Excuse me. There’s a message in the cockpit for me.”
He strode out and Iona followed him.
“Hey, Tanya,” he said, pressing the button to open the communication link.
“Hi, Gage. I know you’re on your super hot sex romp with Iona right now, but I’ve got a girl going to Europa and it would be a huge favor to me if you could pick her up on your next revolution of Callisto, put her to sleep and take her with you to Europa. I swear she won’t be in the way and Sleeping Beauty Inc. will pay you half the price of Iona’s contract for you to take her and Iona will get a fifty percent discount on your rental price. What do you say, you two lovebirds? Can you take her?”
Gage glanced at Iona. “Hang on, Tanya. We’re going to have a couple’s meeting.” He turned off the communication link. “What do you think?”
“Will we have to see her?” Iona asked skeptically.
“Not here. If I’m picking her up on the next revolution, that means that we’ll be doing the handoff in space. They’ll put her cryochamber in the cargo hold without either of us saying hi. However, we will have to wake her up on Europa.”
“I don’t like the idea of getting a discount on you. I want to pay the highest amount for you,” Iona said stiffly.
“I’ll get more money if you say yes,” he pointed out.
“You don’t mind picking her up?” Iona snarled.
“Normally, it’s the only thing I do, so no, I don’t mind.”
Iona put a hand on her hip. “What happens to her after we drop her off? Will she try to weasel her way back aboard for our trip to Io?”
“Let’s find out.” Gage turned the communication link back on. “Hey, Tanya. Iona seems to be game, but she needs reassurance that our vacation will not be interrupted further. If we take your girl to Europa can you guarantee that you won’t ask for another passenger to Io?”
“Aw, Gage. You know I can’t promise anything like that,” Tanya whined on the other end of the line. “I’d love to, but you know as well as I do that space is unpredictable. If a spaceship blows up anywhere near you, I’ll have to send you as a rescue crew even if you’re in the middle of–”
Gage pressed the communication link button in rapid succession so Iona would hear a beeping sound instead of the end of Tanya’s sentence.
“What are you trying to do, Tanya? Kill the romance over here?”
“Sorry,” the communication specialist murmured. “It’s been a tough time over here. The only thing I can promise is that if your vacation is horribly ruined, Sleeping Beauty Inc. will provide money or time to compensate for whatever time is lost.”
Iona was shaking her head uncomfortably.
“One sec,” Gage said as he turned off the communication link. “What are you thinking?”
“I think that I’ve already let go of so many of my expectations for this trip. Not only are we not fooling around as I hoped we would, but if Sleeping Beauty Inc. is willing to pay that kind of scratch to get this girl to Europa in time for the show, she’s going to be competing against me for Sherman’s attention. What are they going to do to compensate me if she gets that big fat contract and I don’t?” She huffed out a breath and turned to Gage. “How badly do you want to take her?”
Gage didn’t care if he took the other model to Europa or not. He didn’t care about the money, but his old self was kicking in as Iona expressed her unhappiness over their contract. He couldn’t let his master feel that way about their contract.
He stood up and almost did something that couldn’t be undone. Instead, he took refuge behind an old standby. “We can do whatever you want while we wait for her to be dropped off,” he offered.
“Done,” Iona said before strolling out of the cockpit. “I’ll meet you on my bed.”
Gage frowned. That was a game he used to play with one of his old owners. The way she played it had been horrible, however, it had always made her happy and that had always made things better. Apparently, Iona liked it too because she had gotten awfully excited.
He got back on the communicator and told Tanya they’d stay and pick up the model.
“Great,” Tanya said. “It’s Cinni. Do you remember her?”
“Gobs of cinnamon flavored perfume? Reddish brown hair, brown eyes, freckles, and a dead ringer for Strawberry Shortcake?”
“That’s her.”
“Tell me. Are we picking her up so she can also be at the Sleeping Beauty Inc. model show on Europa?”
“Yeah. Did Iona put that together? Is she annoyed?”
“She’s a little annoyed, but it’s nothing I can’t fix,” Gage said coolly.
“I should save up and buy a little time with you,” Tanya said over the speaker system with a saucy click of her tongue.
Gage rolled his eyes. “Goodnight, Tanya.”
He got up from his pilot’s chair and made his way to his room. His room was not like Iona’s in that it had no bed in it. If he was going to sleep, he slept in his cryochamber. Aside from that, he had a locker that held the things he needed to make himself more presentable. He used them sparingly when he was working, but since he had temporarily signed away his freedom, he performed his checklist.
He stripped and showered. It was never much of a shower in space. It was wet air blown on him from all directions, but it helped him feel cleaner, especially his hair. When that was done, he put on fresh clothes, cleaned his teeth, applied scent, and finally got around to putting the ointment on his lips he’d been promising himself he’d apply. That was the most he had ever done for Olivine and she’d never complained.
He snapped his door shut and made his way to Iona’s room.