Iona stepped away from Dante. She couldn’t give him a taste of rush without getting one herself, so she was feeling dizzy from artificial happiness. The feeling disgusted her, but she had been given a stockpile of the stuff from a former model who pitied her and believed that it would give her the edge she needed to escape the tyranny of modeling. That model had felt very different from Iona, but she hadn’t had corporate contracts, so her situation had been more complex.
As it was, Iona had been trying to get rid of the stuff since she had originally been given a thousand doses. Usually, she laced drinks with it when she was entertaining guests for the company and only in seedy places like the Crater. That way she could claim someone else smeared it on the lip of the cup.
In any case, she had done what she’d set out to do with Dante. Although the whole thing was less exciting than she hoped it would be. Gage had warned her that he was better looking than Dante and that if she compared the two of them, he'd have the edge. That was one of the reasons why he said he had to cover his face. It didn’t help though. Iona had seen Gage recently and the memory was more than convincing. Gage was better.
Dante had even been on his best behavior and Gage still outshone him something fierce. It wasn’t their faces or their bodies. Gage was a better man inside. Iona had to remind herself that Gage was part of the industry that sold people off. It was voluntary but voluntary in name only. People did things they didn’t want to do all the time because they disliked both choices but chose the lesser evil or the bigger reward.
Her life had once been like that too and she would do anything to stop her life from reverting to what it was before she was a model. With a contract on her side, she felt like she had some power. It wasn’t the kind of power the buyer had, but it was something, and no job lasted forever.
Putting some space between her and Dante and their kiss, she wasn’t sure how effective her little act had been. It was hard to tell when she was forbidden from turning around to look at his face. Now that she was walking away from him, had he forgotten all about her? Was he back with Georgina and the others? Or was he still watching her? What was the look on his face?
She didn’t mean to, but she turned to get a peek anyway.
It was more than luck that Gage was behind her to block her view. The metal of his gloves against her elbows two at a time kept her body moving forward toward the stage.
“Have you taken rush before? Is that why you’re babying me? You’re worried I’ll fall forward?” she whispered, knowing that he would be able to hear her.
“I’m worried your boy will see you at less than your best if I don’t block his line of sight. Not only that, but the choir boy with the eight pack has almost finished his set and you’re up next. I don’t want you to be tipsy. The gravity is less here than on Earth, so you’re less likely to fall. At least, I thought you were less likely to fall before you took a half dose of rush.”
“I’m not going to fall,” she replied firmly.
“Breathe harder. Big deep breaths in and out. You can breathe your way out of a rush dose if you breathe hard enough and you need to be at your best.”
She followed his advice as they went back behind the stage. Frikzen met them and Iona went over the movements of the acrobatics she planned to perform before the show. Gage had made her go over them with him numerous times back on the Cannonball III, not just listening to her explain what her show would look like, but almost going through the motions with her.
The singer finished his last song and got applause from the audience before the MC came on the stage and made a few jokes while the set was changed.
“Tonight we have a special treat for you. Long ago, Iona Stirling won the crowd right here at The Crater with her spontaneous acrobatics. She’s on break from Sleeping Beauty Inc. and Excalibur Helocarriers and she has a great act planned. Everyone get out your recording devices. You’re going to want to prove you were here when this act goes viral.”
Iona winced at that, but that was the sort of world she lived in. If only she didn’t still feel like she was going to fall over. She breathed heavily as Gage instructed.
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“Welcome her! Iona Stirling!”
The crowd hooted and clapped for her and she parted the curtain and stepped onto the stage. She went to center stage and bowed while the rings and aerial silks were lowered. She straightened and the music began.
The first thing she had to do was remove the dress she wore over her costume. She called up a man from the audience. She specifically chose someone who stood a few paces from Dante. She even had the gall to look Dante in the eye for a moment before she chose someone else. The man came up and she made a silent show of how she needed help undoing the buckles at her hip.
He must have been very experienced in undoing clothes as he had her unbuckled faster than the music had tempo for. Playfully, she tossed him off the stage and threw her dress off her shoulders, which she then threw in the face of the man who had helped her.
Her costume under the wrap dress was the one Gage swore would be the best. It was black and pink and she looked much more naked than she actually was as most of the outfit was made out of stretchy fabric made to imitate skin. It cut high up the legs with huge amounts of tulle that flared at the small of her back and gave the impression of tail feathers. The front was pink glitter from her waist to where her legs parted. The glitter went all the way back, which would look amazing when she did the splits between the silks and rings. The black of the outfit was a black sash around her waist that faded as the bodice became pink satin. She finished the outfit with a black velvet choker.
She felt perfect as she did two cartwheels to land next to the ring she planned to mount. She landed them like a champ, but when she sat like a bird on the perch of the ring and it went up, she was suddenly accosted with a wave of motion sickness.
That never happened to her. She was dizzy. She was faint, but she tried to go on with her performance.
She lifted herself further up so she was no longer inside the hoop, but above it. She clenched her fingers around the chain and went up into the air.
Iona was never able to explain what happened when she got to the top of the stage. She saw white–white lights. She saw black–something inside her shut her eyes without closing her eyelids. She was falling, though she was not screaming. She was used to falling in a way a normal person was not. Instead of panicking, she reached out and her hand caught the silk that was made for bearing her weight. She was swinging though she could not see the hand that caught her.
She let go of the silk because she trusted the touch implicitly. She was encircled in arms she trusted, hands that touched her carefully. She was bent over his knee and he was kissing her. The last of the rush was licked off her lips and she suddenly came to, her sight returning to her.
Gage was under her and on top of her. He wasn’t wearing his armor and instead, he was dressed as if he had always meant to go on stage with her, wearing athletic black pants, no shirt, and a black blindfold over his eyes. Of course, it wasn’t a normal blindfold and its greatest function was to cover his face. He could see her perfectly.
“Did you take a double dose?” he asked, breathing out the ecstasy that was rush onto her face.
“I didn’t mean to, but I must have,” Iona murmured.
The crowd had clapped for Gage’s catch of Iona, but it was a little hesitant because they weren’t sure if that much danger had been part of the act.
“You have to finish. I’ll help you,” he said, lifting her up and giving her a little twirl.
She got back up on her ring and Gage climbed a silk hand over hand to catch up with her as she went up and up. She brushed fingertips with him as he stretched out to touch her.
As he accompanied her through the dance, she wondered how he was so steady on his feet with all that rush so recently in his system. Like his body, which was so perfect, so were his movements. Had he been a pole dancer in a previous life? Had he joined the circus? He caught her twice and threw her up in the air like she was a bird that could take flight if he got her high enough in the air.
At the end of the routine, he put her directly on the extended stage and straddled her. For a second, she realized that was what she had wanted when she marked all those crazy boxes on their contract. She wanted to be this close to him.
The lights went out and she wanted to disappear with him.
As it was, he hopped off her when the lights were off and returned to the back of the stage.
She got up too and when the stage lights were back on, she was alone on the stage, bowing in front of the audience.
They screamed and hollered. The fuss was more than it had been when she had performed before. The fuss was more than she had ever had on her own and Gage was gone. She knew he was behind the curtain tightening his armor.
She found Dante’s eyes in the crowd and blew him a kiss.
She didn’t think about the dress she had discarded and instead bowed three more times and joined Gage backstage.
Around the corner, the man she had danced with was gone, and instead, her blue and silver clad bodyguard was all that was left. He led the way for her to exit the building and taking an odd escape route through the pink stone palaces, they were soon safely back in the Cannonball III.