Chapter Two
Sleeping Beauty Inc. was completely within its rights to send Gage a contract of this nature. He was under a contract with them himself. Like Iona and the other models he transported, he spent quite a lot of time asleep in a cryochamber. His sleep was a little different than the others as he was not quite a dead sleep the way theirs was, but it put a hold on 95% of his aging while he was inside and gave him the flexibility he needed to continue working in space without wasting his life between jobs.
Like Iona, he had a corporate contract where he was merely hired to do a job. For the time being, he had a contract with Sleeping Beauty Inc. until he turned 30. When he was awake long enough that his body was 30 years old, they would renegotiate his contract. However, there was nothing that stated he couldn’t accept another contract at will if the right one came along. He was twenty-eight.
Looking at the contract in more detail, he saw that Iona was trying to rent him and the Cannonball III for ninety days of sexual fulfillment.
Nothing sounded less natural to Gage than that proposition. His relationship with Iona made the request sound impossible. There had to be something about the contract that he wasn’t understanding. Possibly, she wasn’t asking him to be her partner in her ninety-day vacation. He was going to call it a vacation. Maybe she had some other partner in mind and he was just supposed to ferry them around while they experimented in her room? But as he read the contract, it was very clear that that was not what the contract was describing.
She was requesting sex with him. There were boxes she had checked that outlined what he had permission to do to her. He knew the form. She didn’t have to write out the sexual acts herself. She only had to check the ones she was interested in. Gage had seen many of those forms before. Iona had checked a lot of boxes.
He slapped himself across the face. There had to be something about this that he didn’t understand. He started at the top of the contract and read every word like a primary student who was reading in front of the class. Reading it that way helped it make a lot more sense. Now it sounded like what she wanted was merely a guaranteed break from work and she was using the pretext of hiring him as a way to safely get one according to Sleeping Beauty Inc.'s work standards. But if that were true, why had she checked so many boxes?
He huffed his breath and left the cockpit. He didn’t want to have a conversation about the contract with her when she was in her bedroom, but he also was in no mood to wait for her to wake up.
He tapped on her door lightly.
“Come in,” she called.
At the very least, he was the only other person aboard the ship, so she knew who she was letting in.
He came in.
Iona was in her sprawling bed, resting between lines of pink silk sheets. She rubbed the side of her neck and sipped on her water. Her honey-colored eyes rested on him.
“I got your contract,” he admitted, hands on hips.
She raised her eyebrows in mock indifference. “What did you think of it?”
“It left me a little confused.”
“Did it?” she said, averting her eyes. “Why?”
He rubbed between his eyes. “We’ve always been friends. You get sick every time you leave a job, so you’ve been awake with me more than the other models I transport. We chatted and shared food. I’ve always kissed you when there’s been no one to do so when you wake up and you’ve always acted like that was fine by you, but I’ve never once got the impression that you wanted me to rip your panties off with my teeth.”
Iona snorted.
“Is it funny?” he asked.
She was a professional and got control of her features immediately.
“I’ve also never got the impression that you wanted me to haul you off to the bedroom by your hair,” he said as he flicked the screen that now displayed a copy of the contract. “Is there something going on that I don’t understand?”
She sighed and the smile on her lips made his heart skip a beat. “You know everything, Gage. You’ve always known everything. Yes, that contract is not what it seems. I’m angry and I think you can help me be a lot less angry.”
“Yes, I did notice that you checked a lot of angry sex boxes, but–”
She interrupted him by waving her hands. “It’s nothing like what it looks like. Let me explain. I’m angry because I’m going to fall in the ranking during this round of bidding. I didn’t get as much attention as I normally do at the showroom this last year. Everyone there knows me and the novelty is gone. I played it safe and I took a job that would make me very comfortable. I hoped I could be comfortable and rise in the rankings. It didn’t work. I want more money.”
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Gage stared at her. She had a lot of money. She wasn’t as rich as God, but she was getting there faster than any of the other girls he transported.
“I need to do some campaigning. I want you to take me back to Callisto and help me retrieve the spotlight.”
“Wait. Explain these boxes.”
“They’re not really–”
“Explain them!” he said firmly.
After a significant hesitation, she said, “I need it to be known on paper that I’m not a prude. My reputation has sunk and if I’m not willing to do anything in bed, I won’t be able to pick up a reasonable individual buyer.”
“An individual buyer?” Gage asked, knowing exactly what that meant. It had always been true that she could make more money from an individual rather than a company. “Oh. I see.”
“Are you disappointed?” she asked quietly.
“Disappointed?” he replied quietly. He knew there were quite a few things included in the contract that he was not willing to do to Iona or any other person. Not only that, but he didn’t want anyone doing some of those things to Iona. Screw consent. No one deserved that treatment. There were very real reasons why he lived on a spaceship with no company like a celibate monk. He couldn’t quite interpret everything he was thinking and feeling. “No, I’m not disappointed. We’re friends. I wanted an explanation and you’ve given one, but I don’t understand why it has to be me or why we spent the fuel to come into orbit if you just want to go back down again. You could have gone to Sleeping Beauty Inc. on the surface to get dolled up for your campaigning. They help with that sort of thing all the time. It’s in their best interests for you to get the highest price possible. They get a cut of the money.”
“I don’t want their help on Callisto,” she said. “That was another reason for the contract with you and all those boxes. I had to make it seem like if I didn’t have at least a vacation’s worth of sex and relaxation, I’d quit, which I’m seriously thinking about doing. That’s why I need to find an individual, not necessarily a buyer. I want to get married and quit this. You know Sleeping Beauty Inc. will not like that. They don’t get pay cuts from consensual marriages, only the price of slaves.”
“You have a ton of money. Why do you have to get married?”
“It’s not just about money,” she said, calm and still. “I want more.”
Gage stroked his chin. He thought a lot of things about what she was saying, but if she was planning to get married, then the things he was afraid of for her were probably less likely than he originally imagined. Marriage, in his mind, was still an honorable estate and he believed in marriage even if he wasn’t married himself. But then he also guessed it had more to do with who she married. “Well, do you have someone in mind? Or are we just throwing a net out?”
“I have three men I’m interested in chasing. One of them is on Callisto, but the other two are not. They’re on Europa and Io.”
Gage shuttered. He did not like going to Io. Better Io than Amalthea, but still, nothing good ever happened on Io. “If we’re traveling between moons, three months isn’t a lot of time. What’s your game plan? Why me and the Cannonball III?”
“I have to get better first, but I planned on being sick. Our contract can’t start until I’m well, but if I’m not better by next weekend, that’s going to cause a problem.”
“What happens next weekend?”
“We get started.”
“Hmm…” he said, taking a step forward. He didn’t normally spend much time awake. He would normally spend three to ten days awake out of thirty. He had a little plan of his own. Aside from his models, who he pulled through time along with him, he wanted everyone he had once been connected to, to be dead. Then he’d take his money from working for Sleeping Beauty Inc. and retire to Lapetus where no one had ever heard of him.
“I still don’t quite understand why I need to be involved in this,” Gage said slowly. “If you want to take a vacation, Sleeping Beauty Inc. is pretty understanding of that. You could take a break, get a spot by the ocean on Europa and chill out. Why this hot hustle to find a husband secretly? I’m not the only way to get around and a commercial carrier would be more luxurious than the Cannonball III. Give me a reason that makes sense.”
She hesitated. “I need a friend. I don’t want to do this by myself.”
“Yeah, but you don’t normally ask your friends to sign binding agreements that allow you to electrocute them if they don’t drop their pants.”
She shrugged her shoulders and huffed. “I didn’t think those things would bother you as much as you’re claiming. I would prefer to leave the contract as it is, but if you need to curate it, then mark what makes you comfortable and we’ll go back and forth until we come up with something we can agree on.”
As indifferent as Iona looked, sitting in the bed as placid as a plant growing out of the mattress would have been, Gage had not always worked for Sleeping Beauty Inc. the way he was now. He had once been a model that had been sold. The contract between a buyer and a model existed to draw the line between what was real and what was fake. He knew it from experience, without a strict contract, someone could act like anything. What was written in the contract they signed was an undeniable statement of what they wanted.
Iona was trying to make him forget that by hiding her true feelings behind a layer of heavy indifference.
He thought about forcing her to admit what she wanted from him. If he was taking a stab in the dark, he thought it looked like she wanted to clear her head about whatever romantic inclinations she had toward him by having sex with him during her search for another man. In the end, she would leave him because there was no doubt in his mind that she would get whichever man she decided she wanted.
Was he okay with that series of events?
Actually, he wasn’t.
“Sorry,” he said slowly. “I can’t sign your contract the way it is at all. I don’t know what you know about me because we have never had the sort of relationship where we have sat around and swapped stories of how we have been abused. I have the job I have for a vast collection of reasons, but one of the biggest is because I’m not interested in being used in this way anymore. If you were in love with me and this was the only way we could try a relationship, I might be interested. I haven’t had any close friends or lovers in many years. But this… just the idea of someone using my body for their fun times makes me feel sick. I’m not your toy.”
He watched Iona exhale in a way that reminded him of someone taking their last breath, but all she did was keep her light brown eyes on him in a way that made him feel like getting away from her would be impossible if he didn’t fight hard. Eyes that soft, that beautiful, had a way of fooling a man with their form. Like many others, soon he would believe that a woman couldn’t be evil under all that beauty.