The Future of Sex Page 2

  She looked up at Barnes, then up at the couples fucking on the tables overhead. On the right was a blonde on her back, her muscular partner’s strong cock sliding in and out. On the left, a brunette with small breasts pressed against the glass, straddled by her parter from behind.

  Chloe slipped from her seat and knelt before him. Her hands went to his buckle. Barnes laughed, then took her hand and pulled her upright. She stood. Her five-seven usually felt tall, but it seemed small in front of his six-foot-plus.

  “Not that,” he said. “Just tell me.”

  “Tell you?”

  “It’s like I said earlier.” Barnes sat on the edge of the table so his head was lower than hers. “Pretty is only the start. What’s left to qualify an applicant if beauty is a given? Well, good news: what’s left is you. Nobody has figured out how to use nanobots and AI to enhance a personality. I read an article the other day theorizing that eventually people would be able to download skills right into their brains. You remember The Matrix? ‘I know kung fu?’”

  “No.” Chloe felt something between embarrassment and confusion. She’d assumed she’d be having sex as some sort of tryout. She’d worn her nicest panties, which seemed classier — more O, say — than the more lowbrow tactic of nothing at all. But here she was, in a room with a handsome man, and her interview was an actual interview.

  And he was talking about kung fu.

  “I guess you wouldn’t. You’re too young, and it was shot in 2-D. But I was going to say that even if that happens, I don’t believe they’ll find a way to make boring people exciting. The good news for you is that if you’re one of those interesting, intriguing, innovative sorts of women, you still have an advantage. You waited nineteen years to start having sex, Chloe. Why? It meant something. I’m intrigued by that — by you. You won’t impress me by bending into position or sucking my cock. This is your chance.”

  “You want to know about me?”

  “You.” Barnes nodded. “What makes you special, why I should give a shit about you. I used to be a sex therapist. I didn’t improve people’s sex lives by telling them to exercise or practice new positions. I did it by teaching people to be the purest versions of who they are. By showing them how to share their most authentic sexual selves.”

  “Like Anthony Ross.”

  Judging by the way his eyes clouded, Chloe realized she’d said something wrong — maybe even insulted Barnes by implying that his life’s work was derivative. But apologizing would only draw more attention, so she focused on her confusion, letting bewilderment mask her faux pas. “You want me to ‘share’?”

  Barnes nodded, his face clearing. “Yes. What makes you unique, not just an applicant for a sex job?”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s not always sexy when a whore spreads her legs. In my opinion, it’s sexier when a shy normal girl does.”

  “So you want me to do a schoolgirl thing?”

  “I want you to do a Chloe thing.”

  “How?”

  “Let’s start with that story about your virginity.”

  It seemed like Chloe should tell him something impressive and outrageous, like the time she almost — but not quite — sucked off a boyfriend while on a skyroad. But outside of what she did at work, Chloe wasn’t that crazy.

  Why should he hire someone like her?

  “Well, I lost it to my primary school boyfriend.”

  “You went to a physical school?”

  “Yes. They have one on Voyos. My mom worked so much — and had to work away from home, obviously — that she wanted me to go to a physical school so I wouldn’t go stir-crazy.”

  “I see. So were you in love?”

  “I don’t know.”

  And still, even today, she didn’t. Truth was, Brad had nagged until she finally relented. Their first time had been unspectacular. He’d lit candles, but it wasn’t romantic. She’d sucked his cock and used a spit-slicked hand to stroke her man before letting him fuck her. But the whole thing had had such an analytical feel.

  Chloe told Barnes the story. It felt odd, telling a stranger — but if she wasn’t expected to screw him for the job, this seemed like the interview’s next most logical course.

  “So when did you do it with him again?” Barnes asked.

  “I never did.”

  “Why?”

  “We broke up. It was like the sex was the only thing holding us together. Or at least the anticipation. After we’d done it there was nowhere to go.”

  “How long had you been together?”

  “Almost five years.”

  “Why didn’t you do it earlier?”

  Chloe thought about it. Brad had asked — had begged, in fact. She’d always resisted, but it wasn’t because she was a prude, or afraid, or didn’t want to get close or be vulnerable. She had never thought about it before; it had been a fact like the sun rising to start every morning. They simply hadn’t done it.

  Now, with Barnes watching, Chloe realized that she finally knew why.

  “My mother was a sex worker. I didn’t want to be like her.”

  “And yet you’re applying for a position in an O spa?”

  Chloe shook her head. “No, not like that. I mean I didn’t want to be defined by her. I didn’t object to what she did for a living — if the law and most of society don’t object to escorts, why would I? — but I didn’t want her life’s path to be my default. My mom’s work made sex strangely neutral to me. Do you know what I mean?”

  Barnes looked up for a long minute. One of the male performers thrust hard and came inside his partner. Come dripped out, pooling on the glass.

  Barnes gave Chloe a sly smile. “I know exactly what you mean.”

  “I wanted to go into having sex with no bias for or against it. Like I’d been in a kind of sexual deprivation chamber. It was hard on Brad, and must’ve been harder because I didn’t want to explain it.”

  Barnes was still smiling as he stood, tapped the table, and made marks on Chloe’s resume. Then he slapped the table and extended a hand. Chloe, after a moment’s hesitation, shook it.

  “All right, Chloe Shaw. The odds are against you, but I’ve forwarded you for testing nonetheless. And — off the record — I wish you luck.”

  “Testing?”

  The door opened.

  Barnes nodded. “Make your next appointment with Lucia at reception. You have one chance to show O what you’re made of.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Her subject’s name was Logan.

  Chloe knew he liked his sex a little rough but would never admit it. He wanted to feign being in charge, then be rebuked. He wanted to pretend he was taking the role of a dominant partner, while being subdued.

  But explanations would ruin it.

  The encounter was about intention and meaning. If Logan told a partner he was seeking denial, he’d be setting an expectation — and the girl, if she was good and getting paid, would rise to meet it. This would be tantamount to putting on a show, and Logan didn’t want someone to fake it. He wanted the real thing. He wanted to pretend he was in charge and being denied, and wanted it all to happen organically.

  Logan didn’t want to hire a girl to please him. He wanted to find a girl who, on her own, acted precisely as he desired.

  Chloe could see all this in the way he moved, acted, held his steely blue eyes upon her. Most girls would have missed it. Chloe could see that in his eyes, too: a reluctance, because disappointment was inevitable. He’d been failed before. The knot of conflicting emotions and desires inside him were an endless tangle of games and puzzle boxes. No one could unlock them without asking for guidance and still get the details right.

  Except for Chloe.

  She could read him by the way he circled the specialty O device in the center of the otherwise empty room. He was feinting, waiting to see how Chloe would respond to his faked dominance. Would she submit? Or would she see him as a challenge, and balk?

  Chloe could read Logan by the way h
e looked down as he undressed, his hands slow on the buttons of his starched blue shirt. Another feint; he was pretending to be shy, wrapped inside a farce of wanting to undress himself and rob her of the power that came with doing it for him.

  Logan wasn’t shy. He was watching her watch him, watching her assess his apparent shyness. Chloe intuited that the correct move would be to cross the room, take over the removal of his clothes, and persist a tad forcefully when he resisted. Again: a fantasy of himself in control, with Chloe’s role being to shatter that fantasy. He craved want before denial. And there, in that crevice, Chloe would find what he truly desired.

  And oh, the things his clothes told her.

  Logan’s shirt was custom-tailored with buttons on the left. For over a century, that had been a hallmark of women’s clothing, but he’d had this shirt made that way because he was left-handed. But that was interesting too, because Logan now reached for her with his right hand, and cupped her breast, snaking his fingers down the smooth skin of her belly and into her panties. He’d trained himself to work with his right hand as the dominant one, something that spoke volumes about his childhood. Logan had spent a lifetime hiding who he really was — yet he wore his true self, in that lefty-tailored shirt, for all to see.

  “I need you to fuck me,” Chloe said.

  “It’s what I’m here for,” he replied, as if doing her a favor.

  Chloe had been given her choice of wardrobe, and had made her selection before getting a chance to read her trial client. She’d chosen something irritatingly generic — it wouldn’t neatly fit anyone’s fantasies but would be generally pleasing to any straight man.

  She wore a pale pink bra and panties, trimmed with lace, scooped and low in the front. Over this was a long, sheer white robe so thin it had to be a new synthetic. She hadn’t bothered to do much with her hair; Barnes’s emphasis on being herself still rang in her head. She wore little makeup and had used the few items of clothes to enhance what nature had given her, rather than falling headlong into the role of seductress.

  Her tits weren’t enhanced — they were a moderate C cup — and were covered demurely by the bra, heaving above it with the thinnest sheen of perspiration across their tops. She’d worn heels, a clichéd staple that had never gone out style.

  Chloe approached the Rocker — a high-end O product that looked like a wooden wave with controls along one side, about which she’d been told nothing at all — and bent across it. She rolled so her back pressed against the smooth surface, then arched her body and lost the robe. She ran her palms up her front, down into her panties, feeling how wet she already was.

  “Get up,” Logan said.

  “You get up.” Chloe reached for his crotch, but he backed away.

  “Get up and strip for me.”

  “I’m not here to play games with you,” she said. “I’m here to fuck.”

  Chloe had said that just right. She could see him respond, see the bulge of his thickening dick rising under his slacks. He’d asked. She’d denied.

  Yet her manner was sexy, implying that she’d be doing him the favor.

  The customer was supposed to be right, but that wasn’t how Logan liked it.

  “I want you to suck my cock.” But his voice told Chloe something else.

  She rose, crossing from the Rocker to where Logan stood near the door. When the door was closed, you couldn’t tell there was one. The room was perfectly circular, its walls a light gray like the room where she’d had her interview with Barnes. Knowing O, and how it always managed to stay ahead of technology’s curve, the surfaces of the room were probably Crossbrace-enabled, capturing everything she and Logan did. And if her suspicions were true, those surfaces could probably read her temperature, to see where and how she was becoming aroused.

  It wasn’t enough for an O girl to fake it. She had to genuinely enjoy having sex with her clients. So the room would hear every word — and Crossbrace AI would parse every nuance of their encounter for later analysis.

  Chloe put a hand on Logan’s chest and pushed him against the smooth, featureless wall. He pushed back, looking annoyed. But that was another feint, so she pushed harder.

  “I know you’re here for a job,” he said. “It’s your job to please me.”

  “Fuck first. Job second.” She pushed him again. “And I won’t suck your dick.”

  Logan’s dick protested the news. Chloe could feel it pushing against her naked thigh. She reached behind her back and her bra fell to the floor.

  Her tits appeared under his face. Logan looked down, unabashed.

  Chloe stepped out of her panties. She usually had a small strip of hair above her pussy, but while in the dressing room something told her to shave it. Now she was beautifully smooth, her lips swollen in a wet pucker.

  “You’re going to eat my pussy.”

  Logan reached for his pants, ready to free his throbbing cock, but Chloe slapped at his hands, her face just inches from his.

  “You don’t need that to eat my pussy,” she chided.

  “I’m in charge here.”

  “I’m the one with the pussy. I’m the one with the soft mouth. I’m the one you want to come on, and in. You are in charge of nothing.”

  Chloe took five big steps back to the room’s center and laid back on the Rocker. Contrary to its name, it didn’t rock at all. At least not yet.

  She spread her legs.

  Logan came forward. Of course he did. Nobody had ever fit his fantasies quite so precisely.

  Chloe’s lips tingled as he knelt. In her experience, it was nearly impossible to fake full-body arousal. Some of the sex dealers sold add-ons to help — sympathetic-response lubrication generators that could be installed in the vaginal walls like nozzles in a car wash, vasodilator nanos in sensitive areas that would cause the right folds to blush and swell — but in Chloe’s mind, genuine arousal was easier and more enjoyable. If she was going to fuck a man anyway, why pay an enhancement dealer good money to fake excitement? Why not get excited instead?

  It seemed so obvious. Yet all it took was a quick search of the Crossbrace network to find page after page filled with prostitutes discussing the best ways to seem wet for their johns. The only method they never mentioned was getting horny.

  “Use your tongue,” she said.

  Logan extended his tongue and ran it up Chloe’s wet length, lapping her clit.

  She leaned back and exhaled, her eyes closing.

  It was only one lick, but suddenly it was all she needed. Logan made another circuit, moving down and around, using only his tongue to find all of her sensitive areas. He lingered on her clit, rubbed it with wavelike motions of his tongue, then delicately sucked.

  Rockets blasted along the length of Chloe’s spine.

  Now she wanted something more.

  Chloe sat up on the Rocker, her back curving into a C as Logan lapped at her pussy, his mouth open and breath getting heavy. Her asshole puckered as her entire pelvic floor rolled into spasms.

  She looked at the Rocker. There were a series of controls along one side — and a few of its functions suddenly seemed obvious.

  O was known for its toys, for its cutting-edge eroticism, for its radical uses of technology to enhance pleasure. O’s tagline was “The Future of Sex.” So although Chloe had never seen the Rocker, she thought she knew how it must work.

  She pushed a button on the right, near the side. A section of the wood between her legs became like liquid, then poured upward and semi-solidified into something resembling a large coat hook. She felt sure the protrusion was only a starting point. O made dildos and other insertion toys, but this was from their top line — likely either used exclusively in spas or a prototype that hadn’t yet made it to market.

  Chloe asked herself: What would O, the company that was boldly deciding the future of sex for everyone else, use their R&D specialists to develop?

  “Move,” she told Logan, pushing him down further.

  She slid onto the protrusion, its
curve fitting neatly into her pussy as she laid back on the Rocker.

  “Fit it to me,” she ordered.

  Logan reacted without thinking, pressing a second button near the first. Too late, his eyes flickered up, as he realized what she’d said — and what he’d done.

  Logan wasn’t a client at all. He worked for O, and knew exactly what the device did and how it functioned. He was already trying to pretend she hadn’t surprised the truth from inside him, but his face was her evidence.

  “Now the nanobots.”

  Logan wouldn’t be fooled twice. “What?”

  O had pioneered too many advancements in sexual nanotechnology for the device to be missing nanos. Chloe pawed around until she found a reservoir where it would logically need to be, at her left hand, and removed a cold cylinder that looked like it might hold compressed air.

  She shoved it into Logan’s hand. “Spray it on me.”

  “What is it?”

  “Do it. I’m going to come.”

  And she was.

  The protrusion was molding and changing inside her, making long, slow waves, vibrating in a hypnotic — one might say rocking — sensation.

  A faint scent of burning ozone suggested working nanos around the protrusion inside her. They tingled from the inside, talking to the nanos on the outside, because a girl needed her clit tickled as well.

  Logan sprayed the substance on Chloe’s pussy. The nanobot-infused liquid touched her clit — millions of microscopic robots working in tandem, from the inside and out, shaking and massaging Chloe as the protrusion thrust, exploring her like something alive, like nothing she’d ever felt.

  Chloe had read about lovers who seemed to know her better than she knew herself (though she’d never actually had one that good), and the Rocker was like having a hundred such lovers at once.

  The bots seemed to scan her nerves, to know exactly what she needed to feel. They raised her to the edge, then tipped her off.

  She came hard, bucking on the Rocker, gripping the shaft with her wet pussy. The device moved with her, yielding when needed, bending when required, keeping her full and giving her hungry muscles something to grip.