The Future of Sex Read online

  Parker took a step toward Olivia.

  Alexa raised her hands, urging them back. “Parker, you knew the criteria,” she said. “You knew her inexperience would be a deal-breaker. We’re obligated to hear applicants who are legacies from current or past employees, but it should have been a formality. You thank her for coming, tell her she’s too young and doesn’t know enough, then send her back to the tables. If she’s especially engaging, you invite her back in a few years. You keep tabs. What you don’t do is send her up, because that only added a variable that never should have been there. You confused the situation.”

  “Regardless of whether she should have been tried or not, she was … and now we have to deal with our discovery.” Charisma stared at Olivia. “Which, I’ll remind you all, is something we’ve literally never seen.”

  Olivia and Houston opened their mouths to object.

  Alexa raised her hand for quiet. “Okay. Quick vote. Who says we cut her?”

  Olivia and Houston raised their hands.

  Alexa had lowered hers after getting the group’s attention but now raised it again. “And who says we bring her back for a second interview?”

  Benson, Charisma, and Parker raised their hands. Parker’s was almost shaking; his eyes were wide and defiant.

  “Three to three. Told you we should’ve formed the Seven.”

  Benson barked laughter.

  Alexa inhaled, looked around the conference table, then slowly exhaled. “All right. I guess it won’t hurt to bring her in again. But just so we all understand, the burden of proof is heavily upon Miss Shaw. If she doesn’t do something that turns at least one of our nays to a yay, that’s it. Right now, I can’t imagine what she’d do … but we’ll give her one shot to find out.”

  Olivia sighed. Parker beamed.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The man in the dark blue suit eyed Chloe like meat. “Do you know how much I’m paying to be with you?”

  Sitting on the bed, she shook her head.

  “Nothing. You’re a freebie.”

  The man paced a half-moon around her, raising one arm and then the other to remove an expensive-looking pair of cufflinks. He’d grown up poor. He’d made his fortune himself. But he’d done it before the NAU, before Mexico and Canada had merged with the US, before the parties had formed. So while he’d done things a modern-day Enterprise member would do, he’d done them back when such a person was called a “capitalist.”

  Chloe could see it all, read it on his face and in his eyes and in the way he used his hands. A huge percentage of what a person said was communicated nonverbally, but Chloe had realized long before that she could read those silent words as if they were written on one of the screens above the city.

  The man removed his jacket, draped it over a chair, then peeled off his tie before methodically unbuttoning his shirt.

  “You’re so damn green, that they let me ride you for free. Usually, a fuck at a place like this will set you back a hundred thousand credits or more. They don’t want me angry, see. They figure I’ll accept a fuck as a fuck, and won’t be pissed off if you’re terrible because I didn’t pay. What they don’t understand is that for someone like me, a hundred thousand credits is a squirt of piss. I want to pay, because I know I’m getting something worth paying for. Someone poorer might clip coupons for pussy. But time matters so much more to my life than money. If you’re terrible, I will be angry, and resent O for insulting me with their little perk … a perk of someone not ripe enough for prime time.”

  The man had an older sibling, probably a brother, who had bullied him mercilessly. He’d never had a girlfriend growing up, but had desperately wanted one. At least one girl had laughed at him in public, and Chloe had a sneaking suspicion he’d peed his pants (again in public) when she did. This event had earned him an insulting nickname that had followed him until he was maybe eighteen.

  And, despite looking thirty, the man was at least sixty-five. Chloe could hear anachronisms and vocal inflections which belied his age. He looked around a room like a man who has spent far longer than three decades looking around rooms. Older men knew they were mortal, regardless of whatever insanely expensive rejuvenation treatments they’d been able to buy, and that awareness appeared in the way they took steps and absorbed their surroundings.

  His arms and chest were cover-model lean and his face was handsome, but despite appearing totally natural, Chloe could tell it was all the work of nanobots. His muscles were too new; they lacked the subtle appearance of muscle maturity that a man of even thirty should have. His arms were too big for his mind; he used them like they belonged to someone else.

  He was putting up an excellent front, but was transparent to Chloe. It was ironic that she was applying for a job at O, which had built its fortune on knowing more about its customers than anyone else … because Chloe, without the help of a computer network, could do exactly that, same as always.

  She stood, spanned the room, and leaned with her arms crossed against the far wall. The man had his shirt entirely off and was unbuckling his pants. He watched her until his pants were gone, then stood opposite her and waited, his firm body clad in boxers and a pair of black socks.

  She could read Parker Barnes, too, and understood the precise demeanor of those watching her. She knew what was at stake, and that no one expected her to succeed.

  There was little she could do to make things worse, so she rolled the dice.

  “You live alone,” she said. “You had a wife once; I can tell by the way your left thumb keeps going to your ring finger. She didn’t die, and you didn’t leave her. She left you. And judging by your reaction now, she left you in a way that you found both embarrassing and traumatic. She found another lover. He was …” Chloe paused, assessing. Then she had it. “A friend of yours. Someone you’d known forever. And even after this man took your wife, who you thought you loved but who you neglected in favor of work, you tried to remain friends. Because you had no one else. And yes, you realized at the time that it seemed pathetic. But deep down you were lost.”

  The man’s face formed a deep, ugly scowl. He suddenly looked every year of the biological age Chloe had intuited him to be. “Just who the hell do you think you are?”

  Chloe approached him. “Nobody expects me to please you,” she said, looking toward the most logical wall through which Crossbrace pickups would be watching, into the eyes of the imagined Six on the other end. “Right now, they’re considering storming in, because you’re an important client with a big mouth. But they don’t need to.”

  Chloe kissed two fingers on her right hand then touched them to the wall, imagining the arguments and chaos erupting among the watchers.

  “Because I can do things you can’t possibly imagine. Things that will make you either forget what I’m saying now or forgive me for saying them. Parker Barnes asked what I can do. This is what I can do. I can read you. I know that you’re older than you’re willing to admit. You have a least one fetish that you won’t even tell the people at O, despite their reputation for accepting any perversion.”

  The man looked shocked. Still angry, but now also confused.

  “There’s more.” Chloe closed the scant distance between them and put a single finger on the man’s broad, beautiful chest. “You are handsome, but I find you reprehensible. But it’s okay, because that’s another of the things I can do: choose arousal. Like a switch in my brain. You will love fucking me, because I will honestly beg you for more. I will get so wet that I’ll paint your face with my juices. And in the end, after I come and you come and you have to go back to being yourself, somewhat diminished for knowing I’ll never, ever touch you again, I will feel no regrets. Because I am not a whore. I fuck, and I get money. But I merely flip a switch, and it’s like masturbating. I fuck, and then I get money. I do not fuck for money. Right now, fucking you will get me what I want, so I will choose — and want — to do it. But rest assured, when this is all over, if you try getting into my pants again, I will cut of
f your cock and bury it with the rest of your artificial body. And I promise you: When this is over, the first thing you will say to me is Thank you.”

  Chloe narrowed her eyes at the wall, imagining herself staring into the eyes of the watching Six. She smiled. They didn’t want to give her the benefit of the doubt? Fine. They’d already decided to send her off, even after she satisfied their rich client? Fine. If she couldn’t make things better, her only logical tactic was to make things worse. Because if an O girl could please a client after all that Chloe had said … well, then that girl could do anything.

  “What did you just say to me?” The man looked confused more than angry. If he was here now, he had more money and power than 99 percent of the population. It had probably been a long time since anyone had dared speak to him like that.

  Chloe reached for the man’s boxers, to the lump that had failed to rise.

  The man slapped it away. But Chloe was undeterred. She reached again. And again the man backed away.

  “I didn’t sense homosexuality in you,” she said.

  “Fuck off.”

  “Except for that one time.”

  The man was already reaching for his pants. “You will never work for O again. In fact, you will never work again. I have friends who can interfere with your Shift, too. Right now, you’re looking for a cushy job with O, and that would put you in Directorate with a fixed dole. Everyone knows that’s normally the party for suckers, but in this case it’d actually be good, because your dole would be so high and you’d be secure for as long as you had it. But we can push you into Enterprise, where you’d have to make your own way, sink or swim. It’s what I did. But a whore like you? You’ll starve in a week without support.”

  Chloe pushed her client back onto the bed. He had one leg in his pants, so his feet tangled as he staggered backward. The bed caught him, one limb tied in his slacks and the other free.

  “Oh, come on,” she said, pouting. “A whore like me? I’ll always be full.”

  Her hand was back on his cock. In betrayal of the man’s anger, it filled with blood beneath her touch.

  “Or maybe I have what I need to get what I want from anyone,” she said, still rubbing. She knelt at the edge of the bed and, her breath close to the hole where his cock threatened to spring through, let her long, slim fingers trail up and down the insides of his legs, kneading his bulge like dough. His fleshy hood began to peek out; she touched it absently, as if by accident. “Maybe all men are, at root, weak. Maybe you all put on a front, but will sell your nearest and dearest for a fine piece of ass.”

  “I’ve had the best pussy money can buy,” said the man, lying back on the bed, legs hanging off its edge near Chloe.

  She stood. He didn’t move, despite his anger.

  “Yes,” she said. “But I’m free.”

  “Because you’re worthless.”

  She turned, ass to him. Her small dress — a shiny blue synthetic fabric, almost like thin leather — was all one piece, and she wore nothing beneath it.

  “Worthless is such an ugly way to look at a transaction where no money is exchanged.” Chloe started to unzip, turning her head to glance at him over her shoulder. “It’s better to see it as a transaction in which I will almost certainly receive nothing, yet am willing to do terrible things to you anyway.”

  Chloe’s zipper reached its bottom, near her navel. She reached one hand up, her back still to him, and slipped the garment from her left shoulder. Her other arm followed, tumbling her breasts into the chill air and stiffening her nipples.

  She stood facing away from him, the small dress bunched at her waist like an after-shower towel. She crossed her arms over herself, and caught him looking at the long smooth curve of her back, all willing flesh from ass to neck.

  “You worthless cunt,” he spat. From the corner of her eye, Chloe could see he’d risen to full attention. Men.

  Especially powerful men — who, more often than not, were measuring dicks when they balanced their credit accounts.

  “What’s your name?”

  “You can call me Sir.”

  Chloe turned, unfolded her arms, then bent at the waist and slipped his dick into her mouth. It was huge and throbbing between her lips. True to what she’d said, Chloe felt her pussy getting wet. If she was going to do this, she might as well enjoy it. Anything else was supremely illogical.

  She pulled his cock from her mouth. “I won’t call you Sir.”

  “You aren’t worth my time. You’re just another girl, same as the rest.”

  “Your cock says otherwise.”

  “It has a mind of its own,” said the man, managing to crack a small, non-sinister smile. Then the scowl was back, strangely arousing to Chloe now that her juices were flowing. He had an excellent body and a dick to go with it — all surely enhanced, but it didn’t matter when such beauty was entering your lubricated body. “Don’t worry. I can override it.”

  Chloe put the head between her lips again, then ran her tongue around the ridge without removing her mouth. She touched a particular spot on one side, and he responded in the minutest way — probably a sympathetic nerve cluster. That sometimes happened with nano enhancement; native nerves re-grew in new places as the manufactured tissue was built, especially when such work was done around the groin. Doctors jokingly referred to it as “Frankenpenis.”

  The man’s reaction was perfectly subtle, but Chloe saw it immediately. He liked attention there, and had probably never fully received it. And while a powerful man such as Mister X wouldn’t hesitate to tell a girl what to do, he’d stop short of requesting anything that made him vulnerable.

  Again: men. They’d ask to be whipped, but somehow felt that wanting a favorite spot treated delicately was beyond mention.

  But if a girl could find it? Well. She could rule his world.

  “You don’t want to override your cock today,” said Chloe, stroking slowly, lubricating the man’s member with his pre-come, applying pressure to the hot spot with every stroke.

  He swallowed.

  “What’s your name?” she asked again.

  “Falteroy.”

  “Your first name, baby.”

  “That is my first name.”

  Chloe almost laughed. It explained so much. “That’s not what your friends call you,” she purred.

  Falteroy, who had a name that would earn a kid six wedgies before lunch, looked suddenly shocked. Of course his friends (such that he had any) didn’t call him by his loathed official handle. Only his mother called him that. Right now, he’d be wondering why he’d given the whore his name.

  Chloe knew why. To put a finer point on it, she had used a finger of her other hand to rub the dime-sized spot between his balls and ass, like he secretly loved.

  “Falls,” he said, his angry demeanor diminished. “They call me Falls.”

  With both of her hands still working, Chloe put her lips to the tip of his dick and whispered, “Falls.”

  His head had tipped back. He looked up.

  “Only a man much older than you appear would let a woman he was going to fuck see him in boxers with black socks pulled all the way up. It’s giving you away.”

  “What?”

  Her hands were getting cramped in his boxers’ small dick hole, so she yanked hard at the fabric until it ripped, then began to wrangle them off.

  “Those are imported silk!”

  “Shh.” She licked his cock again, right at the good spot.

  Chloe stood and then, while Falls watched, reached down and pushed her dress to the floor. The full lips of her pussy kissed the cool air. Once her body adjusted she felt the burn again, her lips blushing red. She stood tall, her firm C-cups high and engorged by excitement.

  Chloe felt something like tumblers, unlocking something inside her. Each sensation, attitude, pleasure, and desire seemed to slot into place. It was important to collate and categorize your feelings — you had to put everything into boxes so you could measure each before diving into a
nything headlong, releasing lust and pleasure in desired proportions.

  You couldn’t lose yourself if you wanted to stay in control.

  Chloe had learned from a pro. Her mother had drawn a sharp line between work and play — tricky when the two were so similar. She’d explained it to Chloe — describing how, for an escort, it was vital to split sex into piles: physical and emotional. Most escorts disassociated entirely over time, forever keeping the piles separate. The healthier way to do things was to cross-pollenate — and stay fully conscious of when they did. You couldn’t just fuck a guy and let your feelings get away from you. But you could fuck a guy … then decide if you wanted emotions to enter.

  It’s like baking, in a way, Mom had said. An amateur buys a cake mix and sees what it makes. But a pro will buy her sugar and flour and baking powder and salt separately, and mix them precisely, as needed.

  And maybe, in the end, that had been what had gone wrong with Brad. He’d wanted to fuck, but Chloe had thought she might love him. That created a problem: her first time, per her mother’s suggestion, needed to be dispassionate. It would be a confusing mistake to experience sex and love together at first — akin to mixing flour and sugar into something she couldn’t separate later. She had to experience sex fresh, without emotional entanglement, so she’d recognize it in its pure state.

  Chloe had to know sex and love separately, before she could blend them.

  But at nineteen, she’d no longer been able to hold Brad off. So they’d done it anyway, and she’d kept it as mechanical as possible, always planning to try again later — once more, with feeling.

  But that first time had doomed them, and that had been that.

  Chloe continued to suck, her lips and tongue intuitively following the man’s tiniest cues. He was already hers. She could see his eyes closing, his mouth starting to open. He reached down and grabbed at her tits. She allowed herself to enjoy the sensation. Very carefully, Chloe allowed herself a memory of Brad, who had done the exact same thing that single time they’d made love. She told herself Falls’s hands belonged to Brad. She felt her wetness, wanting the man to fill her.