Passion Model Read online

  Before the accident, I’d worked in one of the big plaza mansions that ringed the city. I was a personal hygiene coordinator for one of the residents, one of the wealthiest old men on the planet. I was entirely responsible for his daily body care, from running his bath at exactly the right temperature to choosing the flavor of toothpaste that would complement the day’s planned activities. Once I arrived at the job, I never had to leave the bathroom.

  I was good at what I did, and I was paid well. And more importantly, I enjoyed it. I liked Alfie Zoydman, my employer, and his fetish for fresh breath.

  I’d even, for a very short time, been married. Steve had never come to see me in the hospital. I’d received the notice from his lawyer during my recovery.

  Not a divorce notice. A dissolution notice, instead. He had every right, since I’d been declared legally dead, to dissolve our union. His claim that I was not the woman he’d married stood firm. I wasn’t. Several pounds of wire, batteries and artificial organs proved that. More than fifty percent of my body’s systems and/or parts had been replaced. I was mecho.

  Dissolution meant I wasn’t entitled to take with me anything we’d gained or created together during the marriage. That I might be left destitute obviously hadn’t bothered my former husband.

  I’d spoken to him only once since then. “I’m still the same person, Steve.”

  “No.” His voice sounded tinny through the speaker, and he refused to meet my eyes through the screen. “No, you’re not.”

  What Steve didn’t seem to realize, and his lawyer to care, was they hadn’t replaced all my organs. Some of them were still mine. Including my heart.

  Chapter Three

  I left the office still buzzing with tension. Stim-time hadn’t relaxed me enough. I needed a workout. I hopped a pedtread and mingled elbow to elbow with the crowd.

  There’s something so sensual about the crush of humanity. I don’t mean sexual, which is something else entirely. Sensual. The sounds, smells and sensations of a crowd of humans is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Before my accident and the resulting phobia of going off-planet, I’d been to a dozen different systems. I’d seen alien cultures where smelling someone is considered the highest of insults. Others where speaking directly to a stranger is forbidden. Another in which eye contact could earn you a stint in traveler’s prison.

  No matter what anybody else might say about our rudeness, our crassness, our incredibly lowbrow behavior, here on Earth, being around people is a cacophony of sensations. It’s why we’re the biggest tourist destination in three galaxies, even without the clean air, sandy beaches and resorts the other planets boast. Aliens come here to rub elbows, literally, with humans.

  Just like I was doing now. For a moment, the pedtread shuddered as somewhere along the line a crowd shifted. The vibration barely rocked any of us, just jiggled us enough so an arm nudged a back here, or a leg shifted against a thigh there. I heard a dozen different snippets of conversation all around me. Someone was wearing rose perfume.

  Roses. My fingers clutched convulsively on my bag, where I’d stashed the florb. Declan had sent me roses.

  “Excuse me.” I moved around the man standing next to me and jumped off the pedtread.

  In the second it took my feet to adjust to a nonmoving floor, I cursed under my breath. A couple passing me on the platform gave me an odd look, but I just flashed my tatbadge at them and they continued on without a backward glance. I’ve never really gotten used to how Ops are easily the most visible and overlooked people around.

  I’d disembarked a good four blocks from the spa. I looked back to the pedtread trundling past me, and its cargo of passengers, and decided I’d walk. The exercise would be good for me, and I wouldn’t risk any more unexpected thoughts of…him.

  I sidestepped the hovertaxi waiting at the curb and headed for the raised catwalk above the street. My boots clanged on the metal stairs as I climbed. The walk was only about four units above the street, but the extra height allowed a wafting breeze to hit my face as I walked.

  Below me, traffic puttered without cease and the murmur of voices from the pedtread ebbed and flowed as it moved closer or farther from my metal path. I was the only one up here. For one moment, I paused with my hands on the railing, my eyes closed, imagining the ocean.

  But only for a moment.

  When I finally reached the spa, my uniform already clung to my skin with sweat. Twenty years ago, when the city put up the anti-UV dome to keep out the cancer-causing solar rays, someone had screwed up in planning the ventilation system. Consequently, we live in a humid, sticky, artificial atmosphere. It beats waking up with melanoma, though.

  The retscan flashed in my eyes and the door opened for me. I entered another world. Air scented to smell like nothing but air greeted my nose. The temperature and humidity dropped. Only the hushed noise of slippered feet traversing the plush artigrass floor met my ears. This spa, The Mental Break, prided itself on offering its clientele something they lacked in the outside world. Peace. Serenity. A few minutes to unwind before they started punishing their bodies on the exercise machines or in the workout rooms.

  “Hello, Miss Gemma.” Jake, the door attendant, took my uniform as I slid out of it, then waited for my boots. “Nice to see you again.”

  Jake is an asex, having voluntarily undergone the operation after puberty’s hormones had settled down. It was a little unsettling to watch his eyes slide over me without his dick even twitching in response, but refreshing too. Sex is my business, even when it’s a pleasure. It’s nice to get a break from it sometimes.

  There were plenty of spas in Newcity, but I paid extra to belong to A Mental Break because of Jake, and because the spa allowed its members to compete physically instead of having only comgen programs. Today, I really needed to get some hand to hand. Work my body in a way that wasn’t sexual. Get my mind off Declan.

  “Hey, Gemma!” The petite brunette standing by one of the workout rooms waved.

  “Britney. Ready for me to kick your butt?”

  She laughed. “As if.”

  Britney is a rethead, completely into retro. Her era of choice is the 20s. Boy bands, patriotism, low-rise jeans, the works. She’d even changed her name in honor of the decade’s hottest pop princess.

  Once inside the room, she stopped laughing. Without even waiting for me to get settled, she launched herself at my back. I bent low, and she flipped over. She hit the padded floor with an “oof!”

  “Ouch.” I didn’t offer her a hand up. “That looks like it’s got to hurt.”

  “I’m just getting warmed up.” Britney leaped to her feet in a move that always astounded me, then faced off with her hands in a birdlike pose. “I’m going to get totally Neo on your ass.”

  “How many times have you seen that movie, anyway?” I matched her pose, one leg lifted, ready as if to fly.

  “Last count? Five hundred.”

  “Still go to the midnight showings?”

  She shook her head. “Nah. I ripped my Trinity vinyl pants. I’ll get a new pair Offworld next week.”

  “Don’t you ever stay home for more than two weeks at a time?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  She didn’t ask me to go with her, because Britney knew better. I gave her the move she loved to give me before she had the chance to, a little wiggle of the fingers the movie hero made before pounding its villain. “Bring it on, shorty!”

  Aided by the room’s lowgrav function, we met in the air like eagles. Her foot connected squarely with my midsection. Now it was my turn to hit the floor with a thud. Britney didn’t show mercy; she kneed me in the place my kidneys had been. Since they’d been replaced with flexible mesh filters, the blow didn’t hurt me as much as it might have someone without my enhancements.

  “Not fair!” She bounced a little on the padded floor. “You’re enhanced. How’m I supposed to beat that?”

  “You’re not.”

  We fought each other, hard, until the tim