The Beam: Season Two (52 page)

The fabric stopped seven centimeters above her knees. Thin straps and a deeply scooped neck gave a good look at her cleavage but not enough to be overtly sexual. Nothing about the dress was overt. It was subtle. It hinted at good, fast times but could have been read differently. The world had changed since her mother’s day, and women were freer to be who (and what) they wanted to be. For women like Kai, it meant the freedom to wear a borderline dress to a meeting, knowing she might be driving her appointment wild…while staying within her rights to slap him if he said something inappropriate.
 

With her non-overt, either-way dress, Kai wore tall red heels and matching lipstick. She’d pulled her dark-brown hair back into a loose ponytail that looked casual, even though it was anything but. It had taken twenty minutes to get the strays soothed and get the shaggy ends to hang just so.
 

She entered the room like a serpent, swaying her hips and locking eyes with the stranger in the suit sitting in a leather chair — real leather — with his legs crossed. His brown hair was parted and combed so perfectly, not a single strand dared to fall out of place. He had a firm, handsome jaw and sexy eyes. He looked to be in his early thirties — though increasingly, appearances meant little when determining age. As she neared, he pulled a cigarette from his lips, let it dangle from his hand on the chair’s arm, and blew out the puff he’d just taken.
 

“Is that a real cigarette?” she said.
 

Kai cursed herself, unable to believe how fully she’d shown her hand with five words after so much time spent composing herself. According to Alexa, the man was asking a lot of Kai. She would only know her level of interest after she heard him out, and until then
she
had to be the one in control, despite the handsome man’s obvious intentions.

He held the cigarette in front of his face as if noticing it for the first time, delicately squeezed between his first two fingers and thumb, cherry toward the ceiling, a fine tendril of fragrant smoke curling into the air. He turned it then looked at Kai with eyes she could have sworn were gray.
 

“It is,” he said. “One of a pilot lot of five hundred cartons. My company purchased some land in the Carolinas near what used to be Raleigh and was granted permission to plant a high-yield strain of tobacco.
Real
tobacco. Who knows? Smoking may make a comeback.” He extended the cigarette toward Kai. “Do you smoke?”
 

A trap. If anything, modern cigarettes were somehow worse than those her grandmother had smoked. And ironically, even after a cure had been found for most cancers, it was the
non
-cigarette cigarettes — the imitations smoked by middle class poseurs — that were still called cancer sticks and coffin nails.

“Of course not,” she said.
 

“Would you like to?”
 

Kai stood in front of a chair opposite the man. She kept her knees together, demure, and eased comfortably down. She said nothing.

The man turned his attention to the burning cigarette, stared at it with interest, then took another puff and let it dangle. He exhaled a slow cloud into the room, and Kai found herself succumbing to unwelcome memory. It was as if he somehow knew the scent of her yesterday and had brought the cigarette to unhinge her.

“It’s not for everyone,” he said. “In fact, now that I’m in it, I see how the industry is a fuck-you across the board — or at least to everyone who can’t afford the nanobot treatments to undo the damage real smoking causes.” He looked back up at Kai. “I see it as a fuck-you to mortality. A way of showing the world that you’re not afraid of anything because if you
can
afford the nanobots, you can’t die.”
 

“Everyone dies,” Kai said.
 

“For now.”
 

She shifted in her chair. “Alexa didn’t tell me your name.”
 

“It’s Micah.”
 

“She didn’t tell me your last name, either.”

Micah looked around the big room as if taking it in for the first time. “This is an O spa. Where people hire the company of pretty women. And men, I suppose. I doubt you traffic in last names often.”
 

“The rules are different for what Alexa told me you wanted.” Kai crossed her legs, careful to keep them together. This was a seduction, but not the sort that typically occurred under O’s roof. According to Alexa, he wanted to hire her away from O. Kai rejected nothing without proper thought, but this man would have to romance her quite a lot to make the offer enticing. O paid all of Kai’s living expenses and took just 20 percent of her rather substantial client fees. She was escort royalty, at the top tier of the company’s offerings. She had a waiting list miles long and a stable of regular clients who were handsome, well built, and wealthy. The idea of moving to a new employer — just one man — rankled her both in terms of lifestyle and boredom. How could Kai ever be satisfied with such a glaring lack of variety?

“Ryan,” he said. “Micah Ryan.”
 

“I know you,” she said.
 

He laughed then shook his head. “You don’t know me at all.”
 

“Alexa says you want to hire me. Not for the night. Not for a weekend. But forever.”
 

There was a small table between them. The two chairs and table were set atop a lavish rug. Between the rug and the door was polished wood floor. The ceiling was high, with tall windows that opened to copious light. The alcove wasn’t in direct sunlight, but Kai had sashayed her way through several stark sunbeams as she’d approached, swaying to establish control over the man dominating his leather chair. But as Micah Ryan — industrialist, upcoming politician, fierce Enterprise capitalist — leaned forward to dock his smoke in a crystal ashtray that Kai was certain had been placed for the district’s only lit cigarette, she felt uncharacteristically weak. Whatever else Micah might be, he was certainly confident. And for good reason.

“Forever sounds so extreme. Let’s just say, ‘into a full-time position.’”
 

“I already have a full-time position.”
 

“Yes, but this is better. What do you earn in your best weeks at the spa, as an escort?”
 

It was an audacious, intrusive question. He said “escort” with a twinge, as if judging her. Prostitution had been legal for nearly a half century and hadn’t had any significant stigma for decades. Kai had no shame. Yet here was this man, at her spa, judging her. Something in his poised manner demanded rebuke, and before Kai could stop it, she found herself blurting information she shouldn’t have shared.
 

“Four to six thousand credits.” She found she was also unable to throttle her superior tone. Sure, 200,000 or 300,000 credits per year would pale next to Micah’s income, but it was the top in Kai’s world.

“I can double that.”

“You’ll pay twelve thousand per week?”
 

A small smile creased the corner of Micah’s mouth, probably because she’d doubled the highest end of her range. “Sure.”

“Why?”
 

“I need someone with certain abilities and am used to being able to buy my desires.”
 

Kai leaned forward, pinched the cigarette in the ashtray between her fingers, raised it to her lips, and took a delicate puff. When she replaced it in the ashtray, it was ringed in bright red. She fought a cough, leaned back in her chair, and exhaled in a way that both mimicked and mocked Micah’s demeanor.
 

“Sounds very Directorate,” she said.
 

Still, Kai found herself fighting to keep her face neutral, to keep the pulse from showing in her long, smooth neck, which she’d been arching for seductive effect. Directorate or not — fixed, paid-no-matter-what-salary or not — that much money would go a long way for a girl who’d been eating from alley trash cans and turning dime tricks to buy her way up just five years ago. She was in a good place, but the path behind her was still slippery. Despite her confident delivery, she’d told him about one of her best weeks. Sometimes, even her waiting list dried up, and weekdays were often slower than an empty bottle of syrup. She was making decent money for once but still had loans and below-the-board debts to repay. If she ran the numbers, she was really only two dry weeks from flat broke, back to a life where begging and borrowing re-entered her life. Two dry weeks, and she could be back on the street — not because she’d be unable to find jobs through O, but because her debts would tire of waiting and would finally chase her.

“It’s not Directorate at all,” Micah said. “I’d never do that to anyone, let alone someone like you.”
 

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“Oh, but I do. I mercilessly research anything I’m looking to acquire. I know you grew up on the street, that you’ve been stabbed, shot, and raped. I know you’ve been with O for three years, but that despite starting as a glass table dancer, you rose to AA-class escort within two years. I know that today, you’re not only the most-requested escort at this facility but that O’s travel bookings show you as requested even more than local talent on many of the islands. And perhaps most importantly, I know that you come with the personal recommendation of Alexa Mathis — and that Alexa has never backed a failure.”

Irritation was rising inside of Kai, but she kept it from her face. She’d never told O most of her past’s violent details. How had Micah known? He was right, and her best move — if she wanted to save whatever illusion of control could still be salvaged — was to play along, pretend it was obvious.

“Then you know I’m happy here. I make my hours. I choose my clients. I have all the freedom in the world.”
 

Micah retrieved his cigarette from the ashtray, looked at the bright-red lipstick on it, smiled, and stuck it between his lips. That was a surprise; she’d taken her puff to mark the luxury as hers. Watching him smoke it, she felt strangely violated, as if he’d stolen a kiss.
 

“You could still do that,” he said. “I’m not asking for exclusivity.”
 

“You want to pay me over half a million credits a year for non-exclusivity?”

“I want to make you an offer that pleases you as much as it does me. Because I have an ulterior motive, see. Frankly, half a million credits is pocket change to me, and I don’t care about spending it…”
 

“Then pay me a million.”

Micah smiled at the interruption. Kai didn’t feel victory because even though she may have just doubled her pay, she’d also given him her tacit agreement. Her name was as good as on the contract.
 

“A million it is. In a short time, like me, you won’t consider even a million to be much. You
can’t
know what I’m offering, Miss Dreyfus. Because there are things I know that you do not. I’m afraid I’m at an unfair advantage. But that’s not bad news for you. It’s very good news. You see only the credits now because you can’t imagine what’s coming.”
 

Kai was intrigued. His offer felt like a devil’s temptation, and despite feeling it was a mistake to show weakness, she wanted to know more. A year with this man would solve her problems forever. No more being hungry. No more scrapping and scrambling. No more debts. Based on what he was saying and how badly he seemed to want her, Kai could probably get him to clear her debts as a bonus, on top of the million. The thought of feeling less strapped was like standing in a ray of sunshine.
 

What would it be like, to truly be free?
 

But there was no way to find out what he wanted without asking.
 

“What did Alexa tell you about me?”
 

Micah leaned back in his chair. Kai noted a boyish playfulness below his confidence and found herself drawn to it. Oh yes. She could be with this man.
 

“That you’re driven. Ambitious. Hungry. You’re a self-starter. Perfect Enterprise, never wanting anything from anyone that you don’t feel you’ve earned.”
 

“I don’t take handouts.”
 

“She also said that your ambition has an edge. You can be ruthless. Callous. Selfish. You have a loose moral compass, if the occasion requires. Or permits.”
 

Kai leaned forward to protest, but when Micah raised his hand to stop her, she let her indignation bleed out and leaned back again. It was all true, but it was also the sort of thing a person wouldn’t normally want said about them. Micah, however, seemed to be looking for that particular constellation of attitudes.
 

“In other words, you’re like me,” he said. “I’ll step over my own mother if she’s standing in front of something I want. If only she’d allow it.” He cracked a large, genuine smile, all white teeth. The kind of smile that could melt a girl’s panties into a quivering pool. “Alexa and I run in some of the same circles. She knows me…well, let’s just say she knows me ‘better than most.’ We understand each other. Didn’t you think it was strange, how Alexa took such an intense personal interest in you?”
 

Kai took a breath, thinking. Now that she looked back, it did seem odd. Alexa Mathis was one of the famous Six who had revolutionized the sex industry from its core, somehow turning taboos into mainstream commodities before anyone noticed, like a magician turning his magic hat inside-out. She’d
formed
the Six, and those who weren’t kidding themselves agreed universally that she led O as it existed today. Pariah and hero, Alexa was wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. She was perhaps the most powerful woman in recent history. Yet until this moment, it had never seemed strange to Kai that Alexa had spent so much time with her, holding her hand both literally and figuratively as she rose through the ranks. It had earned Kai many jealous, spiteful looks from escorts who had been with O longer, but Kai had never asked to be teacher’s pet. She’d simply accepted it as logical and inevitable because she was the best.