Page 6 of The Pleasure Contract

And there’s a brief moment – very brief, mind you – where I imagine his thick fingers skimming gently across my skin, the pads of his fingertips rough in the most delicious kind of way. Would I swoon and melt under that kind of attention, just like those flowers?

“Lois?” Jaya calls through my door. She follows it up with a soft knock before her head tentatively peers into my room. When her eyes land on me, she smiles almost bashfully. “Sorry,” she says, taking a step inside my dimly lit room. I dismiss her apology with a wave of my hand, beckoning her to come and sit with me.

I have been nestled right here at my room’s deep window seat for what feels like the past few hours – and somehow, no time at all. I know the sun had been higher, and there had been fewer lights dotting the windows of the city, when I had first sat down to watch the world go by. Countless flying craft zoom across the early evening apricot skies, all filled with Xavianns busily getting on with their lives while I watch on like the whole thing is living art, just to be observed with no participation at all.

“What are you going to wear tonight?” Jaya asks once she’s settled against the plethora of plush cushions opposite me along the window seat.

I can’t help the loud groan that escapes me. “I’d forgotten about tonight,” I confess, sliding reluctantly off my seat – it is set so high, I have to make use of a decorative brocade-clad chair to ease my descent. “Are we meant to dress fancy?” I ask as I walk toward my elaborately stuffed wardrobes.

“When are we ever casual?”

Jaya has a point.

Xaviann women’s fashions are all flowing skirts and corsets. What they call leisurewear just consists of slightly less fancy versions of that.

I pull out one of the dresses that Vel had told me is for lounging around in. The thing probably costs more than a year’s rent at my last place back on Earth. The fabric is a dusky purple and buttery soft to the touch. There’s nothing like it back on Earth, but I guess it’s like a really, really thick silk. The top half has a less rigid structure than the usual corsets, but much more than a comfy t-shirt. It also clings to my tits and tummy rolls before skimming down into a single-layer skirt. I’m not one to really care about that sort of thing – I’m not trying to hide my body, but it’s the sensation more than anything.

I glance back at the wardrobe rack, a sugar-sweet wall of dresses crammed together. New ones seem to appear for Jaya and me every week, which feels absurd when all I’m actually craving is a pair of sweats and an overworn, faded T-shirt from some long-forgotten supporting band – no memory of the music, no clue how the shirt ever became mine.

This will do, I think to myself as I stare down at the dress in my hands. I don’t care if Lady Zalora gives me that look; I’m just not feeling particularly ‘corset-y’ today. Using the wardrobe door as some kind of privacy screen, I peel my comfy clothes off in favor of this ‘leisure’ dress.

“Will you miss him?” I ask Jaya from behind the wardrobe door. Once I’m done changing, I approach the huge dressing table in my room, each little drawer and compartment stuffed to the brim with jewels and ribbons, lotions, and perfumes. All provided by the palace, whether I want them or not.

Jaya screws one side of her face up and shrugs. She won’t miss him, but she’s too polite to actually say it out loud.

Tonight, we’ve been invited to the palace for Zann’s farewell dinner. He had hoped that entering into a contract with Jaya would stop his father from sending him away to work on some middle-of-nowhere conservation planet. The punishment was doled out for the crime of actually physically sleeping with a female and not using their weird hologram Permissions thingy to get his rocks off. To make matters worse, it wasn’t just any female, but the daughter of a senator. So, you know, the ‘defilement’ cut deep down at the Capital, apparently.

And, to some extent, I get it. These Xaviann guys have this bonding venom that apparently can make the females go cuckoo-bananas for the one that bit them, and Zann was stupid to put the woman at risk in that way.

But a three-year banishment seems a bit harsh.

“At least no one will be chasing after you for a contract while he’s gone,” I tell her, mentally tacking ‘or a proposal of marriage’ on the end. But Jaya doesn’t need to know about that particular incident.

Az hasn’t been the only one to bring up the subject of a contract with me. Although he is definitely the most persistent. The trouble is, a lot of the Xaviann males around here see how happy Niska and Kiahn are. All you need is the rumor about Niska letting their prince bite her while they’re doing the nasty to spread, and soon every male on Xaavia is going to want to get himself a little human bite-buddy.

“He’s still not pressuring you to do anything with him, right?” I ask Jaya, as I try to artfully tousle my curls in the mirror, for them to just fall back into their original positions anyway.

“No.” I hear Jaya huff out a purposeful breath and then the faint squeak of a finger dragging against damp glass. “He knows I only signed the contract to try and do him a favor. It just didn’t work as well as we’d hoped. Although I’m pretty sure he tried flirting with me at first, but when I didn’t respond, he dropped it quickly.”

I turn on my vanity seat to face Jaya and notice the little smiley face she’s drawn into a fogged-up patch on the window. She is a beautiful young woman, and I’m thankful, at least, that this contract will afford her some extra protection while it lasts. From what I understand, no other males would dare think about touching her while she’s under an active breeding contract – with a prince, no less. Even if the ‘active’ part of that description can be used very loosely in this context.

I think about saying to her again that if Zann pressured her into doing anything, I’d break one of his horns off and use it to nail his dick to a table. She was only nineteen when I first met her at that horrible alien auction. And, understandably, she did not cope well at all with the whole situation. It had been gut-wrenching to watch, and difficult to get her to crawl out of that all-consuming well of anxiety we all felt at the time. I never want to see her like that again.

But she’s twenty-one now. And it’s felt like a whole lifetime has unfolded between then and now. Now that we’re safe. Now that we can plan futures that don’t include servitude and all the horrors that may bring. She doesn’t need me fussing over her. But I hope she knows that she can come to me for anything she needs help with.

“Good,” I sniff, turning back around to face the mirror. “Can you get him to tell his brother to do the same and knock it off with all the flirting?”

Jaya snorts. “I don’t think it would do any good. That man is invested.”

“That man needs a new hobby,” I say, rubbing the pinkish cream I’ve been given into my lips and then popping them in the mirror. I assume it’s some kind of lipstick or lip balm. That’s what I’ve been using it for, anyway.

Just then, there’s a knock at my door. “Lady Lois, a cruiser from the palace is here for you and Lady Jaya.”

This announcement causes Jaya to leap down from my window seat and high-tail it out of my room, muttering about not being ready yet.

After teasing my hair as much as I can bear and being surprisingly happy with the result, I make my way down the stairs in my scandalously uncorseted leisure dress that still makes me feel all dressed up. The hem skims each step as I take them, but the split in the skirt is almost to my groin, off to one side. The fabric is so silky soft, it feels like decadent liquid on my bare legs. My comm orb floats beside me as I descend one of the polished wooden staircases. It makes its odd little chirping sound, like the thing is just happy that I let it out of my bedroom for a change. I hadn’t meant to do that, initially, but the damn thing slipped past the bedroom door before I got a chance to close it. Oh well, maybe it could… I don’t know… make friends with the nutrient replicators in the kitchen while I’m out. Perhaps it can ask them not to burn me next time I attempt to make some toast.

All thoughts of electronic devices navigating the brave new world of friendship die instantly when I see Zek open the front door, bowing as a large figure enters.