Read Passion Model for Free Online Page A

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