Merchant of Venus

"Don't you die on me yet, you stupid machine," Engel panted, swiping the sweat from her eyes. She braced herself with her other hand on the wall beside her bed. Her hips rose and fell in a regular rhythm, her skin clapping against the hard, leather covered box between her legs.

It whirred uncertainly, the sound of gears grinding drowning out her moans. The vibrating dildo that sprouted from the top of the box was a reasonable facsimile of the real thing, if not large enough to shame most men into avoiding eye contact with it. Not that that had been an issue recently, the men. Engel hadn't had a real cock inside of four months. In that time, she had nearly worn out her "fuckbox", as she affectionately referred to the piece of machinery now slowly chugging to a stop between her thighs.

"Oh, fuck no," she groaned, coming to a shuddering halt, dildo buried to the hilt in her ass. Her throbbing cock looked painfully swollen, drooling precum heavily down the length of its shaft. Sweat poured down her face and neck, running in small rivers over the slight swell of her breasts. A drop hung a moment on the rim of her pink left nipple, shining in the low light of the cabin, before dripping with a barely noticeable splash on the bedsheets below. The bed itself was drenched in sweat and, by the smell of it, machine oil now as well. She pulled herself free with an audible pop, shivering at the sudden feeling of emptiness inside her dissatisfied ass.

With some effort she managed to hop free of the bunk, her legs shaking from the strain. She'd been riding the fuckbox for a good half-hour with nothing to show for it but some bruises on her thighs and what seemed to be a heavy incoming repair bill. She was handy enough with machines, but more in the sense of diagnostics. She was no grease monkey, whatever the spreading stain on her once-blue-now-black bedsheets had to say about it. She unplugged the fuckbox from the wall port and leaned against the cold metal of the cabin walls, taking a moment to catch her breath and her thoughts.

She looked out the porthole window at the familiar sight of the

Pound of Flesh

pleasure station. It was gaudy by any measure, lit up as it was with pink and purple logos promising everything a heart could desire. Barring a heart, it had tools to work over other choice pieces of anatomy as well. Tomorrow, though, it would be a receding memory falling rapidly out of view as she took her ship on its first trip out of Venusian orbit. Engel was already feeling homesick, and she hadn't even undocked yet. She stretched her arms over her head, cracking her back with a satisfying pop, and looked beyond the pleasure barge to the planet below.

There was something to be said of the Ashen Light all those dead men claimed to see with their bespoke scopes pointed into the endless abyss: a thrill of illumination that buoys a dark body into something resembling the face it shows the Sun. And here, above the yellowy clouds, somewhere a few hundred miles away from Aphrodite Terra, Engel clung to this notion of a silent lightning, undetectable by anyone lacking the imagination to see what the probes refused to show in their transmissions home. She was born here in this tidally locked station, one of thousands of faceless proles, a product of some banker's pen sinking home into the vault of one of a handful of megacorporations. She was sure there had to be a video of the copulation somewhere on the DarkNet. Even the most basic observer could at least see the shockwaves that went through the stocks at the time. It was the final push of colonial funding that opened the floodgates for all those fresh little babies to start cooking in the artificial wombs the corporate scientists had set up ages ago before hurling the little blastocysts of potential into the void.

On the books she was designated C3-69, but only the official entities on the station bothered with it. To everyone else she was Engel. No one from the tanks worried about family names overmuch, what with them being experiments more than anything else. Sure, there were your usual in-groups and gangs and such that took on fancy nomenclature, but for Engel, it was enough. She had been given it by a kindly enough old German ex-pat who had decided to blow his retirement out riding the interplanetary pleasure barges. She kept it a secret for the longest time, her own name, a person to aspire to be, until she had found her feet and established herself as the go-to girl for the discerning gentlefolk at the old

Pound of Flesh

.

But that was working girl Engel, not captain Engel, and she had eschewed the company of many eager benefactors to sever herself from that past life. She wasn't at all ashamed of the work she had performed working off her built-in indentured servitude, but she was a freeman now and had aspirations beyond spending her days on her back, entertaining various diplomats and other sundry V.I.P.s. Still, it would be nice to get fucked properly, just to scratch the itch that always built up inside the pit of her stomach when it had been too long between proper orgasms. As it was, with the fuckbox dead, she just had a bottle of lotion and her hands to take care of the throbbing between her legs.

She sat at her computer desk and loaded up a striptease a friend of hers had filmed for her, what, five years ago? Could it really have been that long since Renda had left the

Pound of Flesh

? She shook her head to clear her thoughts, her damp, shoulder length red hair sliding over her shoulders to stick on her back. Engel watched the screen, rapt in admiration for the curves of Renda's body and the expert way she was performing her strip tease. It had cost her a hundred ken to get this made special and Renda cut no corners.

Renda looked into the camera lens, smiling with her purple lips, a smile that always sent a thrill down Engel's spine and up her cock. Dark synthwave music pumped out of the speakers as Renda began to sway, running her slender fingers down her ample chest and over her stomach and hips. Engel sat rapt, both hands absently working her cock as Renda undid the clasps on the front of her corset, the tops of her breasts jiggling over the cups of her sheer bra as they were released from the binding pressure. She reached into her bra, removing first her left then her right breasts. She grinned and licked the tip of her right index finger, running it in circles over her dark brown nipples until they both stood to attention.

Renda smiled again and Engel pumped harder, the slick sound of her lotioned hands only barely covered up by the music coming from the speakers. She watched as Renda leaned forward, her heavy breasts swaying free, and peeled off the black lace thong that had done little more than make a brief cameo in the video. Reaching off camera Renda came back with a long, gold dildo, some nine inches in length. It looked sturdy and thick, and Engel grinned at the memory of buying it for just this show. Renda was nothing if not amenable to having props bought for her films, and Engel was more than happy to provide it. She'd had it modelled after her own cock. If she couldn't fuck Renda in person, she could at least do it by proxy.

Renda was moaning on the film now, running the length of the dildo between her thick, meaty labia. Engel could already see the accumulating wetness running down the shaft and sped up her stroking, trying to time it just right. And there it was, the gasp and deep groan from Renda as she pushed the pseudo-cock past her labia and into her cunt. It was that gasp that got Engel every time. That and the pleasant shudder than ran through Renda's body when the fat tip of the dildo parted her cunt, digging into the hot, pink flesh inside. Engel groaned herself, pumping her cock furiously as a blast of stinging hot cum shot out and splattered against her chest and stomach. She kept pumping her cock with both hands, milking it, cum pooling in her belly button and running down her lap and thighs. She shook with pleasure and leaned her head back against the headrest of the computer chair, a shiver running through her body.

On the screen Renda was in a chair of her own, frantically pumping her cunt with the golden vibrator, but Engel was done with the show, and clicked it closed. As the afterglow wore off, she swore under her breath and looked around the cabin for a towel. Finding none, she settled on a pink shirt that was crumpled at the foot of her bunk and used it to wipe herself down. She tossed it inexpertly into the side of the hamper across the room and stood, stretching again. That movie always did the trick, but she would have preferred a welcoming mouth or ass or damn near anything that wasn't her own lotion-slick hands. She thought back to her last client before the troubles and sighed. That had been such a waste of her expertise.

She had been an ambassador from the Martian colonies, someone born the old-fashioned way, with gravity and blood and screaming invective. Her incognito handle was Seves, and she was an older woman. Engel put her at about mid-fifties, probably sixties without the dye job. Certainly, old enough to be her grandmother if she'd been an automated arm filling syringe. She wasn't much taller than Engel herself, just under 165 without the heels. Most of Engel's clients came in dressed to party, but this Seves woman had worn a severe pantsuit, black fabric with a crimson lining. It spoke of power lunches, heavy use of narcotics in the privy, and a life that wasn't always one of public service. Angular as it was, when she was relieved of the fine tailor work, Engel had found the woman to be surprisingly soft.

Not pleasantly soft, the way a fluffy cat might be, but very much surprising. Where Engel expected to feel some firmness or resistance, there was only yielding flesh. A water balloon had more structural integrity than Seves' chest, ample as it appeared to be. And her shoulders! And her waist! And her arms! Perfectly soft from the repeated application of exceptionally fine and luxurious taxpayer funded lotions, but wholly unappealing to touch. Still and yet, she wasn't wholly putty. Her pubic bone was prominent enough to provide exceptional discomfort while she ground arrhythmically on Engel's erect cock. She was thoroughly enthusiastic, but Seves had clearly never been properly fucked in her entire life. Still, Engel was there to be of service, not to give notes, and so she had played the part well. There was gasping, moaning, a strong, faked orgasm into a hastily disposed of polyurethane condom. The usual.

Seves had reclined against Engel's right side, one long, thin arm draped casually across Engel's breasts. The woman had breath that had continued to reek of garlic, no matter how many drinks or sweets Engel had proffered, and the room was feeling unwelcomely stuffy because of it. Doing her best to breathe without smelling, Engel busied herself with studying the woman, making the appropriate amount of eye contact, playing the part of the good hostess. She was very interested in the lines of Seves' face. Of note was the way her crow's feet extended out from her eyes and further still, disappearing into her hairline. If she'd just get a solid bit of tattoo work done, Engel had thought, she could make a nice bit of a fashion statement.

A knock at the door to her cabin snapped Engel out of the brief reverie and she hurried to answer it, brazen in her nudity. On the other side of the door frame stood a young woman, just shy of Engel's height, dressed sharply in the uniform of the Interplanetary Navy.

"What is it?" Engel asked. "I'm kind of busy."

"Ma'am," the woman answered sharply, doing her best to professionally avoid taking in Engel's nakedness. "I have a message for you."

"Yes? And?"

The woman cleared her throat and produced a telegraph card from her breast pocket and began reading, "Dearest Engel. Stop. Delay from departing until the day after tomorrow. Stop. Have someone you need to meet immediately. Stop. Love, T. Stop."

"You could have just handed it to me," Engel said, taking the card from the woman's gloved hand and reading over it again. It must be a message from Tarran. Only he would be old-fashioned enough to use the intership telegraph service. It wasn't like she didn't have e-mail.

"Sorry, ma'am. That's just protocol." The woman blushed, looking away and down the hall. "Sorry to have disturbed you, but it was marked urgent."

"You're fine, you're fine," Engel said, waving her hand dismissively.

The woman continued to stand there, only moving to cough into her hand.

"What do you, oh, right. One second." Engel went back into her cabin and fished around on her desk before coming back with her credit stick. The attendant swiftly produced a stick reader, and with a tap and a few button presses, Engel transferred a small tip over from her account.

"Thanks so much, ma'am," the attendant said, saluting before making her way down the well-lit corridor.

"Think nothing of it," Engel called after her, turning back into her room and closing her cabin door.

What could Tarran possibly be up to, she wondered. With a resigned sigh she turned to the task of cleaning up the wreckage of the fuckbox and throwing away the ruined sheets. It took a good bit of elbow grease to get the grease-grease out of the mattress, but by the time she was done, you almost couldn't tell a fuckmachine had died there. Almost.