Fantasies R Us Read online

  Ninety-Nine smiled knowingly. “How about we start with the recent past?” Ninety-Nine glanced at the white, vinyl purse clutched in Jayne’s hands. “The fifties, perhaps?”

  Television shows and movies of the era came to Jayne’s mind and she muttered, “They had twin beds.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The fifties hasn’t quite the steam I had in mind.”

  “The sixties then.”

  “Woodstock, love-ins, drop-outs? Too mindless.”

  “Perhaps if I knew what your favorite movies were.”

  “Oh. That’s easy. Sleepless in Seattle, Titanic and Rebecca.”

  “I’m sorry but I’m not familiar with those.”

  “They’re rather old movies,” Jayne said with great enthusiasm. “The nineties or earlier. In the first, the hero and heroine carry on this correspondence by E-mail. You remember E-mail, don’t you?”

  Ninety-Nine was looking at her with a puzzled expression.

  “Well, anyway,” Jayne rushed on. “They fall in love over this correspondence and at the very end they meet on top of the Empire State Building in New York City.”

  “You want a fantasy where you don’t meet your lover until the end of it?”

  Jayne’s excitement fizzled. “I guess not.” But she brightened again. “In Titanic the hero and heroine have a glorious love affair…until he dies.” Her final words trailed off.

  “You want your fantasy hero to die?” Ninety-Nine asked.

  “No.”

  “How about that third one?” the facilitator asked. “Rebecca?”

  Jayne gave a half-hearted smile. “It’s full of gothic angst. That’s probably not very good in a sexual fantasy, huh?”

  “I wouldn’t think so.” Ninety-Nine gave her a sympathetic smile. “How about favorite books?”

  “At the turn of the century, there was a romance titled Wolfsong, though the hero and heroine fight all the time. But there was another by the same author. Time Out of Mind. Unfortunately it’s about reincarnation so the characters die a lot. And then there’s…” Jayne lowered her gaze to the floor apologetically. “Rebecca.”

  Ninety-Nine sighed. “Favorite play?”

  “Romeo and Juliet.”

  “Now that one I know. They die in the end, you know.”

  “Yes, I know.” Jayne slumped in the chair that had given her more sexual tutoring in a minute than all her favorite movies and books. “I’m boring.”

  “That’s why you’re here,” chirped Ninety-Nine. “To take a vacation from your reality.”

  Her reality. Her boring reality. Jayne sighed. Her reality was so boring, she couldn’t even come up with a proper sexual fantasy. She needed help.

  She looked Ninety-Nine in her bright green, holographic eye. “Look. I need help here. I haven’t a clue what to ask for.”

  “You haven’t a clue? My dear, what are you, a virgin?”

  Chapter Two

  Jayne felt the flush climb her throat, spread through her cheeks and prickle across her scalp.

  “Oh,” said Ninety-Nine. “I should have guessed.”

  “That obvious, huh?”

  Ninety-Nine chuckled. “Hardly. We get the prim-looking types in here all the time. You’d be surprised the wild fantasies they choose.”

  “I’m sure I would be. But then, some of your posters out front are wilder than anything I could imagine.”

  “Mmmm,” Ninety-Nine hummed. “Maybe with you we should start with the man and go from there.”

  “Okaaay,” Jayne agreed apprehensively.

  Ninety-Nine snapped her fingers and three more projector balls dropped in tandem from the ceiling. Instantly, a muscle-bound type appeared. He sauntered toward her, his long blond hair rippling as though catching a breeze though no wind blew through the presentation room.

  “I want to suck your toes,” he said in a thick accent.

  “Oooops,” went Ninety-Nine, banishing the blonde. “I didn’t mean to start with that model. How about this one?”

  Another man materialized before her with wavy black hair and a T-shirt that molded to every rippling muscle his chest could boast. He raised a snakeskin-booted foot to the arm of the chair, folded his tan arms across his upraised knee and looked at her through smoky eyes. “I’ll fuck your brains out.”

  Jayne flinched.

  “The Tony model can be toned down if you don’t want him to be this direct. But he is one of our favorite bad boys.”

  “I’m not sure I’m into bad boys.”

  “Okay,” Ninety-Nine said. “No bad boys.” She snapped her fingers and a somber red head appeared and gave Jayne a long, brooding look.

  “How about The David model?” the fantasy facilitator queried.

  “He’s rather…sullen.”

  “Oh,” Ninety-Nine said, sounding rather disappointed. “I thought since you liked gothics…”

  Jayne shook her head. “My reality is already too somber. I want something a little more fun.”

  “How about I activate them all and see if we can make a love connection?

  A love connection. If it could have been that easy, she’d have come to Fantasies R Us long ago.

  Jayne nodded agreement. Immediately, projectors dropped in groups of threes, filling the room with holographic studs in every hair color and body type. They strutted around her, flexing their muscles and giving her lusty looks. Who did they think they were fooling? Men didn’t lust after her.

  Especially not men suave as the gentleman jewel-thief type, hulking as a burly barbarian or sexy as a legendary leading man.

  But these weren’t men. These were holographic images of cyborgs. Manmade, manlike machines.

  “How realistic are they?” she asked Ninety-Nine.

  “You tell me. The skin of the chair in which you are seated, which you’ve been rubbing with the palms of your hands is the same composition as our cyborg males’ penises.”

  Jayne squealed, leaping out of the chair.

  “You mustn’t leave the chair,” rushed out Ninety-Nine.

  Too late. Jayne had already stumbled through several holographic men, making their images ripple and crackle. Her elbow struck something hard and cold that gave her a shock. One tiny projector spun off across the room and she lunged in the opposite direction only to be zapped again and again as she plowed through the holographic men.

  The mini projector balls bounced crazily off around the room. The bodybuilder head wound up on the elegantly suited jewel-thief body. The barbarian chest bobbed between the debonair leading man head and a set of male dancing legs in leotards.

  “Oh my,” gasped Ninety-Nine. “This is going to be a mess to straighten out.”

  Jayne stumbled back against the wall, gaping at the mayhem before her and groaned. She couldn’t even keep her cool amidst holographic men. What was she going to do with a cyborg who had skin that felt like that chair…at least on one critical area of his body?

  That is if Fantasies R Us would still allow her within twenty feet of one of their cyborgs after this. She was going to die a virgin.

  A headless, legless torso tottered toward her. She curled away from the grotesque muscle-bound chest…and found herself facing a man whose sky-blue eyes sparkled from a frame of blond hair. And what glorious hair it was, falling in thick waves around an angular face and over a set of broad shoulders clad in a poet’s shirt.

  A poet’s shirt. Be still her heart. She loved a man in a poet’s shirt. And close-fitting breeches?

  Breath held, she chanced a glance at his lower extremities. He was whole…and wearing close-fitting breeches.

  “Oh, yes,” she breathed.

  He smiled the smile of an angel and opened his mouth.

  Please don’t say anything stupid. Please don’t say anything crude. Please don’t let him have some oily voice.

  “How may I serve you?” crooned a masculine voice that resonated through the marrow of her bones.

  “Oh, Miss Ninety-Nine. This is the
one. This one.”

  Fantasy Facilitator Ninety-Nine floated through the mayhem on a set of cowboy legs, spurs jangling. Jayne bit her lower lip and forced herself not to look around the room for a cowboy wearing spike heels.

  “Excellent choice,” Ninety-Nine chimed and snapped her fingers. The mismatched holographic men and Jayne’s intact dreamboat disappeared in a whir of tiny projectors whizzing off to the ceiling. “Now let’s explore scenarios for your fantasy.”

  “He’d make a dashing pirate,” Jayne gushed, feeling all dreamy. “Oh, to have a man like him board my ship and steal me back to his cabin.” She sighed.

  “Aaah, The Swashbuckler scenario,” enthused Ninety-Nine, the deck of an eighteenth-century, three-masted schooner materializing beneath their feet.

  “I do love this set,” Ninety-Nine crooned as the canvas sails snapped open above them. “Can’t you just feel the salt spray on your face?”

  A not-so-fine mist slapped into Jayne’s face and coated her glasses. She removed them and squinted into another spray as she wiped her glasses dry with a cotton hanky. She hadn’t considered the dampness of a sea setting—the humidity. She could feel her hair frizzing already.

  Ninety-Nine inhaled deeply. “Can you smell it, the salt, the brine—?”

  “The decaying of seaweed, the moldering of old food, the stench of long unwashed bodies,” Jayne muttered, pinching her nostrils shut.

  Ninety-Nine blinked at her. “We can tone down some of the realism. Make it more romantic for you.”

  “More romantic would be good.”

  “If only you were still in the chair,” chimed Ninety-Nine. “You’d be able to feel the rocking of the ship as it rises and falls with the waves.”

  Rocking. Waves. Rising and falling.

  Jayne gazed over the ship’s holographic rail. The walls seemed to have disappeared, water taking their place. Water as far as the eye could see. An ocean of it…undulating with waves.

  “Would that scenario be for the full week or would you like it combined with others?” asked Ninety-Nine.

  Jayne swayed, closed her eyes and backed until she felt the wall firmly at her back. “Neither,” she muttered through tight lips as she willed her stomach down from her throat. “Just make it go away.”

  “Aaah. Seasick,” intoned Ninety-Nine, an instant later announcing, “You can open your eyes now.”

  Jayne opened one eye. The room was back to normal…or as normal as a room with an obscene chair, a ceiling full of holographic projectors and a fantasy facilitator with a femme fatale’s torso and head and a cowboy’s legs could be.

  She lifted a weak smile at Ninety-Nine. “I don’t seem very good at this.”

  “May I make a few suggestions?” offered the fantasy facilitator.

  “S-sure.”

  Ninety-Nine circled her, looking her over. “We could do a makeover.”

  “Ex-excuse me?” sputtered Jayne.

  “The Cinderella.”

  “Cinderella? You mean as in scrubbing floors for my evil stepmother and stepsisters?”

  “I mean fairy godmother makeover and a ball with a prince to die for.”

  Having already seen her prince, Jayne couldn’t argue with that scenario. She beamed. “I’ll take it.”

  “Now, do you desire that scenario for the full week or would you like to combine two or more into the week?”

  “If I keep the Cinderella for the week, will I have to go back to the stepmother’s house and scrub floors?”

  “Only long enough for the prince to fit the glass slipper to your foot.”

  “And that would be how long?”

  Ninety-Nine smiled reassuringly. “I guarantee, the prince will find you very quickly and you will spend the better part of the week finding out what the prince and Cinderella did in their nuptial bed.”

  Jayne got a strange tingling sensation between her legs. She smiled broadly at Ninety-Nine. “I’ll take Cinderella’s prince for the week.”

  “Excellent choice. One moment while we process your order.”

  Ninety-Nine went still for a moment. This was really going to happen. She was going on the vacation of a lifetime, a vacation during which she was guaranteed to lose her virginity to the prince of her dreams. That man in the blousing poet’s shirt. Didn’t he just have the most incredible eyes? They were like looking into a cloudless sky on a balmy spring morning.

  Or like looking into a still pond. Close. Looking into his eyes was like looking into a clear pool that reflected that blue sky.

  And those lovely eyes had looked back at her like she was the only woman in the universe, as though she outshined the curvaceous Ninety-Nine. He’d asked her, “How may I serve you?”

  Her, no other woman.

  How may I serve you?

  “In the most romantic of ways,” she sighed, closing her eyes and hugging her vinyl purse against her less-than-bountiful chest. She was going to rid herself of her nettlesome virginity at last and she was going to do it in the most romantic of ways. Nothing could be more perfect.

  Ninety-Nine came back to life with a jangle of her cowboy spurs. “I’m sorry. The system shows no record of your credit line. In fact, we don’t have anything about you. Weren’t you prescreened?”

  Jayne blinked back to reality. “Prescreened?”

  “Didn’t the receptionist have you feed your financial card into our system?”

  Jayne’s smiled slipped a little. “Er, no.”

  Ninety-Nine grunted. “Thirty is one of our older models. Perhaps she wasn’t upgraded.”

  Jayne felt the muscles stretching her smile give a little more. “Upgraded for what?”

  “Before the upgrade, we wasted a great deal of time and energy displaying scenarios for people who didn’t have the credit limit to handle one of our fantasies.”

  Credit limit? Apprehension shivered through Jayne. Just how much did these fantasies cost?

  “Then there were those who requested a presentation just for a cheap thrill,” Ninety-Nine added.

  Jayne noticed the fantasy facilitator’s smile had disappeared and her eyes had narrowed on her. Jayne felt her face go hot. “I assure you, I did not request a presentation for a cheap thrill. I want more. I truly do.”

  Ninety-Nine’s smile grew to full width once again. “Wonderful. Now, your financial card if you will, please?”

  Jayne dug in her purse, dread pressing down on her shoulders as she fought to retain a remnant of the elation she’d felt a moment ago. “Just what kind of credit limit does one need to be able to afford a Fantasies R Us fantasy? Your brochures were rather vague about the cost.”

  “Kindly hold your financial card up for me and I will finalize your fantasy.”

  With shaking fingers, Jayne held the card in front of Ninety-Nine’s face. “I will get an estimate before this is finalized, won’t I?”

  “One moment while we process your account number.” Ninety-Nine went still once more, apprehension closing on Jayne’s throat.

  She should have asked the receptionist for a brochure with prices. She should have demanded a price list before the presentation even began.

  She shouldn’t be showing a hologram her financial card.

  Jayne snatched the card back from Ninety-Nine’s holographic face.

  “I’m sorry,” chirped Ninety-Nine, whirring back to life, “but there seems to be a problem with your credit level.”

  “Good,” muttered Jayne, cramming the card back into her purse. “This was a crazy idea anyway.”

  But the image of Mr. Perfect in princely form waltzing her around a ballroom floated through her brain. She could practically feel his arms around her. Disappointment was a cold, lonely thing.

  She paused before closing her purse and ventured almost hopefully, “What sort of problem?”

  “Your financial card hasn’t a credit limit high enough to afford one of our week-long packages.”

  “Oh.” She snapped the purse shut, recalling how one set of sky-
blue eyes had looked at her as though she were the most beautiful woman in the world.

  “Have you another card, perhaps? Or another type of account we can draw from?” queried Ninety-Nine.

  Warning bells chimed inside Jayne’s head. But the memory of how her prince’s “how may I serve you” had tingled a path along her nerve endings straight to her heart deafened her to them. Then there was the fact that she had spent her past vacations at family gatherings or catching up on housework. The most exotic thing she’d ever done was eat yak meat. And she was approaching thirty. She deserved this fantasy.

  “I don’t have any other cards or accounts,” she answered, disappointment dragging at her shoulders. “How about a weekend fantasy?”

  * * * * *

  “What a mess,” grumbled the sharkskin-clad owner of Fantasies R Us, scowling at the bank of monitors beyond the control console, specifically the one framing Jayne Applegate.

  The Technical Control Operator seated at the console chuckled. “Yeah, we never had one jump out of the chair before.”

  “I’m talking about you releasing his hologram along with all our standard models,” snapped the boss.

  Kalli Summers spun her swivel chair toward Wolfgang Schmuck, charging, “Maybe if someone had told me he was restricted.”

  Schmuck snorted, which was about as close as Schmuck ever got to admitting his mistakes.

  Kalli folded her arms high across her chest, settled back in the chair and lifted one of her don’t-blame-me-for-your-mistakes looks to her boss. “Besides, she hasn’t the credit level to pay for any weeklong fantasy so his hologram getting mixed in with the others doesn’t matter.”

  Schmuck scowled. “The woman should never have gotten this far.”

  “And she wouldn’t have if you hadn’t substituted the C-7 model receptionist with the old Number Thirty, Wolfgang,” simpered Kalli, always happy to point out to Schmuck how shortsighted and costly his quick fixes were. “The C-7 would never have let a client pass without a credit check.”

  “C-7 damn near electrocuted Benton Dicks,” countered Schmuck. “We had to comp his entire fantasy. We can’t afford mistakes like that, especially not with a client as important as the playboy of the century.”