“I’m afraid not.” The Beast shook his head. “There’s no admittance unless one of the lab techs or scientists is in there to escort you. Some of those plants in there are really valuable—and some can be fucking dangerous.” He nodded through the glass window.
“Oh, really? Like what?” Cassie asked.
“They got ginna plant in there—the plant itself doesn’t do anything but one single seed will give a humanoid male a hard-on that lasts for a solar month. Also, y’claw blooms. One sniff makes just about anyone unbearably horny for an entire day. Of course, afterwards they’re suicidally depressed for a year, but you get some really great performances out of them before the crash.”
“Why does Gozeriam need aphrodisiacs at all, though?” Cassie asked, frowning. “I mean, he’s assembled the greatest porn actors and actresses from all over the galaxy, right? Yourself, included,” she made herself add, nodding to The Beast.
He puffed his chest out. “You got that right, beautiful.”
Stone growled and The Beast took a step back, eyeing the big Kindred warily.
“Easy, Stone.” Cassie put a hand on her partner’s arm and turned back towards The Beast. “As I was saying, Gozeriam has all these excellent actors, so why the need for performance-enhancing drugs and substances?” she asked, honestly curious.
“Well, because—Gozeriam likes honest, authentic passion in his porn. In fact, he insists on it.” He shrugged. “To him, there’s nothing worse than bad porn or porn that doesn’t make the watcher feel.”
“Really?” Cassie couldn’t keep the surprise out of her voice. Once again she was reminded of Frank Yarrow back on Earth. Just like the sleazy porn producer who lured innocent girls by promising them they would be doing
“art-house” type films, Gozeriam fancied himself a true artist. Which was probably why he wrote some of his scripts himself, she thought, looking down at the transparent sheet The Beast had given her.
She wondered uneasily what kind of scene the Slimerian had written and what she and Stone would be asked to do together. Neither of them had gotten a chance to look it over yet.
“Well, are you hungry yet, Mistress?” The Beast asked her, raising an eyebrow. “We should probably head towards the humanoid Dining Hall if you want to get a bite to eat before you have to hit Wardrobe and get ready for your first performance later on today.”
“Oh, you think we’ll be performing today?” Cassie couldn’t keep the tremor out of her voice. Of course, Gozeriam had intimated that he might want them to start “acting” immediately, but she had hoped that she and Stone would have more time before they had to jump back into their respective roles as Mistress and body-slave porn partners.
“Hell yes, you’ll be performing, Mistress.” The Beast shot her an incredulous look. “You think his Slimefullness stayed up all night writing a script for you to just sit around on your juicy ass doing nothing?”
Stone growled again and Cassie frowned.
“I think it’s better if you don’t talk about my, er, anatomy like that in front of my body-slave,” she said stiffly.
“Sorry.” The Beast shrugged and eyed Stone. “Come on—the Dining Hall is this way.”
“Thank you.” Cassie followed him, trying to think of a way to change the subject. “Tell me—can you really look like anyone at all?” she asked, deciding that a narcissist like The Beast would probably enjoy talking about himself.
“Hell yes.” He tilted his head arrogantly. “Any living being or thing—you name it—I can be it.”
“Then I have a question,” Cassie said, frowning. “If you can so perfectly disguise yourself as anyone else in the universe, why would you get a living ink tattoo?” She nodded to the tattoo in question, which was currently making its restless way around the back of The Beast’s neck. “I noticed when you er, became me, I could still see it,” she went on. “Is it visible in every form you take? It seems like it would be a dead giveaway if you were trying to pretend to be someone else.”
The Beast scowled, his jaunty, arrogant smile slipping for just a minute to be replaced by a sullen sneer.
“Believe me, getting the Live Ink was not my idea,” he said. “It was a punishment because I was too good at what I do—too good at being other people.”
“Is that right?” Cassie frowned. “A punishment from whom?”
“My own fucking people on Seculare Four,” The Beast snapped, looking even angrier. “They accused me of fucking around with some girl, pretending to be her husband. And a few other things too—all of it bullshit, you know?” He shrugged angrily. “So then they decided to tattoo me so everyone on my home planet would know who I was, no matter how I changed my appearance.”
“That’s…quite a punishment,” Cassie remarked neutrally. She was pretty sure the “few other things” The Beast had been charged with were probably some form of sexual assault, considering how he treated women.