“I’ll bring dinner from my favorite Italian spot. Seven o’clock at your place. When you accept my sponsorship offer, the app will tell me your address and apartment number.”
I blinked at him. “Sponsorship offer?”
He smiled. “You’re new at this. Sorry. I’m going to offer you a week’s allowance. That means we have one date. If we don’t hit it off, you cancel the sponsorship.”
I remembered what Ann, the intake counselor, had told me. “But…” I started, feeling my face go bright red.
Mike nodded. He leaned in again to make sure we wouldn’t be overheard. “But I get to punish you if I want, even after you cancel, if I think you’ve earned it. That’s true.”
I felt my forehead crease hard. I chewed fiercely on my lower lip. I could feel the cortisol flooding my system, telling me to get up and run away. But Mike’s dark eyes held me in place.
“So,” he said, “you need to consider carefully whether it’s worth it. I have a feeling I know what your answer is going to be, though—especially after you see what I’m offering.”
CHAPTER 9
Laura
Mike’s offer arrived as I was walking back to the Presidio. I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk when I felt the buzz in my pocket, forcing other pedestrians to flow around me like water around a stone. My hands trembled as I pulled out my phone, my heart already racing before I even opened the app.
The notification glowed on my screen:New Sponsorship Offer from Mike G.
I tapped it, and the details loaded. For a moment, I couldn’t process what I was seeing. The number had too many zeros. I blinked, counted them again, my breath catching in my throat.
$10,000.
Ten thousand dollars. For one week.
My knees wobbled under me. I stumbled to the side, leaning against a building for support. Someone muttered something annoyed as they passed, but I barely heard them. All I could see was that number, glowing on my screen like it was mocking me.
Ten thousand dollars was three times what I’d made in an entire summer of working retail. It was much, much more than most people made in a month. It was… it was enough to change everything.
But it wasn’t just a week, I realized as the initial shock began to fade. It was my virginity. The seal between my legs pulsed with awareness, reminding me of exactly what Mike would be paying for. The right to remove that seal himself. To open me. To take something I could only give once.
And not just that. The right to punish me. To use me. To have me available to him however he wanted, whenever he wanted, for seven days. Or maybe only one day—but a day with consequences so mortifying I could hardly think about them.
My thumb hovered over theAcceptbutton, frozen. This was insane. I’d met him once, for less than an hour. I didn’t know him. Not really. Yes, we’d talked about philanthropy software and my failed college career, yes, he’d made me feel seen in a way I couldn’t remember feeling before, but that didn’t mean I knew him. It didn’t mean I could trust him with my body, with my virginity, with my safety.
But ten thousand dollars.
I thought about the Selecta security guarantees Ann Tolliver had mentioned. The surveillance cameras in my apartment that would record everything. The intervention protocols if a sponsor crossed a line. They were watching. Always watching. That should have been horrifying, but right now, standing on this street corner with my entire future hanging in the balance, it felt almost reassuring.
I thought about Mike. The way he’d listened to me. The warmth in his dark eyes when he’d called me a good girl. The confidence in his voice when he’d told me my panties were coming down tonight. Not cruel confidence, but certain. Like he knew exactly what he was doing. Like he could handle me, guide me, give me the structure I’d been desperately lacking.
Like maybe he could help me figure out who I was supposed to be.
And then, underneath all of that rational consideration, there was the other thing. The thing I didn’t want to acknowledge, but couldn’t ignore. The way my body had responded to him. The way his words had made me clench and ache even beneath the horrid seal.
The thought I’d been trying not to have for the past twenty-four hours finally surfaced, breaking through all my careful rationalizations. Maybe I deserved this. Maybe I deserved to be punished the old-fashioned way for what I’d done.
In one important sense the cheating hadn’t been a mistake. It had been a choice. A series of choices, actually. I’d looked at that exam, known I wasn’t prepared, and instead of accepting the consequences of my own laziness, I’d pulled up the answers on my phone. I’d copied them down. I’d turned in work that wasn’t mine and pretended it was.
And when I got caught, I’d tried to lie my way out of it.
My thumb moved before I could second-guess myself anymore. I pressedAccept.
The app loaded for a moment, then a cascade of notifications appeared on my screen.
Congratulations! You’ve accepted a sponsorship offer from Mike G.
