That was the starting price. More money than I’d ever seen in my life, though it wasn’t nearly enough to solve mine and Mom’s money troubles. But I didn’t have time to worry that no one would bite, because in seconds the stakes had raised.
“I’ve got seventy-five, seventy-five, do I see eighty?”
My pulse was running wild. The next number I heard, seemingly seconds later, was $150,000.
“We can do better than this, fellas! Look at that tight little body!”
I felt someone push me forward, closer to the clutches of the criminal creeps vying to take me to bed. I flinched but hurried to regain my composure, squaring my jaw and turning my expression as blank as I could make it.
The bait worked, though. Between one breath and the next, the amount of money the men were offering for my body was astronomical.
“And with that bid, we’re at a quarter mil! Hey, now we’re talking! Can I get two seventy-five?”
And the men, astonishingly, were continuing to bite. To up the ante and show how badly they wanted access to what they could see. It was an amount of money I could really use, regardless of losing the percentage my horrid father had demanded from my “earnings.” The mental math came to me naturally, a nice distraction from the emotional calculations I didn’t want to be making.
When the bidding was over, I’d have to face reality.
I’d have to have sex for the first time, and not with someone I loved, or liked, or even knew.
Numbers were much, much easier to swallow thanthat.
The dollar amount hit high enough that I knew for sure my cut of the pie would fix everything.
A solid half million dollars—and still climbing.
With that kind of cash, I could pay for Mom’s house, I could pay for the rest of my education, and I could even wipe out a good chunk of mom’s medical bills. We might even be able to negotiate some of them down enough that I could wipe the slate clean and have a little safety net of cash left over.
Relief swept over me like a wave of cool water, temporarily wiping away the grim reality.
But then I noticed who was currently the highest bidder.
The little paddle was in the front row, and it belonged to the one man I’d unfortunately noticed before, the creepy grandpa.
A wide grin, bright white in a way that implied veneers if not dentures, caught my eye amidst the haze of the audience.
He threw a wink at me, and I wanted to throw up.
There were a handful of other bidders continuing to up the ante, too. Another elderly man a few rows back who was hanging all over a different woman around my age in a way that made me cringe; a pair of guys who, though a bit younger than the others, were big and rough-looking enough that I feared for my safety if they won me as their prize.
The last bidder, though, was far enough back in the sea of strangers that I couldn’t make out more than an imposingly broad-shouldered silhouette, a glint of the chandelier against a shining wristwatch.
The man kept his cool as the numbers climbed ever higher. Dizzying amounts of money, but he kept up with the bidding war regardless, his determination palpable even across the broad space. Because he was in the shadows, I could almost imagine that he was someone gentler, someone less repulsive than the other men who wanted a night with me.
If I was more of a romantic, I could even pretend he was some prince charming type, destined to save me from my fate—but I knew that wasn’t the kind of event I’d attended. It certainly wasn’t the kind of life I usually led, either.
Maybe if that was my life, I wouldn’t still have my virginity to auction off in the first place.
“One-point two mil, fellas! We’re reaching some real numbers now. These are the numbers that separate the boys from the men, and I’ve already seen our candidates for this gorgeous lady’s first fuck thin out. Who will win the prize? I guess we’ll see…”
The numbers were climbing again, the pace breakneck until a dramatic pause that scared me out of my skin. The bidding was hovering at two million dollars.
I felt like I was going to pass out when I saw that the smug near-winner was Mr. Front Row, his skeevy gaze feeling cold and slimy against my skin like I was sure his touch would be.
He had two million dollars on me, on a first that should have been special and wanted, and I could see in his expression that he knew was going to win.
“We’ve got two million going once, going twice…”
“Three-million,” a powerful, cool voice rose up from the back of the crowd.
