“Our crown jewel of the night is a twenty-five-year-old romance author by day,” Jayne called with a broad smile. “And a perfect angel by night.”
At least two hundred pairs of eyes were now on me. I put one foot in front of the other, head spinning, heart pounding, feeling on the verge of a fainting spell.
“Spin around for us, angel,” Archer whispered, taking my hand.
I didn’t have the ability to protest, not with this amount of adrenaline coursing through my veins. I slowly turned. A few people whistled.
“What a perfect ass,” Archer said, low enough that only I could hear.
I faced the crowd again.
“Two hundred thousand dollars.”
I could physically feel the color drain from my face. There was no way that was thestartingbid. I met the eyes of the older married couple who’d bid on me, and they smiled encouragingly.
“Two-fifty,” a man in the back called.
I scanned the overflow of newcomers, but my head snapped in the direction of a new voice.
“Three-fifty,” one of the men in golden masks called. He and his friends hadn’t stopped staring at me the entire auction. I wondered if they were the same men from the subway. Their masks certainly matched.
Surely, this was the end.
It wasn’t. Someone in the back called four hundred. The table of golden masks called out five.
“I’m going to pass out,” I heard myself say.
Archer’s hand snaked around my waist, as if to steady me. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”
When the golden-masked men broached seven figures, black stars encroached upon the edges of my vision.
The man in the back was undeterred—and I realized in horror it was the wolf man I’d rejected at the start of the evening. I didnotwant to be sold to him.
“One point two,” the wolf declared, drumming up collective excitement.
I pulled in deep breath after breath.
“We have places to be,” the golden boar drawled in a monotone voice, drawing a few snickers from the crowd. “So we’re going to wrap this up.”
“Six million for the angel,” the golden rabbit said, silencing the room.
My knees buckled. Archer kept me standing. The table laughed.
Jayne beamed at me. “What a fabulous end to the auction,” she declared. “I thank everyone for their generous donations toward a better world—a world where everyone gets to choose their own destiny.”
Archer walked with me to the edge of the stage. Someone shoved through the crowd of people in the back, and my pounding heart clenched tight.
Wes broke through the fray, his face contorted with beautiful rage. Muscles in his tattooed neck pulsed. But the only emotion in his rich brown eyes when our gazes locked wasfear.
I couldn’t hear the sound that left his lips from this far away, but I could write the single syllable, could feel it slam against me like an inarguable command.
No.
The table of men rose. They nodded to Archer.
Archer’s smile was warm and pleased. “Is there anything else we can do for you this evening?” he asked, as if they were a homogenous entity.
“This will be all,” one of the men said.
