Chapter 5

February 4th

This is it. I did it. I signed on the dotted line and the virginity auction is happening. Oh my bookworm. I can't believe it.

"Girl!" Eli cried as he shoved open Paige's apartment door without even knocking. "Did you just send me a link of you dancing to Like a Virgin in your underwear offering up your V-card to the highest bidder on some escort site? I mean, your face wasn't in the video, but I know your horrible moves and that girl is you."

"What the hell?" Paige cringed as she heard Leah screaming from the floor below a second before the sound of a door slamming and footsteps racing up the stairs.

Leah burst into the apartment in pajamas and a green deep cleansing facial mask. Her blonde hair was in a messy bun on the top of her head but the horror in her eyes came through loud and clear. Eli wore a similar look on his cover model, clean-shaven face. He was in jogging pants and looked as if he'd sprinted from the last performance of his show to question her.

"Did you like it?" Paige asked nervously. She had thought the dance video had been a cute idea to announce her virginity sale. "Of course, you know where I got the idea?"

"Sale by Authoress X," they both said at once.

"So hot," Leah said, waving her hand in front of her face as if to cool herself.

"But you can't do this!" Eli was in a full-blown hissy fit. His arms were flapping around in the air as he paced back and forth. "What kind of creep will buy you? What if they murder you?"

"I've thought about that. You look really intimidating with all your muscles. You can wait outside the room. I even found a hotel that has security where I can meet the winner," Paige explained.

"Paige, where have you shared this post? What will your boss say? What will your parents say?" Leah asked, horrified.

"With any luck, my boss will buy me and I can cross boss/assistant off my trope list too. Grumpy billionaire alpha-hole for that matter, too," Paige said with more confidence than she felt. "But I think he forgot I exist since he's not spoken to me in the last couple of days. The escort service put the auction up under a fake name. They only have a fake email to forward the applicants too, so I'm not worried about it."

"But this is prostitution, right? Have I missed something? It's still illegal here in New York, isn't it?" Eli asked.

"I found a way around it. A loophole. I cleared it with the escort company and they agree that it's all legal too."

"How is that possible?" Leah asked.

"It's not truly an auction. It's more like an application process."

"So, you'll get your pick from the applicants? I thought the highest bidder won your blossoming flower," Eli said with an epic eye roll.

"I made all applicants fill out a form with their bid. There's fine print that states only qualified applicants will be considered and a list of questions they must answer to be considered. Further, it never mentioned that the winning bid must be paid. Plus, the winner's email will include some even finer print stating that I have decided not to collect the money, therefore it'll be me gifting my virginity, thus making it all legal. I did ask them to consider making a donation in the amount of their bid to the literacy group. So, it's more like a Virgin Deflowering Application as opposed to auction," Paige explained, "They just won't know that until the winner is emailed."

"Oh, that's good," Leah admitted. "When is the time up? We should all get together and go over the applicants together."

"Day after tomorrow at midnight. The escort service clears all the guys who apply and has sent a blast out to their clients. Well, the ones who give actual contact information." She took a deep breath and continued, "The second the clock hits midnight, the escort service will take down the video, scrub the posts, and send all the applications for me to pick a winner. Then they'll email the client with the information and the contract they all agreed to." Paige had to admit, it was rather hot, thinking that a sexy stranger would be doing all the things Paige had only read about in the hundreds of books on her shelf. In a couple of days, she'd no longer be a bookworm, but the heroine in her own real life erotica novel.

"Now!" Amelia yelled, eyes on the clock.

Paige refreshed the escort company's webpage. It reloaded and her post was gone. Now she could breathe again. The evidence was gone and her adventure was about to begin.

"Has the email come yet? I can't wait to see these applicants," Eli said excitedly as he handed everyone a glass of wine.

Paige's heart pounded as she pulled up her email. There they were. Email after email sent by the escort company hit her inbox. They said they would simply forward all of them. Since they weren't being paid, they didn't want to waste the manpower of sorting them. Paige would pick a winner and a runner-up. The agency would run a background on those two candidates. Upon Paige's confirmation, the final winner will be sent his email.

This was it. Was one of these her future happily ever after?

"Pick one and open it. I'm dying to see it," Leah said, looking over her shoulder at the screen.

Paige's hand shook as she moved the mouse to the first email. Here goes nothing. Paige opened the email.

"Jeez-Louise," Amelia gasped. "Is that . . .?"

"Yup," Eli said, staring at the screen.

"But it's..." Leah barely managed to say as her mouth hung open.

"Yup," Eli said again.

"A spike through his dick. And he sent a picture of it. To a virgin. I'm going to delete that one." Paige cringed as she took one last look before deleting it.

Thirty minutes and a hundred and fifty dick pics later, they'd gone through more than a hundred creepy applications, even more just plain boring ones or incomplete ones, and the list was now narrowed down to the six men who hadn't sent dick pics, actually answered the questions, and didn't give off I'll murder you vibes.

"I think they've ruined this for me," Paige said with a sigh as she opened the first real application to give it a thorough read through.

"Is the poor virgin traumatized?" Eli teased.

"I was so excited about finding my sexy buyer, but I've been disenchanted," Paige admitted.

"Oh, my!" Amelia said before letting out a whistle. "Look at this hottie."

Paige looked at the applicant Amelia had pulled up, and everyone sucked in air. Hello handsome! He was clean-cut with short dark brown hair and warm brown eyes that left her heart pounding. But it wasn't just his good looks that had her heart pounding. She knew him.

"Who is he?" Leah asked before Paige could say anything.

"Max Cable," Amelia read off. "Thirty years old. Like dogs. Is a personal trainer. Very nice bid, too."

"He's coffee shop meet-cute guy!" Paige blurted out.

"The one who called you a cow?" Leah looked ready to punch him.

"No. The one who bought my coffee."

"It's kismet!" Amelia said, looking excited. Paige had to admit she felt that same excitement.

"Let's look at the others too," Eli reminded them. "Then we can see who the winner is."

Amelia clicked through the rest of the images and the bids. Some of the men were clearly not the type Paige wanted for her first time. In the end, it came down to Max and one other man.

"Okay, so these are the final two. Now tell me the bids and we'll see who will make Paige a woman," Eli said, giving Amelia a nod to move up the forms so they could see the bids.

Paige held her breath and closed her eyes. Please be Max. When she opened them, it was to find Eli high-fiving Amelia and Leah. Her breath was pushed from her lungs when she saw the numbers on the screen. Max had won her.

"Go get your man," Leah said with a wink as Amelia moved from the chair so Paige could email the escort service to run a background on Max and the runner-up. Then they'd email Max the meeting information upon Paige's final confirmation.

Fifteen minutes later, the escort service emailed her a background. Max had a speeding ticket three years ago. Lived in an okay part of town and paid his bills. No violent history. No arrests. No red flags. Paige emailed them the okay to send him the contract with the instructions they'd settled on. This was it. Paige was living her first book. She wasn't just a plain bookworm now—she was a sexy bookworm off to have a grand adventure straight from the pages of her book!