Chapter 3

THREE

brOOKE

Immediately, I’m blinded by the stage lights.

Just like Moira said, they’re all pointed directly at me, and I can’t see a thing. I put my hand up to block the light, then take an uncertain step forward.

The smiling owner of the club, Caleb, suddenly appears out of the blinding halo.

Caleb leans in to whisper, “Quinn explained what’s going to happen, right? That I’m going to touch you to show you off? And ask some personal questions?”

I nod nervously. I’ve never been on a stage before. Well, that I can remember. The doctor said as I started going back out into the world, familiar things would start coming back to me, but nothing has in the two months since I woke up at the hospital. But every new experience could turn out to be one more clue.

“I need verbal consent,” Caleb whispers back.

“Yes,” I say nervously. “I consent.”

He grins and puts my arm lightly through his as he leads me forwards.

I suck in another breath as I clasp his arm. He helps steady me as we walk up to the microphone. I can only stare out at the murky room beyond the bright stage like a deer in headlights. Everything inside my chest goes tight as a guitar string. The lights are aimed towards me, so I can’t see what the men look like beyond shadowed outlines.

“Here,” Caleb says, lifting the microphone, “come stand right up here.”

I nod, feeling like a bobblehead, and go to stand where he says to.

Caleb lifts the microphone to his lips, holding out his arm towards me. “Here she is, our prize of the night. The beautiful virgin. So ripe and untouched. Do a slow little spin so our viewers can see all of you. Good, good, that’s a good girl. Now stand right there in the center and arch your back, gorgeous. Stick out those sweet little tits for our bidders.”

I do what he says, a little awkwardly at first. But I finally understand how arching my back makes my nipples point upwards. That’s funny. I wouldn’t have thought of that. Each thought feels disjointed from the previous one and the next. Everything’s happening so fast. It’s like my brain can’t keep up.

“Yes. Just like that,” Caleb says. “Now turn around and bend over. Touch the floor and give our gentlemen a peek at what they’re bidding on.”

Really feeling the lights on me now, I turn and start to bend. There’s no one out there , I try to tell myself. It’s just a dark, empty room .

“Spread your legs wider.”

Oh. I see what he means now. If I stand with my legs open, they can see my?—

I gasp a little in shock and shift my legs a little. There’s no one out there. Just a dark, empty room.

“Wider.”

I lift and really separate my legs, spreading them wider than my hips. I bite my bottom lip, feeling the coolness of the room on the warmth of my very exposed sex.

“Good girl,” Caleb says, his voice a little caressing. I inhale a little gasp at his praise. “Now touch the floor, if you can with those heels on. Let’s see how flexible you are.”

Immediately I’m obeying as if on reflex, even though I don’t even know how flexible I am. I have noticed that I prefer it when people give me direction rather than asking me to make decisions. They were always asking me questions I didn’t know how to answer at the shelter. About what I wanted to do next. I felt so choked and panicked each time. But whenever anyone told me what to do, I immediately relaxed.

Even now, calmness settles over me as I reach down further and further until my fingertips, then my palms, rest on the floor. I feel the stretch in the back of my legs and my butt, but it’s a pleasant pull. The physical therapists had me do a lot of stretching in the hospital and I kept it up afterwards in the shelter.

Upside down, I look through my legs at the men watching me. My eyes are slowly adjusting to the darkness. I can just barely make out the shape of a few men’s faces—enough to tell that they aren’t gross old men or like Jabba the Hut in the Star Wars movies I watched with Moira this week.

These men all have nice enough physiques, in various dark-colored suits. Like paper-doll cut-outs of each other. All their eyes are glued on me.

“Spread wider if you can, honey,” Caleb says into the microphone. “Really give them a look at your virgin pussy.”

I gulp and feel a clenching deep inside now that I’m able to see it’s absolutely not an empty room.

Somehow that makes it real. I’m exposing myself in the most extreme way anyone can be exposed. And unexpectedly… a flooding rush of adrenaline I never anticipated crashes through my body. It’s a sparkling electricity that dances across my skin. Especially as Caleb continues to instruct my movements, and I continue to obey.

My face flushes with heat as I lock eyes with one man in the back who’s staring at me so hard, it’s like he’s trying to drill into me. I can’t decide if it looks like he hates me or he wants to fuck me or if he wants to hate-fuck me.

The more I keep staring at him, imagining all the things he might be fantasizing about, I slide my legs further apart like Caleb tells me to. Air-conditioning kicks on then because I feel a draft against my exposed pussy. It makes me shudder.

I break the stare of the man and turn my face shyly into my leg, even as my butt and sex clench, still thinking about him. A couple of groans come from the audience.

“That’s good, sweetheart,” Caleb says. “You can stand back up now.”

I obey, my cheeks wildly hot as I stare at the polished wooden floor.

“Have you ever felt the touch of a man before?” Caleb asks, holding the microphone out in front of my face for my answer.

“No,” I whisper, jumping a little at my amplified voice when it comes out of speakers around the room.

“You’ve never had sex before or been penetrated by a man?”

“Not that I know of,” I answer as honestly as I can. “The doctors said my hymen is intact.”

“Do you touch yourself?”

I suck in a quick breath. “I— I’ve thought about it. I think about it.”

“What do you think about? ”

Oh my god, this is embarrassing. Quinn told me the auctioneer would talk to me on stage a little, but I didn’t realize he’d ask about this. She said to just answer everything honestly. To be myself.

“I, uh…” I close my eyes so I don’t die of embarrassment. “I think about what it would feel like. First, I think about his arms around me. He’s touching my hair. He’s heavy on top of me, and I like how that feels. And then I feel his… um, how he gets hard down there. I imagine what it might be like to have him… if I touched him and took hold of him in my fist because I want to know what one feels like—” I pause for a second when more groans come from the crowd.

“Keep going,” Caleb whispers to me.

“Um. Then I think about what if he, um, if he put it there and—” I swallow hard. I’m not sure I could do this if Caleb wasn’t directing me. “Like, I had a dream the other night about a man pushing me down on the bed and then having, like, um, a thick fullness in there between my legs. And then him pushing it inside me. Like, in the place where it aches.”

“How does it ache, baby?” Caleb demands. “Tell us.”

My cheeks are red hot. I feel my whole face burning, not just my cheeks but my forehead too.

It feels otherworldly to be up here, baring my naked body that I’m selling, and telling my most intimate fantasies to tempt every man in this room. There’s a little bit of shame mixed in, but even that adds to the rushing adrenaline. I might not know much, but I suspect that the big world out there looks down on this kind of thing. I’m doing something forbidden and sexy as fuck, and risky and dangerous. But it’s also easy because I’m just giving in to commands.

As for the fact that I’m exhilarated and wet… My eyes open and slide back to the glaring man.

“It aches,” I answer, “like this pulsing that starts… down there,” my hands caress my body, “and comes up through my belly and then I want… I want to be pushed down and have the heaviness on top of me. In me. The heaviness of a man. Like I need something, but I don’t know how to get it.”

The intensity burning off the glaring man is too much, so I break our stare. Only to find every other eye in the room on me. My eyes have adjusted to the darkness. Some men have their hands down their pants. Others sprout little tents. Then movement and noise in the corner catches my eye.

It’s Moira, bent over with a hand against the wall, dress bunched at her waist. A man grasps her hips and enthusiastically fucks her. His pants are shoved down just enough to expose his tan ass.

I gasp a little in surprise. I’m watching my friend have sex.

“Not in the same room as me,” barks another man, drawing my eye. He turns away, holding up a hand to block any possible peripheral vision of Moira.

He’s the one who locked eyes with me earlier. As I look, he glares my way again.

I frown. He looks angry at me. I look back at Moira as she lets out a high-pitch groan and wiggles away from the man. Without a word, she grabs him by the front of his untucked button-down shirt while he struggles to yank his pants up, dragging him down a hallway.

“Now,” Caleb announces from beside me. “Do we have a bidder?”