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This room…it’s not what I expected. I mean, really, I have no idea what to expect about any of this, but a room full of men in suits, sitting there as if they’re about to start a business meeting or something, is about the last thing I thought I’d find here. There’s a raised dais at the front of the room, five other girls standing there in their stripper get-ups.
Harry waves me toward the stage. “Make me proud, girl.”
I numbly make my way up to the little stage, and a few of the other girls smile at me. They seem excited, almost giddy.
Is this where I’m dancing? What is this? These men are clearly rich.
Better tips, probably.
Well. That’s what I’m here for, after all, I think, doing the endless, impossible math in my head. How much I need to make per night to save Pops. I take another deep breath. Just another type of performance. I was born to perform. I can do this, too.
I keep my eyes down, well aware of eyes on me. My stomach twists, and I wish I was wearing just about anything else. The tight white blouse, the skimpy plaid skirt, the knee socks and ridiculously high heels… I’m barely wearing anything at all. My long black hair is put up in pigtails.
I feel like an idiot.
Money. Think of the money. Think of Pops.
There aren’t many well-paying jobs for girls like me. I’ll take what I can get.
Ha
rry steps up to the stage, and as he does, I glance up. But not at Harry. No. At the man in the front row. He’s sitting there, legs spread wide, arms crossed over his chest. Wearing a suit, like the others, but he looks like a cross between a businessman and a male model. Dark hair, with just a hint of wave to it. Dark, intense eyes. His suit is impeccable and clearly expensive. He’s totally polished, except for the dark stubble along his jawline. Somehow, that makes him even more devastating.
His eyes are on me. Calculating, intense. I force myself to tear my gaze away from him, but I swear I can still feel him watching me.
“Welcome, gentlemen,” Harry says. “You are my esteemed guests, and I’m pleased to welcome you to tonight’s auction. Highest bidder for each girl gets a week with her. No questions asked.”
I shoot him a panicked look.
“My girls are worth it,” Harry says. “They can live for months off of one good auction should one of them get chosen now,” he adds, meeting my eyes, raising his eyebrows as if to say “shut up and take what you can get.”
I do.
This was never part of the plan. Dance a little. Probably get groped. But this? A week at the beck and call of a man I’ve never met?
I’m about to protest when Harry speaks again, addressing the men.
“We’ll start the auction with Gracie over there. Starting bid, one hundred thousand.”
My jaw snaps shut, and any thoughts of trying to get out of this float away. A hundred grand would save my father. Not completely, and not forever, maybe, but it’d be a hell of a good start.
I watch the other dancers get auctioned off. One goes for a quarter of a million. One for just over a hundred thousand.
The entire time, the intense, gorgeous man in the front row is looking at me.
Not him. Let one of those other men buy me instead. They look like lawyers or doctors or something. Benign. Something in him, his intensity, the way he watches me, makes me feel like he’d turn my life upside down in about a minute flat. Anyone else. Anyone else.
Just not him.
“Which brings us to Samantha,” Harry says, and I take a deep breath.
“I want different terms,” the man from the front row says, and his voice is a deep rumble, rough, almost hoarse.
“We don’t usually—”
“One month. One month, at my command. You get your hundred K.”
“A month is a long time,” Harry argues.
