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“Take off your clothes,” the oaf said, causing me to turn my wide eyes from the scene in front of me to scowl at him.
“Like hell,” I sneered.
“If you don’t, I will,” he threatened, then took a menacing step toward me.
My thoughts scrambled as I tried to figure out my best course of action here … Did I strip down naked in a room full of disgusting men and terrified girls, humiliating myself and basically allowing them to hose me down like a barnyard animal? Or, did I fight, probably end up battered and bruised, and after the struggle, still naked in a room full of disgusting men and terrified girls?
Figuring I needed to keep my strength and remain uninjured so I could find a way out of this mess, I gave the oaf the stank eye while I took off my clothes myself. He flashed his teeth at me, grinning in triumph, so I flipped him the bird, then resumed disrobing.
Once I was naked, he pointed toward the girls, indicating I should move over to join the group shower. As I slid over, I looked at all of the girls. Even though I’d never met Hannah, and had no idea what she looked like, I wondered if she was in the sea of faces.
I was processing how frightened the girls were not paying attention to the goons, so when the blast of freezing water hit me, it was a shock to the system. I gasped, then instinctively tried to cower away.
It was over in seconds, but they were seconds I never wanted to live again. Cold, wet, my hair dripping, I huddled into myself as best I could, then tried to wring out as much of the water as possible from my hair.
“Up and to the next room,” the man with the hose bellowed, and when the girls didn’t immediately get up and start moving, he blasted the ones closest to the door on the opposite side of the room again.
“Now!” he yelled, and this time everyone scrambled to their feet and moved, including me.
I kept my head down, but took in everything I could as we walked across the puddles in the floor and into the next room. There was another set of girls in the room. But these girls were dressed.
They’d obviously been through the same drill my group had been, because their hair was wet, although most of them were now wearing braids and ponytails. There were not only men, but female goons in this room. They seemed to be involved in the dressing and fixing of hair.
I stood in the line of wet girls, peering around the naked bodies in front of me to see what was happening in front. The girls in the front of our line were being toweled off by the men, while the women handed them dresses, then moved them over to start on their hair.
I was looking at
the girls who were already dressed and sitting around the room in folding chairs. Although they had dresses on and their hair was done, no one had on any makeup, which only made them look younger and more pristine. Pure. Which I assumed was the look Yusuf and his buyers were going for.
I wondered what in the hell they were planning to do with me, since I was a fork in a room full of spoons.
As I was searching their faces, I realized that they were all acting much differently than those of us still naked and in line. They were sitting listlessly, not reacting to what was going on around them. They didn’t seem to care that they were being made up for auction, and hadn’t responded to the fact that there was a line of wet and naked girls all whimpering and whining in the same room as them.
They must’ve been drugged, I thought, then turned my attention back to the first girls in my group who were now dressed and were being led to a chair in front of a mirror. When the young, dark-haired girl sat down, one of the women handed her a water bottle.
The girl looked up at her, obviously about to refuse, but I saw the woman put her hand on the girl’s shoulder and urge her to drink. I watched closely, not tearing my eyes off the dark-haired girl even as I shuffled forward in line, so I noticed when her shoulders relaxed and her head dropped slightly forward.
It was the water. They were slipping something in there, knowing that the girls would feel safe drinking water out of a bottle, therefore making them pliable and easier to get ready for auction.
Jun said that Yusuf kept the girls drugged so that they didn’t know they were being sold off until it was too late. This is how he did it.
I was getting closer to the front, trying to figure out how to keep from drinking the water, when my eyes landed on a girl sitting in the middle of the room. Long black hair, toffee skin, and the face of an angel … They’d taken Alani.
“Damn, where’d this one come from?” the man asked rudely when I got to the front of the line. He was toweling me off roughly when he turned to the woman next to him with a smirk. “She’s as old as you.”
I growled in response.
Seriously? The woman handing out dresses is at least sixty. What an asshole!
“She was snooping around,” the goon offered from behind me. “Yusuf said to add her to the list. Some guys have fetishes, ya know.”
Fucker.
They all laughed, and I swore to myself that I was going to kick some serious ass when I got out of this. Or, I’d at least have Cade do it…
Once I had a white sundress on, that was almost identical to what every other girl in the room was wearing, I was pushed toward the chair at the vanity, and sat down. I held my breath as the lady handed me a bottle of water.
“Here, ma’am,” she said, her English broken and her tone kind. “Drink up, you need water.”
