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1
Aurora
“Okay, this is it,”I tell myself in the mirror. “You can do this.”
I do look hot; I’ll say that much. The too tight, a little too short black cocktail dress hovers just on this side of scandalous. My long red hair is down with a slight wave to it, and my makeup is on point; smoky eyes and all. The outfit is perfect, but it’s the inside of me that’s all messed up.
This isn’t how this is supposed to happen. No girl lays in her bed daydreaming about her first time being the result of a financial transition. Of course they don’t, and neither did I. My daydreams were always about him—the utterly untouchable, completely out of my league Carter Holloway. I doubt I could even count how many times I fantasized about him. It’s incalculable to know how many daydreams and fantasies I had involving him.
He’s the one who I should be seeing tonight. It shouldn’t be a stranger, who’s paying me. I feel the sick feeling in my stomach at that thought. Tonight, I’m beingpaidto give something that can only be given once. I know “purity” or whatever is a stupid concept. I mean it’s just sex. The whole world has it, a lot. Some of it is that it’s not Carter, and some of it is that I’ve simply hung onto it for so long. I’m twenty-one, and I’ve never once done a thing with a guy. Pathetic, I know.
I take one more look at myself in the mirror. Then I grab my phone and my clutch and leave my tiny Lower East Side apartment. I glance at my phone in the cramped elevator that smells like pee to see if my Uber is here yet. He’s close, but I also have a text from Sienna. It just says that she hopes I’m feeling better and to call tomorrow if I’m up for it.
I feel awful having just lied to my best friend. I lied to her mom, too, who’s basically my second mom. I told them all I wasn’t feeling well, and that’s why I had to leave. A few hours ago, I was at dinner at Sienna and Luke’s house out in the Hamptons. House isn’t the right word, more like palace. But I wasn’t sick. The truth is, I got the message from “ParkAvePlayboyX” that he wanted it to be tonight. We’d planned for a few days from now, but his schedule cleared, and he messaged that he couldn’t wait any longer.
Most girls would be thrilled to hear that a rich guy they’d been texting with was dropping everything on his busy plate to see them tonight. But ParkAvePlayboyX isn’t my boyfriend or anything. He’s not a friend. My God, I don’t even know his damn name. It makes this even grosser, to be honest, and more tawdry. No, ParkAvePlayboyX isn’t anyone romantic with me. He’s the man who’s paying me two-hundred-thousand dollars for my first time.
It started a few months ago. My mom’s cancer came back hard, and everything started to go downhill fast. I left school to come home and help her out, since it’s just the two of us. But it wasn’t long before any savings we had started to dwindle to nothing. It was some late night after hours on the internet trying to find ways to make money when I found it: an exclusive, audition-only forum. It was a place where very rich people buy and bid on things that you just can’t buy out in the open in the real world. And in one part of it were girls selling their first times to men who would pay for it.
I wanted to throw up the first time I saw it, and I immediately closed my laptop. But the idea kept coming to me over the next week. The bills kept stacking up, my mom was getting worse, and I knew there was only one thing to do.
In my fantasies, I’ve been saving myself for him; for Carter. That was a silly idea before, but now it’s impossible: Carter died a few years ago in a roadside bombing in the Middle East. I don’t know why, but even after he was gone, I couldn’t bring myself to try dating, or see anyone. He’d been my crush since before I knew what a crush was. He was the only man I ever wanted, and he’s gone.
But now it’s time to let that silly idea go. My mom needs the treatment, and we need the money. I’ve got nothing left to trade but this, and it’s going to be the answer to our problems. ParkAvePlayboyX has seen the pictures of me that I submitted to the forum, along with my polygraph test asserting that I haven’t in fact ever done it before. He’s put the money in an escrow account run by the forum, and I’ll get it after both of us confirm the transaction tonight.
Outside of my building, the Uber pulls up, and I get inside. Then I’m on my way uptown to his penthouse. I blanche at the word “transaction” for what I’m doing tonight. But that’s what it is. I force myself to not think about it though. All I have to do is show up and get it over with it. I just hope to God that “ParkAvePlayboyX” isn’t in his seventies or an asshole or anything like that.
I didn’t just lie to my best friend tonight, either. I was jealous of her in secret. When we were younger, we both had crushes: me on her older brother Carter, and her on his friend Luke. Both Luke and Carter went off with the Marines to Afghanistan, and both were lost in that roadside IED. But somehow, Luke came back.
Back from the dead, Luke swooped in to be my friend’s Prince Charming. He’s a billionaire now, too. The house where we were having dinner tonight is their dream house he just built on a cliff over the ocean near where we all used to go swim. Iamhappy for both of them, honestly. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. The man I loved never came home, after all.
Thirty blocks later, the Uber stops outside of a gorgeous building. Sure enough, ParkAvePlayboyX does actually live on Park Avenue. I say I’m a guest of Penthouse A at the door, and the doorman just nods and lets me inside. I wonder how often my mystery man tonight does this sort of thing. But that thought makes me sick, so I shake it from my head.
It was supposed to be Carter. But desperate times call for desperate measures. And if I’m going to, I might as well make some money losing it, right? All I have to do is get through this, and our problems are solved. And it’s just sex, right? The elevator doors open, and I gasp a little. The hallway looks like the entrance to a palace. There’s even only one door, too—the door that leads to Penthouse A, where I’ll be losing it tonight.
I can’t fucking believe I’m doing this, but I square my jaw and walk to the apartment door. I remind myself that I look great with the dress, hair, makeup, and the sheer matching bra and panties I’m wearing under it all that ParkAvePlayboyX bought and sent to me to wear tonight. But it still doesn’t make me feel any better about all of this.
With a heavy heart, I fill my lungs with a breath and knock on the door. I can hear footsteps, and I close my eyes and count to five to steady my nerves. It’s just sex. It’s just a transaction. Actually, it’s the oldest transaction in human history, says the internet research I did. The footsteps draw closer, and finally, I hear the door unlocking. The knob turns, and I ready myself for what’s to come.
But when the door swings open, nothing can prepare me for who—who—is on the other side.
For a second, I think I’m dreaming, or having an episode or something. Maybe the stress of this situation has broken my mind, and I’m seeing things. Because there’s no freaking way I’m actually standing here face to face with Carter Holloway.
“Aurora,” he growls. My head swims, and my legs falter. I start to fall, but he suddenly catches me in big, muscled, and very real arms.
“You…” I whisper. I look up into his face. My pulse races. “How...how?”
“For you, Aurora,” he grunts quietly. His blue eyes hold mine intensely, never blinking as he looks into my very soul. “I came back for you.”
2
Carter
She falls,but I’m there to catch her. She drops into my arms, and I want to roar out loud, like an animal who’s found its mate. Holding her feels like home. And for the first time since I came back, I feel whole.
I know there would have been easier and less dramatic ways to do this. But it’s not all just for the effect. It was to keep her safe. All of what I’ve done for so long is to keep her safe. Working with the enemy and smiling at my captors for all of this time was to keep Aurora safe from them. The Jihad Brotherhood, who are the fuckers who’ve had me in captivity since the day everyone thought I died, are everywhere. They’re based out of Afghanistan, but they have cells and agents all over. I had to be sure. Ihadto keep her safe.
I groan when she twists in my arms. The feel of her body against mine, and the heat of her through my dress shirt and pants is like gasoline on a fire. I’ve wanted her for years. I’ve craved her for longer than I ought to have. Now, finally, she’s in my arms; exactly where she belongs.
