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“And remember, Rose…” She regarded me with a wariness bordering on fear. “This man is not your knight in shining armour, okay? More likely he’s a deranged freak who gets his rocks off to breaking in virgins and has way more money than sense.”
“Right,” I replied, forcing back the fear I’d managed to block out. “Got it. He’s no knight in shining armour.”
Then I tipped back my bottle of beer and drank it, recklessly, in one.
My nerves didstar jumps and somersaults as I watched the auction counter tick down. I stood up for the hundredth time in ten minutes and paced through packed cardboard boxes, swigging Pepsi and chewing gum like a six-year-old who’d just consumed a lifetime’s supply of Haribo.
I hadn’t told Mum and Jeff I was moving out. As far as they were aware, I’d forgotten the hitting incident and had moved on, being just slightly more submissive than before. I hadn’t ventured out of my room unless it was to leave the house altogether. I hadn’t tried to approach Mum again and she hadn’t attempted to approach me. It broke my heart that she wasn’t standing up for her own daughter, but if I was ever going to be able to help her, I had to help myself first. And getting far away from Middlehurst Drive was top of my list.
I swigged down more Pepsi – the caffeine helped divert my thinking away from my sorry home life towards the possibilityof a future in which I’d have enough money to get the education I’d dreamed about. I glanced back at the screen. Then, as if time itself had stopped, I stared at the ticker, wondering why it hadn’t budged for an age. I tapped the track pad and nothing happened.
What?
I hit the track pad and, again, nothing happened.
Whaaaaat?Fuck, fuck, fuck. What was going on?
I tried to close the window but the screen had frozen so I forced a shutdown and hopped from foot to foot while the spinning wheel of death taunted me from the blank window.
Come on, come on.
About a year later, the screen came to life and I restarted the browser, almost chewing my lip off in the process.
The auction deadline had passed.
Was I to be the proud owner of a hundred grand or was I not?
My eyes roamed the screen, unable to focus on any one thing. Then I read the line, ‘Your auction has ended. Congratulations. Now meet your winning bidder.’
My heart lodged itself firmly in my throat as I clicked the button. It took me through to a profile page that contained no photograph and only one line of information:Payment will be made to a holding company once contracts have been signed, then released on fulfilment. Instructions to follow.
I scrolled to the foot of the page and felt an overwhelming sense of relief. The winning bidwasa hundred thousand pounds. ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND POUNDS! My virginity. Sold. To the highest bidder.
The only bidder.
I closed my eyes against the inevitable ‘what’s wrong with me?’ and ‘Am I really so ugly?’ inner prodding and reminded myself that others who may have been interested would probably have seen the six figure bid and decided against it. Whoever had bid on me had put me in a league above the rest.My head swam with insatiable intrigue and dread. Who was it? And what were these instructions?
Almost immediately, a notification appeared at the top of my screen. A message had appeared in my inbox. It was from Lamont Law. I opened it and felt immediately intimidated by the very proper and complicated wording it used. I had to read over the letter three times before it made any sense.
This Agreement (“Agreement”)is entered into by both the parties described herein under as “Client” and “Provider”.
Dalziel Sebastian Edward Thorn, also described as the ‘Client’ and Rose Delilah Robinson, also described as ‘Provider’, do hereby agree to all the terms described and given below.
The term of this agreement begins immediately upon arrival at the Client’s property and shall continue until the service has been fulfilled.
The words swambut one line rose to the surface, higher than the rest. “Provider will be transported to the home of the client to fulfil the purpose of this agreement. The address of the client’s home is Blackcap Hall, Warlock Mount, Isle of Crow.”
Isle of Crow?
I was going to the Isle of Crow?
No one had stepped foot on that island in years. Decades. Maybe even a century. Hovering off the Scottish mainland by a few hundred miles, it was notoriously closed off from the rest of the UK. It was completely isolated and inhabited by the world’s most reclusive billionaires. Well, that figured. One of them just paid for my virginity.
Excitement and fear wrapped around the base of my spine and wound upwards until I shook with nerves.
This was it. I was going to lose my virginity to a billionaire and become rich in the process. It was too good to be true. On paper it promised to make me, but I had a nagging feeling it might break me instead.
Rose
