At His Bidding, page 1
At His Bidding
Ginger Talbot
Copyright 2019 by Ginger Talbot
This book is intended for readers 18 and older only, due to adult content. It is a work of fiction. All characters and locations in this book are products of the imagination of the author.
License Statement
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Contents
Blurb
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Also by Ginger Talbot
Two wealthy, ruthless men are in a bitter war.
And Riley’s body is their battleground.
She thought they’d taken everything from her. She was wrong.
She thought she’d left her tragic past behind. She was wrong.
She knows that now. Because she’s standing up on a platform at the Betancourt auction, scorched by the cruel, hungry gaze of the world’s richest men, selling the only thing she has left: herself.
Now two men are bidding for her.
One has sworn to possess and enslave her.
One has sworn to destroy her.
Whoever wins this auction…Riley loses.
Prologue
Present day
Riley Kowalski
I am standing up on a stage in frothy lingerie that is designed to display the most intimate parts of me. The floodlights that light me up for the audience also blind me, and I blink hard, struggling to get my bearings.
I’ve endured hours of waxing, plucking, flat-ironing, and a layer of make-up slathered on so thickly that I’m afraid to move my face. The real me is blurred and replaced by a photo-shopped version of a beauty pageant contestant. My thick chestnut waves have been tamed and fall in a curtain past my shoulders, with dozens of safety pins in strategic places to pouf it up and give it volume. Contour powder is painted down the side of my small nose, and pink gloss highlights lips which have been called “bee-stung” and “pouty.”
My light-dazzled eyes can only make out dim shapes, but I know that in the audience dozens of wealthy men are staring up at me with lust, with contempt, with speculation. They’re eye-raping the body I swore I’d save for love, back when I believed in fairytales. But was I ever really that naive?
“Turn around. Slowly, like we practiced,” a bored woman’s voice instructs me through the little clip-on headphone in my right ear. Her name – the name she gave me anyway – is Maria. I obey instantly, exposing my backside to the crowd.
I have sunk as low as I can go. And there is a certain comfort in that. Twenty-two years old, and I am scraping bottom. After this – when this year of humiliation is done, when I have paid my penance, when my innocence is a distant memory – I can start over. My family will be safe, and I will own my body again. I can live like a nun or have a million affairs – I suspect the former will be all that I will be able to bear, ever again.
That’s what I’ve been telling myself for days now, ever since I agreed to the private auction. It’s a grey-market affair run by a shady conglomerate known as the Betancourt Corporation. Grey rather than black because the women who come here to sell their virginity aren’t sex slaves, they’re willing – but desperate.
Like me.
The air smells like cigar smoke and expensive cologne. My vision is starting to clear a little bit. Maria’s voice barks in my ear again. “Turn your back to the audience. Bend over and touch your toes.” Seriously?
My throat closes with humiliation and sorrow, but I do as I’m told. To ensure that I command a better price, I display my flexibility and put my palms flat on the floor. I dread to think of what I must look like. My panties are nothing but a webbing of black straps, with one thin cord riding up between my freshly waxed lips.
I hear laughter from the audience, and jeers. I blink back tears. The kind of men who would enjoy my humiliation, who would mock me – one of them will own me, sexually, for an entire year. I will be going home with one of these assholes tonight.
I’ll be the property of the kind of rich, bored loser who would buy a woman, and who specifically wants a virgin. He can have me any way that he wants – he can, and undoubtedly will, violate every orifice. He can take me many times a day. He can make me crawl like a dog and beg to service him. And I will have to pretend to love it, to orgasm again and again, so I can make this loser feel like a real man.
You can do this, Riley. For your mother. For Petey and Pamela. What choice do you have?
“Stand up, turn back around, face the crowd.”
I obey. To calm myself, to keep from vomiting up the half cup of water which is all I allowed myself today, I chant the rules in my head.
My purchaser can’t strike me, scar me or in any way leave permanent physical marks on me, and I’ve agreed to only light BDSM. He also can’t share me sexually with other people without my consent. Ha. As if. And he will be required to wear a condom when having intercourse with me.
I will be allowed to eat three meals a day, with food of my choosing, as long as I remain at the exact same weight that I am right now. Maria had murmured that as a suggestion, her one grudging helpful hint. The fact that such a provision had to be included sent a jolt of panic through me.
“Do you mean that some of these men might withhold food as a punishment? Or, for that matter, because they’re sadistic assholes?” I asked her. And she didn’t say no; she just shrugged.
Don’t think about that.
I am allowed to read for one hour a day.
Wherever I end up, I am allowed to volunteer for one full shift at a free clinic twice a month, using my nurse’s aide skills to record vital signs and symptoms. That’s what I’ve done in Lexington for the past few years, and I don’t want to have to give it up.
And – absolutely non-negotiable — I also get to travel to Kentucky once a month to see my mother, and my brother and sister, for an entire weekend. I get to speak to them via Skype once a day, for fifteen minutes.
And the minimum bid, which I chose, is half a million dollars. I calculated the amount carefully. That will be enough to buy my mother out of the latest round of trouble she’s mired herself in, and keep her out of prison. The money will be paid in installments throughout the year; we got the judge to sign off on a payment plan. It will also pay her legal feels, and financially support her and the twins for the year that I’m gone.
If the bidding on my body goes higher than half a million, I will put it in a trust fund for the twins, or donate it to charity – I haven’t decided which yet. I won’t touch a cent of it myself. Not for rent, not for living expenses, not for school. The thought of profiting off this makes me physically ill. I’ll go back to working two, maybe three jobs and be grateful for an honest paycheck. Wiping dementia patients’ butts in a nursing home will be heaven after this.
A gonging sound makes me start. The men have gotten their free eyeful, and the auction is about to begin. My vision has adjusted to the dimly lit room now. I paste a winsome smile on my face and look at the crowd. The men range in age from their late thirties to their seventies. I don’t know what would be worse. The idea of being with a man old enough to be my grandfather is horrifying, but at least I can understand why they’d have to pay to be with a woman my age. But the younger guys? They scare me. A wealthy man in his thirties or forties, drowning in a sea of willing cooch, would have to be pretty damned angry and perverted to involve themselves in something like this.
No, wait, there’s one man who’s younger than everybody else. Even from a distance, even with the dim lighting, I can tell that he’s much too handsome, too young to be at an auction like this…an ice-cold wave of fear washes over me and raises goose-flesh on my arms.
My heart leaps to my throat as his eyes meet mine.
No. It can’t be him.
Why the hell would he be here? What would he want with me? He never had a hard time getting girls. If anything, he practically needed a restraining order to get them to leave him alone.
Did he even know I’d be here tonight?
My eyes trace the cruel, familiar curve of his lips, twisted in that familiar sneer. Of course he did. He’s come to glory in my downfall.
And…bid on me? Or just gloat? The men here are all thoroughly vetted, and they pay ten thousand dollars just for the privilege of being allowed to bid. Would he pay that much just for the sheer malicious joy of watching me be purchased?
It’s been six years. Could he still hate me so much? What the hell is wrong with him? He alre
ady destroyed my family once. We were smoke and ashes when he finished with us. Less than nothing. And now he’s come back for more?
My gaze skitters nervously around the audience, and I spot another familiar face.
My smile wobbles and vanishes, and I sway where I stand.
And I realize that I have not hit rock bottom after all. For me, the world has no bottom.
Chapter One
October 2012
Riley
So pretty it hurts.
That’s how I’ve heard Ashton Winterbourne described, more than once.
And it’s so true. Everything about him hurts me.
His looks. His words. His pure, vicious hatred of me.
His ice blue eyes, framed with dark lashes, are arctic lakes of mockery. The cruel cupid’s bow curve of his upper lip is curled in a perpetual sneer of disdain.
His body, impossibly carved perfection like those marble statues you see in museums, is a magnet for the female gaze. He uses it as yet another weapon in his endless war against me. He saw me looking once when we’d first moved in and he was strolling through the house in his gym shorts – I couldn’t help myself. It was just a quick, startled glance, but I regret it.
Ever since then he’s made it a point to walk around the house in as little clothing as possible. Naked, if nobody else is around. I’m not even kidding – my stepbrother walks through the living room with his enormous schlong hanging out, chatting on his cell phone, carrying plates of snacks to the media room, or with a towel slung over his shoulder as he heads into the workout room…just to mess with me.
When he does that, I make sure that I’m looking anywhere but at him. So of course, he calls out to me, so I’ll have to answer him and look ridiculous while I’m talking to the wall or the ceiling.
Right now it’s a school day and he’s dressed. He’s draped in Abercrombie & Fitch and standing in the living room with his flavor of the week, Sarah Fillmoore. Cliché of clichés, she’s the captain of the cheerleading squad. They’re both staring at me, bright eyes glowing like hawks fixated on a field mouse.
The family butler stands by the door that leads to the servant’s quarters. He’s English, a silver-haired man in his fifties. He always wears a uniform of a dark “morning coat”, white gloves, vest, tie and formal trousers, and his name is Percival. There is a haughty air of perpetual contempt stamped on his face, and he does everything he can to avoid looking my mother and I in the eye.
Percival slides a sidelong glance in our direction, and then strides out of the room, back ramrod stiff. He’s making it quite clear – he won’t be offering a ride. When Henry is home, he is at least minimally civil; when Henry is away on business trips, he makes no effort to hide his disdain for us. Neither does Roberta, the cook. At least Roberta doesn’t dare cook things that give my mother food poisoning like the other cook, Margie, did.
I don’t know what Margie put in my mother’s food, but my mother ended up in the emergency room on I.V. fluids for two days. Henry had Margie fired and she had to pack up and leave town, without a job reference, after 20 years of working for him. Big deal. That bitch could have killed her. That’s how much these people hate us. Ever since we moved to Emerald Heights, people have been trying to rid themselves of us. They are white blood cells attacking a foreign body.
My friend Leighanne has just texted me that she can’t give me a ride after all. She canceled at the last second. And I have a sinking feeling I know why. I don’t think we’re friends any more. Because of him.
Standing by the door to the foyer, Ashton catches my gaze and the corner of his lip curled up, eyes shining with challenge. Yep. He’s cost me yet another friend.
My mother’s voice slices through my troubled thoughts. “Why don’t you just get a ride to school with your brother?”
“Yes, why don’t you?” Ashton’s voice is faintly mocking but my mother doesn’t pick up on it. My stomach pitches like a boat on a stormy sea. He’s not my brother; he’ll never be my brother.
“Yeah, ride with us,” Sarah trills, malice glowing from her light green eyes. “It’ll be fun!” She spent the night here. Every shiny blonde hair is perfectly in place. How did she wake up looking so perfect? Self-consciously, my hand flies to my own messy waves of chocolate brown hair before I can stop myself.
Suddenly, a yawn stretches my mouth. I clap my hand over my mouth, embarrassed, even though I have no reason to be – it’s Ashton’s fault that I’m tired. I didn’t get to sleep in my own bed last night. I’d walked in to my bedroom to find Ashton there on my four-poster bed with Sarah, taking her from behind.
He was slamming into her so hard that the bed rocked. And when I coughed, loudly, he’d looked up at me with hate in his eyes. “Either join us or get the fuck out.”
His leather belt lay next to them and her back was striped with red. That’s a thing he likes to do; he plays very rough. I know this because he makes sure that I walk in on him and his latest play partner on a regular basis. Sometimes they’re handcuffed, or blindfolded…it stirs strange longings inside me.
I’d turned and fled. Their mocking laughter chased me down the hall. I spent the night in one of the guest rooms, tossing and turning, imagining all the things he was doing to her.
A memory flashes through my mind of the only time I was foolish enough to accept a ride to school from him – at my mother’s urging, of course. Ashton tearing around the sharp curves of the roadway in his Porsche Panamera turbo. Me crying, begging him to stop, as his wheels slid off the side of a fifty-foot drop and he chanted all the sexual positions my mother must have used to seduce his father away from his mother.
My heart shrivels in shame as I remember the furious police officer who pulled us over – and the look on his face when he realized that it was Ashton. Because Ashton’s father owns the town of Emerald Heights. “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Ashton had taunted the guy, as I scrambled out of the car. The officer, apologetically, had ended up giving me a ride to school.
“Free advice,” he’d said, shaking his head as I climbed out of the car. “Stay away from the Winterbourne family.”
Oh, if only.
“We’re leaving now,” Ashton says, making his voice sound kind and concerned. It’s worse when he does that. I want it to be real, so badly.
I remember the first day that I met him at the Emerald Heights Athletic Club – that was a few months before my mother gave birth to the twins. And it was before he knew who I was. The warmth of his mega-watt smile, the low seductive lilt of his voice as he introduced himself to me.
And then Ashton’s mother saw him flirting with me, and she furious waved him over to her, and I saw her whispering in his ear.
That’s how Ashton found out that my mother was his father’s mistress.
“Drive with Ashton? I can think of more entertaining ways to commit suicide,” I say to my mother, making a show of ignoring Ashton and Sarah.
“Geez, is she always so mean?” Sarah says loudly for my mother’s benefit, her big blue eyes going huge.
“Every day. I try and try, but that’s just how she is. The offer’s always there,” Ashton sings out to me, leaving me alone with my mother and the thick weight of her disappointment.
The door closes behind them.
I fiddle with my bookbag strap. It’s three miles to school. If I’d known, I’d have gotten up early and walked.
“He’s trying so hard.” My mother’s voice hisses like hot steam, scalding me. “He’s sorry, isn’t that enough?”
I seriously can’t believe that my mother is falling for Ashton’s act. He hates us, will always hate us. He’s been openly vicious to us since we moved in last year. After he cursed out my mother to her face, my stepfather Henry had dragged him into his office and beaten him with a belt, which just made Ashton hate us more.
