I push my sourdough toast around, taking the occasional sip of my coffee, but mostly just trying to stay focused on the topic at hand.

When I walked across the stage to receive my marketing degree from NYU, I stupidly had this dream that I’d be able to go out and make a difference in the world. Or at least be able to pay my rent without putting my virginity up for sale.

Listening to Apollo, Victor, and Ashley discuss the deets though, made me realize how far over my head I was in to this. This whole idea sounds like something out of a Victorian novel. I’m just sure that someone is going to pull out smelling salts at any moment and wave them around, or put on a top hat and cane to walk out of the diner. This is the 21st century. This doesn’t happen in the 21st century, right?

Wrong.

“Why can’t one of you guys just hand me cash?” I ask desperately, my eyes flitting back and forth between Apollo and Victor. They’re both so rich, God is jealous of them, or at least that’s what Ashley told me on the way over here to this diner, whispering to me in the back of the Uber. If they’re so hell-bent on getting my financial situation straightened out, then that seems a lot more straightforward. I could pay them back…later. When I had a job.

“The Virgin Market has all of the details figured out,” Apollo puts in kindly. He seems like a pretty nice guy, even if not exactly living up to the Sex God title that Ashley had been giving him all these months. Not like Victor, anyway. Now there’s a sex god come to earth. “They will set you up with an account in the Cayman Islands where the money will be transferred. It’ll be offshore and untaxed. If we just hand it to you, you’d owe a whopping tax bill at the end of it. This way, you’ll be able to pay off all of your debt and have a nice nest egg to tide you over until you can find employment.”

All of my debt? I can’t help but think that I’ve won the lottery here. I was one of those typical college students who got like ten credit cards when I first started at NYU to “build up my credit” but…life is expensive and credit is easy. Too easy. Now I have so many credit card bills coming in each month, I have to borrow from one to pay for another. Between that and not being able to find a job since graduating six months ago (which means, yup, student loans are coming due too), I’ve just been stressing to the max.

And yet, here was an opportunity to wipe that all clean. Yeah, it was insane and yeah, I didn’t even know it was a “thing” until about three hours ago, but…all my debt gone? A nest egg to tide me over?

I’d fuck a one-tooth wonder with nicotine breath if that’s what it took. Anything to finally be able to sleep at night.

Except…

I know I’m basically getting handed a Get Out Of Jail Free card. I know that there are people who’d kill for exactly what I’m being offered here: A head start on life without debt dragging me down. But…

Why doesn’t Victor want me? He is the hottest guy I’ve ever seen in my life. About 20 minutes ago, he was taking a bite out of his hamburger, and I broke out into a sweat at just the sight of it. God, nothing is sexier than Victor eating a hamburger. Except when he took a bite out of french fries, and I felt the sweat trickle down my back. I couldn’t breathe.

Which is why I know I have it bad. I’ve never reacted to a guy like this, which is why I’m 21 and still a virgin. Guys are cute, guys are fine, but most of them just leave me shrugging. Like Apollo. Logically, I know he probably should be starring on the cover of GQ every month. I get that. But, he just leaves me…meh.

Victor? He’s over-the-top sexy with a side of oh-my-god hunkiness.

So why is it that the one guy I’ve met that I wanted to fuck as soon as I’ve laid eyes on him, doesn’t seem to want me? All he’s doing is helping set me up to be purchased by someone else. Which, ummm…thanks for the help? I guess?

I have this sudden, crazy idea of throwing myself on top of the table and yelling, “Take me as I am!” but barely restrain myself. I want the guy’s help – not to terrify him.

“She’ll have to be trained,” Victor says, which yanks me back to their conversation. I don’t know what else I’ve missed, but yeah…that statement for sure catches my attention.

“Trained?” I echo dumbly. Like a dog?

“Vivian, the going price for young, gorgeous—” He thinks I’m gorgeous! “—virgins like you is about 1.5 million dollars.”

I just gape at him.

I can’t breathe.

Wha…what?!

“You don’t think someone is going to give you $1.5 million dollars for one night of sex, do you? Virginity is to be prized, not denigrated—” Tell my last four dates that “—but not that highly prized. You’re going to be doing a lot more than just fucking some guy.”

I shit you not when I say that my eyes are as big around as the pickle slices on our hamburgers. Follow along for just a moment with me, will you? I went from:

a) Thinking that I should save my virginity for the man I love, to

b) Thinking that I’m mutant for still being a virgin, thus I should

c) Just fuck a random guy and get it over with, to

d) Finding out that auctioning off your virginity was a “thing” that can be done in the 21st century, to

e) Thinking that this meant a night of sex in the arms of One Tooth Wonder, to

f) Finding out that I was, in fact, going to become some sort of sex slave.

All in the last three hours. You’ll have to excuse me for not keeping up.

“She’ll do it,” Ashley puts in. I turn to glare at her – since when is it her choice of whether or not I become someone else’s sex slave?? – when the number $1.5 million rolls around in my head again.

Can you imagine everything you could do with a cool $1.5 in the bank? I know I sure can.

I turn back to Victor. “What is involved in being ‘trained’?” I ask suspiciously. If being ‘trained’ means wearing a poodle outfit and crawling around the house on all fours, barking like a dog…

Well, I’d at least have to think really, really hard about it before saying yes. Pretend that I’m above that sort of thing before admitting that for $1.5 million dollars, I’m really, really not.

Let’s be real here.

“Nothing you won’t…enjoy,” Victor says with a mysterious smile, which lights up my heart like he’s pumping me full of helium. I smile back at him, wanting nothing more than to launch myself across the table at him. What if I unbuttoned his shirt with my teeth? Would he want to fuck me then?

“How to act as a proper sex slave. How to be spanked…and like it. How to handcuffed to a bed…and like it.”

Is it hot in here? I feel like it’s about 700 degrees in here. I want nothing more than to strip myself naked right now.

“I’ll do it,” I croak.

“Who’s going to train her?” Ashley asks. “Are you?”

Victor looks between Ashley, Apollo, and me like he’s waiting for one of us to yell, “JUST KIDDING!” complete with jazz hands, at that suggestion. When everyone just stares back at him, he finally gets out, “Hold on a moment here…I didn’t say I wanted to buy a virgin!”

“But you’re the only one who can give her the proper training,” Apollo says gently. “I’m pretty sure that Ashley wouldn’t appreciate it if I did, and I don’t see anyone else standing around, waiting to do it, do you?”

Automatically, we all look around the diner, as if some BDSM master is just going to show up at our table and say, “I’ll take her home!”

Not surprisingly, it’s two o’clock in the morning and Suzie’s Diner in West Side is clean out of BDSM doms. Who woulda thunk it.

“You know that if she goes into the Virgin Market auction untrained, her value goes down significantly. Not your value as a person,” Apollo says, turning to me anxiously. “Your inner value is priceless. I just mean how much someone would be willing to cough up for—”

“It’s okay,” I say, waving off his stuttered worries. “We’re way past PC now.” I turn back to Victor and with a big gulp, say, “Will you do it? Will you train me?”

His gaze never waivers as we stare at each other over the cracked linoleum tabletop. 

“Yes,” he finally says. “Yes, I’ll train you.”

YES! It’s all I can do to keep from jumping up on the table and dancing a jig. 

“Be at my place tomorrow – noon. I’m in the Time Warner Center. I’ll meet you there and we can start going over things then.”

Tomorrow at noon, my whole life changes.

Ho

ly

fuck