Chapter Eleven
An hour later I’ve been waxed and primped all over my body, whimpers escaping me while she murmurs sympathetically. Now I’m wearing a robe while she does my makeup, a natural look that’s somehow using more makeup than I’ve ever seen. Contouring, she calls it. I can’t deny the effect is stunning on my cheekbones. My eyes almost look bare, even though there’s shadow to make them wider. More like a doe. On my lips she paints a pale pink, like cotton candy.
“How are you feeling?” she asks.
“Relieved the waxing is over,” I say honestly. I’m still feeling tender there.
“It’s not my favorite part of the process, but the extra sensitivity you get will help you. And the men, they go crazy for it.”
I’m not sure I’ve made a man go crazy for anything. “What if no one bids on me?”
She laughs softly. “Do you really think that will happen?”
“No,” I admit, but it doesn’t have anything to do with confidence. I had been to enough charity auctions to know that rich old men would buy anything—broken furniture that was owned by the Queen of England, the golf ball that lost a crucial championship. “I know someone will buy me. I just don’t know whether it will be enough.”
There isn’t an insurance policy on something like this. If someone buys me for less than the balance of that real estate bill, I’ll lose the house. And I’ll still have to sleep with him.
“Stand up,” Candy says, her command so effortless—and so kind.
When I stand, the silk robe falls open. I gave up on modesty around the time she ripped hardened wax off my most private places, but it will be very different with a roomful of men.
She picks up a small pot of pale pink shimmer. She sweeps the brush into the powder, every move almost sensual. I’m already wearing blush, and I didn’t have to stand up to apply it.
Her gaze goes to my breasts, still partially hidden by the sides of the robe.
“Oh no,” I whisper.
Her expression turns sympathetic. “It might seem over-the-top, but those men are used to over-the-top. And those lights will wash you right out. This is the palest color that will work.”
Her hands are gentle as they push the silk aside. The cool air brushes over my nipples, turning them into hard points. I’m shocked—in part because I wasn’t sure the men would see my bare breasts during the auction. And in part because my body responds to her gaze almost with arousal.
As if I’m a work of art, she applies the brush to my nipples. She’s right that it’s not a drastic effect. They actually look kind of pretty like that, something I never imagined I could think.
“Men are very simple creatures,” she says without looking up from my breast. “They like to feel important, to feel smart. They like to feel strong.”
I wasn’t sure women were so different when she put it that way. Those things sounded great to me, especially after feeling so inordinately weak. “How do you make them feel that way?”
“Not by giving in. That would be too easy.”
The caress of the brush sends strange arcs of energy through my body—my chest, my sex. Even my lips seem to tingle. Every careful stroke echoes across my skin as if I’m hollow. As if there’s nothing inside me but air. “So I should fight him?”
She bites her lip, concentrating. Then she stands back, examining her work. My nipple looks perfectly pink, perfectly circular. Definitely more plump than before.
One nod, then she moves to the other side. I force myself to stand still, not to demand answers, not to beg for them. “Not fight, either. I like to think of it as a dance. He steps forward, you step back. Then you step forward, and he must step back. There’s a symmetry to it, a rhythm.”
I blink, feeling out of my depth. “Do you mean sex?”
“That has a rhythm, but I’m talking about something more. Any woman can fuck him, any woman can spread her legs. There’s nothing special with that.”
“I’m a virgin.” My voice comes out flat. I’m not bragging. What I so carefully protected has actually come to mean more to me than I would have expected—saving my family home. Saving my father.
I would have preferred a safe marriage. A safe life.
If I could magically change fate, I’d never want to know this desperation.
“They aren’t paying for your hymen,” she says. “They’re paying to teach you things. They’re paying so much money because the push will be greater—but so will the pull.”
The rhythm. I hear what she’s saying, but I’m missing it too. She’s trying to explain something to me, something important. And I know that she understands it—I know because she has a very dangerous man wrapped around her finger. I know because of the age-old wisdom in her blue eyes.
“I’m afraid,” I whisper.
She gives a half smile. “That’s part of the pull.”
And the greater the pull, the greater the push. “The more afraid I am, the more money I’m worth?”
“It’s not just fear that pulls them. Innocence and fragility and grace.”
I picture the old men, smoking cigars and drinking whiskey. “Everything they’re not.”
Her expression turns sly. “Don’t fight him, oppose him. Make him desperate for more.”
I’m staring at her, wondering if she’s taking her own advice—because I’m the one desperate for more. I want something concrete, some trick I can do with my hand or my tongue to make this work. Some universal safe word that will make sure I don’t get hurt. Instead she’s giving me philosophy.
And I’m so focused on it, so deep in it, that I don’t hear footsteps in the hallway.
Don’t hear the turn of the doorknob.
Then Gabriel Miller is standing in the room, his golden gaze on me. On the eyes that Candy made large and doe-like. On my pink nipples in hard little nubs. On the sensitive place between my legs, stripped bare of any covering.
The low sound he makes, almost a growl, snaps me out of the trance.
I pull the silk fabric over me, feeling exposed, abraded. I wasn’t willing to examine the idea of Gabriel Miller at the auction, even though I knew he would come. He enjoys seeing me humiliated, the daughter of his enemy. It isn’t enough to watch my father’s fall.
He wants to see mine too.
“Damon is downstairs, holding court,” he says. “Is she ready?”
Candy glances back at him, looking amused. “Of course. I was just telling her how to control whoever buys her.”
His voice is bland. “Do you think he’ll swing that way?”
She laughs. “Control isn’t kink, darling. It’s a way of life.”
The way he looks at her isn’t sexual, though. There’s something like respect in his eyes. Maybe it’s only there because she’s with Ivan Tabakov, but I don’t think so. She has a way of earning it herself.
The way she leans close to me is almost regal. Her lips by my ear, she whispers, “All you have to give them is your body. Your mind, your soul—that’s your leverage.”
That’s my ball of string, I realize. A lifeline, so I can find my way out of the maze at the end. She was playful before but dead serious at the end. Because this is life or death, my ability to move on from this. It could devastate me. It could break me.
Then she’s sweeping out of the room with a little wave for Gabriel.
We’re alone.
I’m insanely focused on the fact that there’s only a piece of silk protecting my body from him. So thin, so vital. He doesn’t stare at my body. His gaze meets mine, but I feel more vulnerable this way. He sees every doubt, every fear. “Did you touch yourself?” he asks, almost mildly.
Heat rushes to my face, and I know I’ll be bright red. “That’s none of your business.”
He studies me, thoughtful. “I think you did, little virgin. I think you touched your hard little clit and made yourself come, your eyes squeezed shut in the dark.”
I hate how well he can read me. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know I could make you come in two minutes.”
A step back, my calves bumping the small chair where I sat. “You wouldn’t.”
“No, but you wish I would.”
“I hate you.”
A low laugh. “Do you really think you can control the man?”
My fists tighten in the silk, covering my breasts. “Better than the other way around.”
“Would it be so bad?” he asks thoughtfully. “Giving up control for a month? Letting someone else guide you? Letting someone teach you?”
Part of me yearns for that, but not with a stranger. Not for money. “I don’t care what happens to me at night. They can touch me, teach me, whatever they want. That won’t really be me.”
He walks to the window, looking at the city’s skyline. There are people working late in those offices, climbing the corporate ladder, sleeves rolled up for the paycheck. A few of those penthouses are empty, their occupants downstairs, waiting to bid on me.
Without turning he murmurs, “What makes you think it’s only at night?”
I stare at him, unaccountably surprised. I hadn’t really reasoned it out loud or I might have guessed the obvious. My knowledge of sex is so limited that I only imagine it at night. That goes doubly so for a strange old man. Uncertainty vibrates through me. “He’d want me during the day?”
Gabriel turns back, his eyes fierce. “The auction is for a month, Avery. Your days, your nights, your everything. He will own you.”
A shudder squeezes my body. I’m starting to understand what Candy meant about the push. His intensity, his demands. And what would be the pull? My acquiescence. No, she told me not to give in. Innocence and fragility and grace.
I lift my chin, meeting his eyes. “I have to take care of my father. Someone has to feed him, to wash him. Several times a day.”
Gabriel turns back to the window. “The buyer will pay for his care.”
“I can’t—” My voice breaks, and I suck in a steadying breath. I can’t afford to pay for a full-time nurse for a month, not after paying the tax bill and Damon’s percentage. What will we eat when it’s over?
“He’ll pay for his care,” he says, his tone hard. “On top of the auction amount.”
I take a step forward, strangely drawn to him. “Why would he do that?”
A large shoulder lifts. “The men down there have more money than they know what to do with. Whoever buys you, use him. Take what you need from him.”
In the window I can see his reflection, the bold features of his face. But I can’t read him. I could never read him. Is that part of the push Candy told me about? Or is that just the impenetrable mystery of Gabriel Miller? “Why are you helping me?”
“I’m not your friend,” he says gently.
He’s my enemy. When we’re alone, it’s easy to forget that. In a few minutes we’ll be downstairs with the wealthiest men in the city, maybe even the state. Men who would purchase me like an object. Men who Gabriel taught a lesson by ruining my father.
“Fifteen minutes,” he says before leaving the room.