Devil's Bargain

I notice her hands are fisted and she doesn’t raise them like she should when the girls draw the cloak from her, baring her naked body.

I swallow at the sight.

“Keep someone on her, but don’t pick her up,” I say, hearing how thick my voice sounds. “She’s no use to me anyway, not in the state she’s in.”

I swallow the rest of the whiskey in my glass and can’t drag my eyes from the naked woman on the stage. Watching her face burn in embarrassment while her eyes narrow in a combination of rage, rebellion and confusion as the men call out numbers.

The auctioneer discusses her heavy breasts—large for her small waist—and the particular shade of pink of her hard little nipples.

I myself can’t look away from those breasts, can’t not think about how perfectly they’d fit in the palms of my hands as I weigh them.

“Turn her!” someone calls out.

Feeling oddly possessive, I note who.

Melissa struggles against the girls who take her wrists and they’re confused. The women on the block are willing. No one is made to do this against their will. Not really.

This one, though, she’s not like any of those women. I knew it from the moment I first saw her.

“Turn her!” more chants come from the crowd. Her resistance will only make them want it more. Want her more.

The auctioneer, too, is momentarily at a loss. He glances over the crowd to my table.

I give a nod and two guards step out of the shadows and onto the stage.

The auctioneer gestures to the men. “Turn her.”

By the time they get to her, she’s off the dais.

“I guess she changed her mind?” Axel chuckles as we watch the scene, this cartoon as the two giants grab the naked woman who can’t be more than five-and-a-half feet. She’s fighting as if her life depends on it and somehow manages to knee one of the men in the balls.

Axel winces.

“Ouch,” I say, pouring more whiskey into my glass without taking my eyes off the spectacle.

“Why don’t you stop it. You know you’re going to buy her anyway,” Axel says, taking the bottle and pouring for himself.

I turn to him. Before I can deny it, he laughs.

“I know you, Hawk. You want that girl. You did the moment you laid eyes on her.”

I shrug a shoulder and when I turn back, the men are forcing her back onto the platform. And when she raises her middle finger at the crowd, the bids explode.

The soldiers hold her there, and the auctioneer is looking at me again. I nod once more, and he picks up the strap and walks toward the girl.

She sees him, sees what he’s carrying, and her eyes go huge as she’s turned and bent at the waist. She screams when he raises the strap and brings it down hard across her ass once, twice.

“Quiet, girl,” he hisses the command.

More numbers are called out from the cheering crowd.

Calls for more strokes to be laid on her beautiful ass.

When the auctioneer returns to his podium, she’s straightened and turned to the room again. Her face is flushed, and I wonder if she can see me. If she knows I’m watching. If she knows it was me who ordered the strap.

I stand. The room quiets as I do, and I speak my number.

“Quarter-of-a-million dollars.”

I don’t have to raise my voice and I meet every eye in the place daring any one of them to challenge my bid.

The gavel comes down once. That’s all that’s necessary when I bid.

“Sold for a quarter-of-a-million dollars.”

I look at Melissa’s tear stained, mascara-smeared face. She still can’t see me. The spotlight is too bright on her. But she must recognize my voice and know that it was me who bought her.

The men take her down from the platform. She still fights as she’s removed from the stage. The curtain falls and the lights in the room go on announcing to everyone that it’s the end of the night.

Axel chuckles. “Told you,” he mutters as I resume my seat.

“Fuck you,” I say, the excitement I feel in my gut something foreign. Something I’d forgotten.

One hour later, Melissa is delivered to my penthouse by the same two men in about the same fashion as when she threw that fit on the stage.

I’m standing at the window with my back to the elevator when I hear the doors slide open. I sip my drink, watching the lights of the strip in this city that never sleeps.

A city of vultures.

Hungry.

Always hungry.

Always looking for innocent flesh with which to fill their bellies.

I’m hungry, too.

I set my empty glass on the counter and turn to face her.

Innocent flesh.

I’ll fill my belly with hers.

“You asshole,” she says.

The men are physically restraining her. She’ll have bruises on her arms tomorrow.

“You fucking asshole!”

I give a nod and the men strip her of her cloak as they step back onto the elevator.