Her Troika (7 page)

“Not just any random stranger no — though she knows that’s a possibility she has to risk.” Kurt grabbed Derek’s hand, turning it palm up, laying one of the placards in his hand, curling Derek’s fingers around it. An iridescent kaleidoscope pattern of colors shimmered against the dark, varnished wood of the placard, dazzling to Derek’s eye. “But she’s got one person in mind she’d prefer.”

“Kurt … ” Derek looked from the placard, to Breanna, then back to Kurt. “I can’t. No way in hell can I do this.”

“It’s either that, or as you say … some stranger.” Kurt inclined his head. “I’d really rather she goes to someone she at least knows. Wouldn’t you?”

“This is so fucked up. So fucked up.”

So why are you hard as a rock?

Thankful for the constriction of his jeans, no matter how painful they might be at that moment, he looked to her again. One of the goons turned Breanna toward him, putting both of his gloved hands into the neckline of her blouse. She flinched as he yanked down, the rip of fabric tearing across the comparative quiet of the audience, the globes of her breasts bouncing free. The blouse lay in tatters across the front of her skirt, several more rough yanks divesting her completely of the destroyed garment. Her mouth opened in a stunned O, reflecting Derek’s own thoughts.

“Look at the tits on this one,” a man nearby said, his eyes like two hard bits of ice above the craggy topography of his whiskered face. “Someone’s going to have some fun with those.”

Kurt’s glance shot over at the man, his eyes narrowing for a brief moment. Then he turned away once more, a new tension straightening his frame. If it were Derek’s wife, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to maintain Kurt’s sanguine affect.

We don’t have to worry about that since Cassandra left you, now do we?

The goons made quick work of the skirt, one of them producing a pair of shears, cutting the black skirt away as if it were mere wrapping paper. Though he tried not to look, Derek’s eyes swept over the prominent mound huddled between smooth, sun-kissed thighs. Her sex was entirely shaved, the smooth skin almost glistening in the harsh light from above. Her legs were equal parts power and grace, something he’d always suspected considering her workout routine. He was embarrassed at how much he’d remembered, how much he’d managed to retain from even the smallest, casual snippets of conversation he’d had with her over the years.

Throwing the torn clothing aside, the men held her as they had Shae before. Immobilized between them, she closed her eyes as the man at the lectern slammed down the gavel once more.

Kurt laid a hand on Derek’s shoulder, squeezing. “Remember what we talked about, Derek. Just be cool.”

“I’ve got no fucking clue how to be cool about this. What the hell am I supposed to do?”

Kurt tapped a finger at the center of the design embossed on the placard in Derek’s hand. “You’ll know what to do.”

With a slight nod, Kurt acknowledged the man at the lectern.

“What am I bid, this woman for a Term?” The tall man scanned the crowd with his hard, pitiless stare, gavel outstretched as if a weapon. “We open at fifty thousand.”

Chapter Five

Breanna stood still, held fast, her eyes shut tight, the men’s gloved fingers digging painfully into her arms. The air inside the building was warm, currents of it washing over her, the lights overhead beating down like a whole bank of suns.

She could smell the cologne of one of the guards, and it sparked a memory of her first weekend at this place. Was he one of the many men who’d had her that first night? Had it been his semen sluicing across her proffered breasts? Had it been his voice ordering her to rub it into her nipples?

The bidding opened with a flurry, the figures quickly reaching almost a hundred thousand. When it reached six figures, a collective gasp rang out from the crowd. It made her open her eyes, even though she told herself she mustn’t. As bad as the blindfold had been, the illusion of anonymity it offered her was strangely comforting. Without it, she felt utterly naked, defenseless, a helpless victim to the undercurrent of lust swirling through the crowd.

She looked across the sea of faces, trying not to recognize any of them, yet fascinated at the number and variety of people witnessing her humiliation. There were older men, still attractive, graying at the temples and chin, with the cruel eyes that seemed honed by time and experience. A few women dotted the throng as well, especially at the crowd that watched from the side where the pens stretched away. The smiles, the appraising, critical looks of the women were the hardest to take, for she wanted to claw out their eyes, prove to them that they were no better than she was.

The men were somehow easier to tolerate, even understand, their lusts firmly in control. That didn’t mean Breanna was at all comfortable with what was happening. No, this was entirely more than even her darkest dreams had prepared her for. Inside, she roiled with an indefinable maelstrom of emotion: terror, a sick, out of body type fascination, a sort of elemental humiliation that she felt to her very bones, and underpinning all of it — and most shocking to her — a deep, disturbing arousal. She’d always known she was submissive, and indeed felt at peace subject to a man, complying with his every sexual demand. But this was something much more intense, dangerous, and utterly irresistible.

This night had opened her eyes to a part of her psyche she’d not known existed, and despite the dark pleasure of it, the wrongness at what her body felt as the quintessence of
right
, she wasn’t sure she wanted to really know about this part of herself.

Things once learned, cannot be unlearned. She knew this, but that knowledge of that baser part of her, that aspect of her sexuality that reveled in her subjugation as someone,
something
, less than human, shook her to the core.

Two men quickly emerged as the frontrunners to win, both trading bids rapid-fire. One was a rather stout older man, a well-kept salt and pepper beard neatly framing a strong jaw. His eyes looked upon her not as a person, but as a potential acquisition, the avarice she saw there something she’d never experienced before. His rich suit opened at the neck, hinting at a powerful chest, the gold band on his finger glinting in the bright light as he held up the placard that signified a bid.

His competition was someone entirely unexpected. A man so young, she’d have guessed him a mere youth of eighteen or nineteen. But the bright blue eyes and hard lines on his face bespoke an age beyond his years — and belied a cruelty that couldn’t be hidden, that she felt viscerally. He would not be a kind master — if that was what he’d become to her, should he win the bidding war.

Frantically, she looked for Kurt, not sure if he’d even be there. He’d told her nothing when he’d left her with Lino, which in itself was not wholly unexpected. He’d made it clear that on such weekends, she was something less than a woman, something more than an animal. Most of the time he’d forbidden her to even speak, though thankfully Lino sometimes did allow it.

Though she hated Lino with a bitterness she couldn’t identify, she was grateful for that small mercy.

You come here because you don’t want mercy. There is no point in thinking otherwise.

“Turn her,” she heard the man behind her say. She’d recognized him as they’d marched her down to the wooden dock. It was the same man she’d seen speaking with Kurt the last time she’d been to this place. The man Kurt had been talking with when the black blindfold had deprived her of her sight. Perhaps he’d had a chance to sample her body too? It was likely she’d never know, a fact that both galled and thrilled her in equal measure.

Why was it that injustice called to her so?

The two towering men holding her arms spun her around, her breasts swinging wildly, and making her cheeks flame. She cursed the fact that she could not stay their swinging on her chest, the movement no doubt drawing every male eye in the place.

A hand clasped her nape, sending chills down her spine. The hand pushed her downward, another insinuating itself at the crease of her waist, the fingertips perilously close to her sex. They forced her to bend straight, her ass thrown out like a mare in heat. She tried to clench her ass to prevent her charms from being revealed, but as the hands forced her still lower, jackknifing her helplessly until she was bent nearly double, she knew the swollen folds of her pussy were displayed for all to see, the secret opening to her bottom as exposed as it was possible to be. Nothing could be hidden, and though she cried out inwardly at the humiliation of it, that same mischievous inner woman sank down into the delicious mortification, finding pleasure in the helplessness, the exhibition of her privates in the most callous of ways. She was nothing but a cunt to these men, and the knowledge that every cock in the house wanted to plunder her filled her with a sort of twisted sense of power, a kind of soaring freedom in accepting her own surrender.

She heard claps and whistles from the crowd, the sounds making her struggle, which only encouraged them. The gavel came down, making her jerk.

“Unless you’re bidding, I suggest you show some manners,” the man at the lectern growled

She almost burst out in demented laughter at that.

We’re trying to sell a woman here! What’s wrong with you heathens?

More bids came, and a hand smacked her ass, not hard, but enough to give her bottom a crowd-pleasing wobble.

Then a finger played at her folds, spreading her. She gasped, and tried to straighten, but the implacable hands held her fast. It was impossible not to fight it now, as the finger slipped between the lips of her pussy, sounding the depth of her sex. There was more scattered clapping, the crowd murmuring, and she grunted with the effort, twisting in vain against those hands.

“Enough,” the man at the lectern intoned. “Stand her up.”

Handling her as if a rag doll, she once more found herself staring out at the strange faces, the eyes that never met hers, that drank in the contours of her vulnerable, naked flesh. There were avid, lust-filled gazes, cruel eyes that say only the female as object, even disinterested ones —absurdly, this was almost an affront to her, this disregard for her humiliation.

Then as bidding continued, she saw them.

Kurt … and
Derek?

She remembered how she’d mentioned in an offhand way how nice Derek seemed, how she wished Kurt would have him over sometime. Of course, she couldn’t very well tell her husband how much she liked his lean, rangy frame, or the way his jeans hugged the contours of his compact, muscular ass.

Somehow, she knew though that Kurt was well enough able to read between the lines. He knew Breanna’s needs, knew the men she was drawn to, and after last weekend, he’d made it clear that he intended to explore
all
of her needs, no matter how dark, repressed, or taboo. Whether she liked it or not.

Though the knowledge that Kurt was every bit a man of his word had the butterflies fluttering in her belly, and the visions of her dirtiest, most depraved fantasies coming to life had her truly worried, she also knew that he would always watch out for her, never (quite) give her more than she could handle.

How is he supposed to know how much you can handle, when you don’t even know deep those urges go?

Her eyes met her husband’s and though she was on the ragged edge of panic, the reality of this whole process so much more intense than her fantasies had prepared her for, the strength she saw in his gaze stiffened her resolve. Derek’s handsome eyes held uncertainty, and something else she dared not hope was … lust.

No way in hell are you getting that lucky.

But the fact that Derek was still there, and hadn’t fled the building in disgust, gave her hope. Perhaps her plan wasn’t as outlandish as she’d feared?

As twisted as it would sound to someone who didn’t understand, Kurt had done all of this for her. The least she could do was to be brave, endure, and meet the next few minutes with grace.

“Do I have further bids?” The man’s voice sent chills down her spine. It was definitely one of the voices from her first weekend here. “Price stands at one hundred twenty seven thousand.”

The man who’d bid that exorbitant amount, the hard, cruel man with the graying hair, took a step closer, his gaze locking upon her like an executioner regarding the condemned.

“I bid one hundred thirty thousand,” the young man said, grinning like a wolf at the older competitor. The older man blanched, stepping back and dropping his hand.

“One hundred thirty thousand then,” the man at the lectern intoned. “Any others?”

The crowd held its collective breath, the tension growing more unbearable by the second.

She watched Kurt say something to Derek, who looked back at him, eyes wide.

Oh my God. This can’t be happening.

Chapter Six

“I
’m your friend. I’ll do anything for you, Kurt … but I’m not bidding on your goddamned wife.”

The night had begun strangely, and had now slid fully into all out surreal. Here he was standing in a barn full of complete strangers, looking upon a naked woman being sold at auction — a woman who happened to be his friend’s wife.