Highest Bidder Collection - Lauren Landish Page 0,11

But the sound of his voice won’t go away. The memory flashes before my eyes. My body tenses remembering how I looked around for my father. How I screamed out for him to help me.

I tried to fight back, but it was useless. My heart beats rapidly at the memory, pumping cold blood through my veins. I wish I could forget.

“Dah?” Carla asks.

I jerk my hands out of hers, startled. My breathing is ragged, and anger tightens my chest.

“Is something wrong?” Carla is peering at me with concern, and I’m freaked out at how I so easily spaced in an instant.

I clear my throat and unclench my fists that I hadn’t realized were balled up. That fucking bastard. He’d taken so much from me, and hadn’t had to pay for it. When I told my father about what Uncle Tommy did, he just laughed, not believing his brother capable of such a horrible thing. He chose him over me, and he refused to take me to the hospital. “Yeah, sorry. I was just thinking about what you’ve told me and how interesting it all sounds,” I lie. I’ve never told anyone other than my parents. I’m ashamed. I know I have no reason to be, but I am.

Carla looks unconvinced. “You sure?”

“Yeah.” I wave away her concern and swallow the bitterness that forms in my throat. I’ve never forgiven my father for not believing me about what Uncle Tommy did to me. The incident caused so much friction in the family that my mom ended up divorcing him. That had been awful with all the screaming, arguing and accusations flying about. I liked to believe that my mom cared the most about what happened to me. After I saw how she focused on what assets she would get in the divorce instead of making sure Uncle Tommy paid for what he did, I began to feel like she’d just used me as an excuse to leave my father because she wasn’t happy in her marriage. “Please continue.”

Carla hesitates for a moment, studying me closely. She doesn’t buy it, but I can’t let her know what happened to me. I don’t want her to get spooked. I give her a nod, and then she finally continues. “So anyway, if someone does buy you, half of the final bid goes to the club. But when the minimum bid is five hundred thousand dollars, you won’t find much to complain about as far as the fees go.”

I gape with shock. Five hundred thousand dollars? It takes a long moment for that to even register. It’s a good distraction from where my mind was going. I don’t want to dwell on the past. I can’t.

“That much money?” I ask with disbelief in my voice. “You’ve got to be kidding!” I can’t believe they’d pay that much money.

Carla shakes her head. “I told you, these men are powerful and wealthy beyond your wildest dreams. For some of them, a million is like a dollar bill. But that’s not even half of it. They pay a hundred grand a month already for their membership; these men are absolutely fucking loaded.”

I’m too stunned to speak. Everything that I could ever want is right at my fingertips... if I could debase myself enough to become someone’s sex slave for a month. It’s an idea I should find shameful, an idea you’d think would repulse me to my very core even, but I find myself… craving it.

I need this.

Years after my traumatic experience, I’d grown up with the desire to be dominated. Which is ironic, because my uncle was never harsh or rough. He held me down, but then I gave up. The things I need to get off are highly specific.

At first these feelings brought me shame, but I couldn’t help myself. I needed to be controlled by a powerful man to get off. There was simply no other way. This caused friction with some of my partners. My first boyfriend couldn't understand why I wanted him to force himself on me, why I wanted to be choked and slapped around while being fucked mercilessly. He could never know how I’d been violated, and how the very act had perverted me in ways I didn’t dare say to anyone. I didn’t understand either. I felt sick after every sexual encounter with anyone. With the help of a therapist, I started to cope with everything, past and present. I need to be dominated, but I need to know it’s