My men laugh. Mr. Johnson offers a deep bow. “Of course, Mr. Ivanovich, you know best in this matter. I will defer to your expertise.”
He scurries off. Oleg chuckles loudly. “That is not a man,” he says. “Look at his little waddle.”
Anatoly takes a small sip of vodka. “Fool or not, he knows his business. We’d do well to weigh his words carefully.”
“Bah,” Oleg replies, dismissive. “Buy whichever whore gets your dick hard. Is that not the point?”
We sit back and wait for the auction to begin. Oleg keeps pounding vodka shots and Anatoly taps his nails against the table. I sit almost completely still except for my finger moving around the edge of my glass.
Finally, the lights cut out completely. A hush falls over the room and the music lowers.
A spotlight appears in the middle of the room.
The auctioneer, a prim-looking lady in a buttoned-up shirt, stands in the center. “Gentlemen,” she says. “Thank you all for coming to Archangel Vision this evening. I hope you are all seated comfortably. We will begin immediately. For our first piece, we have a painting done in the expressionist style, completed by the legendary Andrew Hinchcliff in 1987. Bidding will begin at ten thousand dollars.”
A woman walks out in a bikini, a skinny, scared-looking thing dragging the stand upon which the art rests. She blinks into the spotlight like a deer.
I take a sip of vodka as the bidding commences.
“Ten thousand!” a drunk-sounding man roars from the shadows.
“Fifteen!”
“Eighteen!”
“Look at those legs,” the same drunken man slurs. “I could make good use of ’em! Twenty thousand!”
“Some people have no dignity,” Anatoly mutters. “If he continues bleating like a pig, I’ll give him something to bleat about.”
I laugh. Anatoly is smart, but too particular. Never one to get his hands dirty with the riffraff.
The drunken man wins the art and the girl moves to the rear of the room. More girls are brought out one by one, but none of them are of interest to me.
It’s the fear in their eyes that is most unsettling. I am not sentimental, and the devil knows I’ve had my hand in some unsavory business in my lifetime, in the kind of business playing out on stage before me. But the whole thing feels distasteful. Seedy. Like a parade of truck-stop whores, marching from eighteen-wheeler to eighteen-wheeler with singles tucked into their cowboy boots.
The night wears on and the drunken man gets even more drunk. “Fucking whores!” he proclaims loudly. “I love ’em. Let me have ’em all.”
More and more pieces of art are brought out—even some abstract pieces, which indicate virginity—but none of them stir me. I start to eye the door, considering an early exit. Maybe this was all a stupid idea. Buying a wife, a mother to my child? I’d be better off shoveling through cow shit and hoping for diamonds.
Then, at the very end of the evening, she appears.
She is tall and slender, with pert breasts and pale flesh that seems almost translucent in the spotlight. Her hair is red and flows down to her shoulders in waves. She turns her deep blue eyes around the room without a hint of intimidation, and the art piece she presents is all blocks and cubes.
A virgin.
Then she turns her eyes to me. The light is low, but it must not be low enough. I notice a spark of something there. She bites her lip, staring straight at me.
For the first time tonight, I feel my manhood stir.
“Look at this one,” the drunken man laughs. “She’d be too much hassle. Thinks too much of herself.”
“You’re right,” she says, her voice crisp. “I’d be too much for a man like you to handle, for sure.”
The room hushes. I nearly laugh.
“Excuse me!” the auctioneer snaps from the side of the stage. “Disrespect will not be tolerated.”
She shrugs, still looking at me. Fuck, this one really is different. “He started it.”
“Enough!” The auctioneer makes to walk into the spotlight.
“No,” I say, voice quiet.
The auctioneer pauses mid-step. “Mr. Ivanovich?”
“The bidding will proceed,” I order. A low murmur ripples through the crowd. I pay it no mind.
The girl on stage doesn’t pose like some of the others did. She just stands with her shoulders back, head high, as though she is not in the least bothered by the gawping men all around. She’s a proud filly.
Begging to be broken.
The bidding runs high for her, getting to forty thousand.
I sit back, letting it climb, letting the pretenders around me get hot beneath their collar for a girl far too good for them.
Then I make my move.
“Seventy thousand,” I call.
Silence hits like a hammer. It is the highest anybody has gone all night.
The amount surprises even me. It came unbidden, like a puppeteer took control of my voice, moving my jaw of its own accord. But as soon as the words are spoken, I can feel a fire ignite in my chest.
I am already imagining stroking my hand down that sleek body, savoring the feel of her smooth curves, the rise and fall of her breasts and hips, the soft moan from her parted lips. My cock is rigid with desire.
But there’s more to it than pure carnal need.
It’s an unfamiliar feeling, utterly alien, and at first I don’t know how to control it. I want desperately to reach out and touch her right this second. To stake my claim like I’m branding her with my own name. A brutal, possessive urge.
I want her.
I need her.
I will have her.
This one is mine.
“We have seventy thousand!” the auctioneer cries. There is not a peep from the crowd. “Going once, twice … and sold!”
When it is over, the inferno that had taken over my chest simmers down some, but I can still feel it licking at my insides. I settle back in my seat and gaze, unblinking, as she walks confidently back the way she came. Her hips sway; her hair bounces
