Chapter Nine
Okay. She just needed to think about things in a calm and rational manner, and then she’d be able to come up with solutions.
She was sitting in the back seat of their limo. Her knees pressed so tightly together that it wouldn’t be long before she successfully cut off blood supply to the lower part of her body.
The scent of the cologne captivated her. Their presence consumed her. They owned her virginity.
Yep. That had been her thinking pattern since they left Martin Davenport’s dungeon office—also, what the heck, a dungeon office? Every thought she'd had came back to that one.
They owned her virginity.
They owned her virginity.
They owned her virginity.
They owned her virginity.
They owned her virginity.
She was going to go mad. Burst an artery. Hemorrhage brain cells.
She had to think. Logically. Rationally. Properly.
No, she needed to sleep. For a week.
“I would like to buy my virginity back from you, please. If we could discuss some sort of payment plan, I can do some odd jobs for you. I’m really good at cataloging books because, you know, I'm a librarian. I can clean your house and cook your food. I can—”
“Allison, shut up and take off your panties,” Reid said.
“What?” She cried as her face went blood red.
“You heard him,” Gage countered. They were seated opposite her, and she sat alone on the other side, her back to the driver.
“I…”
“Now. Or would you prefer me to take you over my knee, pull your panties down myself, and belt your ass twenty times for being in the wrong place at the wrong time?” Zac asked.
“What do you mean?” Her voice quivered. “It was a mistake. I didn’t deliberately go and get myself entangled in a virgin auction. Also, what kind of friends do you have for operating something like that?”
“The kind whose necks we would break if they touched you.” Gage’s tone darkened, and she shivered. She always thought he was the more reasonable one of the three of them.
“You have five seconds left to do as you’re told.”
She frantically looked behind her to make sure the tinted partition was up, and there was no way the driver would know what she was doing. Dear god.
She bit her lip and closed her eyes.
“No, no. Eyes on us,” Reid said roughly.
She reached under the skirt of her dress, tugged her fingers into the band, and pulled them down.
Oh crap. Her panties were wet. They would know.
She balled them up, trying to hide them, blushing so hard that she was sure she saw steam coming from her cheeks.
Zac held his hand out to her.
Nooo…
She swallowed hard and handed him her underwear. His fingers brushed against the wetness.
“Fuck. She’s wet,” Zac said, he sounded angry frustrated, and defeated at the same time. He handed her panties to Reid, and Reid handed them to Gage.
“Ah, fuck,” Reid said, rubbing his hand across his jaw.
Tension filled the air around them. She couldn’t breathe. She felt out of her depth, and she wanted to go home. They were too big for her, too overpowering and all-consuming, and her body, which had been on high heat since she met them, upgraded to an inferno.
She didn’t know what was happening to her. She couldn’t understand the need riveting through her for them to touch her. Suddenly, her virginity became a burden, and she wanted to give it to them. Only them. And not because they paid her for it.
Errant tears gathered in her eyes, but she sucked them up. If nothing else, she was resilient. Her mom had been like that. She had raised Allison all by herself after Allison’s father died before she turned two years old.
She wished she hadn’t gone to the ball. She wished Horse hadn’t found that one stray red piece of lace and turned her life upside down. And she was heartbroken. How could she be heartbroken? But she couldn’t deny the feeling anymore.
They had bought her virginity to protect her and nothing else. Fuck. How was she ever going to pay them back? They didn’t even like her and now they were twenty million dollars poorer because of her.
Oh gosh, for the first time that evening, the amount of money they had spent on her sank in.
She just wanted to go home, but then the limo stopped, and they got out and waited for her to alight. She frowned. This wasn’t her house. No, it was an architectural dream house—the likes she had never seen before—but it was not her little cottage.
“I’d like to go home, please.”
“This is your home from now onward,” Gage said softly.
“No. It is not.”
She tried to scoot to the other end of the car when Reid reached inside, but he was too fast, and he quickly grabbed her and tossed her over his shoulder, oblivious to her shouts to be put down and her sudden taste to bang her fists on his hard body.
The instant he set her down in the foyer, she was immediately bombarded by an overexcited dog.
Horse?
What was he doing here?
She hugged him as if she hadn’t seen him for years, and he showered her with so much love that she wanted to cry.
And then it hit. From the foyer alone, with its glass and chrome finishes and near-priceless art and ornaments, she could tell the rest of the house would be equally luxurious and inordinately expensively decorated. Horse could break everything in sight.
“He can’t be here,” she cried, panicking and holding onto him.
“We had anything removed that might trigger him, and the rest doesn’t mean anything,” Reid said.
“But I don’t understand. Why did you bring him here?”
“This is where he lives now, Allison. This is where you live now.”
“I can’t stay here.”
“You can until we figure something else out.”
“Roselie, our housekeeper will show you to your room.” As if on cue, a woman with the friendliest face imaginable appeared and quite expertly guided her onto the elevator. Horse decided to take the stairs and was there to greet them as soon as the doors pinged open.
The room she was shown took her breath away. Her clothes had already been unpacked, and she didn’t know how to feel about it. But, of course, they had paid an insane amount of money for her; they were not letting her out of their sight.
Trying to clear her mind, she took a shower, grateful when Roselie brought both her and Horse some snacks and curled into the ginormous bed.
She may have slept for an hour before her heavy heart woke her up. What was she doing here? She couldn’t take it anymore. They either had to get their money’s worth or let her pay them back, but either way, she wasn’t accustomed to feeling this level of sadness. And she couldn’t understand why she was so sad in the first place.
Although deep down, she knew why.