Chapter 22
NOVA
Isat with a group of young women and men behind a dividing curtain in the grand ballroom, where I assumed rich people galas were held when they weren’t hosting kinky sex parties.
“Absolutely not,” I said to Jayne. “You can give my age, but not my height and weight. Hard limit.”
She pressed her lips together. “Anything else you want me to highlight to the crowd?”
I pondered for a moment. “Yeah,” I said with a strong nod. “Tell them in addition to their charitable donation, my father will also be requesting a dowry of twelve cattle and eight acres of land.”
Jayne blinked. “I will tell them you’re twenty-five and a writer with a colorful sense of humor.”
I sank back in the chair and gave a nod of defeat. She moved on to the next volunteer.
Maisy was gossiping nearby. I kept catching phrases here and there—Hamptons fiasco, summer home, wife is here, fake-ass salt daddy.
My gaze unfocused, letting the words float past like clouds over the horizon. Seeing Wes with someone else had taken the wind out of my sails. Part of me was ready for all of this to be over.
Even if a different, more frightening part felt like my quest was only just beginning. I’d only scratched the surface—of this mansion, of this world, of myself.
The jealous ruminations were unrelenting. Each unanswered question I had about Wes was suddenly glaring, making every moment of chemistry and tension we’d shared acutely painful. I felt stupid for willfully forgetting what he’d said at the diner—that his intention was to part ways as friends.
And I felt even more stupid for thinking that, in the car, he’d been trying to tell me he’d changed his mind.
When Jayne gestured for all of us to stand and follow her, I was almost too moody to register what the fuck I was about to participate in.
I whispered to a potential ally beside me—a short, skinny man wearing big hoop earrings and lots of body glitter.
“This is lowkey fucked up, right? Like, fantasies are fantasies, and that’s cool, but you know, the wealthy are already under scrutiny right now, and the nod to human trafficking—talk about a PR nightmare, at the very least—”
The man panned toward me. “Girl, I do not care about all that. Rent’s due.”
I stopped my anxious ramblings. “No worries,” I said, raising my hands in defeat.
I glanced around at the group of mostly women and a few men.
Clearly, in addition to the charitable donations, some of them were also getting paid on the side.
Were they all sex workers? Or submissives indulging in a dark fantasy?
What did everyone else think they were auctioning off?
I would be an asshole to judge them when they weren’t the ones pulling the strings, right?
I felt a headache coming on, and even stone-cold sober, I was lightheaded and clammy by the time Jayne led us through the curtain into a room full of wealthy bidders.
Many were seated at tables while others lined the back of the room, standing. A hush fell over the crowd.
I was back to feeling like a slab of meat. Everyone stepped onto a dais, forming a line that ended with me.
Jayne met Archer in front of a microphone, holding her sheet of paper with our biometric information. Archer found my eyes immediately. When he smiled, it felt like I’d lost. I’d willingly walked right into another of their orchestrated power plays.
I scanned the room. At first, I was looking for Lorelei, but soon, I found myself searching for Wes.
No Lorelei. No Wes. I didn’t even see Roman.
I hadn’t been paying attention to another of Jayne and Archer’s self-indulgent, pseudo-spiritual speeches about freedom, authenticity, and connection. I only caught the tail end.
“What we are doing here in The Circle is revolutionary,” Archer said.
“We are indulging our shadows in accordance with only the highest possible code of ethics and virtue. We are animal and soul. We are bloodthirsty and we are selfless. We are lustful and we are merciful. We are relentless and we are generous. Everyone here is radically free to explore even the darkest depths of their fantasies safely and sanely. We always have a choice. And here, we choose to be good to each other and do good for this broken world. Every dollar raised at tonight’s auction will go to human trafficking relief.
It is our duty not only to take care of each other, but also to be custodians of the planet.
Binaries do not exist in The Circle. Wealth is not the antithesis of virtue, nor is power the antithesis of justice.
Here, power is our greatest responsibility.
The Circle is not an exclusive kink community.
It is a solution to the oldest human dilemma: how do we maintain balance between our essential light and dark selves, our yin and yang, our masculine and feminine?
The Circle is wholeness. The ouroboros. Eternity. ”
Graceful clapping spread across the space.
I studied faces in the crowd. At one table, an older man and woman in masquerade masks held hands—both wearing wedding rings—clearly moved by the speech.
Another table was full of stoic men in royal garb, clapping politely.
Another sat a group of women in powerful, conservative attire, smiling with cool confidence as they clinked glasses.
Dommes, if I had to guess. At another table, a group of men with golden animal masks laughed.
They were staring not at Archer, but at me. A chill crawled down my spine.
Jayne called the first volunteer on stage, a curvy woman with long black hair and an infectious smile. I swallowed down a shocked noise when the first bid came in at fifty thousand dollars. More people entered the room, crowding the back. Still no sign of Wes.
My eyes stung, feeling betrayed and confused. And worse than that, silly for feeling those things to begin with. I had to start preparing myself for Wes finally telling me the truth: that all of this had been for the woman he found tonight.
And I needed to find Lorelei so I didn’t leave this place empty-handed.
“Sold, for one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars,” Archer declared.
I paled. The woman left the stage. A man greeted her, bringing her hand to his lips, and the crowd clapped.
Archer’s speech rattled around in my mind as the line of volunteers thinned and the bids only grew higher. My lightheadedness wasn’t helped by Archer’s next words.
“Two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars.”
Maisy took the stage.
“Our princess in pink is twenty-six years old, five feet five inches, one-hundred-and-twenty-five pounds,” Jayne said.
Maisy grinned and twirled for the crowd, showing her ass that already sported red marks from an impact scene.
This did not deter the bidders.
When Archer called out three hundred thousand, I was close to fainting.
Maisy sold to a man seated with Jeffrey for four-hundred-thousand dollars. Jeffrey didn’t look displeased at being outbid; if anything, his eyes were hooded with lust.
My heart pounded. Three people stood in front of me. I scanned the crowd again for a mask with ram horns.
Still no Roman, and still no Wes.
“Our crown jewel of the night is a twenty-five-year-old romance author by day,” Jayne called with a broad smile. “And a perfect angel by night.”
At least two hundred pairs of eyes were now on me. I put one foot in front of the other, head spinning, heart pounding, feeling on the verge of a fainting spell.
“Spin around for us, angel,” Archer whispered, taking my hand.
I didn’t have the ability to protest, not with this amount of adrenaline coursing through my veins. I slowly turned. A few people whistled.
“What a perfect ass,” Archer said, low enough that only I could hear.
I faced the crowd again.
“Two hundred thousand dollars.”
I could physically feel the color drain from my face. There was no way that was the starting bid. I met the eyes of the older married couple who’d bid on me, and they smiled encouragingly.
“Two-fifty,” a man in the back called.
I scanned the overflow of newcomers, but my head snapped in the direction of a new voice.
“Three-fifty,” one of the men in golden masks called. He and his friends hadn’t stopped staring at me the entire auction. I wondered if they were the same men from the subway. Their masks certainly matched.
Surely, this was the end.
It wasn’t. Someone in the back called four hundred. The table of golden masks called out five.
“I’m going to pass out,” I heard myself say.
Archer’s hand snaked around my waist, as if to steady me. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”
When the golden-masked men broached seven figures, black stars encroached upon the edges of my vision.
The man in the back was undeterred—and I realized in horror it was the wolf man I’d rejected at the start of the evening. I did not want to be sold to him.
“One point two,” the wolf declared, drumming up collective excitement.
I pulled in deep breath after breath.
“We have places to be,” the golden boar drawled in a monotone voice, drawing a few snickers from the crowd. “So we’re going to wrap this up.”
“Six million for the angel,” the golden rabbit said, silencing the room.
My knees buckled. Archer kept me standing. The table laughed.
Jayne beamed at me. “What a fabulous end to the auction,” she declared. “I thank everyone for their generous donations toward a better world—a world where everyone gets to choose their own destiny.”
Archer walked with me to the edge of the stage. Someone shoved through the crowd of people in the back, and my pounding heart clenched tight.
Wes broke through the fray, his face contorted with beautiful rage. Muscles in his tattooed neck pulsed. But the only emotion in his rich brown eyes when our gazes locked was fear.
I couldn’t hear the sound that left his lips from this far away, but I could write the single syllable, could feel it slam against me like an inarguable command.
No.
The table of men rose. They nodded to Archer.
Archer’s smile was warm and pleased. “Is there anything else we can do for you this evening?” he asked, as if they were a homogenous entity.
“This will be all,” one of the men said.
Archer let me go, but he still walked with us toward the exit as his wife continued her closing remarks.
“Where are we going?” I hissed.
The golden rabbit turned to me slowly. “Up.”
It was just an hour. An hour of my time. I hadn’t actually been bought. It was all fantasy, for a good cause.
The crowd parted for us, ogling me the whole way. Wes waited for us in front of the open doors, blocking the path out. He glowered.
One of the men next to me snickered. Another made a whispered comment I couldn’t fully hear, but I caught the word interesting.
“Wes,” Archer said slowly. “Is there a problem?”
Wes looked momentarily stunned when I stepped out from behind the huddle of men. It was the first time he’d seen me all night.
Varied emotions passed through his intense eyes in a split second, from wrath to horror to shock.
But all I could remember was him with someone else, the woman he was planning on telling me about in the car—the reason we couldn’t act on our so-called compulsions.
“Nova,” Wes breathed, ignoring the others entirely.
I released a shaky exhale and stepped forward. Not toward Wes, but toward the exit.
When he reached for me, I stared him hard in the eyes and shook my head. “Don’t,” I hissed.
I shrugged away from his outstretched hand.
He flinched slightly, as if I’d slapped him.
I left the ballroom, and when I looked over my shoulder, Wes looked on the verge of swinging on the men who trailed me.
Archer approached him, erecting a barrier between Wes and the masked men as he spoke in a low, peacemaking tone.
Wes’s fists clenched. As Archer spoke to him, his eyes never left mine.
I turned and kept walking.