Bought (2 page)

Ellie / Jenny:

It was frighteningly easy to buy a human being. There were many options for those who were interested, in parts of the world where the arm of the law wasn’t long and could be easily distracted by a well-placed bribe. If you knew the right people, you would be allowed admittance to a slave auction in some remote destination. There you could sit among other men, smoke your cigars and sip your scotch, while young girls who had been unwillingly torn from their families were paraded in front of you. You would be allowed to look and even touch these girls. Grope a nubile breast, stick your fingers between their untried legs. You could find yourself aroused by the terror in their eyes.

What Madame Lorraine offered was something far rarer and correspondingly much more expensive.  The consensual slave auction. The billionaires of the world still came to bid, but this was a more refined gathering. In this crowd, the slave wanted her subjugation. She craved humiliation. She needed to serve.

A three-month contract was the norm for this particular operation, run only twice a year. However, from the
dossier
that we had accumulated on Madame Lorraine, I knew that she also offered a shorter one-week term for people newer to the lifestyle.

Money didn’t exchange hands in the one-week version. The house charged a token fee for its expenses and the Dominant made a donation to the charity of the submissive’s choice. Those exchanges were farces, meant to attract the men and women who experienced a sexual thrill at the idea of being purchased as a sex slave. They were glorified vacations where a willing man and a willing woman got together for the purposes of having consensual, kinky sex.

The three-month auction was a darker animal. There were checklists and protections built into the system for the safety of both the clients and the slaves. But three months was a long time and anything could happen. Especially when the slave’s list of hard limits was as short as mine.

On the checklist, I’d indicated that I would do anything. I would perform any act of debasement. Take any amount of torture. Obey any order.

I could see Madame Lorraine read the list that I’d spent the last ten minutes filling out. While she was reading, I surveyed her covertly. Though my dossier had included pictures of her, she still wasn’t what I would have expected. She was short and plump, her skin the colour of warm caramel. She was in her late fifties, but her face didn’t betray it. It was smooth and unlined. Just some crinkling around her eyes and a few lines around her mouth.

Laugh lines? Somehow, I doubted it. Madame Lorraine started holding her auctions after her sister was killed by a slaver. This was her own defiant gesture against the dark underworld of sexual slavery and human trafficking. Her attempt at letting go of her dark past and reaching towards the light.

You know that scene in the Matrix when Neo was expecting to see some super human being and when he met the Oracle, she turned out to be a cookie-baking grandmother? I had that same moment of cognitive dissonance when I first met Madame Lorraine.

“This is an auction for slaves and submissives with prior experience,” she spoke finally. Surprise after surprise, because her accent was about as upper-class British as I’d ever heard in my life. “Can you tell me where you were trained?”

Through a force of will, my mind stayed firmly in the present. “It was a private affair,” I replied briefly. “My former Master does not wish to be identified.” It was a fairly common response in a world where people dwelt largely in the shadows.

She nodded and I smiled inwardly. Lucien and I had prepared for this interview. Every question we had thought she might ask, I’d practiced my response.

“Why do you wish to participate in this auction?” One dark eyebrow was raised.

No doubt she’d already researched me and my past, my reasons for knocking at the door of her auction house. I had to trust that Lucien had done a good enough job falsifying the paper trail so that my cover story would hold up. “My twin-sister has leukemia.” My eyes lowered demurely and I twisted my hands in my lap. I’d practiced that gesture many,
many
times in front of the mirror. I needed to show that I was falling apart emotionally due to my sister’s illness and the fact that we didn’t have enough insurance to provide her with the treatment her body so desperately needed. Yet I also needed to project that I was strong enough to withstand the rigors of the next three months. I needed to convince her I was desperate for the money, but that I would still follow the rules and not sully the reputation of her auction house.

“My dear, I’m so sorry.” This time, her voice was warm with sympathy. “My own niece died two years ago from the same savage, wretched disease.”

I nodded again, blinking back the fake tears. I’d been taught, through painful beatings that were seared into my soul, to feel nothing and to hold back my tears. It took a conscious act of will to bring them forward at this moment, but I needed to show emotion to bond with Madame Lorraine over our mutual pain. It wasn’t random chance that my cover story had my sister dying of leukemia.

We were both sad for a moment, our shared grief binding us together. Just as Lucien and I had planned. Then she reached out and placed her hand on mine. Not a sexual touch, though there was always an outside chance that she would want me that way. I’d prepared for that scenario as well, but this touch was motherly. A simple gesture of comfort.

For an instant, I was almost undone. My mother had rarely touched me that way. Mrs. Olusola had offered me comfort and caused me pain with the same hand. When Lucien touched me, my body was only a weapon to be trained and moulded to his exacting needs. I wasn’t used to simple gestures of humanity.

“We usually require references or recommendations, my dear, but I’ll make an exception in this case. Of course, you’ll have to pass an evaluation at the hands of two of our trainers.”

Again, her words were not a surprise. When we had discussed this in our planning session, Lucien had given me a hard look. “I trust you’ll be fine, Ellie?” I knew he was referring to that night in Paris, two years ago, when I’d kneed him in the groin before running away. An instinctive response of fear and panic.

I tried not to think of what had happened after. I tried to forget the beautiful man who had touched my body and made me feel whole and complete and cherished. I didn’t have room in my life for that. I didn’t have room for Marc.

“Of course,” I said in response to Madame Lorraine’s question. My eyes were locked on my fingers, unseeing as the memories of the past threatened at the worst possible time. “I understand that an evaluation is expected. But I’d prefer that there be no penetration.”

No cock in my throat until I choked and gagged. No dick or fist in my pussy or in my dry, unlubricated ass. That was in the past.

And in the present was Madame Lorraine, who looked askance at the idea that her trainers would do such a thing as uncouth as have sex with a slave destined for the auction block. “Of course not,” she chided in that prep-school accent that seemed so odd every time I heard her speak. “You do not surrender your right of consent in this auction. We will test your obedience and skill. You will be penetrated, but it will be by dildos, not dicks.”

Dildos not dicks should have been the name of a band,
I thought wildly. I was trying not to remember the many days when I’d been given as a prize to all of my Master’s bodyguards. I was trying not to remember the horrific pain of that first day when all five of them had brutalized my body.

But my photographic memory was unrelenting. The images flashed in my head, one by one, in a movie-reel of unending terror. Ivan striking my ass with his doubled-up belt until it was black and blue when I’d gagged around his cock and my teeth had grazed him. Sam, who had slapped my face so hard that my mouth had been filled with blood. Cocks painfully thrust into my raw sore pussy. Into my dry unprepared ass.

“When would you like to do the evaluation?” While my voice was the perfect mix of nervousness and anticipation, my hands were clenched into fists as I fought back the memories of the past.
Not now, Ellie,
I told myself angrily.
Not when you are so close to revenge.

Madame Lorraine eyed me with concern. “Are you alright, my dear? You seem flushed.”

“I’m fine.” I’d become so skilled at lying. “I’m sorry, Madame Lorraine. It’s hard for me not to think about Alicia.” It took an effort, but I let the tears form in my eyes once again, pushing back the memory of Mrs. Olusola whispering to me the first night.
This will be easier if you forget how to cry, girl.

“In that case,” she said gently, “how about right now? After all, the life of your sister depends on how you do.”

***

Lucien had changed everything six years ago.

I am a frightened twenty year old huddled in a small house in the outskirts of Lagos, waiting to be raped by the three men who have just purchased me. Though my desire for revenge runs hot in my blood, the reality is that my body is frail. I can’t fight. I can be held down with pathetic ease. I can’t defend myself from attack from someone who weighs a hundred pounds, let alone these big, burly, well-armed men.

I hate myself at this point. I hate how weak I am.

Then the shooting begins.

When I stop screaming, a man walks into the room, his eyes wary and his grip tight on his gun. He is wearing a black t-shirt and black pants. He looks at me briefly before dismissing me as a threat and leaving the room. I can hear him search the house. When he is done, he comes back to where I’m still sitting, curled up into a tight, fearful ball. “You are Dylan’s latest girl, are you not?”

I nod.

He shrugs, more or less indifferent to my plight. “Where is Dylan?”

“Abeokuta,” I reply. “In his compound, I’d imagine.”

The man swears a string of colourful curses. Though there is still a tense knot of fear in me, I watch him curiously.

“Damn it,” he says finally. He runs his hands through his hair. “I’d hoped he would be here with you.” He exhales and is silent for many minutes. When he finally breaks the silence, his words are stoic though his eyes remain bleak. “Ah well,” he says. “There’s always next time, right?”

He turns to leave. I seize my courage into my hands, and call out. “Wait.” He gives me a look of barely concealed impatience. “You want to kill Dylan, don’t you? I do too. Take me with you.”

His eyes rake my body and I can imagine what he sees. A beautiful woman no doubt, but otherwise completely useless. My muscles are weak. I huddle in terror when the shooting starts. “You have nothing to offer,” he dismisses me. “No. You will not be useful.”

“I’ve been Dylan McAllister’s sex slave for two years,” I snap back. The dismissal stings. It only reinforces what I already know. I’m deadweight. But I’m not going to back down. I will have my revenge. “I know things about him that will help you in your quest.”

“Like what?” he scoffs.

I recite things. The blessing of a photographic memory. Precise descriptions of each of Dylan’s five bodyguards. Details about the Nigerian mercenaries that Gregor Petrovich has hired to supplement the security in the compound. I paint vivid word portraits of the housekeeping staff. I talk about security rosters. At what hour of the day the guards change. I remember everything and I tell it all to this stranger dressed in black.

When I’m done, there’s a moment of silence. Then the man speaks again. “It appears that I have underestimated you,” he says. “What do you want?”

“I want to kill Dylan McAllister.”

“Get in line,” he quips, before he turns serious. “Killing is hard and soul-destroying work. Do you have what it takes?”

I remember everything. Every unwelcome touch. Every biting kiss of the whip. Every painful penetration. Every single time I’ve been tossed to Dylan’s bodyguards as punishment.

“Yes.” My voice is flat. I do have what it takes.

***

The life of my imaginary twin sister did not depend on this auction. But my revenge did.

There had been a spate of killings in the human trafficking world. Lucien and I did our share, but our target was always Dylan McAllister and his henchmen. We didn’t take on the entire shady underworld. We just didn’t have the resources.

But people had been dying. Two years ago I had killed Ivan Klimov in Paris. Ivan had been guarding Stanislav Durov, the man who controlled the pipeline transporting women from Azerbaijan and Georgia to Moscow. But the next day, I’d learned that a few hours after I’d killed Ivan, Stanislav Durov himself had been assassinated. Someone took advantage of the confusion I’d created when I’d killed Ivan to go after the bigger fish.

Everyone was afraid. Everyone had doubled and tripled their guards and were on high alert. And sadly for us, Dylan McAllister had moved from Abeokuta, where we might have had a chance at getting him, to a completely impenetrable fortress-like compound on the outskirts of Hanoi.

There was only one way in. Three times a year Dylan McAllister was visited by a man. Alexander Hamilton. Lucien had tried to gather intelligence on Alexander but had come up with absolutely nothing. We didn’t have a photo of him. We had no idea what he did or why he visited Dylan. We’d heard that he was Dylan’s finance guy – the one responsible for keeping him firmly entrenched among the ranks of the world’s billionaires so that Dylan could kidnap women with impunity, and surround himself with bodyguards to safeguard him from his crimes. But it was just speculation. We had no idea.