Page 5 of Snowed in with the Villains

“Sold to the gentleman in the back,” Lily completes my sentence. “Yes, that kind of auction, and the best part is you get to choose who you want. The next auction is in three days, and I can shoo you in. I know the boss pretty well.”

“How does that even work?”

“It’s a big deal. The day the auction starts, men start to bid on you. You get to see their faces. You can talk to them, get to know them; they shower you with gifts, and all the while they’rebidding on your virginity. You get access to everything, so you can see who bids what. After three days you make your pick.

“Usually girls go for the highest bidder, but sometimes they go for who they’re attracted to even if they aren't the highest bid. Choice is all yours.”

“How much does… how much can someone make at an auction like that?”

“Sweetie, the last girl sold hers for nine hundred thousand dollars. She spent the night with the guy, upped, and left the next day to start her own bakery in California. Easy peasy, virgin squeezy. Bids start at two hundred thousand dollars, so you can’t lose, and if you don’t like any of the bidders, you get spooled into the next round. You would get bid on so fast and so high; your head would spin.”

Does Lily really think I’m worth it? Still, I can’t help my eyes widening so much I feel them engulfing my whole face. I’m so out of my depth, my legs begin to tremble, so I take another sip of the drink, then I bite my lip. Am I even contemplating this?

“Okay, think about the virgin auction thing, but in the meantime, I can get you into the digital side of BBB.”

“What’s that?” I say, still wide-eyed.

“Relax. It’s great for a beginner, and it’s where I started. There’s a whole clientele out there who just want to talk to a pretty girl.”

“About what? Sex?”

“Sex— sometimes yes. It’s all on screen, so nothing physical at all. Some might ask you to masturbate for them, but they pay really well for that, I’ll have you know. If it gets out of hand, BBB security shuts them down and bans them.

“Sometimes they just want you to listen to them talk about the day they had, and then they jerk off. They’ll tell you what they want to do to you. You just have to flirt back.”

Right, because I’m Ms. Flirt all by myself.

“You could easily make anything from five hundred dollars to twenty thousand dollars a day; you just never know. I have this guy who wants to be a juggler, but he gets off going at it naked, and he wants me to be his audience. A grand for twenty minutes of me praising his body. He has a great body, and his juggling skills are not bad at all. Again, no contact.

“None of the people you talk to online want to meet you in real life, honestly. All of them are just lonely, you know, with kinks other people think are weird. The most popular kind is where you simulate entire lives with them. They make up things, like you’re married to them. You have children; you talk about your son getting into trouble at school, or you have a fight with them, and then it’s make-up sex time, and you masturbate together. Some are a bit strange, not going to lie. I had a guy once who wanted me to explain in excruciating detail what my cramps felt like during my period.”

“But no physical contact at all, right?” I ask as if Lily hadn’t made sure to insert the no physical contact phrase every time she could.

“Just you behind a screen.”

“I’ll do it. And the virgin thing. Put me down for the virgin thing as well, please.”

Chapter Five

Alex

Two days and nine hours. That’s all the time I have left to find the bastard. Losing is just not my thing, so I’ll have to think a lot more creatively than I am right now.

My desk is strewn with maps; on a board pinned to the wall is all the intel I’ve garnered. I’ve looked in every obscure location there was: deep in the mountains, residential areas if he chose to hide in plain sight, hotels, and hospitals, because he’s a crazy motherfucker, and I won’t put it above him to break his own fucking arm just so he could lie in a hospital bed while I search the whole damn planet earth to get him.

One thing I know for sure. He’s in the States. He was spotted coming off an aircraft onto American soil, and I know, for a fact, he hasn’t left yet.

East Coast, to be precise. He hates the sun. Loves the cold. Just like his heart.

“Where are you, you sneaky motherfucker?”

I roll my shoulders, then flex my hands so the muscles in my forearms puff up, straining against my tattoos. My gaze strays to the countdown timer on my laptop. Two days, eight hours, and fifty-three minutes.

My instinct tells me he's in the mountains. He has to be up in the mountains, but despite scanning miles and miles of rocky terrain, valleys, basins, and every crevice possible, drones and satellites come up empty.

But I won’t lose, so I start again. I check drone footage twice more; I pore over more maps and satellite images. I even check for the purchase of an ungodly amount of chocolate-coated candy.

I may be six-three and all muscle, but the bastard I’m looking for is six-four, closer to six-five, and has the cantankerous fortitude of a four-year-old with a sweet tooth denied another bag of sweets.

---