Seal'd Auction

by Charlotte Byrd

  As I walked around the store, something was bothering me. That many guys waiting at Claire’s dad. It didn’t make sense. From what Claire said, he was a gambler and owed Kovalev money. I mean, they were waiting for us, in part at least. But that wasn’t it. If all Kovalev needed was to get us back, they should have just shot us both. What did he need with Claire? She was beautiful, of course, but I had seen dozens of beautiful girls pass through his hands. What made her special?

  When they first found us, they tried to run us off the road, spraying bullets. If they didn’t want to kill us, why take such a risk? It was almost like they only needed Claire alive after they found out that her father was gone. But why? I knew Kovalev. He would take a financial loss just to send a message. He wouldn’t keep a hostage just to secure a bit of money. There must be something else going on. The problem was, I couldn’t figure out what it could be.

  “Hey, Jason.” Claire’s voice broke into my contemplation from behind me. “Can you come help me with something?”

  “Um, sure.”

  “In the dressing room?”

  Chapter 16 - Claire

  I had picked out the clothes I was going to get in just a few minutes, but I kept browsing. The normalcy of the activity was pleasant, soothing. I watched Jason out of the corner of my eye to make sure he actually left me alone. He was watching me constantly. Not that I didn’t appreciate his concern. I knew he wanted to keep me safe, but all I wanted was a few minutes of something that seemed ordinary.

  As I ran my eyes and hands over the shirts, skirts, and pants, I marveled at the fact that I was still standing and not crying in a corner somewhere. The day had progressed so rapidly, I hadn’t processed the reality of what had happened in the moment. It was only the mid-afternoon and already my world had changed so radically, it was unrecognizable. Until I came close to death, I hadn’t realized that the life I’d been living was near death already.

  When I agreed to go with Kovalev, to sacrifice myself to save my father’s life, I didn’t realize that I would actually be trading my life for his. I assumed I would be buying his life with a few months of my body. What it turned out to be was something far beyond that. If I had known what I was getting into, and what my life would have continued to be if Jason hadn’t intervened, would I have made the deal to save my father?

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to answer that question.

  I continued to wander the store, walking past all of the people who were just out shopping, the ones who weren’t on the run, who hadn’t just escaped death or worse. I envied them to an extent. But at the same time, I felt so alive. The fear and exhilaration made my senses attuned to every movement, every sound. In a big store, it was almost overwhelming. But it was intoxicating as well. I felt like everyone else was sleepwalking, but I was wide awake. Even the feel of the fabrics as my fingers trailed over piles of clothes on display tables was so intense, so immediate.

  My feet came to a dead stop in the middle of the aisle. If touching a sweater felt that intense, well…

  I strode ahead to track down Jason.

  He was standing, looking absent-minded, in the grocery section. He didn’t even turn around until the second time I said his name. But if he had been spaced-out when I approached, he was focused like a laser when I asked him to come to the dressing room with me.

  His eyes were palpable on my back as I led him back toward the women’s clothing. I couldn’t believe what I was doing. I was acting like a completely different person. Even before my time with Kovalev, I wasn’t the kind of girl that would just go up to a guy. But whoever this new girl was, I liked her.

  Jason’s hand took mine when I trailed it behind me. I gave it a tug and pulled him closer, feeling the closeness of his body as we wove through the racks.

  We snuck past the woman who checked how many items you came in and left with and chose a changing room that was as far back as possible. I put my finger to my mouth, indicating that we have to be quiet. Jason nodded his acknowledgment. I knelt down and began undoing his jeans. It didn’t take him long to be ready and his cock sprang forth as soon as I freed it from his boxer briefs. I took the tip into my mouth, doing little circles with my tongue. With one hand, I stroked his long, hard shaft and with the other, I softly played with his balls, sometimes tracing my finger back toward his ass.

  I looked up and saw him bite back a moan of pleasure. Seeing him in the grips of such pleasure, completely under my control, really turned me on. I could feel myself getting wet. I gave him a few more seconds before I stood up, dropping my borrowed jeans and fancy underpants in a single motion. I put my hands around his neck and Jason, taking the hint, put his hands around my waist and easily lifted me into the air. I wrapped my legs around his waist and carefully lowered myself onto his cock. I grinded back and forth, easing myself down until he was all the way in. He filled me up completely. I let out a shuddering breath, barely stopping myself from moaning out loud.

  Jason lowered himself a bit and began rhythmically rocking his hips while keeping me resting on his powerful thighs. He slid in and out of me, but his pelvis kept up pressure on my clit. I bit down on his shoulder to keep myself from screaming out a completely unexpected orgasm.

  I had barely recovered my senses when I felt him pull out completely. He set me back on my feet and spun me around. He pressed me face first against the changing room wall and spread my legs wide. I looked to the side at the full-length mirror and watched as he pressed the head of his cock into me again. He gripped both of his strong hands on my hips, pulling me back toward him hard so my ass slapped against his hips. I tried to tell him to be quieter, but I couldn’t get out the words. Not that I wanted him to stop, anyway.

  I was certain someone was going to hear, but at that point I didn’t care. It might have gone on for hours or seconds, I couldn’t tell, but suddenly Jason’s rhythm shifted. He buried himself deep inside me and shuddered. I felt his cock pumping and heard him gasping for breath.

  We both sat down on the little bench, fires quenched, exhausted. He looked over at me and we smiled at each other, blissful and contented.

  “Go get the car,” I said. “I will check out and meet you in the parking lot.”

  Jason, still out of breath, nodded and pulled his pants back on. He leaned down and planted a soft kiss on my neck before carefully exiting the dressing room.

  I leaned back against the wall and grinned from ear to ear. I couldn’t believe I had just done that. Who was I becoming?

  Chapter 17 - Claire

  When I placed my basket down on the conveyer belt at the check-out line, I could feel the cashier’s eyes on me. I had done my best in the dressing room to rearrange my hair, to straighten my clothes, but there was only so much that could be done. The one thing I could definitely not get rid of was the broad smile cut across my face.

  I dumped the clothes onto the conveyer and tossed the basket into a pile of its fellows below the counter. Stone-faced, the cashier began to separate and scan them. I had been a little overzealous but, given the fact that I hadn’t bought clothes for myself for months, it was deserved. I ran my hands through my hair like a comb, trying to wrangle the unruly locks back into form. The movement recalled the feeling of Jason’s hands tightening with a fistful of hair, pulling at my scalp. I barely muffled a little whimper that I was sure the cashier heard. I don’t know why I was so self-conscious. Why did I care what anybody thought? After the hell I had been through, I was owed a few moments of bliss. Even if they came in a Target dressing room.

  Once I paid, I walked quickly out to the parking lot where Jason sat in the driver’s seat of the Accord. I saw his eyebrow raise at the number of bags I was holding, but he soon thought better of it and hopped out to help me put them in the car.

  “Get everything ok?” he asked.

  “Fine, no problems.”

  I tossed the bags into the backseat. Jason took the bag of extra food I had gotten and put it on top of the case of water in the backseat foo
t well. As I slid into the passenger seat, I felt my heart start to beat faster. We were on our way. Wait a second.

  “Jason, where are we going?”

  “Umm, I am not exactly certain. I want to get out of town for a while. Somewhere out in the desert, small town, or something.”

  “What about my father?”

  “I was thinking about that, actually. Do you know where he is? Cause I don’t want to go driving all over the place, not knowing when we are going to run into trouble again.”

  I hesitated. There were a few places that he might go, some out of the way spots that I knew he liked to visit. But which one? Then it hit me. If he knew he was in serious trouble, he would only head one direction.

  “He is in Joshua Tree.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, he’s there. I’m certain.”

  Joshua Tree National Park was one of my father’s favorite spots. We had gone there often when I was little to hike and climb the boulders. When my mother was still alive, it had been a fun family vacation. After she died, it was a refuge, a place to hide out when the sadness and emptiness got too big. He loved the alien landscape, the giant granite boulders, and the twisted, spikey trees. I was sure he would be there.

  “Ok, then,” Jason said, putting the car into drive and pulling out of the parking lot. “It is only a three-hour drive, I think.”

  “There is a bit of a short-cut, actually. It goes right through the Mojave Preserve. Almost nobody on the road.”

  Jason nodded, and we pulled onto the freeway.

  Despite the build-up in the south part of Las Vegas, the new housing developments that still had dozens of empty houses, the South Point casino, the distance between the bright lights of the strip, and the empty desert was very short.

  We drove in silence for miles. I was surprised that he had agreed to go find my father so quickly. Jason had been reluctant to help him before, and given what happened at his house, I wouldn’t be surprised if he wanted nothing to do with my father again. But he had agreed without hesitation. He said he had been thinking about it on his own. Why? I couldn’t imagine he had suddenly had a change of heart about my dad. He seemed to have a pretty negative opinion about him and unwilling to risk much to save him. If he were doing anything, he must be doing it for me.

  “Take the next exit, just before the top of the hill,” I said, breaking the silence. Off to the right, a field of mirrors focused sunlight up to a tower whose top blazed so bright it was almost painful to look at, even in the late afternoon sunlight. It was a solar thermal plant. I thought I remembered reading about how those towers were filled with molten salt. What was amazing to me was how the reflected sunlight looked almost solid, like it had been focused into a physical beam. Saint Brigid of Ireland, coming in from the rain, had hung her cloak on a shaft of sunlight. I doubted that I would want to attempt the same trick. The sunlight focused by those mirrors had a dangerous, violent feel. Too much of a good thing, I guess.

  We turned off the freeway and into the two-lane highway that cut through the Mojave Preserve. Jason pulled the car to a stop on the soft shoulder just over a small hill. With the engine cut, the silence was ponderous. He stepped out of the car, I followed. A light wind was breathing across the broad valley between jagged lines of rocky hills. The valley was filled with Joshua trees. Their tortured, twisted forms looked like something out of a Dr. Seuss book, or like the flora of some alien planet. At the same time, though, it felt comforting. I had been in these deserts so often as a child, this strange looking environment felt like home.

  I followed Jason down a little slope to where he stopped, just out of sight of the road. He sat on a wide, flat stone and pulled out an energy bar. I sat next to him, the cool, hard rock poking me through my new jeans.

  “Why are we stopping here?” I asked.

  “Just in case,” he replied. “I doubt we were followed once we changed cars. I trust Charlie, but you never know. We can wait here fifteen minutes or so and see if anyone suspicious comes past. They won’t see the car until they crest the hill, so they will give themselves away if they want to check us out.”

  A dull, metallic clink drew my eyes, and I saw Jason set a pistol beside him on the rock. A chill went through me that had nothing to do with the breeze. I was happy to have left danger behind us and didn’t want to think about being around any more guns. Jason seemed entirely too comfortable with the situation, sitting there munching on some kind of amalgam of peanut butter and chocolate that passed itself off as healthy. It occurred to me, sitting here in the middle of the desert, that I knew virtually nothing about this man into whose hands I had put my life. Or rather whose hands had taken hold of my life.

  “Jason?” I asked, more tentative than I would have hoped.

  “Yea?”

  “Tell me about yourself.”

  He turned to look at me, a quizzical expression on his face.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I mean, I don’t even know your last name! I don’t know anything about you. I know things have been crazy, but still. Don’t you think we should, you know, get more acquainted?”

  Jason laughed. The sound was lost in the vast emptiness.

  “I guess we haven’t exactly started out…conventionally,” he said through a wide smile. “What do you want to know?”

  “Where did you grow up?”

  “In Vegas, actually.”

  “Really? Me, too. What high school did you go to?”

  “Palo Verde”

  “Oh, I went to Arbor View. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “No, only child. My parents have both passed away, so it’s just me now.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I was an only child, too.”

  I was quiet for a few moments. Jason didn’t offer more information than he had to, and I was wary of delving too deep into subjects that I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear about. But after a few minutes of awkward silence, I continued.

  “Umm, what did you do before? I mean, before you went to work for Kovalev.”

  Jason let out a sigh. I was worried that he was going to clam up, that it was something he just didn’t want to talk about. But after a moment he dove in. He told me about joining the Navy, about SEAL training, about the men and the missions. It began to make sense, how he could move like he did, fight like he did. And how he didn’t seem to fit in as one of Kovalev’s goons. There was something different about him. It was like a heavy patina covering the pure silver underneath.

  “Nobody wanted to listen to me when I told them what my CO was up to. I was too idealistic, too naïve. I didn’t understand that ‘doing the right thing’ was no protection. That nobody cared if you were right. So, I ended up back here. Dishonorable discharge, no money, no connections, no chance of a decent job. All I had were my skills which, outside of the SEALs, didn’t have much legitimate practicality.”

  He sounded dejected, resigned. His broad, powerful shoulders were slumped forward. I reached out hesitantly and touched his back, running my hand down its curve and feeling the rounded muscles. He straightened up. I dropped my hand as he twisted around to face me.

  “I’m tired of being a bad guy,” he said.

  Chapter 18 - Jason

  When no cars passed us after fifteen minutes or so, I decided we were probably in the clear. Not only that, but I also wanted to take a break from Claire’s questioning. I didn’t begrudge her curiosity, but talking about my past made me uncomfortable. Even if she seemed remarkably understanding and compassionate, there was a lot that I didn’t want to go into regarding what I had done since joining Kovalev’s crew. I had made a break with that, a violent and final break. I didn’t want to dwell in that time any more than I needed to.

  Back on the road, she indulged me with silence for a little while, but as we passed the old Kelso Depot, a little train station in the middle of the desert, conversation burst out again.

  “You know,” she said as if there had been no interrupt
ion. “I don’t think you are a bad guy.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She shifted around on her seat, the shoulder strap cutting a deep valley between her breasts. Not for the first time I noticed she hadn’t put on a bra. I loved how she could be so sexy without even trying, as if she didn’t notice what she was doing.

  “Well, it seems to me like you just did what you had to do, you know. You were put in a difficult situation.”

  “I still had choices. I made the wrong ones.”

  “Look, I think we can both agree that it would be better if neither of us had ever had anything to do with that scum bag, but you do your best with what you have in the moment, right?”

  “I guess. But you acted out of altruism, to save someone else. I hurt people for money. I don’t see an equivalence.”

  She didn’t respond right away, so I continued.

  “I appreciate you trying to make me feel better, or make yourself feel better about me, or whatever. But nothing can change what I have done, the choices I made.”

  “There is a balance, though, isn’t there?”

  I arched an eyebrow at her.

  “I mean, karma-wise, or whatever. You did the right thing when you were a soldier and you got nothing but trouble for it. Doesn’t that weigh against anything bad you have done recently?”

  I liked the way she thought, but I wasn’t sure I bought it. For me, doing the right thing was just doing the right thing. Doing the wrong thing when I had the capacity to choose otherwise…Somehow it seemed more bad than the other seemed good.

  “And the people that you…encountered, working for Kovalev…they weren’t innocent, right? I mean, they were people who worked in the underworld, other criminals. It isn’t like you were out robbing little old ladies or something, right?”