Uncover (Club V Book 3)

by Gisele St. Claire

  I still had that nagging feeling in the back of my mind that there was something more going on here. Why had it felt like it was a personal thing with her? From the moment she had first stepped foot in my office it was like she had some kind of vendetta against me. Well, maybe that was strong, but it was a kind of dislike that was easy to perceive given the circumstances. And yeah, we had fucked and it was great, but there was even more behind that. Unless that was how the woman always was her first time with a stranger.

  Then, like fog clearing after an early morning, things started to become clear and the bits and pieces that I had been struggling to grasp…all started to make sense.

  Video. The internet. Penny Saxs had been familiar in some way, but it was something I couldn’t exactly name. I went to my desk and sat down, typing in her name for the first time and searching to see who this woman was, how many bylines she had, and why on earth I felt like I was seeing a ghost every time she entered the room.

  The results popped up quickly. Her fake page at the men’s magazine. Some older articles at Expose. Her social media accounts. Then there, about halfway down the page, I found what I had been looking for. Penny Saxs was indeed a ghost from my past who had come back to haunt me a final time.

  I drove back to my building and made my way up to the penthouse, telling myself over and over that it might not be the same one. It couldn’t be. They looked nothing alike. But I had to go through my files from the time and check to see for myself.

  The files were in a desk drawer in my home office. I shuffled through a few folders before I found the one I was looking for and slid the documents out. Her picture was there, along with her name and suddenly it all became clear why she was so intent on getting payback.

  Penny Saxs was the girl in the elevator.

  I shook my head, ashamed and not too surprised that the thing I was most sorry for in my life had come back to get me like this. Of course, it had, karma worked like that. And there was no surprise that my moment of deepest shame was going to be what nailed me to the wall with my business. I wasn’t sure exactly what they would be able to prove, but then again I didn’t know how much information they had or exactly how they planned to roll it out.

  Now the video blackmail I had on Penny was out of the question though. I had shamed her once in her life and I would never do it again, no matter what the personal cost to me might be.

  I sat with those feelings for hours, until my desk chair became so uncomfortable that I had to get up. The sun was starting to rise and it was Sunday morning. I knew what I needed to do.

  I picked up my phone and dialed Penny’s number. There was no answer, so I left the message I should have given her a decade before.

  “Penny, I am so desperately sorry for what I have done. There’s no excuse and no way to explain it all away. Please let me have the chance to tell you this face to face. We can talk it out. Come to my apartment. I’ll be here all day.” I paused for a moment, realizing that the message was still vague and that she might not understand what I was apologizing for.

  “I remember you,” I said, then hung up the phone.

  Chapter 10

  Penny

  I was grateful then that it had been the end of the school year when it had all happened. It made it easier that way. I wasn’t going to have to stick around for a long time, not like if it had happened in the middle of the year. That would have been an entirely different story. In all likelihood, I would have dropped out and ruined an entire year of college credit.

  But as it was, I had one final left to take a few days later and my plan was to finish that and head home. There was no way I wanted to take a chance that I would see Pete anywhere on campus between now and then. I packed up my things and tried to make the best of what was a very embarrassing, but thankfully private situation.

  That lasted all of twelve hours. When I woke up the next day there was a video entitled “Nerdy Girl Asks Jock to Fuck Her Hard” making the rounds on social media and I could have died. I didn’t leave my room and when my roommate asked me about the video I remained silent. It was everywhere. It had been tagged and shared all over campus so that most people knew what had happened. A few people recognized me and named me in the comments. It was out there and it was everywhere. The story got some traction in the campus newspaper and no matter how hard I tried to avoid it, the thing was there. They had thankfully left my face off of the video, instead choosing to focus on Pete.

  Even that had been a failure though. You would think that if his face was plastered everywhere that the focus would have shifted to him and he would have been the one dealing with the backlash. But the place they had set up the camera made it impossible to tell who Pete was in the video. No one knew it was their start football player. Nobody could have guessed that it was one of the rising stars of the business college. He never received any kind of backlash or reprisal for what he had done, which seemed like a particularly cruel twist to the story.

  I had ditched my glasses and straightened my hair, pulling on a ball cap before I headed to my last final. It was enough to change my appearance so that I wasn’t immediately recognized when I exited the dorm. As soon as the test was over I rushed back to my room, gathered up the rest of my things, and left the University for good.

  Even ten years down the road, I knew that if I looked hard enough, typed in just the right keywords in a search, I could find the video that made my skin crawl and my heart break into a million pieces.

  He had hurt me, badly. So why was I now taking the elevator up to his top floor penthouse on a Sunday morning at the crack of dawn? I didn’t know if he was really going to apologize to me or if this was some other kind of cruel prank he was going to play on me. Maybe he was angry about Expose and the story we were going to do on him and Club V. It would be his livelihood that was up in smoke.

  The chimes on the elevator rang and I wondered if elevators were my lot in life as I stepped off and straight out into Pete Wilson’s living room.

  He stood there by his dining table in a pair of jeans and a tailored shirt. He was still dressed far more casually than I was used to seeing him. And god did his body still look great. Even though I was mad as hell and didn’t plan on changing that anytime soon, I could still admit that Pete Wilson was one of the most attractive men I’d ever seen and definitely the hottest I’d ever had sex with.

  “Thank you for coming,” he said in a quieter, lower tone than I’d ever heard from him.

  “Listen, I don’t really want to be here and I don’t know what you could possibly have to say to me.”

  He took a step in my direction and then stopped.

  “You’re so beautiful.”

  I looked at him curiously. “Compliments aren’t going to get you anywhere.”

  He shook his head as if he were trying to clear his mind. “No, I know that they aren’t going to. That’s not what it’s about. And like I said in the message, there is no way I can explain what I did, but there is something about all of that I need to tell you. Will you have a seat?”

  I took a breath and moved to sit on the couch in the middle of his living room. He joined me there but kept a respectful distance.

  “I’m not going to try to put the responsibility on anyone else, but I do want you to know it wasn’t my idea. I didn’t want to do that to you. Yeah, they dared me to ask you out on a date, but you want to know something about me, even then? I never did anything I didn’t want to do. You might have thought you were an ugly duckling, but we all have our awkward phases. Hell, I’ve got a few pictures from when I was in high school that you should see.”

  “You can’t possibly mean that you wanted to go on a date with me.” It was a crazy thought and one that I wouldn’t accept as truth.

  He nodded his head though. “What can I say? I heard you discussing some things in that chem lab we had together—yes, I remember you from the chem lab. I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you…well…I mean, you’ve clearly flowered into a ver
y beautiful woman and some things have changed, but your voice. Your voice is still very similar to what it was when we were younger.”

  I shrugged. “Thanks, I guess. I still don’t know what this is about.”

  Pete let out a deep sigh. “I wanted you.”

  “What?”

  “I wanted you. Then. Like I want you now. Okay, it might have been more of a horny, 21 year old guy kind of wanting back then and I’m really sorry you missed out on that, but what I’m saying is that I was there because I wanted to be. I wanted to take you out on a date. And when we got back to the elevator and I was taking you up to your room, I wanted to have sex with you. But I had made a deal with these guys and that wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. The video thing; that was all them and I didn’t even know it had gone down that way until it was way too late. When I went to find you, your roommate said you were already gone. And then you never came back and I was never able to find you again.”

  I nodded and bit my lip. “I transferred to a different school after that. The video almost ruined my life, Pete. Do you know that people look up my name when I apply for a job and that whole thing shows up? It’s a decade old and it’s still there. I can’t get away from it. Well, I thought I had and then there you are, right back in my life again.”

  “And now you’re going to take me down, right?”

  I tilted my head slightly and narrowed my eyes. “Why shouldn’t I?”

  He reached out to caress my shoulder. “Because I think you have some feelings for me. And you’re a better person than I am. You’re not interested in destroying anyone’s life.”

  I stood, wanting to get out of his reach and he pulled me back down. I landed in a heap on top of him and he held me tight.

  “You still want me,” he said in a deep, guttural tone. “I want you too.”

  I fought to get away, but it was useless and the tension between us was building. He was right as much as I didn’t want to admit it to myself. I wanted him pretty desperately and right now I was ready to take him.

  “Do whatever you like,” he said. “But I’m not letting you leave here until we work this out.”

  I heard a growl come from deep inside my chest as I straddled him and grabbed his shirt collar, unbuttoning the shirt and peeling it off of him as my hips moved on top of his. I could already feel him growing hard beneath me and I didn’t want to wait. I wanted Pete inside me. We were going to work this out and I was going to ride him.

  “I’m going to fuck you,” I said, biting his neck.

  He unzipped his jeans and his erection sprang toward me. I shimmied out of my leggings and panties and he pulled my shirt off before pulling me back to him and positioning me above his cock.

  “Fuck me then,” Pete said as he leaned in to nuzzle my breasts.

  I sank down on top of him and he gasped, biting at one of my nipples. It was furious and angry and full of pain and I rode him hard like I had never done before. I wanted him to feel what I felt. To remember the urgency of what it had been like in that elevator. How badly I had wanted him then and how it was still all there, that need for him to possess and take me, only now I was in control and for this dominant alpha male, it was taking some real restraint for him not to turn me over and plow me from behind. I could see it in his eyes as my hips gyrated on top of him.

  I rubbed my clit and brought myself to orgasm quickly, then without any warning, he was spurting inside me again, for the second time in less than 12 hours, and we collapsed onto his couch together, forgiveness found somewhere in the midst of all the wanting.

  “I want you to come to the office and meet some of the girls who are going to be up for auction at our next event.”

  I leaned back and looked at him, still uncertain of what I thought. I had a lot of reservations about what he was doing at Club V, no matter if I was able to forgive him for something he had done to me years ago. If what he was doing could be construed as trafficking then the guy could be in a lot of trouble.

  “I want you to come and meet them, hear their stories and find out why they do what they do. Just…just give me this one chance to prove it to you and I promise you’ll see that it’s not what you think. It’s more.”

  I let out a sigh and leaned into his chest as he swept a strand of hair away from my face.

  “Fine. I’ll meet them. But that’s all I’m promising.”

  Chapter 11

  Penny

  There was already a scheduled meeting for the next round of women who would be heading to the Club V auction block. It was happening that afternoon, so Pete and I showered and headed over. They were all being auctioned that night and it was one of the more important auctions of the year. Almost all the bidders were foreign. A few were paying for long contracts, but most were just getting a week with their collared girl here in the city.

  There were twelve of them sitting in a circle in one of the conference rooms at the club office. They all stood to introduce themselves and each took a turn to explain who they were, some of their interests, and why they had decided to be a part of the auction.

  This was the part that interested me the most. I was eager to hear exactly what it was that brought these women to this point. Was it out of desperation or need? What did this offer them that another type of job couldn’t? Was it because it was fast money?

  Pete had told me on the way over that it was fine for me to ask questions, but that he’d rather none of it be included in the feature in the magazine for obvious reasons. These women deserved their privacy and I wasn’t going to do anything to put that at risk.

  Each one of the women was very beautiful in her own unique way and as they began explaining their reasons for being there I could see that each reason was as diverse as the women themselves. Every skin tone was represented here. Several languages were spoken. Some of them had a financial need, but the thing that stuck out of me most of all was the fact that they wanted to be there.

  They spoke freely about their sexuality. The entire experience made them feel empowered like they were in control of when they lost their virginity. They weren’t giving it away to a stranger, they were sharing in a first sexual experience with someone who wanted to treat them well and enjoy what it was to share a first time with someone.

  “Are you starting to understand what it can be?” Pete asked as we stepped back out into the hallway to allow the women to prepare for the auction.

  “I think I really am.”

  He smiled. “Let’s head to the auction then.”

  We stepped into the darkened auction room and Pete took me around to show me where everything happened.

  All of the bidders had their own private booths, slightly elevated above the stage for the best view. That was where they began filing in and would all find their seats and the auction would begin.

  “It’s really very simple,” he began, showing me where certain members always sit. “We’ve got some who are regulars, coming back as often as we have one of these auctions. Some of them we have to turn away to give others a chance.” He cringed a little. “Some of them are just really into it and that’s their prerogative. We give them what they are looking for in a way that is legal, with women who are willing and who will benefit the most from it.”

  He led me up to the viewing booth. We were going to be the only ones there that night and he was excited to let me watch the proceedings. No one could see us behind the darkened glass, so it was completely private as we watched the auction room begin to fill. It was half an hour after everyone had arrived before the first girl appeared on the block.

  “Watch,” Pete instructed with a whisper.

  I watched as the girl was instructed to bend over and expose herself to her potential bidders. The first one was Prada and her dark skin shone like marble in the stage lighting. Her nipples were tight and puckered, no bigger than a quarter. A man in the front row raised his hand and his bid was noted. There was a back and forth between him and a woman toward the back and in the en
d, Prada ended up going to the woman.

  “Imagine it, Penny. None of them have ever been with anyone before. It’s not just for the money. You heard them downstairs. Many of them are here because they want their first time with someone to be with a person who is willing to pay for the privilege. Someone who knows what they are doing. Someone who can fuck them right.”

  I was standing in front of him, staring out of the glass, when I felt him behind me, hitching up my skirt, pulling down my panties, and starting to finger me as Michelle, the redhead with the large puffy nipples and beautiful round ass walked out onto the stage.

  “Oh, Pete…don’t stop.”

  “I don’t plan on it.”

  He fingered me as we watched her turn around and wiggle her ass for the crowd, her pale milky skin looking so beautifully untouched. I had a feeling she was going to go for quite a price. Her body was incredible and for a moment I wondered what it would be like to take that luscious nipple into my mouth and suckle it like a child.

  “Doesn’t she look delicious, Penny? Would you like to fuck her?”

  I gasped and nodded and Pete removed his fingers, bending me forward so that I was pressed against the glass. Slowly, he teased me with the head of his penis and then entered me inch by inch until he was entirely sheathed.

  He rocked back and forth in such a slow rhythm that I thought I was going to lose my mind. His thick cock was hitting me in all the right places and I released my breasts from the front of my dress so that I could pinch at my aching nipples.

  Next up was Safire, who was decidedly the shortest of all the women I had been introduced to. Her breasts were huge and swaying and immediately there were men bidding on her. They all wanted to have their cocks tucked safely inside her soft body.

  “Penny, do you have any idea how this feels…to be inside you after all these years? I really…I can’t explain to you how much I wanted you in that elevator. I had never…back then I had never.”