by Brook Wilder
They’d put her in white, making her look even more gorgeous and sweetly innocent than she already was. The heels made her already perfect ass look even better, and the makeup and curled hair were flawless.
She was a complete show stopper. I knew because I wasn’t the only one who was unable to take my eyes off her. I saw Ruiz, his eyes pinned to her, not wavering or blinking once.
Fuck! The slime wouldn’t bid on her. He couldn’t. He’d kill her.
I felt annoyed and started to boil at the thought of him winning the bid on her.
But Cassie was the last girl tonight, and he had already won the bidding on two out of the twenty-one girls that had gone before her. He never took more than two.
“Bidding will start at $200.”
“Oh my,” Khloe came up behind me. “She is an absolute gem.”
Just as I’d predicted, Khloe had her eyes on Cassie too. Her life would be better in Khloe’s hands than in those of the Cartel’s head. Or, for that matter, in those of the head of the Ghost Riders MC – namely, mine!
I smirked. With Khloe’s interest piqued, Ruiz definitely wasn’t going to take more than two girls that night
“One of yours?” Khloe asked.
I nodded, “Yeah, brought her in a few hours ago.”
“That would explain why you were late,” she smiled coyly.
I grunted.
“Had to help a poor little lady with a broken-down car on the side of a back road.”
“Lucky night,” Khloe nodded.
“I stand by what I said before,” Diesel interjected. He couldn’t pull his eyes from Cassie either.
“Shut up,” I told him.
“What did you say, Diesel?” Khloe asked curiously.
“I was just…”
“Not another word,” I interrupted him before looking at Khloe. “He said nothing.”
Khloe held her hands up in mock defeat and smiled.
“If you say so.”
She knew I wasn’t angry with her or Diesel, but understood I wanted my business to stay my business.
“There is going to be a war for her,” Diesel muttered.
“She’s mine, boys. So, keep it in your pants, unless you plan on paying.”
Khloe sashayed away.
Diesel looked at me and raised his brows.
“Hers,” he remarked. “And just about every other buyer in the room, from the way they’re looking at her.”
“She’s a good piece.”
“Good?” Diesel snorted. “She's better than good! I’d eat a mile of her shit just to see where it came from. Now fucking bid on her!”
“No,” I told him straight out.
“Why not?”
“No,” I told him again.
“For fuck's sake,” he shook his head. “You’re insane.”
“Probably.”
I looked back at Cassie and saw how scared and confused she was. She was trembling all over. I’d known she’d be absolutely terrified when she saw where she was. But, I wondered, would she realize what was going on before the bidding was over?
I watched as Cassie’s eyes adjusted to the blinding light and she finally took in what was happening. Her whole body shook with fear now, and I could have sworn her heart was thumping so fast I could see it trying to beat its way through her chest.
She spotted me almost instantly, and I could read her face like a picture book as it wavered in devastation.
“$500.”
The bidding started with Khloe’s bid.
“$600.”
Cassie didn’t take her eyes from me, and I couldn’t tear mine from hers.
“$700.”
She looked defeated as she stared at me. Her eyes held a certain sweet innocence that wouldn’t let me blink or turn away.
“$800.”
Her eyes held mine the way my eyes had held hers earlier.
“$900.”
There was something in her gaze. It was so full of life, but so empty at the same time. Haunted? Maybe.
“$1000.”
The price kept going up, all the bids coming from different people, until Ruiz finally put his in.
“$1500.”
Fuck!
"$1600." Khloe offered.
“$2000." Ruiz said.
“$2500.”
“$3000!” Ruiz snarled.
I waited, but Khloe wasn't increasing her bid. No one was.
“$4000,” I heard myself say quietly as I looked at the scotch glass in my hand.
Diesel covered his mouth, trying not to laugh. I glared at him.
The room fell silent after my bid. I didn’t raise my eyes to look at anyone, especially not Cassie.
“$4000,” the announcer said. “This delicious beauty is going for $4000 right now.”
Silence.
“$4000, going once!”
“$5000.”
I almost shattered the scotch glass when I heard Ruiz’s growl.
I didn’t hesitate. “$7000.”
The silence in the room was complete.
“Whoa! $7000! A new record!” the auctioneer boomed. “$7000, going once.”
Silence.
“$7000, going twice.”
Silence.
“SOLD!” I drank the rest of my scotch in one gulp. “Sold, for 7000 pretty USD.”
The room exploded into applause, but I didn’t feel the least bit happy about my win.
“What was that?” Diesel asked.
Before I could answer, or say anything, the stage lights went down and I knew Cassie was being led to where I’d be collecting her from after I’d paid my seven-fucking-thousand dollars.
A woman dressed in a suit came up and whispered in my ear, telling me where I could collect my ‘prize.’ She walked away without my thanking her.
I could feel my anger reach boiling point. I didn't buy women. I sold them.
“Pay the money,” I told Diesel. “I’ll call you.”
I stood and walked away from him.
“Hold up!” the announcer said, “I’ve just been told there is one last girl to come in. She isn’t the best, but she needs to go tonight.”
I shrugged off his words, strode out of the auction room and headed for the lavish staircase that would take me up to where Cassie waited.
She was a pretty prize. I was pleased about that. But why I’d needed to win her I didn’t know. Maybe it was the way she’d looked at me, begging me to save her. Maybe I didn’t want her in Ruiz’s hands. Whatever it was, there would be no turning back now.
I turned the corner at the top of the stairs and had just reached her door when I looked up and saw the final auction number being led downstairs to the block.
I knew her.
Liz.
My best friend’s former old lady.
When she saw me, her eyes went wider than I’d ever seen eyes go.
There was no time for any exchange before she was taken into the auction room.
I sighed before opening the door wide.
Cassie stood before me with her arms folded over her chest, sobbing and sniffling, still shaking and terrified out of her mind. When her eyes met mine, I thought she’d pass out.
Downstairs, the announcer banged his gavel. “Bidding starts at $100!”
I closed the door behind me.
Chapter 3
Cassie
He entered the room, closed the door and stood there staring at me for what felt like an age, before he finally dropped his gaze to the red carpeted floor. He ran a hand through his dark hair and down his face, letting out an exasperated sigh. He walked over to a mini bar and made himself a drink, which he gulped down in one go. Then he turned to look at me again and smirked.
Who is my neighbor?
My already rapidly beating heart pumped faster. What could he find so comical about the situation?
He had offered me help, but never actually had any intention of giving it. Instead, he’d had me kidnapped, stripped, and put up for
auction. There was a term for this: human trafficking. I hated it. Just thinking about the word made my blood run cold and my stomach turn.
I turned away from him.
Why me? I wondered.
It didn’t make any sense. I didn’t even know him. So why would he drag me into this? And who is he? Him, whose name I still didn’t know? He’d never told me his, even after I’d given him mine and said it was nice to meet him. His reply had been, ‘Yeah, you could say that’.
Yes, I could say that. Because, at the time, when I thought it was nice to meet him, he had been offering me help. As it turned out, the only help he was offering was to help himself.
For a week I had been lusting after a man who apparently kidnaps and sells women.
It wasn’t my fault though. I couldn’t help the physical attraction I’d felt – and still felt – towards a man who looks like a God and knows it too. He had to know the power he had over women. I’d never felt so physically frustrated with anyone in my life. I’d never even felt that way towards my ex-fiancé. Josh was nothing compared to him. No guy I had seen was. And he knew it.
$7000. It’s nice knowing what I’m worth.
I wrapped my hands around my middle and stepped back until I felt the bed on the back of my leg. I sat down and started crying again, as I tried to figure out a way to get out of there. I needed to try, even though I didn’t know where I was. There were no windows in the place, and I hadn’t seen anything from the moment I was shoved into the trunk to when I was first brought into this horrible room.
“Please,” I whispered.
“What?” he snapped.
“Please, let me go.”
His voice didn’t waver.
“No.”
“Please,” I looked up at him. “Just let me go. I was never here so I won’t tell anyone. I’ll pay you back your money, and then I’ll leave town. Forever. I promise.”
He laughed.
“Don’t laugh at me,” I begged through a heavy sob. “Please, just let me go.”
“You are mine. I bought you, so now I own you.”
“You were also the one that brought me here to sell. Why?”
He didn’t answer.
“Please, just let me go. I’ll say nothing to no one. I promise.”
He walked over to me and ran a hand down my cheek. I flinched and slapped his hand away.
“Don’t touch me!” I complained.
“Don’t hit me,” he said.
“Hit!” I yelled. “You don’t want me to hit you?”
He said and did nothing. Instead, he continued to stare down at me.
All the emotions I’d been trying to keep hold of bubbled to the surface and overflowed as rage. I started hitting, kicking, screaming and yelling at him to let me go.
I hit his arm. “You sick bastard!” Smacked his chest. “I hate you, and I don’t even know you!” I kicked at him. “You can’t do this!” I tried to punch him in the chest. “You can’t keep me like an animal!” I aimed a fist at his face, but he caught my arm and pushed me away. “You can’t do this!”
I continued to rage at him until I could rage no more. Eventually, I’d worn myself out and collapsed on the floor.
Chapter 4
Mason
I’d had a feeling there was something hidden beneath her timid attitude. The little beauty had a temper, and it did nothing to settle my already hard cock. She fought me for near ten minutes, which was longer than I’d have thought she would have lasted, and it only made me harder. I’d never let a woman hit and talk to me the way she did, but there was no calming her. She needed to wear herself out.
“I don’t even know your name, and you do this to me?”
I let her sob for another minute before I finally decided to say something in the hope of shutting her up.
“Mason.”
“What?”
She looked up through red and puffy eyes. Her makeup was ruined from crying, but the anger in her eyes was enough to make me harder.
“My name is Mason,” I elaborated, raising my eyebrows. “You’ve been living next door to me, and staring at me, for an entire week, and you still don’t know my name?”
“So?” she shrugged. “What does that matter?” She wiped her eyes. “If I had known what kind of sick asshole you were, I would have never looked in the first place.”
“Fair,” I said. “But you did, and you’re here now. So, take your clothes off.”
Her eyes snapped wide open.
“No.”
“Not up for discussion. Take your clothes off. Now!” I demanded again, this time in a harsher tone.
Her eyes started to water again.
“Please, don’t do this. I will pay you back. Please just let me go.”
I shook my head.
“Can’t do that.”
“Why?” she pleaded.
“It’s too late to change things now. You’ve been sold, and bought…”
“By you,” she interrupted.
I nodded. “Yes, by me.”
“I didn’t want you to sell or buy me!”
“I’ve seen the way you look at me.” I said. “You can deny it all you want. Whatever makes you happy. But you have been looking to get a piece of me ever since you first laid eyes on me.”
I stepped forward to lift her up off the floor and onto the bed, but she slapped my hand away again.
“Stop.”
“Quit your fighting! You won’t win.”
“And why won’t I win?”
“Because you’ve thought about being fucked by me every day since you moved to Eden.”
She shook her head. She was trying to deny everything her body wanted. She had stared after me, looked me up and down, undressed and fucked me with her eyes every day since she’d moved in down the street. There was no denying she wanted me. And there was no way I would ever let her go.
Not until she admitted it.
Not until she was screaming it from that pretty little mouth of hers.
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SAMPLE: Taken
Chapter 1
The open sky stretched for miles overhead. Dusk was starting to settle over the hundreds of acres that made up Gold Creek Ranch. The sinking sun turned the bright greens and warm ambers of the prairie to indigo as the shadows began to lengthen. The sun sank westward over the heart of Texas, streaming clouds of bright fuchsia and fiery red in its wake, as Elsie McLaurel rode her horse across the sea of grass.
A loose fitting old button-down shirt hung half untucked at her waist, and her blonde hair—usually worn long and wavy down her back—was pinned up underneath the wide brimmed hat that did its best to protect her fair skin from the harsh Texas sun. If you’d spotted her from the highway, you’d never have guessed that she was the heiress to a multi-million-dollar ranching business—one of the biggest in the entire state.
Her riding boots and sun-bleached jeans were covered in mud from riding across the recently rained-on ground, chasing after each head of cattle that slowly churned the once green grass into sucking muck under their trampling hooves.
Gold Creek was made up of several hundred thousand acres of open grassy fields that had long since fallen under hard times, until her father Mark McLaurel had started buying up every minor ranch in the area. In the matter of a few years, Gold Creek went from nothing more than a few acres and a title on a paper to one of the biggest corporate ranches in all of West Texas—land that would one day all belong to her.
Elsie shook her head at the stray thought. The last thing she wanted was to take over her father’s corporation. She knew Mark McLaurel had a reputation as a ruthless, heartless corporate rancher and she wanted no part in it. Soon enough I’ll be able to get out of here, Elsie mused to herself. Out of this small town, away from Daddy
’s reputation. Then, I’ll be able to make my own life.
