Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 56620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 283(@200wpm)___ 226(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 283(@200wpm)___ 226(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
But that's words. That's fiction. That's me, alone in my apartment at 3 AM, pouring every filthy fantasy I'll never actually live into characters who are braver, and prettier, and far more fuckable than I could ever be.
I look down at myself.
Yuk.
Who the fuck would bid on this?
The forum dings again—a sharp, invasive sound that makes me flinch.
[CONFIRM INTEREST]
And below it, in cold, unforgiving red numbers:
Invitation expires in: 0:59
0:58
0:57
A minute? I'm supposed to decide my entire fate—whether to potentially sell myself to a stranger for Christmas—in one fucking minute?
No.
No way.
Absolutely not. This is exactly how stupid, desperate young women end up as the cautionary-tale protagonist in someone else's erotica story—the kind where things start off intriguing, and flattering, and just a little dangerous, and then three chapters in she's locked in a basement wearing a dog collar while her family files a missing person's report that goes nowhere because she signed a fucking contract.
I know how these stories go. I've written these stories.
The difference is, my protagonists always get their happy ending. They're always secretly brilliant and unexpectedly beautiful beneath their mousy exterior, and the dangerous man always turns out to have a heart of gold buried under all that trauma and control issues.
It's fantasy. It's fiction.
Real life doesn't work that way.
Real life is Derek laughing when I used my safeword. Real life is men who see vulnerability and think target. Real life is me, four months behind on rent, scrolling through an invitation to what is very clearly an illegal sex trafficking operation disguised as a "private event," and actually—God help me—actually considering it because twenty thousand dollars would solve every single problem in my pathetic existence.
0:51
0:50
My phone rings.
I swear my heart skips—no, lurches—forward in my chest, slamming against my ribs like it's trying to escape through bone and tissue. Seventeen beats condensed into one violent thud that leaves me breathless and dizzy.
I drop the laptop. It tumbles gracelessly into the pillow mound beside me.
Then I'm scrambling. Limbs tangling in blankets. Hands patting frantically through the fabric chaos of my blanket fort.
Where the fuck did I put it? Where—
There. Wedged between two cushions, vibrating insistently.
I yank it free.
The screen glows up at me, bright and merciless in the dim string-light glow of my apartment.
The caller ID mocks me. Mocks every single one of my pessimistic, cautionary, sensible thoughts from three seconds ago.
Because the name displayed in crisp white letters is:
AuctionAdmin_DarkDesires
I laugh.
It bursts out of me—high-pitched, disbelieving, borderline hysterical. The kind of laugh that would make a therapist lean forward with concern and scribble notes about "inappropriate affect" and "dissociative response to stress."
And in my panic-stricken, laugh-strangled fumbling, my thumb slips.
Slides right across the green "accept call" button.
Is it a slip though, Scarletta? Is it?
"Fuck—"
"Scarletta?"
The voice that emerges from my phone speaker is male. Deep. Cultured. The kind of smooth baritone that belongs to someone who's never had to raise his voice to be obeyed. Professional yet somehow intimate, like he's speaking directly into my ear instead of through cellular towers and digital compression.
My stomach drops straight through the blankets, through the floor, through four stories of modern, walk-up, soul-less apartment building, into the frozen December earth below.
Shit.
"Um... yeah?" My voice comes out small. Uncertain. Like I'm a child caught stealing cookies, not a twenty-two-year-old woman who accidentally-on-purpose-maybe answered her phone.
"Good evening." There's warmth there. Genuine pleasure, maybe, or an excellent facsimile. "I hope your writing is going well. I'm such a fan of your work."
My brain stutters to a halt.
He knows. Whoever this is—this stranger calling from the DarkDesires admin account at nearly midnight on Christmas Eve Eve—he knows I write. He's read my stories. He's... a fan?
The cognitive dissonance makes my head spin.
"I'm sorry..." I press my free hand against my forehead, trying to ground myself in something real. The pressure of skin on skin. The slight dampness of nervous sweat. "Who are you?"
"I'm the one who just sent you the message." His tone shifts slightly. Still pleasant, but there's an edge now. Purpose. Like a salesman moving in for the close. "I don't want to pressure you, but I'm sure you've noticed the countdown timer. And I really do need an answer soon."
The countdown.
Right.
The fucking countdown that's currently at—I glance at my laptop screen—thirty-three seconds and dropping.
Something in my chest constricts. Not panic exactly. Something worse. The terrible, seductive pull of… what if.
But no.
No.
This is insane. This is dangerous. This is every true crime podcast I've ever listened to condensed into one phone call.
"Right. The countdown." I force steel into my voice. The kind of firmness I've never managed in real life but can conjure in fiction without effort. "Listen, I'm a no. OK? So... I don't know what this is, but... yeah. No. Hard pass. Thanks but no thanks."
I jab the red "end call" button before I can do something phenomenally stupid.