The Sinner's Bargain (Contracts & Deceptions #2) (14 page)

“I don’t want to go back there any more than you do, maybe even less, but we might not have a choice.” The look in his eyes made her shiver. “There’s been a setback with that trip, but I’ll keep you posted.”

When they reached Méchant, Philip instructed her to follow Ava so she could get ready. Ava and Amara made small talk as they walked up the winding staircase. The building was a warehouse, but it’d been converted into a perfectly suitable mini-hotel. The lighting had a dim, red tint to it, giving it a warm feel, the walls glowing with a rich wallpaper etched in a regal, gold pattern. The doors to each room were much like the ones in Paris—tall and red with skeleton key middles and little beams of light beside them to show occupancy.

Ava pushed the last door open, and Amara surveyed the space before completely stepping in.

“Holy shit,” she breathed when she looked at the four women standing in front of her. Courtney wasn’t kidding when she’d said Philip collected lookalikes. All of them looked like Amara. Not identical, but enough that a person who didn’t know her could confuse them or think they were sisters. They all had dark, straight hair that reached their elbows, a couple had layers like hers, and the others were cut the same length. Their bodies were all thin like Amara, although with slight variation in the hip area.

“You must be Amara,” one of them said, speaking up.

“I am,” she said, uneasily. “Isn’t it against code to use real names?”

The girl laughed. “What am I supposed to call you? Jasmine?”

“Yes,” she responded slowly.

“Okay, Jasmine, I’m Jasmine.”

Amara’s brows furrowed. “For real?”

“All of our Méchant names are Jasmine for the night.”

“What?”

The girl shrugged. “That’s what they told us. We’re all wearing the same thing; we’re all standing the same way, and using the same make-up.”

“But how will… Okay,” Amara said, blinking rapidly. She reminded herself she had this one last thing to do before she was free.

They all dressed in mere threads of fabric: artfully shredded, tiny black shirts that left little to the imagination and similar skirts, barely covering the panties beneath. Before long, Vivienne appeared at the door, much to Amara’s surprise.

“It’s been a long time,” Vivienne said with a smile when she spotted Amara.

Amara nodded in response, still gaping at her. She noticed pairs of handcuffs that Vivienne held in her hands.

“Okay, girls, stand in a single line so I can put these on you. Don’t look so scared, Ava, they come off after the auction,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’m also going to put masks on you,” she added. “Just a final touch so you can look more…alike.”

As Vivienne fastened the handcuffs on each girl, she put a key on the side of their panties and gave them a level stare. “For after.” She continued to give her unwanted comments as she stood in front of each girl. Sometimes, “where did they find you?” others “your hips are too big.” Nobody responded to her, they just let her talk, cuff and slip the black, demure masks over their faces.

“Ready,” she chimed before walking out of the room. “Follow me!” she called over her shoulder.

The women followed Vivienne to a stage where they lined up in a row beside one another, their shaky arms rubbing against the others as they looked into the crowd. A few scattered women accompanied some of the men. They watched with equal attention and excitement. The look on their faces sickened Amara.

“This is crazy,” she heard Ava whisper beside her.

“It’ll be over soon,” Amara whispered back.

Her eyes scanned the crowd again. The lighting in the room was dim, like everywhere else, and it gave everyone in the crowd a rosy glow. Amara wondered where the man was—the one looking for her—and that’s when she spotted Colin sitting off to the left side by himself with a drink in his hand. Shit. Amara cursed repeatedly. She tried to see if she could spot Sam or Philip, but couldn’t. She needed to tell somebody about him. If he decided to bid on her—if he could even bid on the right
her
—it would throw everything off.

Before she could do anything else, the auction started. Ava was pushed up first. She stood in front of the line with her head tucked into her chest, just waiting, as Vivienne introduced her as “Number One.” So they would do it by numbers. Nothing more was said about Ava, before a woman stood up and placed her bid of five thousand dollars, only to be countered by a woman at her same table with a bid of twelve thousand. They both laughed, as if it was such a hilarious thing to be bidding on this poor girl’s body. They gave each other a knowing look, which made Amara’s stomach turn. Ava knew what she was in for, though. The girls in Méchant were prepared to give their bodies away without hesitation.

Three more numbers went by before it was Amara’s turn: Number Five. She stood, with head held down as the others had, until she heard Colin’s opening bid of fourteen thousand dollars. Her eyes snapped up to meet his. She wanted to warn him to stop. A man standing off to the other side of the room countered him. Twenty thousand. Colin raised it to thirty. Her hands sweated, shaking so hard she was forced to clamp them together as her eyes searched the room for Philip, Vivienne…anybody who could help. The man raised his bid to forty and Colin countered with fifty. Amara waited on bated breath and sighed in relief when the man didn’t counter the offer. She should have been nervous knowing Philip would be furious if that was the guy they’d been waiting for, but a part of her was relieved. Vivienne said that standard procedure was for them to check who the winning bidders were before they left with the girls —that’s how they would know if the man was there. Maybe if he bid on one of the others and was caught, Amara wouldn’t have to do much more.

The longer she counted the numerous ways this could go, the more tied up she felt. The cuffs around her hands began to be weighty, and the mask on her face felt like it was suffocating her. Amara had to squash an overpowering need to get out, to run and never look back.

Auction over, each girl stepped off the stage and stood beside their winner, eyes still downcast, Amara included, until Colin squeezed her chin and tilted her face toward him. He glared at her, but she was defeated. She met his gaze openly, brokenly, until he finally dropped his hand.

“THIS IS WHAT you call being busy on a Friday night? Selling your body to a room full of strangers?” Colin seethed as he pushed her up the stairs. They were on the opposite side of the staircase that led to Philip and Samuel’s office, but it was just as dark and narrow.

“I had to be here. What’s your excuse? And really, Colin? Fifty thousand dollars? For a casual fuck?” she spat. She looked at him over her shoulder and shook her head as she came to a stop in the middle of the stairwell.

“Shut up, Amara. Just shut the fuck up,” he growled, holding her between the handcuffs that captured her hands. He nudged her to keep walking.

She was exasperated, unwilling to shut up, and wound tight by the fact that he’d come for her without knowing what Philip and Sam were up to —without knowing that this was her chance to get out. They stopped outside of a large door, and Amara took a deep breath as he unlocked it and pushed her inside.

“Why were you here? How did you even know it was me? There were other girls on the stage that looked exactly like me!” she asked turning to face him as he switched the light on. Like in Paris, the lighting maxed out when it was barely bright enough to see.

Colin narrowed his eyes, brushing past her. She turned, looking at him expectantly and watched as he shrugged off his suit jacket and began to roll up the sleeves of his white dress shirt. Her eyes left his to scan the room, finding that it was eerily similar to the one she was assigned in Paris —everything garishly decorated in gold and black. The bed in the center of the room had a mirror above it, which made her heart quicken, knowing that it hid a camera. She knew—she just knew—Philip would be watching them. Maybe even Samuel, and God only knew who else. A shiver ran through her at the thought.

“You cold?” Colin asked.

Her eyes snapped to his.

“You shouldn’t be wearing that.” His eyes painted her body in a slow caress, although there was a bite to his look—one that made her stomach dip.

“I’m fine. There’s a mirror in this room,” she said quietly.

“And?”

She swallowed, her eyes looking at the cherry hardwood floor between them. “That means they’ll probably watch us.”

Something inside him seemed to snap as he strode toward her. His heavy footsteps were loud in the room, save for her rapidly pounding heart. When he reached her, Colin cupped her face and lifted it to look at him. There she stood, her hands cuffed, her head back as far as it could go, being examined by Colin’s intense eyes. She felt completely at his mercy. “This is what they did in Paris? They used to watch you while you fucked those men?”

“I only… it wasn’t… it only happened…”

“I’m only going to tell you this one more time, Amara, so listen closely,” he said, dipping his head, placing his lips at the shell of her ear, letting her feel his breath on her. “Shut. The. Fuck. Up.” He whispered it and bit her earlobe, making her moan. Somehow he made the words sound sweet, though they were anything but.

The tip of his nose ran along the side of her face slowly, caressing her cheek, her neck, and her shoulder and back up to her ear. Amara pushed her body forward, as close to him as she could get, and moaned softly when she felt his tongue at the edge of her mouth, licking, his lips slowly sucking hers to capture her bottom lip between his teeth. Her arms fought against the handcuffs behind her back.

“Free my hands,” she pleaded as she stared up at him. “Please.”

Colin shook his head, his brown eyes clouded with desire. His tongue drew a line along the seam of her lips, making her legs wobble with each stroke. The pads of his fingers crawled up her arms and into her hair, threading through it until they reached the nape of her neck, where he grasped it tightly, pulling her head back. His lips left hers and made their way down her neck, leaving a trail of goosebumps in their wake.

“Colin,” Amara moaned when his tongue circled around the hollow of her throat.

“Shh,” he murmured against her. His hands found hers behind her back and he began to walk them toward the bed. His sole focus concentrated on making love to Amara’s neck, her shoulders, her lips.

When they reached the bed, he switched positions with her, sitting and pulling her to stand in front of him. Colin’s hands reached to pull off her top, which hung between her bound hands. Amara’s entire body shivered as his lips closed over her nipples while he pulled the tiny skirt and panties she wore down to the floor. His mouth moved along the valley between her breasts, licking and teasing. She felt powerless and very naked in front of him, but it was erotic. Amara’s legs felt like jelly and the heat between them magnified with each movement his mouth made against hers.

Colin pushed her back suddenly and moved to stand behind her. She closed her eyes at the feel of his breath on her neck, loving the feel of his teeth grazing over her shoulder blades. He pushed the backs of her knees with his own so that she was forced forward onto the edge of the bed. Colin splayed his large hand on her back, pushing her down. She was completely exposed to him, forced to lean on the side of her face with her ass completely in the air. Colin gripped the backs of her thighs and spread her open, making a guttural noise as he kneeled behind her. Inhaling sharply, she shut her eyes as his hands ran along the inside of her thighs, the tips just grazing the lips of her throbbing core.

Amara felt the bed shift beneath her and gasped loudly when she felt his breath between her legs, his tongue brushing against her clit. Colin opened her up further, his hands digging into her ass as his tongue continued to devour her, licking her, sucking her, nipping her. She could only exhale and gasp again as his tongue circled her center, plunging inside of her and lapping over and over in rapid motion as he feasted on her wetness. Colin replaced his mouth with his hands, slipping three fingers inside her as his thumb massaged over her sensitive clit in slow circles.

“This is what you want, Mara?” he asked in a lusty rasp beside her ear. “This is what you like? Being at someone else’s mercy? Letting people fuck you while others watch?” Amara’s legs began to shake, the need built between them so great that the orgasm ripped through her. She heard him groan as she moaned out his name, unable to hold it back. When Amara regained her breath, Colin’s hands were no longer between her legs. She shrieked when she was suddenly pulled by the handcuffs and forced to kneel upright on the bed. Colin’s legs were now devoid of clothing. He nudged her legs wider and, with no warning, he thrust into her fully, so strong and hard it knocked the breath out of her. With each thrust there was an equally hard pull on the cuffs, making the sensitive skin on her wrists burn.

“The handcuffs,” she said, her voice on the edge between pleasure and pain.

“The handcuffs stay,” he growled pushing in deeper.

“They hurt,” she whimpered.