Bought by Tara Crescent

like prey.
    The blood pounded in my veins. I had been prey once but I had been freed by Lucien and I’d promised myself - never again. I had trained. I had studied. I had done everything I could to become the hunter, not the hunted. And yet, here I was again.
    But Alexander Hamilton was our only way in and the only way to reach Alexander Hamilton was through this auction.
    I looked like prey because I was prey. I was the bait and Alexander had to take it. It was my only hope.
     

Chapter 5
    Ellie / Jenny:
    There were twelve women waiting in a small chamber. When Susan, Elena and I walked in, we made fifteen. Fifteen slaves. I tried to work the numbers in my head to distract myself from my fears. But while my memory was incredible, I was useless at mental math. I did sums anyway, to try to figure out what the average sale price of each submissive would be. Madame Lorraine’s extensive background check would not have been cheap to conduct. Then there was the cost of renting this BDSM club for this evening. Finally, Sarit, the hairdressers, the make-up artists, all of them would need to be paid, all of this taken out of the fifteen percent the auction house kept for itself.
    A thorough, two-month background check. That would cost five, maybe ten thousand dollars. Potentially more, depending on how sophisticated the check needed to be. So at the very minimum, I’d need to be sold for one hundred thousand dollars for this business to stay in the black.
    I whistled silently in my head at my conclusion. Lucien was rich enough to pay for my living expenses while he trained me to be a killer, but I didn’t live lavishly at all. In Cleveland, I’d been poor, the daughter of a struggling single parent. I’d worked in the mall for minimum wage so that I could help out my mother with the bills. Even then, there had been times where there’d been no money for food. Dylan had been wealthy of course, but as his slave, I had lived a life devoid of luxury.
    Inwardly, I scoffed a little at the supposedly consensual nature of this auction. If a man or a woman spent a hundred thousand dollars on a sex slave, surely they would make sure they got their money’s worth?
    My hands clenched into fists at my side and I desperately wished for my Bowie knife.
    ***
    “What happens if Alexander Hamilton doesn’t bid on me and someone else wins me?” I had asked, in the early planning stages of this operation.
    Lucien had given me a steady look. “I pull you out,” he had replied. “Right at the end of the auction, before they have time to get you to a more secure location.” He too had assumed that I would be guarded in a fortified estate, very similar to the one I’d lived in at Abeokuta.
    When it came down to it, neither of us trusted in the consensual nature of this auction. However, Susan had been back three times. She didn’t look the slightest bit traumatized. If anything, she looked eager. Perhaps I should have had faith, but I had no reason to ever have any. I’d seen too much of the dark side of life to believe.
    Madame Lorraine walked in and clapped her hands for silence. She got it instantly. The room hushed and everyone turned towards her.
    “Ladies,” she smiled at us. “You all look lovely.”
    Did I? I didn’t want to ever look lovely. Lovely was what got me abducted in a parking lot in Cleveland. It was better to look tough and ruthless.
    “While some of you have done this before,” her eyes swept over us, and rested on a few women briefly, “many are new, so I want to go over the process once again.” She smiled. “While I’m sure you’ve heard it before, it can’t hurt to hear it once more, can it?”
    I heard many of the women mutter “No, Madame Lorraine,” or something similar.
    She nodded reassuringly. “Now, if you think your background check was extensive,” she chuckled, “let me assure you that the background check of the Dominants that are bidding tonight are ten times as exhaustive.” She made