Page 15 of The Beast Who Bought Me
“That goes to your buyer when we hand you over,” Jesse tells me. “Grisha will receive the merchandise and the key simultaneously. Symbolic, you know?”
It symbolizes that even my pleasure now belongs to someone else.
And I think—can’tstopthinking—about the Giuliano. What ifheever saw me like this?
The plug comes next. “For your owner’s ease of use,” someone says. “And visual enhancement during the auction.”
I make them take me back into the bathroom for that too. And despite the amount of lube involved, I feel every inch as it enters me. The stretch, the fullness, the strangeness of it. The pressure inside me that somehow makes the cage bite tighter.
They dress me—if it can be called that—in a sheer white toga, a filmy haze that conceals nothing at all.
Daniel King enters and examines me as though I’m a racehorse. I half expect him to lift my top lip to check my teeth. “Use the gold dust,” he says after inspection. “This one deserves the full treatment.”
Gold dust?
They remove the toga and oil my skin, every inch from my chin down covered in a fragrant, shimmering oil. Then comes the gold dust itself, applied with soft puffs of air. It clings to the oil, covering me from my feet right up to my neck, where they blend it carefully into the makeup.
For the first time tonight, I sneak a look at my reflection in one of the full-length mirrors. I see a golden god. A statue. Athing.
Beautiful and soulless and utterly dehumanized.
Jesse stares along with me, awed despite himself. “They’ve never used the gold dust before. You’ll bring in afortune.”
I straighten my spine. If I’m doing this, I willnotdo it as a cowering victim. I’ll do it like a Clemenza.
A handler notices the shift and smirks. “Look at that. It knows its value.”
It.
I smile back, cold and imperial. I’ll remember his face. I’ll remember all of them.
“It’s time,” King says. “Not a hand on him, any of you. I want that gold dust completely undisturbed. Jesse, bring him.”
Jesse hands me a gold half-mask shaped like a Roman god—Apollo, or maybe Mercury—and walks me to the stage. Each step shifts the plug inside me; each breath tightens the cage. I’m caged, plugged, painted, and walking on bare feet through a corridor toward the sound of clinking glasses and men’s laughter.
But I walk like royalty. Because I am.
Jesse points me to the center of the stage. There’s only a red velvet curtain between me and whatever waits beyond. “Remember,” he whispers, “the more submissive you look, the higher the price. Keep your eyes down.”
He scurries off to the wings.
It’s almost kind advice. But I don’t take it. I can’t—won’t—be a shivering flower. I’ve been stripped of everything except the one thing no one can take: the absolute certainty that I am better than every single person in that room.
I channel my grandfather. His arrogance. His disdain. His iron conviction that the world existed for his benefit.
Iwill notlet these motherfuckers beat me.
The music changes, a trumpet fanfare…
And the curtain rises.
CHAPTER 7
CALIGULA
Cooler air rushesover my gold-dusted skin as the curtain rises. Light blinds me momentarily—harsh spotlights designed to display the “merchandise” to its best advantage. I blink, adjusting to the brightness, grateful for the mask, because behind it, my eyes are watering.
The room comes into view like a photograph developing. At least fifty men sit at individual tables draped in black velvet, each topped with a platinum obelisk statue. Those stares press into me until I think I’ll split open.
