Hard Bargain: A Virgin Auction Romance Read online

  Mandy had left him at the altar. One moment, she’d been dragging him from cake tasting to plate-choosing to flower-picking, and the next minute, she’d sent her brother to the farm to explain to him that Mandy had decided to run off to Seattle. Seattle, of all fucking places. She’d never spoken of any other lust besides becoming his wife, helping him run the farm. But there’d been a hidden darkness to Mandy that he’d ignored. Something that churned from her during the late hours of the night, after that third or fourth drink. Something he’d assured himself would disappear once they had children, were married, and really gave life together “a go.”

  Mandy had been gone for four years, yet he could still hear the tinkle of her laughter in his ear. He could still smell her perfume—or something kind of like it. Every month or so, his dreams grew rife with her, and he woke up sour, heavy, his shoulders drooped. People didn’t discuss Mandy with him. He’d Googled her only once and discovered she’d opened an art café in downtown Seattle. The website image featured her holding a single cup of coffee, this look of self-assurance plastered over her face. That single, crooked tooth twinkled in the photo light. The image tore Tom to shreds. He’d looked to his hands, at the dirt that crumpled between the tired, farmer wrinkles. The sun was destroying him. He would soon become a stooped, aged farmer, aching for self-destruction and too much beer. He was too frightened to be anything else.

  At this moment, his mind drifted back to Nicole Pinder, the preacher’s daughter. Her youth and vitality thrilled him, caused his erection to pump up in his tight, cowboy jeans. He tilted the beer into his mouth, his eyes closing as he imagined a scene: her, sleeping in his bedroom, naked beneath the sheets. He imagined waking her with a kiss, spreading her legs wide, and diving into her, fucking her with the kind of lust and passion he’d longed to give to Mandy.

  God, why did his daydreams always turn back to Mandy?

  Tom lifted himself from his relaxed position on the rocking chair and jolted back into his country house, whipping his cowboy hat from his head. He hung it on the crooked nail he’d stabbed into the wall. He cleared his throat, assessing the scene. The single red couch leaned heavy on its broken leg. One side of it was sanded in from too much of his lazy sitting, staring at the television. It seemed to emit the only soul in the otherwise whistling, vacant countryside. The floor still retained the boring, beige carpet he’d knocked into it years before, when he’d assumed Mandy would rip it up the moment she arrived. The walls featured no paintings, no art, no beauty. The place was a quintessential bachelor pad, rippling with misuse and stinking of farmer. The greatest tragedy of it was that most days, Tom didn’t even notice.

  Tom snuck another beer from the fridge and sat snuggly in the couch, turning on a baseball game and opening his computer. He frowned as he typed in the words he’d been given at the fair, sensing that each passing moment led him down a path of certain destruction. Curiosity was a flaw, he knew. Certainly there was a passage in the Bible about it.

  Nicolesvirginity.com. The page was ripe, easy, almost too quick to pop up. Tom’s eyes grew wide, showing the whites around his irises, as he riddled down the page, assessing the various bids. Already, in the previous hour or so, over 30 men had bid on Nicole’s virginity. And the bids were coming in nearly every minute. Several men were in a current bidding war, chugging from $500 to $550 to $555 and beyond. Tom scratched as the coarse, dark hairs upon his face, his mind spinning to his bank account balance. He knew he had nearly $70,000, just waiting there for him—as if he were planning a marriage, children, all the appropriate things. But in reality, he had a large bank account without use. He’d probably die with gobs of money to his name, and then what? His name would die off. He’d donate the money to Mandy’s goddamn café. The tragedy of his life would be over.

  He shoved his computer to the side, standing on his creaking legs. The sun was cresting the horizon, forcing mighty oranges and reds and pinks over the fields. His workers would bring the cows to the barn very soon. It was a mighty migration. All 50 of them, creeping on sluggish legs, chewing their cud. Once, he remembered, Nicole had mentioned how much she loved cows—that she felt bad eating them, in fact, because she said they had “old souls.”

  At the time, Tom had tossed this off as one of the silliest comments he’d heard in his life. He’d felt disgruntled, agitated at the stupidity of the young girl. But something about her youth and vitality in that moment had died off, replaced with the vile disgust for her father and the assurance that the world would buy her virginity, if only she put it up for sale.

  “Just bid for her,” Tom’s brain began then. “Get to know her. You haven’t been laid much in the past five years, anyway, and you deserve it. Consider this an investment in your happiness, rather than a decrease of your bank account. You certainly have more than most of those sad sacks in town. Just do it. Make the commitment. Sleep with the sexy girl. Destroy her last thoughts of the Bible. If not you, then someone else will do it.”

  Tom sank back into the couch, considering. The amount on Nicolesvirginity.com had sprung up to 2,000 dollars at this point, and the amount was rising fast. The small town was ripe with assholes, yearning to take advantage of this girl. And if he bid—if he won—then he would look like the biggest asshole of all. He couldn’t bear it.

  He slammed the computer closed and unbuttoned his shirt quickly, the orange sunlight making his tight, rippling muscles and abdomen glow. He tossed the shirt away and roughed up on his feet, leaving his boots at the foot of the couch. The day was slowly ending. His early-morning Wednesday would lurch forth all too soon, forcing him from his pillow and deep into the fields. He had a to-do list with nearly a million items, and he was a slave to it, as his father had taught him to be.

  Tom swam into his upstairs bed, closing his eyes tight, fighting back urges to daydream about the curvature of Nicole’s ass, the way her breasts lifted so high in the sunlight of that steaming tent. He longed to smack her ass with his broad hand, to cling to each cheek as she rode him deep into the night. “I’m so glad you won the bidding,” she would coo to him afterwards.

  He shook his head, jolting from these thoughts. The little girl was, very clearly, lost, deep in a breakdown that she couldn’t quite comprehend, not at this point. Her father, the preacher, had ruined her life. And she had to build it up from the ashes, bit by bit. Sleeping with anyone, when she was teetering on this level of crazy, was a recipe for disaster. And he wouldn’t be an ingredient.

  He drifted off to sleep, then, tapping his lips together and falling into dream after dream, in which Mandy slipped him a coffee cup beneath the Seattle mountains, in which all the cows escaped and moved to Denver, in which the sweet, curvaceous Nicole wrapped her legs around him and helped him thrust into her as they fucked against the wall of his country home.

  Confusion bled through him. And he had no release. Not until morning, when, at four a.m., his alarm clock jangled beside him. His headache railed on throughout the day. And he forced himself away from the Nicolesvirginity.com page, assuring himself that hope for love and romance was a waste of time.

  3

  Chrissy and Nicole arrived back to Chrissy’s house, just off Main Street, and swept from the truck. Each brimmed with giggles and excitement, buzzing from Nicole’s announcement and high from the assurance of change. “We’ll bust out of this town soon,” Nicole whispered as they marched toward the front door, wrapping her arm around her friend’s neck. “And you won’t have to worry about your ex-boyfriend, and I won’t have to worry about my father. We’ll go somewhere nobody knows our names. It’ll be perfect. Imagine it.”

  “You’re stoned on something,” Chrissy laughed, jutting her key into the lock and opening the door. The small, yellow house’s front room was sunlit, with a massive green couch and several cozy chairs, alongside a bookshelf of books neither of the girls had bothered to read. “I just like having my mom’s collection here with me,” Chrissy had told Nicole years before. “She loved to read. I jus
t don’t know why she left all her books here when she ran off with that salesman. Maybe they were sort of a gift to me?”

  Nicole understood this yearning to hold onto a mother’s memory, now that hers had passed. She whisked her fingers along the spines of them, listening as Chrissy poured them two drinks in the kitchen. “All we have is white wine!” she called briskly. “Is that all right with you?”

  “You know I’m not picky,” Nicole called back.

  “I know you haven’t drank before this summer,” Chrissy giggled, “so, how could you be picky?” She appeared in the light once more, the sun twinkling in the white wine glasses. “Let’s toast to your future, Miss Virginity.”

  “Let us,” Nicole agreed, taking the glass from her friend’s hands and clinking it, grinning. “To getting out of this town.”

  “And to getting laid. Finally,” Chrissy responded. They tipped their glasses back, drinking gladly, swimming in the camaraderie of their close-knit, female friendship. Nicole couldn’t imagine living life alongside anyone else. Not after all that had happened with her parents.

  The girls sat on the couch, chatting for several minutes more and finishing their first round of wine. But something about Chrissy seemed jumpy, distracted. Nicole frowned, yearning to inquire. But in a moment, Chrissy had leapt up, tapping her empty glass to the coffee table and excusing herself. “I just remembered. I’ve forgotten something at the fair,” she grimaced. She looked spastic, racing to find her keys. “You should stay here and check on the website! Don’t you think?”

  “I’m not quite ready for that,” Nicole murmured. “I can come with you to the fair—“

  But Chrissy held up an insistent hand. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea. I’ll be right back. Relax, Nicole! This could be your last day of virginity. Spend some time alone. It’ll be good for you.”

  And with that, Chrissy whipped from the front room, running out into the orange-drenched sunset and motoring back out of town. Nicole frowned, swimming with sudden pangs of loneliness. Chrissy’s flight assured her she was bouncing out to meet a man. Perhaps the cotton candy man. Perhaps her ex. Perhaps someone they’d merely passed in the truck on the way in. Someone who had caught her eye. Despite her apparent desperation at losing her ex, her legs were wide open to sexual opportunities. Her prowess was continual.

  Nicole leaned her head back, tipping the wine bottle over her glass and churning with thought. It had been only a few weeks since she’d learned of her father’s affair with Gwen. She remembered it well. She’d quaked with tears from her mother’s death, marching alongside Chrissy on a walk around the town square. The heat had spurned sweat stains under both armpits, and her long, red dress had gotten tied up around her ankles. She had been stung with the shock of losing her mother, her best friend in the world.

  As the girls had approached the town square, hand-in-hand, they’d encountered three old, tidy Texas women. Their bluish, white hair stuck up in prim curls, and their lips were curved downward, in a perpetual frown. They sniffed at the girl, looking her up and down with a disgruntled attitude.

  Chrissy had halted, stomping her foot. Nicole could still hear her voice and agitation.

  “I don’t know what you think you’re looking at,” Chrissy had spurned, “but this girl just lost her mother. The very least Christian thing you could do is not look at her with such anger. You wicked old women.”

  The women scoffed at them, staring down their noses. Finally, the leader, the one with a hooked, bird nose, spit the words forward. “Why should we worry about our Christian values, when our own Christian leader has been sleeping with the organist the entire time? Seems rather hypocritical, don’t you think?”

  Nicole’s mouth had hung open with shock. Her heart had immediately bled with panic. But Chrissy had shoved her arm through hers, yanking her back toward her house. Nicole had been shaking, requiring that extra push to get her back to safety.

  “Don’t listen to those old bags,” Chrissy had stated. “They don’t know what they’re talking about.”

  “Gwen? And my father?” Nicole had whispered, her voice flying away with the breeze. “You don’t think—"

  “Of course not,” Chrissy had affirmed. “Why would that be true, in a million years? Your father was loyal to your mother. Everyone knows that. They were a good, Christian couple. And they created you. A good, Christian girl.”

  But something had nibbled in the back of Nicole’s mind. The long nights she’d spent at the hospital with her mother, all alone, waiting for her father’s call. The gruesome reality that her father hadn’t wept at the funeral and had, instead, delivered a speech about moving forward. The triumphant song Gwen, the organist, had played as the pallbearers led her mother’s casket to burial. It all seemed like too much. It seemed to add up to the terrible truth.

  Nicole had excused herself from Chrissy’s house immediately, sweeping back to the home she’d shared with her father and mother. She hadn’t moved out, despite her age, due to her mother’s three-year illness. She crept into the front door, her eyes flashing, and discovered his father at the kitchen table, being consoled by none other than the organist. Gwen.

  Nicole’s mouth had dropped open with panic. Her heart had lurched, as if this were the only assurance she needed. The words burst from her mouth before she could rein them in.

  “So. It’s true,” she whispered. “You’re fucking each other.” She’d never actually used the f-word before. It sounded strange, out of tune in her mouth.

  The silence that had followed had been the final affirmation she’d needed. She’d swept from the house, shuddering with tears, and bounded back to Chrissy’s. Chrissy had taken care of her after that, as the rest of the town latched onto the gossip and looked at her as if she were a sad puppy left out in the rain.

  Nicole leaned back on the couch in Chrissy’s house, listening to the silence, feeling uneasy. She imagined the townspeople turning their attention to her Nicolesvirginity.com website, ogling, assessing how much people would bid on her body. She reminded herself that sexuality had nothing to do with her mind. She could cling to the Bible, if she wanted to, even while proving this point to her father. Couldn’t she?

  She shuddered with the pain of it. She imagined what her mother might say about her decisions. The way her lips might close quickly, the way she’d look at her daughter, her eyes wide. Nicole had rarely disappointed her mother. Rather, she’d looked up to her, yearned to make every decision with her opinion in mind.

  “Oh, Nicole. What have you gotten yourself into?” This, her mother’s voice, rang clear in her mind.

  She shook it off, humming with the knowledge that, above all, her mother would ultimately find peace with her father’s affair. If she’d lived through the cancer and discovered her husband was sleeping with Gwen, she’d surely ask Nicole’s father to pray with her. Perhaps she’d ask Gwen to join, as well. Her mother believed in the power of prayer, above everything else, and she wouldn’t have sought an immediate divorce. She would have trusted Jesus, the Lord, to sweep them to safety and peace.

  Nicole rubbed her eyes, remembering the saintly nature of her mother. She’d taught her the beauty of the Word; she’d taken her to the zoo to allow her to experience God’s great gifts. They’d recited the Godly words to each other, lost in a sea of adoration for the miracle of life. But those days seemed like they’d occurred a million years before.

  “Forgive him,” her mother whispered in Nicole’s mind. “He’s your father, and he needs your support.”

  But Nicole shuddered with disdain at the sheer thought of it.

  As if on cue, her phone began to buzz in her pocket. She shifted to reach it, lifting it high from her booty shorts. A groan spurted from her mouth at the name: “Dad.” She shoved a thumb on the END button, knowing she wasn’t ready to speak with him yet. Knowing him, he’d surely learned about Nicolesvirginity.com through the grapevine of the achingly small town, and he longed to steer her clear of these “sins.
” Hypocritical, indeed.

  Nicole leaned heavily on the couch, lifting her legs and allowing her eyes to close. The sun had set messily beneath the horizon, still spewing reds and oranges across the open Texas fields. She slept uneasily in her clothes, her mind in constant panic about what she had done. As she drifted awake in the middle of the night, at nearly 3 in the morning, a realization struck her, all at once: the only thing worse than selling her virginity online was not getting any bids. She shuddered at the thought.

  In that moment, she heard a crack of a door and a brief spurt of laughter from the hallway. She erupted to her feet, sensing Chrissy had arrived home. She met her in the hallway, her eyes large, like moons. “Chrissy,” she whispered. “What if nobody bids? I’ll have to move. I’ll never show my face in this town again.”

  Chrissy wore a nearly see-through slip. Her blonde hair seemed to gleam in the moonlight. “Oh, honey. Don’t be silly. If people know you’re open for business, they’ll come spend their money. Trust me on this one.”

  Nicole frowned, hearing another person tilt his weight on Chrissy’s bed, behind the door. “Who did you bring home? Is it Jeff—?” Nicole whispered, inquiring about Chrissy’s ex-boyfriend.

  But all at once, the door popped open, revealing the cotton candy man from the fair, wearing only a bright blue pair of boxers. The boxers matched the cotton candy, and the slight tinge of color on his fingers. He rubbed his hand over his abdomen, giving Nicole a big, garish grin. “If it isn’t the virginity girl!” he exclaimed. “You didn’t tell me she was living here.”

  Chrissy rolled her eyes, looking a bit ashamed. Nicole understood that she’d scurried back to the fair hours before to lift him from his position and fuck him. It was her way. She hated sleeping alone in bed. She longed for the warmth of a man—something Nicole had never truly experienced. She supposed it was something you grew accustomed to.