Page 31 of Auctioned

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OPHELIA

I’m being watched.

Not by the three women who currently fret around me. They don’twatchme. They assess my naked body, whispering to each other things likewaxandbody lotionandthat will do.

This isn’t them.

They’re just there. Just three people I’ve been ignoring ever since they stepped into my cell this morning.

After last night’s mind-fuck, retreating into myself is effortless.

The shame. The belittling. James’s soft touch at the end of it.

I wish I could disappear.

Instead, I disassociate.

I pretend this expansive space I’ve been escorted to is the restaurant where I work. Sure, it’s darker thanLaurier’s. There are no windows down here. No natural light filters into the brightly lit room.

Why would it?

I’m still underground, right down the hall from my cell.

The reminder has my stomach roiling. There’s only so much pretending I can do under these circumstances. While I’m beingdiscussed as if I’m not here. After James did a check-up on me, as if I were his cattle. After he forced me to come.

Not to mention that I’m still being watched by someone I can’t see.

Slowly, it’s becoming impossible to stay in that place in my head, where I’m the observer, the onlooker.

Maybe because I’m the one on the menu.

The three women in black maid outfits continue their chatter. I recognize them. Each one of them was present at least once during the meals I had here.

Maisie, the brunette and shortest of the three, hasn’t fixed her blue gaze on my face throughout the entire time we’ve been here.

Clara, also a brunette but taller, about my height, has had her sharp brown eyes assessing every inch of my skin. She’s in charge offixing me up, it seems. She circles me, bending me over and huffing at my messy hair.

Then there’s Poppy. Her blonde hair is twisted into a low bun at the nape of her neck, just like the other two women. She’s the youngest of the three and doesn’t say a word, simply nods at whatever the other two comment on.

I could kick them. Swing a few punches. Pull their hair. They don’t look like trained assassins or anything. I’d take them down if I put everything into it. I want to. I would’ve too.

But then I’d have to deal with the locked door. Where two guards await. They’d knock me out if I even made it that far.

It hurts my bones, this waiting game.

I have no other option. I have to let them do their thing.

Theirjob.

While I stand there, feeling like a Foie Gras or Spaghetti Carbonara.

Before nausea has me doubling over, that intense sensation of being watched returns.

Goosebumps prickle my skin. Yesterday, I felt that while I sobbed in the cell. In the moments before sleep dragged me under.

Once James returned to the cell, the feeling stopped.

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