Page 46 of Highest Bidder

Vivian! He called me by my name!

I tried to sound nonchalant when I said, “Yeah?”

“Still no panties.”

I fought not to roll my eyes when I quipped, “Wouldn’t dream of it, Sir.”

“See, that’s the problem. You have, and you did.”

“And then you taught me a lesson.”

He chuckled darkly. “That I did.” He glanced at his watch and announced, “You’ve got eighteen minutes.”

“You know,” I called after him, “it’s a good thing we have a contract, because if you were really my boyfriend, I’d tell you to kick rocks with your timer bullshit.”

His smile was menacing when he poked his head back around the corner and replied, “But we do have a contract. And if you want to get paid like the whore that you are, you’ll be ready in”—he looked at his watch again—“seventeen minutes.”

There it was.Whore. Notbaby, notVivian. I was back to beingwhore.

That was probably for the best. It made things less confusing that way.

“I’ll be ready,Master.”

****

Jeff

We turned off the main drag and the neighborhood got sketchier the farther we drove—cracked sidewalks, boarded-up businesses, bars on the windows, and graffiti everywhere you looked. Vivian shifted in her seat and pointed left.

“Turn here.”

We wound through a cluster of rundown apartment complexes that needed more than just new stucco and fresh paint. The whole block should’ve been bulldozed and rebuilt from the foundation up.

She nodded at a rundown building in the middle of equally rundown ones.

“This is me,” she said quietly.

I pulled in, my jaw tightening as I parked. My Porsche didn’t belong here.Shedidn’t belong here.

“I’ll be quick,” she said, already reaching for the handle. “You can park in the lot over there”—she gestured to a lot full of weeds and potholes, surrounded by a chain-link fence that sagged in places—“or just wait here.”

“I’ll just wait here.” Partly because I didn’t want to leave my car unattended, and partly because if I followed her up those stairs, I might ask what the fuck she was doing living in a place like this.

She disappeared inside the building, and I locked the doors. My fingers tapped restlessly against the steering wheel as I scanned the lot. A pair of tennis shoes tied together hung from a telephone wire, and graffiti covered a boarded-up unit two doors down while a guy slept on a bench beside a shopping cart on the other side of the chain-link fence.

Jesus.

She came back five minutes later in black leggings, an oversized pink sweatshirt, and a pair of white tennis shoes.

“All set,” she said flashing a smile that was too bright to be real as she climbed in and buckled her seatbelt.

I knew she was embarrassed. Hell,Iwas embarrassed for her.

“You planning to use the money from this arrangement to move?”

She hesitated. “I wish it were that simple.”

I glanced over. “Meaning?”

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