Sold: A Dark Reverse Harem Romance Read online

  “We’ll make sure she’s ready,” Elias replies.

  “We don’t have long enough,” Mattias sighs. “The sheriff is calling the auction today. He wants the money. They’re saying she’ll go for five million because she’s wild caught and untouched.”

  “Whoever she goes to better have the patience to break her in properly, or they’ll ruin her,” Elias muses.

  “We will do what we can in the time we have. She’s a virgin, so we won’t do any internal stretching. They’ll want to take that fresh, poor thing.”

  “Not her pussy, anyway. The other hole can be trained.”

  Other hole? What other hole? What sick perversions are these men talking about?

  I don’t care. I’m getting out of here before I can be auctioned. I’m going to get as far away from this jurisdiction as I possibly can, and I’m never coming back.

  Turning my attention back to escape, I look for a window. There’s one next to the front door, which I try, and discover is locked. At least they locked something. I’m starting to think this place isn’t secure at all. Why did they put me here? They must know I’m going to try to run.

  The window does have bars on it, but they are not set close enough together to keep a wild bred girl in. Maybe a soldier or burly man might be kept out, but I can slip through if I breathe out and wriggle really hard. I do both and fall out into the garden, where a bush is waiting to claim me.

  Peering out from the leaves, I look around to see if I have been observed. It seems I haven’t been. Yesterday there were guard patrols all down this way. Today, the guards seem to be somewhere else. The path by the house is absolutely deserted.

  I can hear noise in the distance, a big gathering of some kind. A party, maybe? I don’t know how the people in the city live, but my father always told me it was decadent and impure.

  After what happened yesterday, I have no desire to be found anywhere near a gathering of any kind. I stick to the bushes, creeping and crawling my way slowly through the complex.

  Unfortunately, it seems I can’t avoid the crowd. The bushy cover takes me right past a sunken amphitheater filled with men. At the end, there are large screens displaying pictures of some kind. There is a man on the stage at the bottom, speaking through a microphone that booms his voice over the raucous crowd.

  “She’s wild caught, a real beauty. Natural blonde. Will throw some beautiful offspring. You can sell the girls and keep the boys as soldiers.”

  At that moment, a guard patrol passes by. I sink down into the bushes, my mind whirling with sick disbelief. The auctioneer is talking about me. He’s selling me.

  There are pictures too. Pictures I didn’t realize were being taken. Elias must have taken them. Or maybe there are cameras in the walls of the house where they kept me. There is one of me in the bath, my legs spread, my head back, my eyes closed as Matias strokes me to orgasm. And then there’s one of me over his lap, my ass turning bright red from the strap.

  They’re being displayed on monitors that are about fifteen feet high and twenty feet wide. I see myself in all my glory, my nipples alone are as big as my head. They’ve managed to capture me looking sultry, my eyes half closed in a kittenish expression. I know what was happening when that picture was taken. Mattias’ fingers were down between my thighs.

  With each successive picture, the crowd gets more and more excited. They are shouting numbers out, baying for my body. I crouch up tight and small and wish I was anywhere on the planet besides here, listening to my fate being decided by people who see me as nothing but flesh to be used.

  When the patrol passes, I make my move. Everybody is so focused on the images of me on display, they don’t even notice the fact that I am passing by behind them.

  I know it’s going to be a long way out of the city, but getting out of this compound is the first step.

  The bushes lead toward a gate. Not even I am so brazen as to think the gate guard will not notice me walking out in my bedsheet.

  Fortunately, the bushes also line the lower part of the high wall. I decide to slip around that way, looking for a place where nobody will see me go up and over.

  The sheriff lives like a king. This compound of his holds so many buildings, and I am sure, riches. Out beyond the city limits, life is brutal and rough and short. But it’s also free.

  I creep along through the undergrowth, hoping I’ll find some opportunity for escape. A less well guarded stairway, maybe. Or perhaps an opportunity to scale the wall. If I can find some handholds, get high, I might be able to plot a route out of here that doesn’t involve getting caught.

  The wall is smooth to the touch, and too tall to make a leap up to. I am stuck, for the moment, though I am still more free than I was inside that house with Mattias and Elias.

  They will notice my absence soon, I am sure, and then the entire compound will be in an uproar. The sheriff is selling my flesh to a horde of lustful, powerful men as I crouch here, stuck in this bush that offers shelter, but no further avenue to freedom.

  “Trissa!”

  I hear a male voice hiss my name. It’s Mattias! How the hell did he find me?

  “Trissa, come here now!”

  I crouch down even more. Through the bushes, I can see him walking around. He seems to have some kind of idea where I am, but he can’t see me.

  He’s getting closer and closer though, and there’s only so far I can sink down before his keen dark eyes pick me out.

  “There you are.” There’s relief in his voice. A lot of it.

  “How did you find me?”

  He holds up a slim piece of plastic with colored lights on a screen. “The collar around your neck tracks you.”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh,” he echoes sternly. “Stay quiet and come with me. Quickly. If you’re seen out here, it will not go well for any of us.”

  He and Elias bundle me back to the house. The relief at having me back seems to outweigh their anger at my attempted escape. I take the opportunity to plead my case. Mattias doesn’t seem evil, not like the sheriff. Maybe he will listen to me.

  “Please,” I say. “If you have any humanity at all, let me go. I don’t belong here. You said so yourself.”

  His expression softens, but not in the way I want it to. He speaks to me like I’m a silly little girl who is worried about something she shouldn’t be.

  “You need training, that is all. I am sure you will have found a suitable owner. You’re too expensive to hurt, Trissa. You’re going to have a good life.”

  I don’t find his words reassuring.

  “I had a good life. Yesterday. And I’m going to get out if you help me or not.”

  He fixes me with a stern look. “Rebellion won’t help, Trissa. You have to learn to obey. Come here.”

  “No.”

  Elias palms his face as Mattias yanks me over his thighs. This spanking was inevitable. Of course I am being punished for trying to escape. Why not. Why not punish me for breathing. It is basically the same instinct.

  As his hand meets my ass, I curse him. I curse him with every word I have, and some I don’t. Some I don’t know the meaning of, but they sound bad and that’s all that I care about.

  “You fucking asshole microchip! I hope you fester in customer service forever!”

  “What are you saying, girl?” The spanking stops for a moment.

  “I am saying I hate you.”

  “Indeed, but customer service microchip?”

  Now he is swearing at me! How dare he!

  “Customer service microchip your mother!”

  Across the room, Elias snorts.

  “What do you think you are saying, girl?”

  “I... I am telling you what I think of you!”

  “And who taught you this language?”

  “My father. He taught me all the words. And I read some.”

  “I see.” Mattias’ palm is no longer whacking my ass. It is splayed across it, rubbing gently.

  “Tell me,” Elias chim
es in, his handsome face holding an expression I can’t quite fathom. “What is the worst insult you could come up with?”

  “The very worst?”

  “The very, very worst.”

  It’s strange, how I can’t quite manage to say the words at full volume. Even now, after all these years, they slip out in a whisper, as if I’m afraid my father will hear me say them.

  “Parking warden.”

  Mattias and Elias both burst into laughter. I feel Mattias’ arms curl around me and squeeze me tight in something like a hug.

  “You are too precious for this place,” he says with something like regret in his voice.

  “Then let me go!”

  “I can’t. And it wouldn’t make you any safer,” he says. “Men will seek you out. One day, sooner or later, you will be taken. It is better to find an owner now than remain wild.”

  Says him.

  “I liked being wild.”

  I squirm and he lets me up. I could push away from him, but instead I find myself nestling into his lap. Maybe I have missed human contact. Maybe it is nice just to have another body beside mine. Even if it is a mean captor who laughs at the way I speak and punishes me for perfectly reasonable attempts at escape.

  “I saw the auction,” I say. “There were so many men.”

  “You’re rare,” Mattias says. “You’re in high demand.”

  “But...” I bite my lower lip. “What if I don’t like the man who buys me? What if he’s not nice? What if he hurts me? What if...” My questions speed up and run into one another as I start to panic.

  “You will not be harmed. You have no idea how precious you are. You will be taken very well care of. You will have the best food. You will sleep in the finest beds. And you will bear the next generation.”

  I wrinkle my nose up. Food is good, but I wasn’t starving on my own. I can feed myself. Not as well as these men can, but I can survive.

  “I never thought of having a man before...”

  “You’re a sweet little thing,” Elias says, speaking from his seat across the room. “I know whoever purchases you will take care of you.”

  I am encouraged—slightly—by their words. There is something about these two that makes me trust them. Mattias has already given me pleasure to go along with the pain, and they have fed me.

  They are not like the wild men in the market who would have torn me apart just to fuck a piece of me. They are different. I find myself nestled in Mattias’ lap, wondering why they are so different.

  Mattias holds me, lets me sit and think, gives me a chance to take in my new situation, perhaps even consider, maybe being open to it.

  A heavy knock at the door gives me a small fright.

  Elias goes to answer it. I hear voices outside. And then I hear Elias replying. I can’t hear precisely what is being said, but there’s a note of concern in Elias’ voice even at a distance, and when he returns, he doesn’t look at me.

  “Mattias. We need you.”

  Mattias eases me off his lap. “Wait here,” he says. “Don’t go anywhere, I don’t want to have to punish you again.”

  I sit down in the warm chair he vacated, and I wait. This has something to do with me, I am sure of it. The auction. Have I been sold? Who have I been sold to?

  It seems like forever until Mattias and Elias return. I can tell from the expression on Mattias’ face that things are not going to work out as rosy as he said they would.

  “Trissa,” he says. “Come here.”

  I get up and walk toward him. He crouches down in front of me, which puts his head a little lower than mine. His big hands wrap around my upper arms as he gives me the bad news.

  “The auction is complete.”

  “Okay.” Something about the way he is speaking makes my stomach churn with nerves.

  “There was more than one winner.”

  “You mean I’ve been sold to two men?”

  He shakes his head. “More than two.”

  “Three?”

  He makes an upward jerking motion with his head.

  “Four?”

  He draws in a deep breath. “When the auction finished, there were seven joint buyers. The sheriff has decided not to sell you outright, but to sell breeding rights instead.”

  “Breeding rights.” I repeat the words, my jaw dropping. This is not what they said would happen. This is not what I was promised. This is not okay. And I am not going to stay here for it.

  “Relax,” Mattias says, soothing me by rubbing his hands up and down my arms. “You’re still going to be taken care of.”

  “I’m going to be bred!” I gasp the words at him. “I’m going to be taken care of like an animal!”

  “You can only conceive once per year or so,” Mattias says. “So your life may be easier than you imagine. Once you are impregnated, you will not be taken again until your fertility returns.”

  I glower down at him. “Why do you keep saying these things as if they are good things? What will happen to my babies?”

  “If they are male, they will be taken as soldiers. If they are female...”

  “Stop,” I say. I know what is coming and it will not happen. I will not allow it.

  “Elias and I will remain your guardians,” Mattias says. “We will take care of you on a day-to-day basis. We will make sure that you are looked after.”

  He doesn’t seem to even understand what is so wrong with this entire situation. He thinks it is fine for me to be used like an animal, my offspring taken from me and sold. This is everything my mother and my father fought to stop from happening to me. And it’s happening anyway. I want to be sick.

  “When will they start coming to me?”

  “Tonight.”

  Tonight. Tonight I will be taken. Tonight some man I do not know will steal my virginity from me and fill me with his seed. Tonight...

  “Trissa, you look pale. You should sit down.”

  Tonight, I become the prisoner I was never meant to be. Tonight I become a biological thing, a vessel for men. Tonight...

  “Trissa...”

  Mattias’ voice sounds very strange and far away. The world is all weird and wobbly.

  “Triss...”

  I faint.

  Chapter Four

  “I own her! I’ll damn well take her! Stand aside!”

  I wake to a brutal male voice outside the bedroom door. I don’t know how I got here. Mattias must have put me down to sleep. The blankets are tucked in around me, a small display of care I don’t believe in.

  “Sir, she’s exhausted. She fainted earlier.” I hear Mattias trying to stop the intruder, but he is unsuccessful.

  “She doesn’t need to do anything but lie back and take it.”

  With that stomach-churning comment, the door opens, and the sheriff walks in.

  “Hello, pretty,” he leers. “You earned me a lot of money today.”

  I shrink down below the blankets. This man scares me. He is powerful and thoroughly corrupt. He did save me from the mob of men in the market, but that wasn’t because he cared about me. That was because he saw value going to waste.

  He is no longer in his suit of armor, and I can see him more clearly now. He is in his fifties, old for post-Event America. His hair is salt and pepper, his features are rugged, and his shoulders are broad. It makes sense that he is in good shape. Nobody weak rules these wastelands.

  A small part of me—a very, very small part—responds to his presence. He has a raw, brutal masculinity that calls to the ancient female parts of me, but I am terrified of him in every other sense. He just sold me. To seven other men. He is not like Mattias and Elias. He doesn’t take care of me. He will use me as he wishes, and he will pass me on for others to do the same.

  I cower in the bed, a soft whimpering escaping my lips. I wish I had my clothes on right now. I wish I had my gun. I’d put a bullet right in his smirking head.

  He has eyes that glint with gray steel, and an expression I can only describe as being one of pur
e conquest. He reaches down, grasps the blanket, and yanks it off me.

  I squeal and try to cover myself, but there’s no covering all the parts of me. I have never been seen like this before. I have never been looked at like this before. His eyes rake up and down my body, and even though I put my hand between my thighs and try to turn away, I know he’s already seen everything.

  “What’s wrong with her, Mattias?”

  Mattias steps up beside him. “She’s afraid of you, sir. As are many.”

  The sheriff laughs. “No need to fear me, pretty. What I intend to do with you will make you feel better than you ever have.”

  Somehow, I doubt that.

  “She has only been with us a day. She needs much more preparation,” Mattias explains. “She’s very, very wild, sir.”

  “I own that cunt. I’m going to take it.”

  He looks me in the eye. I see wickedness. I see harsh male lust. I see the desire to be inside me. I see my undoing.

  “Spread your legs, girl. Show me what I own.”

  I grab a pillow and cover myself for good measure.

  The sheriff cuts a look at Mattias. “She’s disobedient.”

  “She’s wild, sir.”

  “We better whip that wildness out of her.”

  “We want to break her in, not break her completely,” Mattias says. He has a calm way of speaking to the sheriff that is not as deferential as it might be. “Your clients will not be pleased if she is damaged.”

  “Clients?” The sheriff shakes his head. “Girl made me forget about them. She’s a real beauty. Damn.”

  “Let me show you, sir.”

  Mattias comes to the side of the bed. He takes the pillow from me.

  “Be a good girl,” he murmurs, his eyes meeting mine. I feel a small amount of reassurance as his large hands push my shoulders back on the bed before running down the sides of my body to my thighs. He parts them with a gentle, but firm motion, and slides my hand away from my sex.

  He makes it easy, and when he is done, I am lying there with my pussy on display to the sheriff who caught me, my arms held gently, but firmly by my side.

  “Damn,” the sheriff curses to himself. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen one this beautiful before.”