Chapter 4 : An Auction

Rashid

~~On the other side of the world~~

"You can't actually be serious…"

"I am deadly serious, my friend," Zayed replied as he stared at me.

I had never expected to wake the next morning to the happy expression of my friend telling me he had found someone to entertain me. In fact, I had awoken this morning completely having forgotten about the damn bet I made with him the day before.

We spent all morning cooped up inside the embassy while our fathers bickered with overseas commissions. It reminded me of a never-ending cycle of blaming and pointing fingers as to why shipments were being delayed.

"Rashid."

Shaking my head from the thoughts of my father's business and the never-ending bickering from my mother over what I should be doing with my life, I glanced back at him, slightly annoyed. "I didn't think you'd actually take my challenge to heart, Zayed."

Laughter emitted from his throat as he shrugged his shoulders in a nonchalant kind of way. "Of course I did. You told me to find someone of your skill level. So that is exactly what I did."

I call bullshit. There was no way he found someone online who could keep up with me and if he did, what was wrong with her? The last thing I wanted was for a woman looking to get her fifteen minutes of fame by trying to snag a prince. That would just cause more issues I didn't need.

"Look, stop being so skeptical, and let me show you."

Giving in, I nodded reluctantly as I gestured in the direction of my wing. I had a hard time believing Zayed. In the span of less than 24-hours, had managed to not only find a website where he could properly browse for 'my type', but also one where the women would be willing to keep things on the down-low.

Most women in Dubai into the rough side of sex like myself, weren't the type to want to get involved with my family in general. Selling sex in Dubai was not only illegal, but punishable. Not to mention the implications of engagement being seen with the prince.

No woman in Dubai would, in their right mind, be willing to be seen with me out in public for fear of public ridicule they would most likely endure from news outlets that loved to dig into the personal lives of everyone we associated with.

We were not only politicians but figureheads for the people. The parasocial relationship we had with the people who adored us was a thin line easily trampled.

When we reached my room, Zayed shoved me inside and pulled the door closed behind us, locking us inside. Giving him a perplexed glance, I stood back as I watched him head through the living room of my quarters straight toward my private office.

"When you see this site, your mind is going to be blown."

I doubted that, but curiosity got the better of me—as it usually did—and caused me to follow behind him.

As Zayed took his place in the chair at my desk, I watched him quickly type my password into the login with deft fingers, causing my computer to quickly finish booting up.

"Remind me to change that," I said while sitting on the edge of the desk with one of my legs raised and the other braced on the floor.

He ignored me as he usually did and clicked open a browser, typing again into the search results and pulling up a website I didn't recognize. The black background, decorated with a red intricate design, had a padlock in the shape of a heart in its center, and a gray bar beneath it that read, 'LOGIN'.

"Don't worry, I already made you an account."

"Of course you did," I snorted, rolling my eyes. "Why would I think otherwise?"

"I told you. I've got you covered," he replied, glancing up at me with a smirk on his face as he continued with what he was doing. "You're not going to be disappointed."

I didn't remember him saying those words to me at all, but I wouldn't be surprised if he had said it off-handedly when I wasn't paying attention. Zayed had a strange mind for the details at times, and it always got him exactly what he wanted, but typically, he got him into an incredible amount of trouble because of his smart-ass attitude.

When the webpage loaded, it changed to an interface reminding me a lot of an online retailer. A bar on the side of the webpage had several dropdown arrows listing different filters used to sort the pages further. Then at the top of the page were categories listed as 'buying', 'selling', or 'trading'.

"What… is this?" I asked, my brow raised in both surprise and disgust. "They have them listed the same as you would a purse or clothing."

Again, Zayed laughed as he nodded his head. "Only you would make that observation, Rashid. Basically, this site is like a mega-site for sex or, well, finding the person who… What's the saying that Americans use… tickle your fancy?"

"Don't ever say that again." I groaned inwardly. "Now, before we go further… you didn't just take me to a site that I'm going to have Interpol raid me by this evening, did you?"

Zayed whipped around, his eyes wide. "What? Rashid, no! What kind of man do you take me for?"

"One that thinks finding a dominatrix to match my dominant is wise."

"What, you're not into that? I thought you were," he replied in shock, causing me to groan.

"No…" I stopped myself, not wanting to get into this with him. "Look, I don't have time to explain it to you. Just forget this idea."

"Wait, wait." He twisted back to the computer and clicked around a few times. "Let me just show you what I found—"

"Not interested," I said, slipping off the desk to stand again.

I wasn't going to let him involve me in whatever weird sex ritualistic listing he'd found in the middle of the night while still half-drunk on tequila. I liked it rough, not twisted. Plus, I could only imagine what kind of women would put themselves up on a site like this. Nothing against them, and their pleasures. But I was a prince. I didn't have the same freedoms they did.

"Rashid, wait."

"I told you. I have a very specific taste, Zayed."

"I know—"

"You don't," I snapped at him. "You never have and you never will. Stop trying to pretend that you've somehow figured me out just because you caught me that one time."

He turned away from the computer, his brow raised at me. "You mean when I caught you balls deep in a woman you were in the middle of dripping wax all over her tits? That time?"

I glowered at him with irritation. "Enough. Delete the account and let's move on from the conversation altogether."

Leaning back in the chair he stared at me with disappointment littering his face. I knew he had been excited about the prospect of helping me, but it wasn't helping. "You won't even let me show you what I found?"

"Zayed," I replied with a sigh. "Whatever it is… I'm not interested."

Turning away, I headed for the door. Only to have his next words stop me dead in my tracks.

"Not even for a woman selling her virginity?"

F*cking hell.

"…What?" I muttered under my breath, turning to glance over my shoulder at him. The disappointment that had once been placed on his face quickly disappeared as Zayed went on, clearly knowing that he had my attention.

"She's in the States. Just popped up on this website last night when I was browsing it. Take a guess how much the auction is at right now."

His eyes gleamed from the light from the monitor but had a mischievousness glint to it, making him look almost downright diabolical. I really didn't want to ask him the question but my curiosity had the better of me in the moment. "How much?"

"Nothing."

My brows slowly raised. That seemed completely impossible. Virgins were rare in our space. Not because they weren't around but because they were easily scooped up by doms, like myself. The art of training a virgin into being your own kind of perfect pet was something that I'd always wanted but had never gotten the chance to do.

Why didn't she have a single bid? She was incredibly valuable.

"How long's the auction been up?" I quizzed.

Zayed glanced down at the screen again. "22 hours."

That had me even more intrigued. For such a depraved website that Zayed had found, it was surprisingly not as kinky as it made itself out to be if no one on the platform had even bid a dime on that kind of listing.

"What," I drawled. "Is she ugly?"

He grinned. "Come see for yourself."

Striding over to where he sat, Zayed scrolled back up to the top of the listing. The picture of a woman, who was absolutely stunning, stared back at me causing my breath to catch. Never in my life had a woman all but stopped me in my tracks before but there was something about her bright blue eyes that pulled me in.

Dark brown hair that looked auburn in some pictures of her in the sun. Her bright blue eyes were wide and full of a kind of hapless joy I'd only seen in my baby sister. Even her damn smile was perfect with straight white teeth and perfectly pouty lips that I wanted to touch.

In most of her photos, she wore very little makeup and only enough to accentuate her natural eye shape. Something that I loved. If there was one thing that annoyed me more than anything, was a woman who plastered makeup on pretending to be something she wasn't.

I glanced up at the photos where it said 'Lyla' in bold.

"Lyla…" I murmured.

"Quite a catch, right?"

"Get up," I ordered him. Zayed not wasting another second, jumped out of my chair so I could settle in to admire Lyla a bit more. "Why isn't she getting any bids? Even if she was a catfish, someone should have been stupid enough to bid on her by now."

Not only was Lyla incredibly gorgeous, but she was also young and from the States. A complete catch.

Scrolling further down the listing where her measurements were as well as some basic information regarding her personality and hobbies, I admired more about this mystery woman. My curiosity over her driving my dominant urge to want to know more. All-in-all, she seemed like a girl who was either into that kind of thing or someone who was desperately in need of money and was selling the only thing she had to her name.

Something stirred in me though as I scrolled back up to look at her first photo—the one of her smiling with a flower tucked behind her ear, like the innocent woman she was claiming to be. I was always told that if it was too good to be true then it usually was, but training a virgin… that wasn't an offer that came along every day, and the more I thought about it… the more I wanted to take it on.

Usually, I would tell myself that I didn't have time. But the longer I stared at the beautiful face, the more my schedule was slowly starting to clear itself in my head. I could make the time.

"What do you think?" Zayed asked, breaking me from my thoughts.

"Can we tell if she's a catfish?" I asked.

He shrugged. "I tried doing a reverse image search but nothing came up. Either she's not on social media and these pictures are legit, or she has her accounts hidden from the search results. Either way, there's no way to tell."

"Hmm… when does the auction end?"

Zayed leaned forward to check. "Two hours from now."

"No bids…" I murmured. My mind couldn't wrap itself around it.

"How much should we bid?"

I snorted. With any other person, I'd be insulted, but with Zayed, I knew his question was brought on by the fact he knew what I looked like when I was fixated on something. And damn, was I fixated on her.

I breathed in slowly, wondering for the first time today if I'd truly gone mad. Within the same thought, I decided even if I was, I didn't want to know. "Bid 780. We'll see where that gets us with the bid snipers."

Zayed grinned and immediately typed in $780,000 into the bid box before hitting 'go'.

With the bid set, the only thing left was to wait. Wait to see if I won, and wait to see if this little innocent flower was as innocent as she claimed to be.