PROTECTOR'S CLAIM {Chapter One}

CHAPTER ONE — Gabrielle

Six Weeks Ago…

Sellable: to give up or surrender in exchange for a price or reward: to sell one’s soul to the devil — a word I had never used to describe myself.
Yet, I tasted my own failures sitting in that compressed little room. It was the repugnant sting of a final meal with too much salt and desperation.
I hated myself.
I pitied the person I’d been forced to become.
That I’d allowed myself to become.
This was on me.
“Can you come on command?”
The unabashed question hung in the oppressive weight of the room, a personal invasion I had given permission to and couldn’t ignore.
I eyed the thick, hairy man seated across the desk from me with his sweat stains and foul odor. Gin exuded from his pores and created a thick sheen across his heavy brow. It glistened in the sickly hue radiating from the single lamp lit between us.
He sickened me.
Everything about the place did.
But this foul, little man was the only person in the world who could help me.
“I’m sorry?”
Fat knuckles rapped the end of his blue pen on the folder open in front of him.
My folder.
The photo I’d been asked to provide was held to the corner by a silver paperclip.
I hated that picture. Granted, I hated any picture with me in it. I wasn’t photogenic at the best of times, but even less when I was expected to act natural for the camera.
This was no exception.
I resembled someone who had been on the heavy stuff for too long. The flash had made my face stark and waxy. My green eyes appeared dull and too big, and I’d made the mistake of pulling my blonde hair back that day, so I looked spooked, strung out, and bald.
“You left it blank.”
I had left many of his questions blank. Most of them, I hadn’t understood. The other half was too horrifying to even entertain.
“I don’t know what it means,” I explained lamely.
Large hands folded one on top of the other with the pen still threaded through the fingers. Small, beady eyes the exact shade of animal turd bore into me, heavily shadowed by his caterpillar eyebrows.
“It’s when you’re told to come and you do. It’s self-explanatory.”
When put like that, I probably should have guessed, but it wasn’t as if I were some kind of expert on the matter. If anything, he was the idiot. If he had only read all the way through my answers, he would have known without having to embarrass me by asking.
“No,” I answered quietly. “I mean, I don’t think so. I’m not sure.”
He scribbled something in the space I’d left open for interpretation.
It was my first sit down with Hans, but my third interview. Not one had felt right, or natural. Not Hans. Not the pretty blonde woman in the café. Not the robot-faced man behind the counter at the insurance kiosk. Each one seemed steadily worse.
“You’re still a virgin?”
Virgin was enunciated with a guffaw of disbelief, a heavy slap of scorn that burned my cheeks with his verbal handprint. If I had even a lick of any kind of confidence, I would have said something. I would have at least pointed to the note the doctor his people had sent me to had written verifying that very fact. It was in there somewhere, in his massive, methodical folder. I knew it was, because getting that tiny slip of paper had been one of the most mortifying experiences of my life.
“Yes.”
Hans nodded a large head that was just a wee bit flat on top, like someone had tried to make him shorter than he already was and ended up pressing his skull in.
“Why?”
I blinked when he raised his face and fixed me with those prodding eyes. “I’m sorry?”
“Why are you a virgin?” he repeated, speaking very slow now, like I was an idiot. “Says you’re twenty-two. That isn’t normal. Was it religious reasons? Personal reasons?”
“Personal,” I semi-lied.
I didn’t think he’d understand if I told him I’d already sold my virginity once before. The person just hadn’t claimed it yet, not until after graduation. That was the deal. He would kill me if he knew what I was doing, if he knew I was giving away the thing he considered his.
But that was an answer I couldn’t give Hans. I doubted he would take my confession as endearing or mildly entertaining. If anything, he’d probably deny my application on principal. After all, he made money selling sex, selling women. It wouldn’t make sense to waste time on a woman whose only reason for remaining a virgin was because she’d been forbidden to have sex with anyone else.
“You have read the requirements?”
I nodded.
He continued to jot down notes while he talked, simultaneously doing both effortlessly. “You will not meet the client outside the safety of our house. You will not take money after the act is finished. You are selling a service, not yourself. This is not prostitution. All money made during the auction will be divided sixty-forty with the house taking a larger percentage due to expenses. You will be paid in check at the end of your session. The client will be given your file before every session. He will know your limits, your preferences, etc, but occasionally, in the heat of the moment, if they should forget, you will be given a safe word. You are encouraged to use it if you feel uncomfortable, or need security. The rooms are equipped with voice monitors designed to pick up those words and those words only. It will alert the staff and someone will come to make sure you are all right. Your safety is our only priority. Do you understand so far?”
I nodded again.
He paused just long enough to make sure, then went back to his writing and talking. “You will be issued a handler, a medium between you and the clients. They will vet each client carefully and make sure they match your criteria.” He flipped the page over and continued down the back. “You are not to do drugs before or during your session. You are not to be intoxicated or medicated. You will not stray from character while in session. Clients may request a certain scene and it is your job to provide that. You will be trained by our professional choreographers and kept up to date on all popular fetishes, tastes, plays, etc. Do you have any questions?”
I shook my head.
I told myself this was what I wanted, what I actually needed, but it didn’t stave the feeling of nausea building in my throat. I’d gone my entire life never wanting sex, yet there I was, signing away the one thing that made me physically sick to even think about. But dire times required dire solutions, was what David would have said. We all have to do what needs to be done, whether we wanted to or not. Selling my body was cliché, mortifying, degrading, and terrifying, but it was the only valuable thing I owned.
“Gabrielle Thornton?”
I shook out of my thoughts and blinked at the man. “Yes?”
Hans looked up. “Is that the name you want to use?”
There wasn’t a person on earth who didn’t know the Thornton name. My family legacy was legendary. As famous as the Rothschilds, Waltons, and Ferreros. It was impossible not to know who we were.
Hans knew.
He’d known the moment he’d scanned my photo ID. But other than a raised eyebrow, he hadn’t brought it up. He hadn’t asked why the daughter of David Thornton was coming to him for money when her father could easily buy the entire city. I liked him a little for that. But I knew he would be the only one. Anyone else and my business would have been all over the press.
Hans couldn’t afford that.
Neither could I.
“No,” I said.
His head nodded like that made perfect sense. “What is the name you want clients to call you?”
I hadn’t thought of that. “I don’t…”
“We can put it in later. Just think of something before the first auction.”
The first auction.
Hans had already explained that I could return as often as I wanted. As long as I needed the money. The application process wouldn’t be as grueling, but it would still need to be done to update the changes.
I would still need to attend the auction.
I would still need to be sold.
Every time.
“When…?”
Hans barely glanced up when answering, “In six weeks, after your training.