The reverend nodded, then disappeared.

“Hope Miss Turnbuckle wins you,” he said.

I tilted my chin and narrowed my eyes. “Why’s that?”

“Then she won’t bid on me.”

I frowned, spun on my booted heel, and went out onstage when the minister introduced me. If anyone thought it strange a man of God was selling men to a crowd full of women, no one said. Especially not the crowd of over a hundred women.

I heard a few catcalls, some whistling.

“Ladies, it’s time to bid on the date with the chief of police!”

Clapping ensued and someone shouted, “Will he bring the handcuffs?”

I pasted a smile on my face and rolled my eyes. I hadn’t heard that one before… this week.

I was all for a little play in bed, but I was the aggressor. I was the one who put the cuffs on. Took charge and made a woman beg for release. And I didn’t mean from the cuffs.

“Shall we start at fifty dollars?”

I scanned the crowd, the exit points, my usual survey of the room since it was my job to ensure everyone was safe.

“Five hundred dollars!”

I didn’t even process what had been shouted until gasps and whispers spread across the room.

Reverend Abernathy chuckled. “I think I heard a lady say five hundred dollars?”

In the center of the room, a woman rose from one of the many round tables. “Five hundred dollars,” she called again. This time I didn’t take notice of anything but her.

Sarah O’Banyon. Petite, blonde. A hundred pounds soaking wet. Her blue eyes held mine. Her chin was raised in defiance.

I remembered every inch of this woman. The way her mouth turned up, the little dimple by her elbow, the small mole on the inside of her right thigh. The pale hair that framed her pink pussy.

I’d rarely seen her around town. Once in the grocery store, once on a call when her father had been down with the flu and needed someone to tow a car that had slid off the road. She was older now, not nineteen any longer. She’d filled out some, her breasts a little fuller, her hips a little wider.

Yet in the six years since I’d been with her last, in the back of my pickup under a starry sky, she’d never once looked me in the eye.

Until now.

Now she wouldn’t look away.

She’d bid a shit ton of money. Hadn’t even waited for the numbers to rise.

She knew what she wanted.

Me.

Yet I had no idea why. Why now?

Everyone else in the room knew it too. Anyone over the age of twenty most likely knew our history, and they had front-row seats for the latest bit of town gossip.

“Sold!” the reverend called, then laughed. When the clapping quieted down, he continued. “I don’t think, ladies, that I should keep a woman from what she wants.”

For once I was in complete agreement with the man of God. If Sarah O’Banyon wanted me, I was all fucking hers.