Author's Note: I blame Alyssa and Aurora2020, CubbieGirl and Cattyk8 and for this fic. Not for the smuttiness to come (I take all responsibility and credit for that myself) but for giving me the push to come back to the VMars fandom because LET'S BE HONEST I MISS YOU GUYS ALL THE TIME even when I'm inspired to be writing about other characters.

Disclaimers & warnings: This contains many explicit scenes from a BDSM sex club and a scene of a staged fantasy auction, all of an enthusiastically consenting nature. Don't judge other people's kinks and don't read if it's going to get to you. Mentions of a kidnapping Veronica is investigating. Consensual dominant play and sensual spanking included. Basically, if you're not old enough to have your first gray hair and two mortgages don't even think about reading this one, hombre.

This will be several chapters. Maybe 3 or 4? Depends on if I decide to follow them for future dates.

Chapter 1

This was the best idea she'd had in a while. The cops were getting nowhere on this kidnapping problem, this lead had dropped into her lap like a puppy on Christmas, and no man here was going to look further north than her push-up bra.

Thank you, Victoria, and all her lacy little secrets.

Veronica herself had very few secrets left, once you combined the push-up corset she was wearing with the stockings, the garters, and well, the whole shebang. She had never been fond of the one-piece numbers, personally. Give her a good matching bra and panty set—assuming she remembered to grab a match on the rare Fridays she begrudgingly sacrificed to dating—and she'd pair it with a smile wicked enough to make it look like real lingerie. This particular costume, however, was just sheer and brief enough to look naughty, while actually covering quite a bit more than her beach uniform of a tank and cutoffs. The bonus was, it also rounded her breasts high enough to call in every sexual predator for miles.

This was going to work. She could feel the tingle of a good lead, and she could already imagine how delicious it would be to watch those dirty reprobates get cuffs slapped on their soft, privileged hands and led away from their penthouses to a concrete cell and communal toilet.

Of course, for the moment, she was the one in cuffs.

Veronica shifted in heels, wiggling the fingers that were slowly going numb, stretched as they were far over her head, linked to a chain that went all the way to the ceiling where it attached to a surprisingly neat ring-bolt. When she got the invite to the underground sex club, she hadn't expected it to look quite like this. The venue was classy, all glowing crème wallpaper and flickering frosted glass sconces. It looked like it could change at any moment into a conference for high-end life insurance. The cage she was currently in had obviously been brought in by the event planners, for the occasion.

It was black bars of real metal—she'd tested it with a fingernail on her way in, earning herself a riding crop across her right buttock that still stung—and twelve feet tall. The padlock on the door was real enough, though she suspected it was for show. Judging by the quickened breathing of the five women cuffed in a line next to her, she was the only one not currently as horny as a fangirl who just won a date with Harry Styles.

Veronica shifted her posture again, the wait making her thankful for her sensible-yet-sexy black heels, and fought the urge to whistle dixie to pass the time.

So far, the hardest thing about this job was not staring at the other girls' tits.

The one next to her was stripped down to a G-string, with the teased blonde hair and gentle crow's feet of a mid-40s real estate agent. The natural C-cups of one, too, though to her credit they still had some perk left to them. The third girl down the row was also bare-breasted, though she had some strappy red concoction on that looked like it'd catch you up in a vicious game of Cat's Cradle just trying to get it off. The fourth girl had a shortened bustier and some leather bootie shorts, with dangling O-rings of metal in some very inventive places. Veronica couldn't see down the row well enough to suss out number five and six without being obvious about it, but it was enough to see nobody was obviously drugged or under duress. Which was interesting in and of itself.

"Geez, what's a girl got to do to get a breath mint around here?" she joked. Every head in the row swiveled her way, their chains clinking at the attachment to the leather cuffs. The silence was even more deafening than if she'd farted. She knew, because someone had about five minutes ago and nobody had seemed to care.

Not the best audience for jokes, apparently. She changed tack, making her voice catch, a little breathy.

"Are you guys okay?"

They responded immediately to this. "Of course!" "Full green." "Yes, sweetie, are you?" "Do you need a minute?" "Is this your first time?"

Real Estate Tits next to her murmured, "If you need to go to the bathroom, you can call for Bruno. He's always really sweet about that sort of thing and he'll delay the—"

The door at the far side of the room opened and all the voices snapped off like an old piece of licorice.

Veronica's chin came up and she shook her hair back over her aching shoulders to watch the line of men enter the room. Six, led by some sort of guard who was most likely named Bruno. His wide, rounded shoulders looked like a Bruno, and he still had the biceps to pull off the name, though his ass was starting to sag inside the seat of his leather pants. She hoped no one had brought it up to him. He looked like the type to be sensitive to criticism.

She couldn't quite tell if he was the type to kidnap girls from the Greyhound station, but the 2-3 new missing persons reports in Neptune every week suggested that someone here was. And seriously, how often did you get a tip about a sex club auction when you were investigating a possible human trafficking ring? No chance in hell she wasn't going to go.

The men were wearing masks, with varying degrees of panache, and either leather pants or black jeans. Shirts weren't a big thing here, though there was one black leather vest over a very Jason Momoa set of pecs. She wondered if she'd get in trouble for picking his pocket for his trainer's card. She'd been having trouble busting through her cardio plateau lately, and she really wasn't an elliptical machine kind of girl. Too boring.

As they drew closer, she focused on details. Some masks were the masquerade type, some were the full hood and face model in gleaming leather. If you were a trained observer, though, the masks weren't that much of an obstacle. You could still tell who had a big nose, or a thin mouth. Skin color was up for grabs, as were a whole lot of tattoos. She had them down in seven separate columns in her mental spreadsheet when the padlock on the door clinked open and her vision went a little blurred around the edges.

She gripped her hands around the chain from her wrist cuffs and dug in, mentally jotting down tattoos and weights and heights. Then they opened the door and the whole cage was full of men.

Wide shoulders and clean, dark scents and a few low chuckles. The temperature jumped.

Seven men was a lot. Seven men was a hell of a lot in this small, black-barred cage with 45% of her tits out and black lacey cheekie panties exposing the best of her backside assets. When had her last Tinder date been? When was the last time she'd had her clothes off with anybody but her vibrator?

A man's wide finger brushed her cheek, inspecting her, and she abruptly remembered she was supposed to be posing as a submissive. She snapped her cataloguing gaze to the floor.

Shoes. Most of these men weren't probably leather-pants-on-a-Tuesday types, so they bought the costume for the event, but she doubted they'd bought special shoes. If she could remember their shoes, she'd have a leg up on identifying them in a line up. But when she tried to focus on laces or loafers, all she could see was the swish of a white skirt that she wasn't wearing. That one fucking party back in high school when she'd drank from the wrong red Solo cup and everything had gone wrong from there.

Veronica gritted her teeth and closed her eyes for a second. It had been just one night, just sex. What was sex? Nothing. She'd had it hundreds of times since then. It didn't matter if, that time, she still didn't know who it had been with. Didn't matter if she couldn't put a name to the rawness inside her panties.

A hand gripped her ass and she sucked in a breath, her ears abruptly returning to Bruno's explanation of each girl's benefits.

"Tight body," he said of her. "Plenty of fire. She came to us courtesy of a friend."

Her ears sharpened further. Is that what they'd say about the kidnapped ones? Her arms flexed, weary from being stretched over her head, but strong. The muscles in her arms were weight-toned and kickboxing-quick and they'd yet to find their plateau. She was stronger than any easy target they'd snatch from the local Greyhound and she could get through anything she had to tonight if it'd help her find those girls.

Knuckles skimmed across her belly, tracing the waistband of her panties. She fought not to raise her eyes to the next man who was examining her body. It was so hard not to stare back at them, glaring sparks as deadly as any from her Taser. She glanced away instead, and that's when she saw him. Taller than the rest, it was like all the color in the cage intensified when it got to him. She forgot how many men were still in the line, waiting to touch her. She forgot their scouring eyes and even the hand currently stroking over the high point of her push-up corset. She forgot not to stare back.

He wore a leather hood, covering his hair and head and ears, but cut away below the nose so she could see the interested quirk of his mouth, the cut-glass line of his jaw. His strong throat and deep, intense eyes.

Her chain shook against the ring bolt above and she pulled tight on it to quiet the reaction. The man in front of her put a hand on her waist and she jerked in reaction, her head swiveling like she could spit at him. Belatedly, she put on a smile, then realized she had no idea if slave girls were supposed to smile. She dropped her head and tried to memorize his shoes again, but it was all she could do to huff a breath.

Okay, this part was a lot. But it would be short, and dollar figures were already being thrown around. They were bought for a night, no more. She could do one night of damn near anything. Especially after that shit last spring with the Ukranians and the cattle prod. She'd like to see those fuckers try to get past an appeals judge now.

Two more men in line. She didn't want the one with the eyes and the hood to look at her. And she did, all at once. It was too much, too concentrated, her clothes too tiny and her skin too sensitive, all rippled with goosebumps and slightly chilled to the air.

A finger hooked inside her panties. She flinched back so hard her stiletto heel twisted under her foot and she fell, catching her weight on the leather cuffs and the chain. Hands were grabbing at her breasts and she cringed away from those like she could fold up inside herself and disappear. There was a slap of skin against skin and the finger was gone but now there was a wide hand at her back, setting her square on her heels again.

"What the—"

"Shut the fuck up." This voice was deeper than the one he'd interrupted. The whole cage had gone quiet, the breathy gasps of the girls and the chuckles of the men and even the bidding subsiding. His knuckle skimmed the lower curve of her breast and even through all the padding, she felt it. She wouldn't move, couldn't, and somewhere, a chain rattled tremulously. Her throat felt tiny and delicate and when a fingertip moved up to trace her collarbone, all the colors of the floor went blurry and grey before her eyes. Her heart was pounding so fast she couldn't even draw a breath.

She knew who was touching her without looking up even though she couldn't have said what kind of shoes he was wearing to save her life. His touch set her head spinning for a whole different reason and she didn't know herself right now, didn't understand the clash of her own reactions.

She couldn't do this, fuck, she couldn't do it and tears jumped to her eyes for all those girls she wasn't going to save.

They'd given her a safeword to call things off—a courtesy she assumed they hadn't afforded to the Greyhound girls—and her tongue fumbled for it but she couldn't remember it any more than she could remember if the third man in line had hazel eyes or green.

"This one's mine." The deep voice was rough this time, and Bruno didn't seem to like it.

"Don't jump the line, we'll get there. We're up to a thousand for number one right now, if you want to bid on—

"Three thousand."

"Fuck, Lo—I mean, are you sure? She's new, she might not even last all night."

Veronica was fighting to swallow, her dizzy brain whirling to keep up with this turn of events. She looked up, just to find her balance again, and found dark eyes. Brown, they were brown. And angry, a little squinted at the edges but his jaw was set firm like he wasn't going to give into the baser emotion.

"Ten thousand," he said abruptly. "And I'm taking her to my private room."

This caused even more of a stir, quiet curses and protests and he just shot a quelling look over all of them that brought silence back to the room. This was the leader. Veronica stood a little taller in her heels as she recognized it.

He commanded all these men, dominant though they fancied themselves, and if anybody would know something, he would. She licked her lips and gave him a quick look from beneath her eyelashes. It seemed to do the trick because he reached for the clip-link to her cuffs and ripped it loose, barely slowing to accept a leash from Bruno that he attached to her cuffs. He pulled her along, shouldering one of the smaller men out of his way to get to the door of the cage.

She lengthened her strides in the heels, struggling to keep her balance. This was good, it was fine. It was the best way to get information, though according to the invitation, this was supposed to be a voyeur's paradise, all debauched acts taking place in the main room. She could hear more if they stayed with the others, but the leader would know—she stumbled, unable to keep up with his long steps. He whirled back, light on his feet, and caught her.

He didn't apologize, but he ducked his head to check her face, brushing her hair back from her itching nose as the heat from his arm soaked into her shoulders and made her feel a thousand percent more bare than she'd felt when smoothing herself into her triumphant ensemble of lingerie that concealed more than it revealed.

"C'mon," he murmured. "Almost there."

She threw a glance back at the cage but couldn't see over the seething mass of male backs in there, the women's hands raised high in cuffs. No one was crying out and as far as she could tell, no one was in the kind of distress she'd been in.

He guided her across a huge room. Scattered with couches and tables and daybeds, crowded with moans and sighs and sharper cries. She couldn't look up, didn't know what to do with the glimpses of naked bodies all around her.

A key turned in a lock and he stepped inside and flicked a light on before guiding her over the threshold. She was suddenly acutely aware of her hands, bound in the leather cuffs as he closed the door behind them and turned to her. He'd chosen her with one finger brushed across her breasts. Ten thousand fucking dollars.

She'd like to think her left tit was that good. The more cynical part of her whispered he paid the premium for the privacy. The privacy to do whatever the hell he wanted to her, once no Brunos were there to keep him honest on the safe word front.

God? If you're really up there, just promise me that if this ends in a body situation, that it's a body situation they dispose of so well my father will never have to see it.

Veronica had said some dark prayers in her misspent life, but that one might be the darkest. Still, her heart rate was steadier than it had been in the cage. She straightened, giving herself a mental pat on the back for that. Apparently, she hadn't gone full marshmallow just yet.

He gave her a look, furious and enigmatic all at once, as he swept across the room to a closet. That's when she registered the rest of the furnishings. Leather and chains. There was a black leather X the size of a grown woman, with attachment points at each edge.

A four-poster bed draped with curtains. A padded bench, then something waist-high like a sawhorse but much more luxurious, a straight back chair with ropes coiled beneath it, and a whole wall of whips.

Her heart ricocheted back up to sprinting and she swayed. His presence washed over her and she glanced up as he came closer. She'd sensed him before she saw him, that something that followed him like a bubble floating around his muscular body…she didn't have time to name it or even check his hands for whips before he wrapped a white fluffy robe over her shoulders.

He caught her hands and ripped the leash off her cuffs, flicked the catch that held her wrists together, and then caught her chin. "Who brought you here?" he asked, his voice dark and quaking. "Who the fuck forced you into this?"