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    “Be here at ten in the morning,” she continued. “We will need to get you ready so you can look your best. That will help your purchase price. The auction itself will be at six in the evening.”
    It would take eight hours to get me ready for auction? But I bit off any protest. After all, what did I know of make-up and the art of pleasing men? I’d been taken when I was eighteen. I’d thrown myself into training when I was twenty. I was twenty-six now and painfully inexperienced and I had absolutely no knowledge of the things women did to attract men.
    But I hadn’t needed any make-up to attract Marc. My brain, unbidden by me, once again started reliving details of that night two years ago.
    ***
    I’ve run into a tiny neighborhood watering hole in the arrondissement of Saint-Denis in the north east corner of Paris. My blood pounds and my emotions churn. He’s seated at the bar and the only available seat is next to him. I grit my teeth – I’m not looking for company. I mutter a polite ‘Bonsoir’ and hope I’m left alone. No such luck. He turns to me with a smile. “American?” he asks in English.
    I frown at him. “I speak pretty fluent French,” I say. “I hate when people listen to my French and switch to English. It’s rude.”
    I am the one being rude, but his smile just widens. “D’accord.” Okay. I notice, at that precise moment when he smiles, that he’s really good looking. Two dimples dance in his cheeks. He has short dark hair, with just a hint of a wave in it. Stubble coats his chin. His shoulders are broad and his body, from what I can tell, is the definition of perfection. He is wearing a suit that makes him stand out in this poor corner of Paris.
    I am very aware that I set off in a run after my altercation with Lucien. My hair is damp with sweat and sticks to my forehead. My shirt clings to me. I’m dishevelled and unkempt but he doesn’t seem to mind.
    We chat in French. I have exaggerated a little. My French is very good, but I am not a native speaker. But he is, this stranger with eyes that are as blue as the ocean. His pronunciation is impeccable, his accent flawlessly Parisian.
    His name is Marc, he tells me. He doesn’t offer a last name and I don’t ask. I tell him my name is Rachel. A lie, of course. My real name is not to be revealed. I’m on a mission and my cover is critical.
    There is passion dancing between Marc and me. I feel something for him that I’ve never felt before for a man. Lust. Arousal. Flushed pleasure when his fingers caress mine, a certain blushing acquiescence when he insists on buying me a drink.  
    His hands cup my jaw as the night goes on. “Come home with me?” he asks directly.
    Lucien’s angry words are still on my mind. “Fix this. You are useless to me this way.” And though I am angry with him, I understand the truth of his words. I have always known that I might have to play the seductress, if the situation warrants it. I’d do anything to get Dylan McAllister. Yet I am terrified of sex and I recoil from a man’s touch, knowing from hard experience how close lust is to cruel violence.  
    But I want Marc and this makes him a means to an end. I have never felt lust before. I should embrace this feeling and go home with this man. I will use this tight, pleasurable feeling in my lower belly, the heat in my cheeks and the painful ache in my erect nipples. I will fix my inability to enjoy sex. I will free myself of the fear in my heart when a man desires me.
    ***
    The time I spend with him is the most incredible night in my life. It is a night in which I feel genuine pleasure from the act of sex for the first time.
    I stay with him all night. In the morning, he drives me back to an apartment complex in Clichy sous Bois. He looks unhappy when he sees the badly maintained building, but he doesn’t harp on about it. Instead, his eyes rest on mine. “Can I see you again?” he asks.
    My heart breaks. My life doesn’t have room for