Chapter 63: The Bidding Game

Saturday August 30, 5:06 PM

As David Barnes stepped away from the podium on the right side of the stage, Samantha stepped up to a podium on the left side. Displays lit up showing bar graphs with 400,000 shekels available in total, spread unevenly over the 12 teams, to acquire the 40 women. Then a curtain in the center rose to reveal the auction block, it was already occupied by the first woman up for bids.

Once a woman was on the block, in whatever manner she requested, Samantha began talking her up, starting with remarks from their advertising pages, the “preferences” they had noted, along with other tidbits.

The auction platform was about 4 feet square with an actual raised block in the center where the women stood. (This was not the resort’s first rodeo.) At the back of the platform was a vertical pole, it looked about 8 inches square and 9 feet tall, topped by an arm extending out over the block. At the end of the arm was a pulley with a rope so the woman on the block could be tied with her hands over her head. There was a railing around the back of the block at waist height so the woman could also be secured there, if desired. On one side of the platform was a screen, the “on deck” woman waited there, out of sight. The rest of the women were in their makeup areas. Two large projection screens flanked the block showed the bids for each round.

Samantha had two helpers directing the women. Both of these were wearing black tunics, Roman-styled military breastplates (costumes from “Caligula”), and full-coverage hoods, like an Elizabethan-era headsman might wear, with holes for the eyes. They were a married couple who worked for Barnes at his estate. The female attendant led the purchased women off the stage towards the right, to a screened area where they could continue to watch the stage but not the teams. Simultaneously the male attendant led the next woman to the block from the left.

Bright lights shining down made it impossible for the woman on the block to see the orgy room floor where the team tables and couches were.

We were using cell phones to bid, each team had a phone active with the app. When we signed in on the phone we saw the bidding screen, giving us the amounts to bid. That was a surprise, one of the secret rules. We would not input a numerical value, instead we chose our bid from a list starting at 5,000 shekels and moving at 1,000 shekel increments to 30,000. We had to pick our bid.

Which teams were bidding, and what amounts they bid, was obvious from watching their reactions as the bids went up. The husbands of the women on the block also had some interesting reactions.

The first woman on the block was Janet Howard, wife of my team member Kick Howard, so I could not select a bid. Janet was 25 and enjoyed a reputation as somebody who is attractive in face and figure plus she is generally fun in bed. She was a college cheerleader who has become more sexual. For her “preferences” she had checked all the boxes except anal and tight bondage. Most recently I saw her at my wedding, she came with a number of the younger wives. She was a lot of fun and it seemed she was even more fun after she enjoyed some drinks. The notes included one from Howard said that 1 drink was better than none, and 5 drinks was the upper limit - unless they were interested in “zombie sex.”

Kick was a partner five years ago (pre-Barnes) when he met Janet on a flight across the Pacific. They got along well as they sat next to each other in first class enjoying their drinks. The plane diverted to Hawaii as a precaution (a mechanical issue) so the pair decided to extend their conversation someplace where they could be more relaxed. They opened the adjoining doors to their hotel rooms, got along very well, emptied both mini-bars and only used one bed. Janet was adventurous and Kick kept her happy every way she wanted. Both were impressed.

The next morning between kisses they agreed that they only needed one room with more booze, and had the airline change their flights. Together they spent a week enjoying Hawaii and each other, day and night. Kick had been headed for a conference but he called it a vacation instead. After the week he had to return to LA.

Janet continued her trip, she was meeting friends for a two month vacation traveling around Asia. But after a month of nightly long-distance phone sex she missed the real Kick and decided to cut the vacation short. The pair hooked up again at LAX and she spent the rest of her vacation naked in Kick’s bed. Sometimes she was handcuffed, sometimes the couple was not alone, they enjoyed some variety with other couples and once with four guys. In the fall Janet went back to school but her heart wasn’t in it so she gave up her promising career as a UCLA cheerleader and moved back to Kick’s bed. Three months later they did the mature thing, made her folks happy and got married. From the start it was a semi-open marriage, during their three-month courtship they dated other couples (sometimes her friends from college, sometimes other lawyers) and if it went well they enjoyed swapping for part of the night. When Barnes saved the law firm and introduced his more open policies Janet and Kick jumped on board, they just kept their “couples dating” within the firm. They averaged at least two social/swap dates with one or two other couples (not always married to each other) every month. This was in addition to the law firm socials. By now Janet had quite a fan club of satisfied lawyers.

When the curtain parted Janet was wearing a one-shoulder variant of the basic open-side tunic design, standing with her right arm bound loosely overhead and her right breast exposed. She had fast attach-release bondage cuffs on her both wrists, but not on her ankles. Her hair was slightly tousled and her lipstick was slightly smudged so she looked like a slave girl from Gaul who had been taken advantage of backstage. She did not look unhappy, it was more a “warmed up and hungry” look. In talking about Janet, Sam hinted that the encounter had been backstage, involving two other women and a toy. Janet was hot enough that I would have bid if I could.

The first round of bids came in, 6 teams bid amounts ranging from 5,000 to 11,000. Janet had a lot of fans.

Sam spent a few moments making comments, then she asked Janet to turn around. When Janet turned she “accidently” shrugged so the loose outfit slid off her other shoulder. The chord used as a belt kept the outfit from falling completely off, but Janet was smiling and topless when she faced the audience again.

Something new was visible, we could see what looked like a distinct lip print in lipstick across the nipple of Janet’s previously hidden left breast.

Sam was wearing lipstick the same color. “I thought you were going to wash that off?” Sam said.

Janet answered, “I was kind of tied up ... you ran off so somebody else ... Mmm ... Helped me finish?”

Sam rolled her eyes, called her a “satisfied slutomer” and asked for second bids. The audience loved the interplay and obvious suggestion.

Three teams bid 12,000 in the second round. After the second bids were posted Janet had a hungry look, she brought her free hand under her skirt as if she was touching herself, or she was going to pounce on the winning bidder’s cock. In the third round a bid of 13,000 from Team Anthony bought her company for a night of active entertainment.

This was perfect, fun, sexy, with a lot of people getting invested in the result. It was the type of thing Barnes was looking for in every way. I had my doubts about it being a random choice to come up first.

The average winning bid was going to be 10,000, that was the nature of the auction based on the total pool of 400,000 shekels and 40 women. On the other side, average expectation for a team of 4 lawyers was 35,556 to purchase 4 women.

(There were teams with only three members each, with proportionally less money to bid.)

But that was an average and those numbers could be misleading. My team had 44,000 shekels or roughly 10,000 above average, this was because we were above average for performance (which was normalized) plus we won big on the “random” factor. I knew we were not the highest team total, there was one higher but I didn’t know who it was. Those two high teams combined for more than 20,000 above the average from the 400,000 pool, which meant the other 10 teams were reduced by at least 2,000 each below the average.

Two rules were evident from the start: the 5,000 shekel bidding floor (ante) and the use of the 1,000 shekel bidding increments (min. raise), sort of like poker. These were both built into the app. There would be no foolishness like bidding 4,321 shekels. There would also be no really low bids - nobody could afford them and still get enough women. This simplified team decisions and kept the bidding at a brisk pace.

These were wives of the partners, so a bidding floor really had to be set, anything else could be a problem. But the 5,000 floor also meant that, to win 4 women, people could not go too high in any one bid. For example, if my wealthy teams wanted 4 women, including 3 bargains at 5,000 each, our top bid could only be 29,000 shekels. But one could not plan on 3 minimum-bid wives coming up, or all 4 of us liking them, or winning them if they did come up. In fact, the ones we liked would probably go for more. That reduced our headroom for high bids to something lower than 29,000. There would not be any really high winning bids, no team could afford to risk being short a woman. (Recall, 6 teams would get only 3 women.) Everybody had to revise their plans and expectations on the fly.

Based on these considerations I figured 13,000 might be high for Janet. The team that won her now probably had about 18,000 to 20,000 left, so if they were to purchase 3 women, they must average less than 7,000 each. A 5,000 floor and two raises of 1,000 was 7,000, which was more than they could afford. For a team that was below average, as 10 teams were, they really could not afford anything close to a 13,000 bid.

Suddenly, somebody on Team Anthony who did the math figured out that Janet would be fun, but that they probably overpaid.

These lawyers were competitive and they thought they knew the rules, so there was some muttering. Judge Stern took the floor. “I feel I must remind you, the purpose of this exercise is to self-select 40 women for 12 teams of three or four reasonable people in a timely manner so we can get to the fun for all. There is no ‘unfairness’ or ‘winning’ involved. You can all make reasonable choices.”

The comment about time was telling for the lawyers, 40 women with three rounds each was a lot of bidding and we all had better things to do with the ladies and our time than playing silly auction games with “Jeopardy” bids.

The next three women, all in their 30’s with sexy but essentially conventional presentations, went for 6,000, 7,000 and 5,000 respectively. That last showed another unstated rule, if nobody bid on a woman, a 5,000 bid was assigned to a “lagging” team. That never happened, but it could.

The next interesting woman to take the block was 18 year old Corky Garvey. She was married less than a year. Outside of her husband she claimed the only men she had been with were “the 6 of my husband’s partners I had fun with” overnight at the firm socials. (I knew that of the 6, Barnes, Stern and Billy each had her overnight.) For her auction ad she was pictured from the back in a “fishing line” thong bikini. That is the outfit she wore on the auction block, the pasties covering her nipples were held in place by fishing line, it made for a good show of her B-cup breasts. For preferences she checked FF and threesome sex, saying on the form, “there is a first time for everything ... hint hint.” She noted that she was willing but not very experienced in fellatio. “I understand that my hubby gets expert service at work, I can’t compete with those wonderful girls,” she wrote. “But I am eager to watch and learn.”

For Corky’s first round 5 teams all bid 10,000, her age and innocent lack of experience made her attractive. For the second round, there were two bids of 12,000 but one team blew the bank and bid 15,000. For the third round the 15,000 was matched, it was high enough that nobody wanted to go higher. Sam mentioned that ties went to the high bidder for the previous round, so Corky’s winning bid was a team named “Dinosaurs” made up of 4 guys all 45 or older.

People started to be a little more careful with their bidding, the next four women included some that were attractive or well presented.

Abby, the oldest woman in the pool came out nude, with her body oiled, and was posed in an “iron cross” suspended by her arms. The gymnastics pose is impossible to hold if you are really suspended, but Abby was standing on the tips of her toes which allowed her to hold the pose with her muscles bulging. She had a skinny body-builder frame (she competed in the sport) and C-cup breasts that were large but sagged. Being posed presenting her body in taut relief for her time on the block and was a good choice. Her sheet said she was open to any bondage. I imagine several men pictured her tied down alone in a dark room with guys coming in one at a time to enjoy her in the dark.

The last of these four was not a wife, it was Zoe, a service girl with a unique, exotic look. Both Zoe and the Abby topped out at 9,000.

Phil’s wife Red, who came to the block with just a long transparent scarf over one shoulder, was the next woman to break the 10,000 barrier. Sam’s first comment was that Red “liked her sex hard, without small talk between customers.” Then she mentioned that Red had some special equipment to use (a picture of the wedge and ramp cushion came up on the screen) and that she was “very adept” at pleasing two people at once. She checked “no” for anal sex but added “except, well, you know who you are.” This had been a source of some speculation.

At 29, Red was not that young. She had never been to a law firm social so most lawyers did not know her socially, and her missing leg might have turned some away, otherwise she would have gotten higher bids. Billy wanted to bid for her, but with Phil on our team he couldn’t. They two guys agreed to private arrangements later.

The bids started in the 6,000 to 8,000 range, but for the second round three teams bid 10,000. The winning bid was 13,000 from team Barnes. His team had their first win. I was surprised, I thought he would spend on one of the younger women. Phil was not, he said she was a good fit for them, David had seen Red in action at the gang-bang and liked what he saw. Billy, who had also had her at the same event, backed Phil up, saying Red was a lot of fun.

Red marked the tenth woman (25% point) so it seemed the group was on time, and, according to the bar graphs, close to budget. But a lot more desirable high-priced flesh was coming. Well, better for me if people blew their budget or hoarded their shekels for a future prize. Unless they wanted the women I wanted.

Two women later our first target came to the block, Jessica Stern in her “Sondra” persona. As promised she went to the block blindfolded (small goggles with black lenses) and proudly naked with bondage hardware on her wrists and ankles. At 30, her pussy was, at most, the third least experienced in the room, in terms of her time with a cock inside her. With no dates she had only been with older, respectful men at the law firm social overnights during the last three years.

She was one of our most desired choices so I entered our first bid at 14,000, the highest opening so far. Eight other teams made lower initial bids. I was prepared to go higher if I needed to but I knew the rules about ties so I was counting on that if things went higher. The second round I stood firm and Ed Herman’s team matched me, which was either dumb or his confusion about the rules. He realized it too late, his team members began grousing to each other. Everybody else dropped out, there were more young people coming. Ed had the highest performance score for an associate and his “Youngsters” gathered some other high scorers so he might have had the shekels when they started. But he had already picked up a woman at 10,000 (Irene Ross, before Sondra), and I knew that he was below average in the random factor so I didn’t think he would afford to go much above the current bid. I also knew his team was very interested in the Church girls.

I saw some dissension on his team as his people talked, if I went to 15,000 he would have to go higher or I would win. He might go to 16,000 if he had the funds. But they would not go 17,000. So I went to the 16,000 I originally planned to bid. They knew they had lost so they dropped out of the third round. My 16,000 turned out to be the second highest winning bid of the day.

Sondra had said she wanted to be taken right away by the winning team, bent over on stage if possible while everybody watched, but that was before the final plans for the auction were set. So instead she was led to the side to wait for us. She had followed my suggestion and left the goggles loose enough so she could pull them off before and after her bidding, that way she could watch the show while “preserving the mystery” of who her team was.