chapter 2
Liv wanted to be anywhere but in that car, on her way to uproot another life, facing the next ten weeks behind a whip and a mask. She trained them. She delivered them. And after?
They were dead to her. They had to be. Sometimes, it was the lies she told herself that kept her going. Believing anything else made her a danger to the captives she sold.
She pressed her fingertips against the window. If only she could find the strength to end her own life.
The suburban conveniences of Waco, Texas, swept by in the form of drive-throughs, water towers, and churches of every denomination. As Van drove toward the outskirts of town, the scenery transformed. The wide-open freedom of the crop fields, cut by a swath of tarmac and hangars beneath the moonlight, haunted her vision.
Memories took shape, a tapestry of the private airport in Austin where Mom instructed skydiving courses, the adjacent corn field and its maze of childhood adventures, and the acres of paved airstrip where local teens roller-bladed until dusk.
Until one of the kids was taken.
The old sore in her chest opened. Her exhale erupted in a choke, and she feigned a cough.
Van’s hand swung into view and collided with her throat, squeezing. Oh God, her mind wasn’t on the job, and he had the unnerving ability to mark every f*cking move of her body.
She tried to draw air, an empty effort against the vise of his fingers on her windpipe. His I-control-your-thoughts conditioning was a technique that once worked on her, and experience taught her the best reaction was no reaction.
Lips pinned in silence, she sought out her defense, a song, any song, and grabbed hold of “Gods and Monsters” by Lana Dell Rey. Saturating her thoughts with the lamenting chorus, she sang in her head. The rippling effects numbed her heart—and her throat beneath his fingers. Singing was her tonic, the only trace of self she had left.
“Is your head on straight?” He tightened his grip, gave it a shake. “Feels like it is.” Lungs burning, fingers digging into her thighs, she steadied her pulse to the slow beat of lyrics spilling through her mind.
The clamp vanished and his hand returned to the wheel. She let her lungs fill with quiet stoicism and loosened her muscles limb by limb.
“Your mind is wandering.” His impatience pulsated between them. “Pull your balls out of your cunt.”
She wanted to hate him, but he was all she had. She wanted to love him, but memories tore deep and scarred. “My head is straight. Balls are out. What other body parts are you concerned about?” Passing headlights illuminated the stone set of his jaw, his eyes piercing the road. “Tell me what you were thinking about.”
That command had more power than it should. She summoned a reply with control in her voice.
“Your first capture.”
“My first…” His hands tightened on the wheel, slackened, and a sick kind of attachment slithered into his tone. “My favorite capture.” He squeezed her knee.
Mom used to say no one had truly evaluated their life until they looked at it from 10,000 feet.
Liv’s arrangement allowed her a certain amount of freedom, so she still skydived between jobs.
When she did, her falls always retraced the same path of should-haves.
Should have jumped with Mom that day instead of staying behind to roller-blade. Should have skated away from his car when he stopped to ask directions. Should have screamed instead of getting in when he aimed the gun. A wave of revulsion surged through her. “Your first capture was just a stupid girl.”
“A stupid girl who incorporated the client’s requirements. Tight seventeen-year-old ass, perky tits, all that innocence bouncing up and down on skates.” He hummed. “I have no regrets.” Regret would have gone a long way in their relationship.
He shifted closer and reached for her thigh. She jerked out of the path of his hand and pressed against the door.
Black fields smeared by. If the cold glass against her cheek was the only barrier between her and those fields, she would be sprinting through them as fast as possible away from this car.
He reached again, a full-body lean, veering the car onto the edge of the shoulder. The car righted as his hand made contact, shoved between her legs, and cupped her.
That hand had been her undoing so many times. She was stolen innocence, following the rules of monsters. Somewhere along the way, she’d become one.
The faster he rubbed, the harder he pressed against the denim seam protecting her bundle of nerves, the looser her hips became. It was his words, however, that had the power to own her and destroy her, from the inside out.
“I want to spend the rest of my life looking at you, touching you. Christ, I have to touch you to make sure I’m not imagining you.”
She ground against his fingers, hating herself. Her hips shifted up and down, pelvis rolling out, thighs opening, responding in defiance of her own volition.
His voice lowered to a murmur. “Why is f*cking you the only way I can reach you, Liv? I want more. More than this.”
She released a moan, a sound practiced to seduce. But she couldn’t stop her heartfelt yearning from bleeding into the edges of her voice. She covered it by dragging it out into a longer, more robotic groan.
He yanked his hand away. “Save your f*cking fakeasms for the new bitch boy.” A shaky breath tingled past her lips. She hadn’t been faking, not completely, and that was more revolting than the act itself. “Maybe I won’t fake with this boy.” The sudden stiffness of his posture betrayed the calmness in his tone. “The client was very specific about who will be f*cking his property.”
Of the twelve requirements in the contract, the buyer’s first demand took an audacious detour around the usual kinkativity.
Requirement One. Slave has never experienced sexual intimacy with a woman. Slave is heterosexual but hates women. He desires only his Master.
There wasn’t a buyer who didn’t make her shudder, but this one was so openly sexist, he notched a new level of loathing, and she hadn’t even met him yet. “His first requirement is so f*cked up. I don’t like it.”
“He’s probably some scorned man and wants a slave to sympathize with his misery. He’s not any different than the other kinky, fat-wallet pig f*ckers you’ve contracted for.”
“Maybe. But this one’s a whole new breed of creepiness.”
Their previous contracts were straightforward, listing desired physical attributes and demanding the usual kneel-grovel-suck-my-cock training. The cost for that training was ludicrous, and she never saw a penny of it. But everyone had a price. Hers was more valuable than money.
“The job’s the same.” His voice snapped through the car. “The slave you deliver will be exactly as he ordered.”
Or she would lose the only two reasons she buckled on a parachute when she jumped. She nodded.
He wiggled his toothpick. “Though it definitely would’ve been easier if the contract had allowed us to nab a homo.”
Jesus, the world was already a predatory a*shole, and here they were discriminating who it should feed on next. The client wanted a twenty-something, straight, virgin male with all the usual attractive, athletic qualities. The fishing pool for such a demand was spectacularly small. Boys who grew up without families didn’t retain their virginity. “I don’t like taking this boy from his parents.” It f*cked up her delicately woven strategy, the only secret she managed to keep from Van.
“So,” he said, smirking, “because your previous captures didn’t have families who missed them, that makes them less human?”
Absence of loved ones was her own personal requirement when she went through the selection process, but that did not make them less at all.
His laugh greased the air. “The irony of your ethics is perverse.” The irony of her life was perverse.
He relaxed into a sigh, his head dropping back against the seat. “We make an invincible team, Liv. Just do your thing until the mere presence of your p-ssy makes him vomit.” With the previous captives, Van held the reins, driving the level and direction of the training. But the first requirement in this contract was sticky. To condition the slave to hate women, they’d agreed that she would be the brute force.
Her stomach wobbled. “Think you can stay out of the way while I handle this one?”
“Yep. Just call me in when your devout jock-bag is ready to suck my cock.” Requirement Two. Slave will service Master sexually with exceptional skill, and his body will be prepared to make it easy for Master.
She and Van would play a depraved game designed to turn a straight, virgin boy into the embodiment of the client’s twelve requirements. Virgin boys were beyond her expertise. Joshua Carter—with his pious upbringing and family support—was a tangle in their operation, one that could endanger her arrangement. The unmistakable shiver of panic lurched through her.
He eased off the gas. “I think we’re here.”
Up ahead, a smudge of trees breached the flat horizon of rural Texas. She checked the signal on her phone. “We’re in the dead zone. This is it.”
He parked on the shoulder where the trees crept closest to the road and turned on the hazard lights. She stepped onto the gravel, the stir of dust settling around her sneakers. When she raised the hood of their car, he removed a fuse from the engine compartment and tucked it in his pocket. Then they waited.
Wheat fields reached around the woodland and stretched beyond the mantle of night. The lonely cry of a mockingbird pierced the dark hush.
The nearest resident lived two miles down. She knew them through the lens of her binoculars.
Daniel and Emily Carter couldn’t leave their nightly chores to attend their son’s football game. She knew they expected him home soon.
A distant rumble drew her attention down the desolate road. Given the ease at which sound traveled over the vacant fields, she should see his headlights in about two or three minutes.
Van’s big body blocked her view, pressing in, violating her comfort zone. She raised her chin and searched the depths of his hood. Shadowed and vacant, his expression mirrored her presence of mind.
The back of his hand made a slow trace of her scar, brushing her hair from its path. When he reached her lips, he coiled several strands around his finger.
She grabbed his wrist, and the tendons in her grip turned to steel, immovable. She closed her eyes and braced.
He yanked, sparking a burn where the follicles gave way.
At the sound of his retreating footsteps, she opened her eyes and watched his broad back move toward the trees. “Someday, we’re going to talk about those fetishes of yours.” Without acknowledgment, he continued in a slow, dispassionate stride until the shadows between the trees swallowed his silhouette.
The purr of the approaching vehicle grew louder, followed by the spit of gravel and bobbing headlights. She leaned against the fender and hummed to the tune of her bludgeoning heart.