DELIVER

chapter 5

“Joshua Carter no longer exists.” Liv gave him a second to absorb that, though the firestorm thrashing in his eyes told her he might need more than a pregnant pause. Her own heart rate threatened to rob the strength from her knees, and that kind of weakness pissed her the f*ck off. She gathered control over her features, arranging them into the stoniest expression she had. “For the next ten weeks, your name is whatever I want it to be.”

“Let me go.” Despite the pallor blanching his golden complexion, he glared down at her with the composure of a fearless man. His maturity was emphasized by the whiskers darkening his square jaw and the carved contour of his rigid muscles.

She needed to think of him as a boy. Boys were malleable, unsteady, and less attractive. “For now, your name is boy.”

Standing by the door as if its proximity could save him, he set his jaw, green eyes sparking with defiance. Van kept his position beside her, the gun level with the boy’s head.

“Eyes down, boy.” Not that she expected him to obey. That progression had to be paved with his blood and tears. The thought stabbed a terrible pain in her chest.

His unwavering stare continued to press against her skin, and there was so much force in it, she didn’t think she could endure it much longer. She would, though. She would do anything for the hope that awaited her at the end of the night. The hope that would feed her famished heart.

In the center of the room, the girl remained folded on her knees. Since her training neared completion, she could demonstrate some expectations for the boy. Liv approached her, injecting her command with unfeeling iron. “On the cot, slave. Cuffed.”

The girl crawled to the cot and lay on her back, hands reaching above her head to grasp the handcuffs on the wall. She locked in her wrists. The cuffs connected to steel eyehooks and were sturdy enough to restrain the strongest of struggling slaves.

The boy’s glare ticked between the girl and the gun, tension rippling over the hard lines of his body. He closed his eyes, opened them, and met her gaze, nostrils flaring. “I kissed you.” Her insides tightened, and Van’s finger twitched on the trigger. Just a twitch. Van’s role that night was to keep quiet and ensure her success in confining the boy in the box. The rational part of her was glad Van was there. If she were alone with the boy, she might’ve anchored her thoughts in the intimacy they’d shared and weakened under the resentment of her betrayal.

Van’s presence kept her frigid, focused mask in place. But he was undoubtedly raging with jealousy. Too damned bad. He knew the job and what it involved.

She reached up and slid back his hood, caressing his scar. The affection catered to his possessiveness, calming his inward battle, evidenced in the subtle slackening of his finger on the trigger. But unveiling his expression also served as a warning for the boy. Van outmatched him in muscle and cruelty, and under the fluorescents, she knew Van’s eyes were blades of silver and cut just as deep.

The boy swallowed. “You said something about—” he gritted his teeth “—you intend to sell me?

Like a…a slave? This isn’t a game?”

No way did the boy fully grasp what was going on. He was probably still clinging to the hope of release when they were done with him.

Van scratched his neck. “Let him go, Liv. You got the wrong kid.” While Van was attempting to win the boy’s trust, it didn’t quite soften his razor eyes. He sucked at being the passive captor, though to his credit, he’d never had to watch from the sidelines before.

His sadistic control-freakery was probably tearing him up inside.

“Just stand there and hold the gun like you’re supposed to, Van.” She met the boy’s steadfast expression with her own. “You will be trained. Then you will be sold for sex.”

“I can pay.” He raised his stubborn chin. “I can come up with the money and cover whatever they’re paying you.”

Hell, he didn’t have a dollar, and certainly not two million of them. His illogical offer meant he was still in the panic stage. She remembered the confusion and how the uncontrollable trembling and desire to escape had made her crazed, hyper-aware, and desperate.

Witnessing him experience the first horrific phases of capture was why she’d avoided conversation in the truck. She hadn’t wanted to connect with him as his equal, as a friend.

Connections like that birthed concern and sympathy and other touchy-feely detriments to her arrangement.

But she’d returned his kiss. At the time, she’d reasoned it was a luring tactic. Until their lips separated, and she was left with a lingering taste of something she’d never have.

“Follow me.” She didn’t wait for the boy’s obedience. Van’s gun would ensure it. She strode to the soundproof wall that divided the attic into two chambers.

At the door, she punched her code into the keypad. She and Van had separate codes to move through the rooms within the house, but only she had a code for this one.

She walked through the long, narrow room. Once her prison, it was now her sanctuary, her bedroom, and the only place she could escape Van. When Mr. E promoted her from slave to deliverer, he allowed her request to hold the only combination to the room. And why not? He could reach through any door with the threat he held over her. But Van could not.

Tossing her phone on the threadbare mattress in the corner, she moved past the open shower, toilet, and sink along the front wall. Reaching the coffin-sized pine box opposite the unenclosed bathroom, she turned and waited for the boy to join her.

There was an illusion that he could walk freely into the room, but it was psychological bullshit.

Van wouldn’t shoot if the boy slipped-up, but any number of the non-lethal weapons hidden on his person insured compliance.

The brick at her back made the attic feel inescapable, as was intended, but the true barrier was the sound-deadening concrete forms veneering the exterior walls. Its effectiveness was tested by her own lungs during her first year in that room. No one had come to save her.

The boy crossed the threshold with Van’s gun at his back. His arms lolled at his sides, his expression growing more wary and alert with each step. What would he do? What was he thinking?

Planning?

He scanned her room—the room she would be sharing with him—and his gaze seized on the phone on the mattress, flicked to the horizontal box, and returned to the phone.

“Keypad is locked.” She kept her posture still and straight, her voice detached.

A storm of frantic ideas churned in his icy eyes. He could try to dial 911, but the modifications Mr. E put on her phone disabled things like the camera and the ability to make emergency calls while it was locked. This allowed her to keep her phone with her, one of his requirements. He used it to track her every call, her every move. At the end of the day, she was just as trapped as the boy.

Van nudged him with the gun, moving him forward.

The boy stopped a foot away from her position beside the box. His breath evened in what seemed to be an attempt at deference. Too many emotions clouded his face to predict what he was planning.

But his choices were no longer his.

“Requirement number four. Slave will not wear clothes unless Master requests otherwise.” She exhaled slowly through her nose. This would not go over well. “Strip.” His expression emptied. Was it shock? Was he masking his terror? If so, he was doing a damned good job. Maybe he’d already worked out it would come to this. When she was forced to strip the first time, she’d already played out the worst scenarios in her head. Surrendering her clothes had paled next to her imagination. Hadn’t stopped her from pleading for her modesty.

“Why did you skip requirements one and two?” His voice was calm. Too calm.

Had he already reached the compliance stage? That usually took days to weeks of unrelenting pressure. Perhaps he was just being vigilant and probing his hopeless situation from all angles.

She inhaled deeply through her nose. As a coldhearted deliverer, she couldn’t answer his questions. She kicked his knee, hard enough to make him stumble. “Clothes. Now.” He glanced at Van, the gun, back to her. “If I refuse, do I get a matching scar, too?” The little shit actually grinned. It was shaky as hell, but he had brass balls. Her stomach sank at the thought of breaking them.

Van laughed, playing the part. “Only if you’re really lucky. You’d have to fall in love and break the virginity clause to earn one of these.” He stroked his scar.

She closed her eyes. The love thing was one-sided, and he’d left out the most important part, the piece that held her there. For that, she was grateful.

When she opened her eyes, the boy was watching her with a demeanor she couldn’t interpret.

“Just take off your clothes, man,” Van said. “Do what she says, and no one will scar your pretty face.”

He held her eyes as he yanked his shirt over his head, toed off his work boots, and dropped his jeans and boxers in one shove. He didn’t cover himself. Just stepped out of his pants and let her peruse his body.

His thick neck expanded into cut after cut of muscle down his torso. Sinews and tendons stretched the skin in his arms and legs. It was a physique developed through rigorous labor and exercise, wrapped in golden flesh. And his cock— Her breath caught. In its flaccid state, it lay over a loose, full sac and reached a few inches beyond.

“Look at that.” Van circled to stand beside her. “And you thought it was the jockstrap straining his pants.”

The boy’s eyes widened, likely in realization that this wasn’t a spontaneous kidnapping. Yeah, she knew all about his jockstraps, but she’d never mentioned his package to Van. Didn’t mean she hadn’t thought about it. Warmth swirled, uninvited, through her body.

When she was sure she’d mustered strength back into her voice, she tapped the edge of the box.

“Get in.”

A twitch in his socked foot was the only response.

Van rotated the aim of the gun down, up, left to right, as if deciding what body part to shoot. He settled the sights on the boy’s balls. “Liv, you sure Mr. E doesn’t bury the bodies in the backyard?” Fear was the cruelest weapon. It victimized the mind and bred inaction. She despised the idea of scaring the boy. F*ck, she was scared every damned day of her life, but she maintained the bitchy role she was required to play. “I don’t want to know what he does with the bodies.” Truth was, Mr. E no longer needed to dirty his gloved hands since he’d acquired her. His visits were rare, his identity masked.

“You won’t shoot me.” The boy rolled back his shoulders, flexing his pecs. “How much money are you making off me?”

She leaned up on tip-toes, using the nearness to examine the depth of his bright eyes, the sun-bronzed skin dipping in the hollows of his cheeks, and the velvet pillow of his lips. He was raw, unblemished beauty, mesmerizing, distracting… She relaxed her feet, dropping back. “Emily Carter has a doctor’s appointment tomorrow morning. Your mom goes every Saturday for her weekly allergy shot.”

A hitch shuddered around his mouth.

She reached behind Van, slipped her hand under his sweatshirt, and removed the Taurus PT-22

from its wedge between his spine and waistband. “The clinic’s not in a very good part of town.” She held up the .22, aimed at the ceiling. The intent wasn’t to shoot him. It conveyed a much grimmer purpose. “Would be a shame if she got carjacked.”

He stared at the gun, at the pink wood-grain grip. Horror tightened his face as he recognized his mother’s pistol. “No.” A heartbreaking whisper. “Please, no.” Though he gave her the response she needed, her heart felt like it was shrinking. She relaxed her mouth in a painful smile. “I stole it from her glovebox a few days ago. She’s unmolested. For now.” His breath wheezed hard and fast. A moment later, his lungs slowed. He looked at the box, and a long, deep inhale widened his nostrils. He blinked slowly, eyes lowering.

Then he jerked forward, fist reared back and aimed at her. Expecting it, she dropped in a crouch, dodged his punch, and slammed her shoulders into his knees.

The .22 clattered to the floor, a deliberate maneuver to distract him. He wobbled, skirting around her, and scrambled for the gun. She let him. After all, it wasn’t loaded.

As he bent to retrieve it, Van pressed a boot on his back and shoved the loaded revolver against his nape.

From a small trunk by the box, she gathered locking metal cuffs and a coil of chain, the clanking drawing his attention. “Van’s gun is loaded. Yours is not. Go ahead. Check.” He did, wrinkles forming on his forehead. After a second check of the magazine, he set it on the floor and slumped under the weight of Van’s foot.

“In the box.” She kicked the .22 out of reach as he climbed in, his movements wooden.

The cuffs went on first, cinching tight. Next, she wrapped the chain around his wrists until the full length was used. The excess binding was more psychological than practical.

He allowed her to move his limbs where she wanted them, his eyes squeezed shut. What was he feeling? Frustration, denial, hope of rescue, utter terror? Her time in that box had covered the gamut.

With the ends of the chains hooked together, she raised his bound arms above his head and locked the cuffs to one of the many eyehooks lining the wood slats.

The box was a device in repression, used to send a degrading message. She controlled his actions, down to every sensory detail. In twenty-four hours, he would emerge sleep-deprived, hungry, and, with no access to a bathroom, humiliated. Weakened and at the mercy of her commands.

She removed his socks and repeated the shackling with his ankles. He stiffened each time her finger brushed his skin, likely repulsed by the feel of her. She swallowed around the knot in her throat. She didn’t blame him.

A yank at his arms and legs confirmed the detainment. She stepped back, followed Van to the door, and entered the code.

As he pushed it open, he swayed toward her, slanting his cheek against hers. She tensed. With his mouth so close, would he kiss her or bite her?

His nose slid through her hair, inhaling her scent. “I’ll let Mr. E know we’ll be ready for the videos in five.”

The gentleness in his tone and the meaning of his words loosened some of her stiffness. On nights like these, when they watched the footage together and he shared in the assurance it delivered, she could feel the tender caress of affection poking past her deepest bruises and curling around her heart.

She nodded.

The door clicked behind him. She hurried back to the boy.

On his back, muscles bared, bound, and stretched the full length of the box, he was an erotic picture. She was a criminal, and as ashamed as she was by that, the disgusting, f*cked-up part of her anticipated spending the next ten weeks touching every inch of this man. Boy.

She dragged her gaze from his body to his face, and guilt slammed into her.

He stared up at her with so much pain in his eyes. “Don’t hurt my parents.” Her gut twisted. She knew that pain, lived it every day. She leaned in, lips hovering a breath away, and repeated what Mr. E had said to her. “That’s up to you.” Resolve hardened his face. She knew that emotion, too. Her time in the box was permanently carved in memory, which had made Van’s threats of returning her there an effective form of control in her training.

Tendrils of resentment coiled around her throat. To dwell on her or the boy’s predicament would only bring irresponsible hesitation. So she did what she always did to distract her thoughts.

She reached into the cold place inside her, searching for something yearning she could sing with dispassion. The beginning verses of “What It Is” by Kodaline fell past her lips and shivered through the room. She sang with an icy pitch as she removed a blindfold from the trunk by the box and tied it over his wide, glaring eyes.

To deprive smell, a swimmer’s nose plug went on next. He could breathe through his mouth, and the cracks in the box allowed airflow, but it wouldn’t feel that way to him once she shut the lid.

The skin on his face was hot and damp, the muscles beneath jerking against her fingers. She continued to sing as she cuffed headphones over his ears, plugged them into the tablet outside of the box, and activated the timer. Twenty minutes of heart-hammering silence.

The music in her voice strangled, stopped. Twenty minutes alone with his thoughts. Then the misery would begin.

“It’s just the way it is,” she murmured with an ache in her throat.

His body was motionless, but she didn’t miss the goosebumps creeping across his skin or the slight tremor in his cheeks. The sudden desire to comfort him drew her closer, bending her at the waist, until her mouth brushed his, softly, unjustly. His lips pulled away in a quiver that she felt throughout her body.

She straightened and rubbed her breastbone, unable to soothe the ache beneath it. “I’m so sorry.” A whisper, too low to pass through the earphones.

Then she closed the lid.