DELIVER
by
Pam Godwin
For my husband, my freedom, my warm spark to hold forever.
Chapter 1
Tonight was the night. Nervousness might have been a natural response in her position, but bending to it wouldn’t change a damned thing. Liv sucked in hard. A lungful of smoke pushed past her unsteady smile and tumbled into a halfhearted cloud against the glare of stadium lights. Force of will pinned her bowed lips in place.
Another drag. Exhale. She stretched her neck and rotated her shoulders.
Whistles and cheers roared from the stands. Green and gold banners rippled to the stomp of thousands of feet on metal bleachers. Wedged between a trash barrel and a concrete wall, she smashed the cigarette on the No Smoking sign bolted to the railing at her hip.
To blend in as a Baylor University Bears fan, she wore a green t-shirt and dark jeans. Her alcove was field level, out of the path of foot traffic, and the best vantage to observe her mark. The boy. A goddamned saint. He likely hadn’t known a night similar to the one he was about to have. Her stomach quivered in a war of dread and anticipation.
The scoreboard counted down the final five minutes of the game. Le Male aftershave wafted from the nearby huddle of guys. The scent of store-bought pheromones mingled with their sweaty excitement and the nachos clutched in their hands. Smelled like fucking team spirit. Right now she hated Nirvana and everything musical expression had once meant to her.
She shouldn’t begrudge the college boys their thrills. To be fair, a number of them, with their athletic frames and juvenile energy, could have been her next delivery. But she’d already chosen. A fucking holier-than-thou virgin boy.
The tone of cheers exploded in volume and urgency, drawing her attention to the field. Green jerseys descended upon the turf, cleats kicking up mud, the rush of testosterone led by number fifty-four, the Bears’ star linebacker.
He jogged to midfield in long-legged strides, the seams of his sleeves straining to contain his biceps. She leaned over the railing, eyes glued to his gait. Self-assured and powered by trained muscles, he covered the field like he owned it. Given the whoops of his fans, he did.
His helmet, rib protectors, and shoulder pads concealed his pale green eyes and black hair while enhancing all six-foot-two inches and two hundred and twenty pounds of masculinity and sexual innocence that met the client’s conditions. But she knew everything about the twenty-one year old. She had been watching Joshua Carter for weeks.
Daily surveillance had put her in the woods surrounding his parents’ farm at five every morning, stalking the campus halls during his classes and football practices until four, and back in the cotton fields until dusk.
In his four-year college career as a linebacker, he had caught a record twenty-three interceptions. As a trained sex slave, he would catch seven digits in an offshore account.
While his predictable schedule made him an easy capture, his notoriety on the team magnified the risk. But it was the raw beauty in his seductive eyes and honed physique that passed a whisper between her ears, the kind that couldn’t be unheard once acknowledged. He was the one.
A stolen password gave her access to his university records. As the only child of poor farmers, he would’ve needed every bit of financial aid offered had he not received a football scholarship. His scholarship essay supported his pursuit in earning a degree in Religion, stating it would equip him with the tenet and fortitude to effectively fill a professional ministry role.
His righteousness chafed her heathen ass, but it avowed his virginity. Not an easy find these days, especially not in one so potently masculine and easy on the eyes. Which was why she’d sought this particular job on Baylor’s Christian-centric campus rather than her usual hunting grounds in the slums of Brownsville and Killeen. Besides, he would forget all about his godly endeavors by day two in chains. Just like all the others.
The visiting crowd moaned. Their quarterback lay on his back, the football wobbling beside his grass-stained helmet. Beside him, number fifty-four stretched out a hand to help the guy to his feet.
“A terrific defensive play by number fifty-four, the Bears.” The announcer’s enthusiasm reverberated above the hoots of Bears fans. “Results in a sack.”
Anticipation twitched her shoulders. She came to watch him steal the spotlight. He didn’t know it would be the last game in his career, but she would remember the high points for him. She would remind him of his glory right before she peeled it away and rebuilt him into the sum of the buyer’s requirements.
Sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds were her forte. Not too young to make her stomach roll with pedophiliac queasiness and not too old to resist her methods. Though, with enough time, she could find the chink no matter the age. The buyer for this job demanded a boy in his twenties, virtuous in his relations with women, and a body disciplined to accept and please a man.
Number fifty-four sprinted to the defensive line, quadriceps flexing against his compression pants. As he bent at the waist, the spandex stretched over jock strap lines and the glorious divide of his ass.
Payday was in sight. She lit another cigarette and curved her lips through the exhale.
“If beautiful smiles could kill,” said an unfamiliar voice behind her, “you’d be a spear through the heart.”
The lame pick up line sent her molars slamming together. If she looked, she’d find a smirk that needed practice. If she gazed deeper, she’d find an entitled college kid, one who didn’t appreciate his family-funded education. No mind-reading required. Seven years and seven captured slaves had taught her how to detect weakness in a voice and smell the waste in its words.
She brushed a length of hair forward, using the thick curls to cover the left half of her face and the four-inch scar there. It was her permanent reminder, not that she needed one. Her insides were gutted.
With deliberate slowness, she turned her head and confronted the annoyance.
Stiffly crooked lips and nervously blinking eyes belied the confidence he was attempting to exude. Hands fidgeting in the pockets of his jeans, feet a shoulder-width apart, the kid was no older than eighteen, at least six years her junior, and in need of a lesson on stranger danger.
She tiptoed her gaze down his puffing chest and paused on the bulge below his longhorn buckle. With a muffled sigh, she reminded herself she was there for a job. That didn’t include informing some douche drip that her smile was especially dangerous when wrapped around a cock. She flicked her eyes to his and shed the smile.
“Oh, come on. I’m writing a paper on the life of Moses.” He licked his lips. “Let me demonstrate how to part the sea with my staff.” His gaze slid to her metaphoric sea.
The fact he wasn’t choking on his own douchery was a prick to the nerves. He didn’t know she tied people up and fucked them with rubber dicks for a living. With a grab and twist of his nuts, she could humiliate him. But she couldn’t draw that kind of attention. She curled her fingers around the railing and shaped her expression into a mask of cruel arrogance.
Whatever he saw in her gaze pinched his face. He shuffled backward with deflated shoulders. Pathetic. If she had thirty minutes and an empty classroom, she’d show him things more painful than a bruised ego.
She turned back to the game and scanned the field.
Number fifty-four sprinted past the five-yard line, leapt to intercept a long pass, and caught the ball mid-turn.
“Interception,” the announcer yelled as the crowd jumped up, their cheers as wild as the beat of her heart. One second remained on the clock.