Pam Godwin - Deliver

His lips stretched back in misery as he panted through his teeth. Perspiration wet his skin, streaking drips down his ribs with the heave of his chest. A lonely, weak moan reached from his throat and penetrated her chest.

As his body writhed against the walls in the narrow space and a pang of guilt cramped her gut, she forced herself to evaluate his distress. His rush of breath was panicked but not unrestricted. The chains confined his flailing but didn’t cut off blood flow. As for his mind, she just needed it intact enough to be trained, to pass the introductory meeting with the buyer, the final delivery, and receipt of the client’s payment.

After she delivered him, he would be dead to her. The same way she thought of the others.

Her eyes caught on his sculpted pecs, traveled along the dips and juts of his abs, and lingered on the impressive length of his cock where it lay against his thigh. Her fingers burned to touch him.

She gripped her stomach, disgusted with herself. He was even more attractive than the others, but he wasn’t like them. His matured masculinity was prominent in the thickness of his build and the determined set of his jaw. Most importantly, he had a family and community that would miss him. What a god-awful choice she’d been forced to make.

The turmoil inside her hardened into resolve. Ten weeks, a disciplined slave, and Mom and Mattie would be safe for another few months. It was how she measured her life, wasn’t it? In ten week increments, in the trade of slaves, one body at a time.

She checked the music player. The one-hour recording rolled through its second of twenty-four repeats. He’d only been in the box for an hour, but it would’ve felt like days to him.

Ironically, the drone of the 528 hertz was used in meditation as harmonic healing. When Van had shoved her in the box and slapped the earphones on her head, he’d said, “That’s a load of new age bullshit. After twenty-four hours of the same goddamned electrical wave passing through your skull, you won’t be healed. You’ll be fucking manic.”

He’d been right. She’d emerged wild-eyed, delusional, and willing to do anything he demanded to avoid another minute in that box.

Fuck Van and his thrills. When she’d fled from him downstairs twenty minutes earlier, the desire in his eyes had been vulgar in its blatancy. Why had he let her escape so easily? He didn’t give a shit if the boy vomited in the box, and he was too damned calculating to accept that excuse.

Always, he fucked her when he wanted her. Never did she participate with a willing heart. Yet their scrimmages didn’t involve physical force. He’d wear her down with a skilled tongue or prey on her guilt through the mistreatment of a slave. Sometimes, he’d simply threaten to alert Mr. E of her disobedience. It wasn’t until she’d met him that she’d understood the meaning of coerced consent.

She stared at the door, terrified to open it, terrified not to.

Surely he went to bed in his room downstairs instead of following her to the attic. If he’d followed her, he’d be out there with that poor girl, who had been asleep when Liv had dashed by in the race to her room.

Fucking hell. Checking on the girl was the right thing to do, no matter how badly she didn’t want to open the door. Mr. E didn’t give a shit how Van treated the captives as long as they met the requirements at the end of ten weeks.

Her stomach turned as she agonized leaving the boy alone. Goddammit, she was weakening already, and it was only his first night. Her chin trembled. He had to remain in the box. She couldn’t bend the rules and expect to mold him into an acceptable slave. But the girl was already trained and didn’t deserve Van’s needless tormenting.

She closed the lid and jogged to the keypad. If he was waiting on the other side, she could shut it quickly. If he was messing with the girl, she’d have to distract him. Deep breath. She entered the code and cracked the door.

Across the room, the incarnation of her fears sat on the cot, back slouched against the wall. The girl’s head dipped up and down between his spread legs, her face and his dick shrouded by her hair.

Memories ripped in Liv’s mind, sharp and desolate. She saw her own brown hair instead of the girl’s blond. She felt his cock punching the back of her throat and his fingers digging into her scalp. Their baby moved inside her, stretching her belly, making her bent position agonizing to endure.

Her blood pooled away from her core, leaving the frigid numbness of her year as a slave—nine of those months pregnant.

She swallowed the apparition of her past before it consumed her. The girl sucking him still retained her virginity, yet she was adept with her lips, mouth, and tongue. As one of the buyer’s requirements, Liv had spent the prior eight weeks teaching her the skill on Van. And in two weeks, Liv would deliver her to a man whose hand was as heavy as his wallet.

Van looked up and caught her eyes, flames of greed blazing in his. “Come out here and show her how it’s done, Liv.”

God, she hated him when he was like this. When he watched her with such hunger as he pumped his dick in whatever hole he could command. This wasn’t a training session for the girl. It was about Liv and him, and he was using the girl to tunnel Liv’s guilt.

She could tuck her chin, shut the door, and fall asleep in the musty familiarity of her mattress inside the safety of her room.

And let the girl stroke and suck him until he was done with her. She’d blown him a dozen times before during practice. Did one more time really matter?

Van pushed down on the back of her head, and her hands convulsed on the mattress.

Compassion was lethal to Liv’s well-being, but she couldn’t stop it as it shuddered over her skin and swallowed up her heart. She opened the door, passed the cot, another keypad, another code, and down the stairs, her insides bucking and tumbling. At the end of the hall, she stopped at the only closed door and dropped her forehead against it.

What was more horrifying? The footsteps pounding down the stairs after her or all the creepy shit waiting on the other side of his bedroom door?

His body slammed against her back, his exhales hot on her neck, his erection stabbing her tail bone. He hadn’t bothered to put his pants back on.

She mustered a stoic tone. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Oh, the sweet seduction of your words.” He slapped her ass, lighting fire through her jeans, and swung open the door.

Liv stumbled into Van’s bedroom, unable to look away from the antique gun cabinet on the back wall, with walnut crests carved around the double glass doors. One might’ve expected a dozen prized shotguns displayed on the racks within. Instead, the cabinet was crammed with a menagerie of dolls and mannequins piled atop one another. Arms and legs askew, some still attached to molded bodies. Most were not. All of them bald and nude.

She rubbed the chill prickling her arms. “Little girls everywhere want to know, ‘Where do all the broken dollies go?’”

“Shut up, Liv.” He sidled around her, and his foot sent a tiny headless torso careening under the bed, its jointed legs tumbling after.

Why wasn’t that one with all the hollow-eyed faces pressed against the glass of the cabinet? Some of the heads were upside down. Others leered to the side or stared out into the room from beneath hinged eyelids. Dust-laced cobwebs drooped between the dirt-smudged body parts. If she shook the case, how many eyes would wiggle and blink back? She shivered. “You need to—” She cleared her throat, tried to put oomf in her voice “—do some housecleaning.”

“Nah.” He threw himself on the bed, naked from the waist down. His erection hadn’t lost interest. It stood tall and unabashed between the flex of his thighs as he reclined on one elbow and watched her with his unnatural patience.

His interest in his collection, however, didn’t appear to be sexual. None of his plastic friends were anatomically correct nor did they look well-loved. Much the opposite, in fact. A hairless mannequin slumped in the corner of the room, grime coating its nippleless coned breasts from years of inattention. One arm lay beside it, unattached. Its face was punched away, exposing the dark cavern of its head.

Above him, another mannequin hung from something like a meat hook jutting out of the wall. Bent at the waist, its arms and head lolled forward as if reaching for the bed, the far-away gaze on its face frighteningly reminiscent of young Pat Benatar.

“Van…” She jerked her chin at the aberration above him. He’d never answered her years of questions about his fetishes, but he’d agreed to tuck away the ones that chilled her the most. He knew Plasti-Pat Benatar topped the list.

He rose, unhooked it from the wall, and tossed it under the bed to join who knew how many others. Then he turned to her, gripping the base of his cock, and pulled, one long lazy stroke. “Your turn, Liv. Show the pink.”

A shudder bunched her shoulders to her ears. God, she couldn’t do this. Her panties were bone-dry, and her throat felt like a fucking Texas drought. “I can’t do this.”

His expression hardened, his thoughts likely sifting through his arsenal of manipulations. Of course, he could punch her or choke her, but he never had to. She wagered he’d either return to the girl or call Mr. E.

She moved to the narrow bed and perched on the edge. “Not like this.”

The muscles in his jaw relaxed, and he sat beside her, dragging a blanket over his lap. He didn’t touch her. They both knew he would fuck her before she left that room, and his ability to endure her dawdling was something she always used to her advantage. Which was stupid. It never helped her in the end.