DELIVER(2)

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 f*cked 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.

She wanted to clap with the fans, but knowing it was his last victory crushed her celebratory spirit. Truth was, she didn’t have a viable reason for being there. She couldn’t exactly snatch him out of the crowd. But after weeks of watching him on the field, his games had become something to anticipate.

The ambience of the cheering crowd, the camaraderie of friends enjoying a favorite pastime, and the view of athletic boys showing off in tight pants nourished her longing for the youth that had been stolen from her. Seven years ago, she was the innocent girl who stood before the crowd singing the National Anthem at her high school’s football games.

The memory fluttered in her belly and dulled her awareness. She snapped her spine straight. Fuck, she was losing track of time.

Lighting another cigarette, she blew her sentimentality into the night sky and slipped out of her recess. Striding up the stairs toward the parking lot, she twisted to catch a glimpse of number fifty-four running off the field.

Cheerleaders enveloped him on the sideline, hopping and mewling for his attention. He tugged off the helmet and rubbed a hand over his face, his complexion gilded so exquisitely by the Texas sun. He glanced at the scoreboard above her head. If she were watching through her binoculars, she would’ve been staring into the unusual glow of his innocent sea green eyes. The ones she was about to change forever.

“Excuse me, ma’am?”

What the unholy f*ck now? She pivoted and met the narrowed glare of a middle-aged man. Dressed head-to-toe in Baylor swag, he was probably some overzealous alumni reliving the glory days.

He waved a flabby arm. “This is a smoke-free property.”

She raised the cigarette, inhaled, and released a plume of f*ck you into his scrunching face.

A dramatic cough accompanied another flap of his arm. “The university has strict guidelines—”

“Are you the smoke police?”

A fury of red bloomed from his buttoned collar to his blotted cheeks. “You can’t do that here.”

Bet his virgin ass clenched as he said that. She shifted to move past him, irritation skittering across her skin.

He stretched an arm out to block her. “What’s your name, young lady?”

Before she did something that would get her hauled off in handcuffs, she blew him a smoke-ringed kiss, pushed around his arm, and wove into the exodus of spectators.

Past the cooling charcoal grills and trash-littered tailgates, her ten minute stroll took her to the edge of the parking lot. In the farthest corner, beneath a broken street lamp, she circled a nondescript sedan. No one loitered. No witnesses to connect her to the car. She tapped on the passenger window.

The locks released and the door swung open.

“How many times did you get hit on?” Van Quiso’s timbre bordered on growly.

On a good night, calm reason eclipsed his jealousy. She struggled to remember a good night. “Wouldn’t you love to know?” She winked at him, dropped into the seat, and shut the door. Despite the consequences, she got off on tormenting him. A desperate and pathetic attempt at revenge.

A toothpick protruded from the opening of his charcoal hoodie where his mouth was, probing the air in restless circles. “You smell like sex.”

“I banged three linebackers during halftime.” She buckled her seat belt.

“Your sarcasm is juvenile.”

“So is your suspicious resentment.” The stench of his possessiveness saturated her skin and bled into her veins. The more he took her, consensual or not, the farther she followed him, down, down, down into his twisted reality. She rubbed her arms and focused on the empty lot. “The boy is here.”