DELIVER(36)

“Master is not a rapist.” Her eyes flashed to his, lit with fire, her words heated and rushed. “He doesn’t touch me like that, because he loves Mistress, and she loves him.”

What? No way in unholy hell did Liv love that man. His insides twisted and turned at the idea, and it pained him to see Kate’s perception so emotionally distorted by what she’d been through. And what did she mean, he didn’t touch her like that? Forcibly or not all? “You’ve been here a month? Two months?”

She shrugged, and it was wooden and completely absent of hope. “I don’t know.”

Was he staring at the harbinger of his own future mental state? How would his judgment fare after ten weeks of captivity? His head ached, and his impatience with her and the chains that held him set his skin on fire. He rolled his arms in a useless attempt to escape the shackles. “I want to help you, Kate. Please, talk—”

The door clicked open. Rage cinched his throat and accelerated his pulse. He lowered his head with a frustrated jerk and glared at the floor.





Chapter 18




Josh’s breathing grew heavier, louder. His body temperature boiled from his blood to his skin.

Liv’s bare feet skimmed over the floor and passed by his knees. Van’s sneakers trailed close behind. They stopped at the cot, and the mattress creaked under Van’s weight, a plate of food balancing on his lap. Josh’s stomach gave a miserable groan.

“Tell me what I missed, girl.” The cool clip of Liv’s voice sliced the air, but there was a strained edge to it. “I want to hear every word that was uttered.”

Surely her other slaves talked and even befriended each other when they were alone. Did she punish them for it? Locking his eyes on her feet was pure torture. He wanted to read her face, observe what wasn’t being vocalized. In the outer edge of his vision, Van raised a sandwich toward Kate’s mouth.

“He said his parents are cotton farmers. He plays football at Baylor…” Between meager bites and swallows, she repeated the conversation verbatim with much better recollection than his own. When every morsel was consumed, and all of his words betrayed, she finished with, “I told him Master wasn’t a…rapist, that you love each other.”

The heels of Liv’s feet twitched outward so slightly the movement would’ve gone unnoticed if he’d been staring a couple inches higher. Her knees bent even more subtly as if she were pressing her feet to the floor to mute the reaction. A sign of objection.

He was so distracted by the dichotomy between her genuine responses and her facade that he hadn’t considered the consequences of Kate’s tattling until Van stood.

“Roll to your stomach, girl.” He moved out of Josh’s field of vision, his voice pitching through the room. “Face pressed against the mattress. Ass and * in the air and spread for your Mistress’s punishment.”

Punishment? The biting claw of dread shivered down Josh’s spine. No, it hadn’t been nice of Kate to tattle on him, but she didn’t deserve a punishment for answering his questions.

Van returned with a thin rod that resembled the riding crop Josh had used in his horse riding lessons as a boy. His brain twisted into knots trying to piece together what was happening and what he could do to stop it. And with his eyes on the floor, his field of vision was limited to below their waists.

When Van pressed the handle into Liv’s hand, she didn’t close her fingers around it. The exchange was swift, but Josh was certain Van bent her pinkie at an awkward angle to persuade her to take the crop.

She traced Kate’s raised backside with the leather-tipped end. “Boy, you violated requirement number nine.”

Requirement nine? He didn’t know them by number. Hell, he wasn’t sure he could recite them all. But nine was the last requirement she’d taught him, right? The one about not talking—

Whack.

The crack of the crop left a red mark on Kate’s upper thigh. Her legs trembled, and her cry muffled against the mattress.

Josh drew a lungful of air and swallowed the protests springing forward. Kate would suffer even more for his outbursts.

Van crouched beside Josh, his scar pulling at his lips, intensifying the threat of his proximity. “Hey, buddy. The Mistress is a real stickler about rules, but don’t worry. The girl will accept your punishment.”

A roar pummeled through Josh’s throat, and he slammed his jaw shut, trapping it. This horsecrap wasn’t directed by Liv, and Van knew that punishing Kate would hurt Josh the most.

Van stood, sidled up to Liv, and circled a finger on the back of her thigh, just below the hem of the minidress. “Twenty strokes. Right, Mistress?”

A battle of emotions coursed through him, heating his blood and rushing his breaths. He clutched the chains with white-knuckled fists and braced for the most messed up moment of his life.

And so it went. A garbled scream followed every whack, each one corkscrewing through his heart, stripping away pieces that would never be recovered. Liv kept unimaginable control of her swings, bringing down her arm in a rhythmic tempo as if moving to a cadence no one but her could hear.

He shuddered with the smack of leather on flesh, the pierce of Kate’s wails in his ears and the twitch of her small body receiving his punishment under his gaze. Guilt fisted his stomach and shoved the turmoil to his throat.