DELIVER(62)

“My wife.” His nostrils flared. “She used to be my life. Until I found out she was just a f*cking whore.” He stood, yanking the tie loose at his neck, his accent clotting with long i’s. “Fucking all my colleagues. Making me a goddamned laughingstock, the filthy f*cking bitch.” He strode toward his wife, rolling up his sleeves, and backhanded her face.

A normal person would’ve regretted asking the question. Hell, a kind person would’ve ran for help. But she was neither. She needed Traquero’s commitment to the deal to ensure her family’s safety, and she couldn’t leave without it.

Marketing 101. Know the customer’s needs and use the information to influence him. “You want a lover who won’t” —can’t— “undermine the dominion you’ve worked so hard to establish?” Fucking lowlife.

“Yes.” He folded his hands behind his back and swaggered toward her. “Move. Let me see him.”

She didn’t want that motherf*cker anywhere near Josh. The thought alone spindled around her lungs, tightening its oxygen-depriving tendrils. But she couldn’t shove her gun down his throat and pull the trigger. She could not. She could not. She breathed through it, focusing on the reason she’d stripped Josh of his clothes. He was there to be viewed. Seal the deal.

She stepped aside and exposed Josh to the man’s sickening gaze.

“At last, I see you, mi belleza,” he said, and she knew he was referring to Josh’s cock. Traquero’s attention was fixated and slack-jawed. “Out of the way, whore.” He shooed her with a hand, his voice thick with spit.

“It’s Deliverer, you sexist cunt.” Her lashing tone was a pitiful attempt at maintaining her position. Didn’t matter who she was. She had a vagina. He considered her no more important than the woman he strung up and electrocuted, and he glared at Liv now like he might hit her.

She backed up, hands at her sides, fingers resting on the edges of her thigh-high boots.

He circled Josh, his gaze scouring the flexing muscle encased in chains, and paused with a hand over the raised welts. “Magnífico.” He reached up and yanked off the hood. “Face me.”

Never had she expected to become so overwhelmingly possessive of a man, and it terrified her. The fear of losing him was as painful as her loss of Mom and Mattie.

Josh kept his eyes down, but she knew he could see the woman hanging in his line of sight. Other than the twitch in his shoulders, he kept his reaction to the horror behind an empty expression. When he turned and Traquero cupped his lowered jaw, her heart pounded wildly to smack the touch away. She locked her knees, forced herself to wait it out.

“Has your dick been corrupted by *?” he breathed. “Speak. Give me your eyes.”

Josh was several inches taller and regarded the sweaty, suit-clad man with a calm expression, his tone admirably smooth. “I’m a virgin, Master.”

“Good. Good. Muy bueno.” He caressed Josh’s bicep and followed the chains over his chest. An unmistakable erection bulged below the girth of his gut. “The slut I married will watch me f*ck you. She will see honor and respect as you accept my dick, my rules, my power. Then she will know what her cunt has lost.”

So f*cked up. His requiting desires should’ve made his twelve requirements more plausible. Instead, the perversity of his oath and the lust smoldering in his eyes magnified his madness.

When he palmed Josh’s cock, she grappled for an excuse to stop him. She hadn’t told Josh that fondling was acceptable at these meetings. Stopping it would raise suspicion.

Josh held still with a heavy-lidded expression and intense patience, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t cracking beneath his stoic exterior. Her helplessness was an agonizing knot in her throat.

“Your limp pecker pleases me.” He cupped Josh’s balls, weighing them in his hand. “Not interested in men, no? Since I only employ men, you won’t f*ck my colleagues? My servants? Answer.”

She shook her head, inwardly. Traquero liked the idea that Josh wouldn’t be tempted to f*ck his colleagues, but what the megalomaniac wasn’t considering was that also meant Josh wouldn’t willingly f*ck him, either.

“No, Master.” Josh’s voice was soft, but a vein pulsed in his forehead.

“No, you won’t.” Sick satisfaction congealed in the crook of Traquero’s grin, his eyes locked on his groping hand. “I want him.”

The three words she needed to hear and had dreaded with every fiber of her existence. Time to get the f*ck out. “Delivery will be in eight weeks. Do you have the down payment?” His referral would be her next client. One with a new list of requirements and a new captive. An endless cycle she couldn’t break.

“I said, I want him.” The force of his declaration punched through her, stealing the strength from her legs. Did he mean—

“Right now.” He continued to molest Josh’s cock, his audacity slicing through her rising fear.

She brightened her eyes with the vicious smile he couldn’t see beneath the scarf. “He hasn’t been prepared for you, and he’ll fight like hell.” She hoped she hadn’t misunderstood his desire for a willing victim. With her hands on her hips, she rolled her head on her shoulders and stretched her mouth in a yawn. “He needs more conditioning.” She yawned again. “Hence, the eight weeks.” Now get a f*cking clue.