An absolute goddess fills the south-facing window. A total fucking smoke show. Too old for the Nice List, too young for me to be watching her sleep.
Golden brown hair spills across her pillow. Dark lashes flutter as she murmurs something unintelligible in her sleep.
Needing to see more, I pull up her full file on the other window, selecting the folder of images from the past year. A collage of near-indescribable beauty fills the glass, more breathtaking than any sunrise.
And God help me, but shedoestake my breath away.
Transfixed, I swipe through photo after photo. All stunning. All somehow so essentiallyher.
My cock strains against my zipper as I stare at a photo taken over the summer. Her bikini reveals more than it conceals. My finger traces the outline of her curves as visions of what I’d like to do to her dance through my head.
Such a tiny triangle of fabric covering the treasure between her legs. It would take so little to push it aside and taste her sweetness…
Fuck. Ineverlose control, but then I’ve never been tempted like this, never encountered such blinding perfection. Just a few teasing photographs and my balls are damn near ready to burst.
Unfastening my belt, I free my raging hard-on and load a video from the same trip. As I watch her applying sunscreen, I roughly stroke my cock with a desperation I haven’t felt since I was a horny teenager.
Every movement, every gesture is perfection. But it’s the way she bites her lip, frowning at a question someone off-camera asks, that destroys me. Imagining how those full, innocent lips would feel wrapped around me pushes me over the edge after only a few strokes.
Fuck. Who the hell is she—and why is this the first time I’m seeing her?
Closing out of the photo album, I switch to the barebones biography the elves prepared. Madeline Marsden. Nineteen. Just starting her second year of college.
So I was right, not a child. Which begs the question…
Why the fuck did the surveillance elves include her in the feed of good boys and girls?
But the answer is honestly obvious: they fucked up.
The filters are blunt instruments that target syndicate members and potential recruits. The innocent lunatics who make it into adulthood still believing are removed manually before the pool of believers is sent to me.
Not the most efficient system, but given how few adults believe in the impossible, it’s always worked. Sure, a few sneak through, but I’ve never had any trouble just deleting them.
Until now.
Somehow, I can’t delete her from the believers’ pool despite that beingexactlywhat I should do. The Christmas Contract is clear. Make a list, check it twice. A list of children. And Madelyn Marsden is anything but a child.
The continuing stiffness of my cock as I watch her sleep is proof enough of that fact. But I ignore it, digging deeper into her dossier, needing to solve the mystery of her.
At first, I think the recruitment team screwed up. Nothing in Madelyn’s file suggests mental instability. She’s top of her class, well-socialized, appears relatively down to earth. But as I read on, it’s clear why she wasn’t selected.
She’s simply too good.
The surveillance elves have noted every good deed since childhood. She may be the least violent and duplicitous person on the planet. In short, not syndicate material.
Don’t get me wrong. Syndicate members have the biggest hearts. And notallassignments require violence. There are elves in administration, manufacturing, logistics, etc. who’ve never even committed a felony—but theywouldif asked, without hesitation.
Because membership requires a certain worldview, both an understanding of how fucked up the world is and the determination to make it right. Members possess a rare mix of darkness and unwavering belief. And Madelyn Marsden is unequivocally good, boringly so.
Or at least that’s what I think until I discover the letters…
Page after page of letters. Letters that start out innocently enough. But when I get to the one she sent on her eighteenth birthday, I’m hard enough to cut glass for the second time that night.
Dear Santa,
You may not know this, but I turned eighteen today. And now that I’m not a little girl anymore, I have a confession to make…
ONE