“You got this from here?” the guard asked Blaise.
Blaise rose her hand in a lazy wave. “I want to ask him about this book.”
“I’ll be right outside.” He looked at me. “Don’t do anything funny.”
I gave him the deadest look I could muster, and he flinched.
I had no clue what he saw, but I had a feeling that it was what I felt.
And the anger, annoyance, and disgust with the situation I found myself in—had found myself in for all these fucking years—was really starting to get to me.
I was, for all intents and purposes, dead inside.
“I’ll be right out here,” the guard reiterated.
“I heard you the first time,” Blaise grumbled, sounding annoyed herself now.
She didn’t reciprocate the feelings that the other guard felt for her, and for some reason that made me feel intense satisfaction.
The moment the guard was ‘gone’ and we had as much privacy as one could in a jail cell in the middle of a federal prison, Blaise’s eyes turned to me.
There was no more aloofness to her face.
There was intense hunger. Hunger that I felt right back in regard to her.
She took a step toward me, not coming too close because the guard that still had us in his line of sight could still see me, and stared directly into my soul.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
I wasn’t okay. I was slowly dying inside, day by day, and nobody even knew it.
“Fine,” I lied. “Why?”
She swallowed hard. “Because you don’t look like you’re doing okay. You look… defeated.”
I felt my spine stiffen. “I’m not fucking defeated.”
She grinned then. “Then don’t look it. Because, just between you and me, I’m trying as best I can here. When you fight and get in trouble, I can only do so much on my end. Eventually you’re going to either get really hurt, or do something I can’t fix. Like last week when you decided to beat the shit out of that guy for stealing your milk. I know you wanted the milk, and I know it’s a fight or die kind of world in here, but there’s a line. And you won’t get early release if you keep being one of those problem prisoners.”
She had a point.
I wasn’t what they would consider a ‘model’ prisoner in here.
Too many people tried to pull too many damn tricks.
I don’t know if it was because I looked like a challenge or not, but every goddamn person that walked through the doors thought it would be a great idea to challenge the unchallengeable.
“Don’t know if that’s something that’s any of your business,” I admitted.
Her eyes narrowed and she stared at me with so much anger right then that I almost took a step back.
“You could’ve left me,” she hissed. “You could’ve just called off the dogs. You could’ve stopped him and went on about your business. Yet you didn’t. Why didn’t you?”
Because I want to fuck the hell out of you. Because you’re mine. Because when I close my eyes, you’re all that I see.
Yet did I say any of those things? Hell no.
“Maybe I should have,” I lied.
I didn’t even know her.
Not really.
She was an acquaintance at most.
Yet, from the moment I first laid eyes on her, I had trouble keeping my eyes from wandering. From finding her in a crowd of hundreds. From wanting to touch and stroke her body. A body that I hadn’t seen in anything but bulky clothing since I first met her.
But oh, the hint of what I could see.
The small curves hinted at even bigger ones unclothed.
The swell of a breast behind a bulky jacket or a bulletproof vest.
The soft, feminine curve of a hip behind a utility belt or an unshapely set of fatigue pants.
God.
Oh, how I wanted her.
It was wrong.
I was years older than her. She was in her mid-twenties now. I was in my almost-forties.
Fifteen years easily separated us, and about a lifetime of experience.
Yet, that didn’t change what I felt. How much I fucking wanted her.
The glimpses of her in this hellhole were what was getting me through the goddamn day, and she didn’t even realize it. Didn’t realize that she was saving me with each stolen glance.
“Mackenzie,” the guard watching her barked. “Let’s go already. I don’t have all day.”
Blaise sighed, her shoulders slumping slightly in defeat.
“We both know that I mean more to you, and you mean more to me, than we’re both willing to admit.” She rolled her eyes. “I left you something by your books.”
And with that she was gone, leaving me staring at her retreating back.
It was only as the door was closed to my cell, and there wasn’t a guard or prisoner in sight, that I went to the books along the wall.
When I separated them, my heart skipped a beat at what I saw.
It was a small thing. No bigger than my fist.