Prisoner

by Annika Martin

  At first it seemed so strange that such an outwardly ruined place as the Bradford could feel cozy inside, but after four months, it no longer seems strange at all. It just feels like home.

  I’ve put pillows along the edge of one side of this circular room, and I can curl up here for hours, pausing from the pages of my book to watch squirrels dart between the scrub trees. I also set up a desk and chair so I can work.

  Back in my old dorm room, the only green I ever saw was the little patch of scrubby grass in the courtyard. Here, vines have grown up the walls of the buildings all around, thick like a blanket. Even the Bradford Hotel is covered with them. This place is overrun by nature—including the wild men who live here.

  They’re beautiful too, with the same primal strength as these stone walls.

  Nate goes back and forth between here and his farm. He’s tried to build a whole life there, but he can’t quite leave the crew behind. I like to talk to him when he’s here. I think he is relieved when I chat with him. He’s still not comfortable with Grayson keeping me captive.

  What I don’t tell him is that I don’t want to escape.

  Stone still gives me this look sometimes, like he wants me gone. But we’ve formed a kind of truce. I think the murderous look in his eyes isn’t really about me, anyway. Nowadays he’s obsessed with finding the other boys. We all are, but it’s a long road, full of dead ends.

  Grayson and I have a nice, big private bedroom of our own on the fourth floor, and now there’s this turret room, my library.

  Well, I had to keep the books somewhere.

  I hear footsteps behind me, and a smile tugs at my lips. A book lands on the nearby cushion. Pleasure fills me at the sight of the old, loose binding. One shelf is already full of the books Grayson has brought me.

  “What’s this one?” I ask.

  “Open it,” he says with a new kind of tension in his voice. I glance at him curiously. He stares down at me, brown eyes wary.

  So far he’s brought me Hemingway and Steinbeck—the classics. He’s brought my childhood favorites by Madeline L’Engle and Cynthia Voigt. He brought me new paperback thrillers and murder mysteries, hundreds upon hundreds of pages flush with ink. I’ve loved every single one, so I don’t know why he’s nervous now. I pick up the book and look at the cover. Nothing but faded cloth. No title. No author. That isn’t too surprising. Sometimes with old books, the ink will fade.

  I open the cover. There’s nothing inside. No title page.

  Turn the page. Still nothing.

  It’s blank.

  I look up at him, the question in my eyes. “What’s it for?”

  “It’s yours.” He clears his throat. He looks down, and when his gaze meets mine again, his eyes pierce me. I remember the way he looked at me that first day, in the hallway of the prison, as if he could see inside me, straight to the heart. He terrified me then. He still scares me, but in a different way.

  “I don’t…”

  He shakes his head, gaze locked on mine. “It’s your book, Abby. Your story to tell.”

  He wants me to write down my story. And he won’t settle for anything fake, just like I wouldn’t for him. He wants it real. Raw.

  He always does.

  * * *

  I stare at the empty book, lying on the floor. Days pass before I pick it up and move it to my desk. Another week passes by before I open it and look at the first blank page. Two more weeks pass before I manage to write a paragraph.

  Then the floodgates open.

  I have too much to say, about my mother. About all the times I waited for her and she never came for me. About the forgotten birthdays, but there was also the soggy mush of a birthday cake she made me when I was six. Or the five-dollar bill she would leave on the counter every time she left for a bender because, even when she abandoned me for the drugs, she wanted me to eat. About the way she looked when my stepfather lay dying on the floor, both pleading and resigned.

  My hand can hardly keep up with demand, and soon enough, half the book is full. I read a few snippets to Grayson one day in bed. It feels weird but kind of good too.

  “These are amazing,” he says.

  “You’re an easy audience.”

  He grabs my hair and makes me look him in the eye. “They’re fucking amazing.”

  I smile.

  “Remember that intro story you wrote for the journal?” he asks.

  I nod.

  “It was such bullshit,” he says.

  “What?” I give him a punch in his non-wounded shoulder, and he grabs my wrist and flips me over, pinning me under him.

  “Total bullshit. Some shit about college class.”

  I look up at him, feeling so perfectly helpless and enclosed. I think I’ll never get sick of him. “The journal was for the prisoners.”

  A smile quirks his lips. “What do you think you are? I’m keeping you here. You can’t leave.”

  He’s just smug enough to make me hate him sometimes. But he’s right about one thing. I’m one of them. Not only because I’m here, with Grayson. I was in jail too, even if Grayson busted me out on transport.

  “It was a bullshit vignette,” he continues, goading me. “You make all of us spill our guts, and you write about not being able to decide what to wear to class?”

  “Excuse me,” I say. I’m annoyed because I know he’s right.

  “You should change it.”

  “What? It’s already published. It’s on the site. I can’t just go in and change it. Even if I wanted to, I don’t have the passwords.”

  “Knox could crack into it.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “It’s a rush to have a piece up there—a real piece, I mean,” he says, “I think it’s always been leading to this. You teaching that memoir class. You didn’t just show up to teach us. You needed to learn how to do it, from us.”

  Smug.

  I don’t hate him though. I love him. And I kind of love the idea.

  “You want to do it,” he says. “I can tell.”

  It’s more than wanting to. It’s like I’ve always needed to tell my story, just like those inmates needed to. But I could never open up to anyone. Only when I got taken hostage at gunpoint did the story start to spill out.

  But that was only Grayson. This would be public. I pick up the book he gave me. “I’d have to choose one of the things I wrote in here. And make it nice.”

  “So do it.”

  The idea grows on me over the following days. Knox even gets me the password—he can do things like that. Right after they grabbed me from the transport, he made it so I could email Esther to let her know I was okay without it being traceable. Maybe if I change my story in the journal to be an honest and raw one like the guys, I’ll have him help me email her again. Anonymously, so no one can track me.

  The problem is my piece, finding just the right nugget to polish. One seems too rambly, another is just wrong. One feels too painful, another not true enough. None are right. I don’t know why I can’t find one. Maybe I’m scared.

  Weeks go by, and I’m at my desk in front of the window, having put aside another vignette, when Grayson comes in. There’s this look in his eye, and I know I’m in for it. He’s a force of nature, a tornado, and I’m about to get swept away.

  “It’s been six weeks,” he says, his voice deceptively calm.

  “I know; I know.” I’ve been stalling.

  With rough, possessive movements, he takes my hair out of its bun. My heart races as he pushes it over my shoulder. I close my eyes and let him arrange me how he likes. He gets horny when I do anything that looks academic.

  I have new glasses on. I should’ve taken them off when I heard him coming. I’m trying to work.

  “I don’t understand how you can be taking so long,” he growls.

  I swallow. I don’t either.

  “You filled all those pages, and you can’t use anything?”

  “None of it seems right.”

  He twists his ha
nd in my hair.

  “Don’t,” I say.

  “Don’t what?” With an evil gleam in his eye, he hauls me up from my keyboard. It hurts.

  “I need to work on it,” I whisper, knowing that’s exactly the wrong thing to say. I’ve been working on it, but I’m not finishing it.

  He pushes me into the wall. The air thumps out of me. He watches my eyes as he trails his fingers down my neck, my throat, controlling even my gaze.

  “Please,” I say as he nuzzles my neck with his stubbly chin, hard enough to leave marks.

  “I think you’re hiding up here. You don’t get to hide with me,” he rasps, pulling up my shirt.

  “I’m not hiding,” I say, trying to wriggle out of his grip, knowing I sort of am. I can’t let him take me over. I’m pleading now. “I have to do this. I have to work.”

  “If you were working, you’d be done. Why is it taking you forever for something us guys did in a few weeks?”

  “I don’t know!” I wouldn’t have let them get away with excuses—and he’s not letting me either.

  He pulls away and eyes me suspiciously. Then he pins my wrists above my head with one hand and just rips off my shirt, baring my breasts to the cool breeze. I feel way too exposed, way too vulnerable.

  I close my eyes, heart pounding. “Grayson.”

  He palms my breast, moving against me, hot breath on my neck. I stay stiff, but he doesn’t care. He presses his fingers down into my waistband, finding my clit. Forcing me to feel his finger, rubbing relentlessly.

  “Grayson,” I plead, starting to melt into him.

  “I have to fuck you,” he grates.

  Yes.

  I pant as he turns me around. I cling to the corner table just to keep myself up. He shoves his hand under my skirt.

  My panties are satin and lace, a sugary confection from the large drawer. The panties and bras and lingerie arrive in hordes to our anonymous post office box. Grayson and his tribe are very inventive criminals and never seem to want for money, though I don’t know where he gets the time to order it all. There’s almost been something new to wear each day. I guess when I said he should have nice things, he took it to heart.

  I’m his nice thing, his possession, and he dresses me up in every color and style and fabric he can find.

  He pulls my panties down my legs and tosses the expensive scrap of fabric onto the bare wooden floor and slides his fingers along the wetness waiting for him.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  ~Grayson~

  I know she’s working on changing her piece in the journal. I know I should leave her alone, but I can’t. I have to fuck her. This is how it is between us. She’s mine to do what I want with, and I can’t leave her alone.

  Can’t stop fucking her.

  But it’s more than that—seeing her in her library room so worried and wound up, she reminded me of the girl I saw in the prison waiting room that day, and it felt all wrong in my gut. Not beautiful and smart like I know she is, but timid. Too composed. Hiding from everything like she isn’t worth anything. Like she can’t let people see her.

  If I was a good man, I’d let her hide. I’d let her look out the window while I fucked her, the view pretty and vacant. Her skirt is flipped up, exposing her bare ass. I could jack myself off inside her cunt and then let her get back to her journal. But I’m not a good man, and I’m not going to let her hide.

  It doesn’t matter that she’d rather look at the sky so she wouldn’t have to face me. I flip her over against the desk—I want to see her eyes when I take her. She’s my sky, and I’ll watch her as I come.

  She fights against me a little, and I grip her hard. I touch her the way that makes her boneless.

  “Grayson…” Her breath speeds up, and her eyes fill with desire behind her glasses.

  That look brings me to my knees. I kneel and press a kiss in the center of her cunt, right where it’s open and wet. She sucks in a breath. I know she wants more, but she won’t ask for it. I slide my tongue through her folds, learning the shape of her like I do every time. She shudders beneath me, quivering on the tip of my tongue.

  Until I lick her clit. Then her whole body goes rigid. She moans something like my name. So I lick her again, and again, until I hear her clearly. Grayson, please. Grayson, please.

  “What do you need, baby?”

  She makes a sound like a tortured animal. I nip at her clit with the front edge of my teeth. She had to know this was coming, but she still cries out in surprise.

  She likes me to nip her, to bite her, to hurt her a little—to make her feel. Her mom ignored and neglected her, but I’m the opposite; I can never get enough of her, and she knows it. Her cries echo through the room, through the open window, through the neighborhood of wrecked, unruly buildings.

  My dick is hard, punching through denim. I pull myself free and clamp down on her thighs, positioning her, controlling her. I always move her body just how I want it, so I can fuck her how I want to. I used to hate when she called me a caveman, but not anymore. Yeah, I dragged her by her hair into my cave, and I’m not letting her go. I plunge inside—and fuck, yeah, it’s sweet relief.

  She pulses around me, reeling from the intensity.

  She whimpers. “Grayson…”

  Blood thunders in my ears as I suck air through my nostrils. It’s all too much, and the only way I can bring myself back down is to lick and suck and bite at her breasts, leaving them pink.

  “More,” she grates out.

  I shake my head with her nipple still caught lightly between my teeth. I’m holding on like an animal with its prey. She can never get free from me. And she can never hide from me, not in her journal or her books. Not anywhere.

  My balls draw up. I’m seconds away from coming. I won’t be able to hold back, so I make the most of it. I grasp her hips and she wraps her legs around me. Then I lift and rock her hips in both my hands, jacking myself off with her cunt in the coldest, rudest way possible.

  She’s spasming around me. Her cunt is milking my dick. Her arms are clawing me, holding me tight. Even her mouth has latched on to the skin at my neck, sucking me—and I’m not even sure she knows it. She’s a feral thing in my arms, drawing me into her pleasure, drowning me in it. I shout as my cock releases into her, mixing with her wetness. I grasp her ass even tighter and use her body to wring the last drops of come and pleasure from my body.

  I collapse over her, planting sloppy kisses on her neck, her ear. Then I pull myself up and look down at her.

  She hated me once, but it’s not hate I see in her eyes now. Not even fear.

  It’s love.

  I don’t deserve her love, but I have it anyway. I don’t deserve her at all, but she’s mine. Beautiful, smart. And so fucking strong.

  It’s like the universe gave her to me to make up for all the other shit. And I think if I had to go through it again, knowing she’d be there at the end, she’d be my prize, I’d do it. I’d do anything to have her look at me that way.

  My breathing slows. “I know you’re trying to figure out your piece for the journal. But I had to fuck you.” The simple truth.

  She sits up and shoves her hand in my hair, looking at me with those brown eyes. “I know.”

  “I don’t want to stop you from finishing.”

  Her gaze softens. “It’s okay. I know the piece I’ll put in now.”

  “You were thinking about the journal while I was fucking you?”

  Her smile is a little wicked. Full of fire. My favorite kind of smile on her. “Just a tiny bit.”

  Her glasses are still on. Sometimes I like to take them away. Sometimes I like to break them, and we have to get new ones. But other times I like her to wear them. They’re tilted after what we just did. I straighten them, the same way I arrange her hair and her body. I like moving her around. I like touching her. “Which piece?”

  “This part I wrote of us in the car, right after the break out, when you touched my cheek. You touched me because you wanted to.
Because you could.”

  “Always,” I say.

  “That’s the one I’ll put in. The day you escaped.”

  I feel her words on my skin, touching every nerve ending, lighting me up. “The day I made you mine.”

  “I escaped that day too. I just didn’t know it yet.” She smiles. “Look at you all hot on the journal.”

  I trace the line of her jaw with my knuckle. I’ve never let a person this close before, where what they want and need is more important than anything. It’s scary sometimes, how deep I feel that. “Remember what you said? When a person tells their story, it helps to heal them. To make them whole.”

  She raises her eyebrows. “And right after, you said that some people can never be healed,” she teases. “Can never be whole.”

  “Maybe I was wrong. Not about the healing part, but a person can always be made whole. I know that for a fact. I know it personally.”

  She looks up at me now, caught by the seriousness of my tone. She knows I’m not talking about stories anymore, just like she knows she’s mine. Just like she knows I’ll always protect her, even as we move to take down bigger assholes than the governor.

  She shifts around and snuggles against my chest. I wrap my arms around her like a wall against the world.

  The End

  THANK YOU!

  Thank you for reading Prisoner! We hope you enjoyed the book.

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  • Prisoner is the first book in a series we hope to continue. In the meantime, you can read Wanderlust by Skye Warren and The Hostage Bargain by Annika Martin or Agaisnt the Dark by Carolyn Crane. Turn the page to read excerpts from those books…