Prisoned Series Box Set

by Marni Mann

  Afraid of the way I might respond, I said nothing. I couldn’t trust my mouth. Not with the way his eyes were making me feel. I held his stare for much longer than I should have, only breaking it because we were approaching a crosswalk.

  As we waited for the light to change, I pointed at my place. The high-rise stuck out with so many shorter buildings around it. “I’m right there.” Even before I looked, I already knew his gaze was still on me and not on my apartment. “I’ll be fine walking the rest of the way alone,” I spoke so softly, yet I was trying so hard to be louder.

  “I’m sure you’d be fine, but I’m still walking with you.”

  “I…” I couldn’t find my confidence or the snark I needed to use to get this man to back down. I knew what I had to say, but the words just wouldn’t come out. That was because I didn’t want to say them. I wanted to be my own person, make my own decisions. But that choice had been taken away from me. So, I tried to channel Wynter as I gritted my teeth and said, “Don’t.”

  “Don’t?” He turned his head a little to the side, showing me the stubble that ran across his jaw and his heavily hooded midnight eyes. “Come have a drink with me.”

  “You’re not—”

  “Listening to you?”

  He took a step closer, and I stopped breathing. He was less than two feet away, and I could feel him. It was as though he were touching me, but his hands were at his sides.

  “I heard you just fine. But, now, I’m asking you a question.”

  I shook my head. I shook it hard.

  Wynter could be coming home at any second and drive right by us. She could see us and then jump out of her car and make a huge scene. Any of the girls who lived in the area could do the same. I had to get away from him and get my ass home.

  “I can’t.”

  “Are you sure about that? Because I think you want to come with me, and I think you’re going to.” He pulled out his phone and tapped a few buttons on the screen. “Someone is going to pick me up here in five minutes. Come with me, or go home. It’s up to you.”

  To my left was a small shop. The front door had an awning over the top that provided so much darkness, I could barely see the door. It would be the perfect place to hide and wait for his ride.

  But then I glanced in front of me, at the building that was only three blocks away.

  Finally, my eyes made it back to Jae.

  I needed to give him an answer.

  And I needed it to be the right one.

  Eighteen

  Beard

  The morning I was scheduled to fly out to Miami, Bond showed up at the prison. Since the three guards were all in Venezuela, both sweepers were too busy to leave, and Inmate #1516 needed to be transferred here, Bond had offered to bring him in. We didn’t ask for his help that often, but when we did, he never said no.

  Because my flight was scheduled to leave only an hour after Bond landed, we didn’t have much time to catch up. Just a couple of minutes where he told me about the mills and I briefly mentioned my investment with Layla. Then, I took the boat to the airport and boarded our private plane.

  It surprised the hell out of me when Bond walked on a few minutes later.

  “Care for some company?” he asked from the entrance.

  I was in my seat, belt across my waist, drink in hand, with a tablet on my lap. I shut the cover over the screen and crossed my boots. “Sure. Come on in.”

  The plane sat ten. It had a four-seater couch on one side, a row of two single seats, and two sets of two that faced each other. I was sitting in the two sets of two, and Bond took the spot across from me. He dropped his briefcase on the space next to him and put his belt on.

  “I thought you were going to hang out with Shank for a few days.”

  “Something came up, and I have to get back. I figured, why not ride with you?” His eyes told a whole different story.

  That was one of the things about my job; I’d gotten real good at reading eyes. I knew when someone was lying, when they were holding back. And I usually knew what it would take to get them to spill.

  For Bond, all I had to do was ask him. “What’s the real reason you’re flying back?”

  Before he had a chance to answer, the flight attendant came and said to Bond, “What can I get you to drink?”

  “Scotch. Neat.”

  She’d be coming back with a tumbler of liquor, and before the flight was over, he’d be getting his dick sucked. Drinking and coming were the only things to do on these long-ass trips, and this chick was always more than eager to help with both.

  With his scotch now in his hand, Bond set his shoe over his other thigh and looked right at me. “I wanted to check in on you. It’s been a while. I want to make sure things are as they should be.”

  Bullshit.

  “Say it, Bond. Whatever it is.” I lifted my glass in the air, shaking it so that the cubes hit the sides.

  The girl noticed and signaled that she’d bring me another.

  “Give it to me straight,” I said.

  He didn’t say anything as my drink was delivered, and he remained quiet after she left. The plane then taxied onto the runway, and the pilot let us know we were going to take off.

  Once the wheels were no longer on the ground, several sips of booze already down his throat, he said, “I think it’s time for you to come home.”

  There it was. The words I had feared were coming.

  Had he said this at the prison, I would have left and gone into town. I even would have rented a hotel room and stayed there until he was gone. But I couldn’t do that on a plane. Bond had known that. I had a feeling that had been his plan all along. Because getting me to talk about this shit meant backing me into a corner, and he’d done just that.

  “I do go home,” I said. “Every few weeks.” I looked out the window, seeing the clouds move past, knowing the turbulence would settle as soon as we cleared them. At least the rocking of the plane would stop. But who the fuck knew what would erupt from this conversation?

  “That’s how you’re referring to it now? Home?”

  “It’s where I live, where I sleep, where I get my dick sucked. So, yeah, it’s home.”

  “What about your other home?”

  There wasn’t enough vodka on this fucking plane to get me to open up about this. And there was nothing that flight attendant could bring me that would calm what was starting to brew in my chest. Only the screams would take that away, and those were forty thousand feet below me.

  “Fuck that place.”

  “Let’s talk about why you won’t return.”

  I lifted the notch and pulled the belt off my waist. It’d felt like the thing was squeezing all the food out of my stomach. Then, I yelled toward the back, “Bring me another fucking drink!” Whatever liquid was left in the glass went into my mouth, burning as it went down my throat. “Stop trying to shrink me, Bond.”

  That was what Shank and I called it when his dad tried to go all doctor on us. Most days, I could handle his interrogation. Not today.

  He calmly folded his hands in his lap. “No shrinking here. I’m simply trying to understand where your head is at.”

  No shrinking? From the minute he’d walked onto the plane, he’d been all business. This was the doctor talking to me, not the father figure I’d known since I was a little kid. I hated that he sometimes got the two confused.

  “You know where my head is at. You know why I won’t return. There’s no fucking need to talk about it. Hearing me say the words over and over isn’t going to change how I feel.”

  The chick brought two vodkas this time and set both in front of me.

  “I like the hotel I’ve been staying at, and tomorrow, I’m putting down a deposit for a condo. It’ll be a new home, fresh start—whatever bullshit you want to call it.”

  As soon as I finished speaking, he said my name. The tone he used worked me up even more. He wasn’t being the guy who’d raised me. He was still playing doctor, and I couldn’t fucking
stand it.

  “Stop it, Bond. I don’t want to be fixed.”

  He said my name again.

  Jesus, what was he trying to do to me?

  “You—”

  I shook my head. “Enough, Bond.”

  I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want to hear any more of this shit.

  “It’s not your home.”

  My teeth gritted together. “It is.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  When I realized my hand was around one of the glasses, squeezing it with all my strength, I set it down and pushed myself to the end of my seat.

  “It’s not where you were raised or where you used to spend all your time before you opened the prison or where you used to fly back and forth before—”

  “Enough!” I rubbed my palms over my jeans, trying to stop my hands from shaking, drying off all the sweat that had formed. “That makes no difference.”

  “That’s how you look at it now? That it has no effect on your life? Don’t you think you have some things to resolve? It would help to—”

  “Why are you doing this?” I was yelling. And I didn’t give a fuck.

  “I’m trying to make you see that not all your memories are bad ones.”

  They weren’t all bad; he was right about that. But there were enough dark ones to keep me out of that place for a long fucking time. I didn’t need to relive that shit whenever I went back there. So, I’d keep avoiding it for as long as I damn well pleased.

  “Like the day you walked into my house with all your clothes in trash bags,” he continued. “Do you remember that morning?”

  “Bond,” I growled, now holding the armrests, willing myself to stay where I was and not reach forward to shut his mouth closed. “I told you, I’m not talking about this.”

  He sighed. “Fine. But you need to at some point. You can’t leave a wound bandaged forever. You need to unwrap it and air it out every so often. Because you know what can happen?”

  I stood and walked into the aisle. “Yeah, I know. It can turn you into a prison guard where you torture people for a living. But wouldn’t you say it’s a little too late for that? I already kill, and I already fucking torture. So, it looks like my wound isn’t just infected; it’s fucking gangrene.”

  “I understand it might take some time, but I hope, one day, you’ll consider returning home.”

  Home. Home. Home.

  I couldn’t fucking stand that word.

  “Because too much time passes between our visits,” he added. “I don’t like it. I miss the years when I saw you and Shank every day.”

  There wasn’t an angle he wouldn’t try.

  Not a goddamn thing was off-limits.

  “You know where I’m at, Bond. Nothing’s stopping you from coming to see me.”

  He reached into the front pocket of his shirt and pulled out his phone. “Do you need anything? It’s been a while, so I assume you’ve been getting it from another source, but I can get whatever you need sent right over.”

  My fingers dug into the top of the leather seat, the cushion indenting from the pressure. He was talking about meds. Not painkillers, but Valium and sleeping pills. I’d used them for years. When weed or vodka hadn’t worked, they were the only things that could knock me out for a few hours. But then I’d found the screams, and I didn’t need the drugs anymore.

  It had taken me a long time to find those sounds.

  And Bond had reminded me of that place. Of the darkness that had held me and wouldn’t let me go. Of the years I had been so desperate, I had done plenty of my own screaming.

  Of the time Shank had had to stick a tube down my throat and pump my stomach.

  Bond had known what this conversation would do to me.

  He had lifted the bandage on my wound.

  And, now, he wanted me to go home.

  Home.

  There was only one place I was headed.

  “Nah,” I said, “I don’t need any pills. I’ve got everything I need.” I walked past his seat, and when he said my name, I turned around. “Yeah?”

  “Don’t wear her out. She’s mine next.”

  I didn’t respond. I just faced forward and continued moving toward the back of the plane.

  “Can I get you something?” the chick asked as I approached her.

  “Fuck yes.”

  She smiled.

  She knew the drill.

  She reached forward and ran her hand over the outside of my jeans, up and down my cock. “I can fix that; don’t worry, honey.”

  There was a reason I wasn’t hard.

  And I wasn’t fucking worried about it.

  I grabbed her by the hand and pulled her into the bedroom. It was just big enough to fit a double-size bed, a seat that folded against the wall, and space for the two of us to stand.

  She slipped her hands under her skirt and started wiggling, like she was trying to get her panties down.

  I cupped her face in my palms. “Leave them on.”

  She grinned even harder. “Anything you want, baby.”

  Anything.

  I immediately cuffed her hands behind her back and threw her face first onto the bed. Gripping one of the pillows, I shoved it under her mouth and leaned my lips against her ear. “I want you to scream.”

  No one outside this room needed to hear the sounds she was going to make even if they had nothing to do with my cock. The thick layer of feathers would help mute them. So would the door and the humming of the engines.

  “You want me to—”

  “You heard me,” I growled. “I want you to take a nice big breath of air, and then I want you to scream as loud as you can.”

  Her shoulders lifted, and her back rose as she filled her lungs.

  Waiting for it was like holding a blade right against a prisoner’s throat, pausing for just a second before piercing his skin and causing him to bleed out. It was that second—the one before anything happened, the one that felt like a moment of silence that lasted forever.

  But then it came.

  The high pitch. The urgency. The desperation.

  Fuck.

  My chest loosened. The feeling returned to my limbs. The emotions subsided, and a smile filled my lips.

  I was home.

  I pushed my ear onto the side of her face. “Scream like it fucking hurts.”

  Nineteen

  Tyler

  Four Years and Six Months Ago

  “I think you want to come with me.”

  As I glanced from the store awning to my apartment building and back to Jae, I couldn’t get his words out of my head. Did I want to go with him?

  I had less than five minutes to make that decision.

  I didn’t know why I was even considering it. Even if I wanted to, I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere with him. I shouldn’t even be standing next to him on the sidewalk. If Mina found out about this, she would kill me. Literally, according to what Wynter had said. I could try to come up with an excuse for talking to him. But leaving with him? I’d have to say I was kidnapped to get me out of that one.

  “I can’t come with you,” I finally said, hoping that would be the push to make my feet start moving.

  They didn’t move. Not even a step. I wasn’t sure why I was frozen in this spot when I should be sprinting the three blocks to my apartment and tucking myself securely inside.

  And I wasn’t sure why, every time I felt like I was about to start walking, his face would take that urge away.

  “If you couldn’t come, then you would have left already.”

  There was that voice again. The one that hit me in all the places it shouldn’t. In the spots on my body that desperately needed a man like him. Spots influential enough that I wanted to ignore Wynter’s threats and cave to Jae’s request.

  “I can’t.”

  And then I felt myself take a step. Then, it was just a few more paces, but they were in the wrong direction. I found myself hiding in the darkness of the doorway, the awning protecting
me from the street. My arms wrapped around my stomach, my teeth chattered. It’d begun to mist, and my hair had gotten a little wet. I didn’t have an umbrella. I didn’t want one. Not wanting one was a decision I could make. Leaving with Jae wasn’t.

  I hated that.

  I was almost twenty years old.

  And the choice to speak to this man, go home with him, cover myself in his attention had been taken away from me.

  Jae came closer and handed me his jacket. It didn’t look thick. Sort of like a military-style made of khaki in the color of camo green. “Wear it. You look like you’re freezing.”

  “I’m not.”

  He leaned into the doorway. It felt like the space was too small for him. It was definitely too snug for the both of us. A few inches more, and he would be touching me.

  The thought of that terrified me—but not for the reason it should.

  “Why are you shaking?”

  Because I wanted this stranger to stand here. Because his presence eased me and excited me at the same time. Because I never wanted his eyes to leave me.

  Because I feared getting branded by The Achurdy was the biggest mistake of my life, and I didn’t know if there was a way out. According to Wynter, there wasn’t. Was she right? Did she know from experience? Had she lied?

  “I don’t know,” I whispered.

  “Take my jacket.”

  I shook my head.

  “Take it,” he repeated. “And tell me your name.”

  I could tell him anything—a spin-off of cheeseburger, Wynter, or Mina. Or I could borrow a name from any of the other girls in The Achurdy. But I said, “Tyler.”

  “Tyler…”

  “My parents thought they were having a boy.”

  The way he stared at me made me want to tell him everything. His eyes hadn’t even lightened a little. His jaw was so defined. He had a nose that I was sure had been through a few fights. But his features weren’t what made me speak. It was the feeling he sparked inside me that told me he had a hunger to know more.

  “It’s what they wanted.”

  “I wouldn’t have been upset if I were them.”