by Sophia Gray
He rubbed his lips against them first, then brought his head forward, taking them in his mouth. His tongue slid against them as he savored her.
“How do I taste?” she teased.
“You're so sweet, Beth...you taste so good...”
Beth giggled, withdrawing her hand from him. She kicked off her shoes and pulled her pants down, shoving them aside. She wished she could take everything off for him—she wanted to let him enjoy the sight of her naked body, the way she'd enjoyed his while he showered. But what they were doing was already risky enough, and if there was any chance of it happening again while they were both in here, she knew she'd have to minimize their chances of being caught.
She climbed onto the bed carefully, trying not to move it around too much in case it jangled his broken ribs. She knew she'd have to do most of the work, given his injuries and restraints.
That was fine with her.
She positioned herself over Hank, straddling him. Her hands caressed his shoulders, but she tried not to put too much of her weight forward onto him. She could feel his cock quivering between her thighs, brushing against her soaked panties. In a perfect world, she would take her time, tantalizing him, relishing this moment.
But this wasn't a perfect world. This was Bluebonnet, and if she wanted him, she knew she'd have to have him quickly.
She pulled the narrow strip of fabric aside to expose her pussy and lowered herself onto him, feeling him push up into her like a rocket ship propelling itself into the atmosphere. He gasped, his body tightening under her in a spasm of ecstasy. Even broken and chained down, he still seemed to have so much power behind him as he drove himself upward hungrily.
She pushed herself down onto him more insistently until their hips were locked together, thrusting up and down in a single, perfect rhythm. The sounds of their heavy breathing filled the room, and Beth resisted the urge to cry out. Even here, in this place of violence and misery, she realized that she was still feeling the most intense pleasure of her life. She felt all of the fear and hopelessness drain from her, replaced with something pure and radiant and lovely.
The lips of her pussy flexed and clenched around his shaft. Her clit was throbbing so hard she felt like she might burst into flames at any moment, dissolving into a pile of ashes only to be reborn again and again, like a phoenix.
She'd saved him.
And now he was saving her.
Beth heard a low, sensual growl deep in Hank's throat, and she felt his climax just moments before her own. As they drenched each other in sweat and passion, Beth grabbed one of Hank's pillows and pressed it against her face, letting it mute her screams until she felt drained and delirious.
She dismounted quickly, buttoning up her shirt and pulling her pants back on.
“Stay,” Hank said. His voice was neutral, but his eyes implored her. She loved the way he looked at her now. It was as though he was truly seeing her for the first time—not as Bib's tag-along niece, not as a convenient distraction from his grief, and not as some new problem he needed to deal with while he was in Bluebonnet.
He was looking at her like someone who wanted—needed—to be with her.
“I wish I could,” she replied, kissing him on the forehead. “But don't worry. I'll be back as soon as I can.”
And with that, she left, her thighs still trembling happily at the memory of his body between them.
Chapter 25
Beth
Beth parked in front of her apartment complex. Before she got out, she removed her cell phone from her purse and hit a button to light up the screen, in case anyone was watching. Then she typed a quick message, stepped out of the car, held the phone up over her head, and cleared her throat.
“Butler, if you or any of your dickheads are here waiting for me, you should know I just typed out a text to 9-1-1,” she announced loudly. “I guarantee I'll be able to hit the button before you take me down, and then the cops will know exactly whose door to come knocking on. Now, do you want to come at me, or do you want to fuck off? I'll wait.”
She looked around, waiting for them to emerge from the shadows and attack her. No one did.
A boy and a girl—both young enough to be in the early years of grade school—were playing with dolls and action figures in front of one of the other buildings. They looked at her, wide-eyed.
“Lady, you just said a swear,” the boy said.
“Two of them,” the girl chimed in solemnly. “The D-word and the F-word. My mommy told me that it's bad to say those words.”
Beth chuckled to herself ruefully. “Your mommy's right.”
“Then why did you say them, then?” the girl asked, tilting her head.
“Because I make lots of bad decisions. So listen to your mommy, okay? Don't be like me. I suck.”
The boy gasped. “Now she's said the S-word.”
“That's not the S-word, stupid,” the girl replied prissily. “I know what the S-word is. I've heard it lots of times.”
They returned to their toys, dispassionately arguing over which of them was more stupid.
Beth shook her head, proceeding to the front door of the complex. She wondered if either of the kids had ever seen the inside of a prison. She hoped not. She hoped they never would. She hoped they'd stay young forever, and never make the kinds of awful choices she and Hank had made to get where they were today.
When she stepped into the first-floor hallway, she awkwardly unlocked her mail box with one hand, keeping the phone in her other hand. The box was mostly crammed with junk mail, but there was a folded blue post-it note on top of the heap. She took it out and opened it, immediately recognizing Bib's handwriting: “Don't Freak Out – I'm In Your Apt. -B.”
I'm starting to feel like I'm in a spy movie, Beth thought. Fake IDs, secret messages...
She left the junk mail in the box so she could keep her phone at the ready as she went up the stairs to her apartment. When she tried the door, it was unlocked. She put the phone in sleep mode and slipped it back into her pocket, walking in.
Bib was sitting in the dark again, waiting for her. “Did you get my note?”
“I did. Thank you. At this point, I think another surprise like last time would take about twenty years off my life.”
Bib nodded, pulling a creased envelope from the back pocket of his jeans. “Everything's taken care of. I set you up under the name 'Elizabeth Laszlo.' You've got a birth certificate, Social Security number, driver's license, the whole deal. Should hold up to scrutiny, as long as you don't try running for office or anything. Now come on, let's get you over to Nebraska. I got in touch with some guys out there in McCook—they'll keep an eye on you, make sure you stay safe.”
Beth hesitated, thinking of everything that had happened that day.
“What the hell's wrong?” Bib asked. “I said come on, let's go. The sooner we're on the road, the sooner you can get settled into your new place and put all this crap behind you.”
“I can't do it,” she answered quietly.
“You can, and you will. I don't know where this shit's coming from, but you gotta know I'm not gonna let my niece stick around here when her life's in danger.”
“I'm not the only one in danger, Bib. Hank is too, and so are the rest of the Warriors in Bluebonnet. I can't just run away from them. Not when I can still help them.”
“There's nothing you can do for them by staying,” Bib insisted. “I keep telling you, they're tough guys. Until I figure out a way to get shit under control again, they can look after themselves.”
“You're wrong. I saved Hank's life today. The Aryans set him up to get killed by the Sinners in the showers, and I fought them off. All four of them. If it weren't for me, he'd be dead now.”
Bib let out a low whistle. “Jesus. Really? Four of them? All by yourself?”
“Damn right. And tomorrow I'll take on fourteen, or forty, or four hundred, or however many more of those assholes they send after him. What I won't do is leave Hank to be butchered, with no
one there to look after him. So if you want to try to carry me out of here and toss me in your trunk like you said before, hey, take your shot. I already put down four guys as big as you today, so I like my odds.”
Bib let out a long sigh which ended in a weary laugh. “Goddamn. You are just like your mother was, you know that? Same damn mouth on you, with a spine of solid steel to back it up. But please, I'm begging you, okay? Don't do this. Don't make me stand by and watch you die. Not when all this shit is my fault to begin with. Let me make it right.”
“If I were one of the guys in the club, you wouldn't talk to me like this,” Beth said. “If I were your Sergeant-at-Arms and I told you this was something I had to do, you'd respect that and you wouldn't try to talk me out of it.”
“But you ain't no Sergeant-at-Arms.”
“No, I'm not. I'm the one who protected Hank while your Sergeant-at-Arms stood aside with his thumb up his ass because some Nazi told him to.”
Bib pinched the bridge of his nose, frustrated. “At least tell me you've got a plan.”
“Right now, my plan is to keep Hank alive and safe. I was trying to come up with a way to help him escape, but so far, I haven't thought of anything that will work. There are too many guards and cameras on every entrance and exit. There has to be a way, though. And if I come up with one, I'll need another set of fake papers from you for Hank to use.”
“Okay, but you'd better think of something fast. This open-ended shit doesn't sit well with me, and the longer you're there, the more the noose is gonna tighten around your neck.”
“Believe me, I don't want to be in that fuckhole for a minute longer than I need to,” Beth assured him. “As soon as I see any opening at all, Hank and I are gone. How about you? Have you thought of anything?”
Bib's face tightened almost imperceptibly. “Not yet.”
Beth could see how hard it was for him to admit this—how powerless he felt. She kissed him on the cheek. “I love you, Uncle Bib.”
“I love you too, Bethie. And I can see how much you love Hank, too. If you guys make it out of there alive, I hope you get a chance to show him how much. Now get some rest. I've got a couple of the guys outside to keep an eye on the place in case Butler or his guys show up.”
“Really? I didn't see any Warriors out there.”
Bib winked. “See? That's how good they are.”
They embraced, and Bib left. Beth took off her clothes and slipped into bed, grateful for the chance to finally rest after a day of extreme emotional and physical stress. She was so tired that she felt like she could sleep for two weeks straight.
But each time she started to doze off, she felt an intense pressure on her bladder and ended up running to the bathroom to pee. The first few times annoyed her—she couldn't stop watching the hours tick by on the clock, counting off how much time she had left before she'd have to get up and go back into work. Still, she supposed it was probably a nervous reaction to everything she'd been through that day.
Then, when she came back to bed after the fourth bathroom trip, she noticed a few spots of blood on the sheet where she'd been lying down.
She realized she hadn't been keeping track of her periods for the past few months. She'd been too worried about Hank after he'd been arrested, and then she'd been too busy completing her training as a corrections officer, and then she'd been too stressed about taking orders from Bull, and then, and then...
Beth sat down hard on the bed, thinking about the faces of the children outside and wondering if she was about to have one of her own. The thought seemed distant, unreal, especially in the middle of everything else she was dealing with—like a flying saucer suddenly appearing over a battlefield.
She'd need to take a test the next day. She'd need to be sure.
But if it turned out that she was pregnant, what then?
Chapter 26
Hank
After a night in the infirmary's secure room, Hank was sent back to his cell. Bluebonnet's resources were limited, and usually, anyone who was injured seriously enough to stay for more than a day was shipped off to a secure wing in a regular hospital until they healed.
Hank winced with each step forward, his ribs aching furiously. His nose and arm were still bandaged, and since prisoners weren't given painkillers once they left the infirmary—out of fear that they'd use them as currency—they still stung and throbbed. But he'd fought his way through plenty of pain before, and he was sure he'd be able to this time, too.
If one of his fellow inmates didn't kill him first, of course.
As he stepped out into the prison yard during rec time, Ram approached him with a big smile. “Hank, you're alive! Thank God, man. When we heard what happened to you in the showers, we feared the worst. If only you'd done the little thing Bull asked of you instead of acting like some kind of hardass, we could've been there to protect you.”
Hank rolled his eyes. Christ, even that made his face hurt. “What the fuck do you want, Ram?”
Ram pulled his shirt up for a second, flashing a shiv tucked into his waistband. “To give you a chance to square things with Bull, dude. You've gotta know that none of this shit was personal. Hell, Bull wasn't even gonna let those Sinners snuff you—he told Butler to come back after they'd cut you a little, just to teach you a lesson.”
“Four of them, one of me, and one of them had a blade. I'm curious, how many minutes did Bull tell Butler to wait? What's the equation on that one? Sounds like a real exact science.”
“Hey, believe what you want, but Bull still says you're too valuable an asset to waste if we can help it. We just need you to get with the program, that's all. We can't have you jumping bad in here, thinking you're too good for the likes of us. It makes us look like we can't handle our shit. But if you whack a couple of the Sinners—and I mean really fuck them up, like a total bloodbath—you'll be on Bull's good side again, and you'll have our full protection.”
“Bull still thinks he can send a message to the Sinners that way?” Hank asked. “He really thinks that'll scare them off? It was a dumb plan when he first came up with it, and it's a dumb plan now. Not interested.”
Ram sighed. “Fucking incorrigible, ain't you? Everything's got to be the hard way with you. Okay. But you should know that your girlfriend D'Amato won't always be there to watch your ass. We've got plenty of ways to take her out of the picture, if it comes to that. And the next time you get taken to the shower, it'll just be you and a bunch of Sinners pummeling you. Think it over. You've got until after lunch to change your mind.”
Hank did think it over as he ate his lunch alone in the cafeteria, but no bright ideas came to him. He knew Ram wasn't wrong—he'd gotten lucky yesterday when Beth intervened, but Bull could work lots of different angles to make sure he didn't get that lucky again.
Part of him wished he could just shrug, take the damn shiv, and end a couple of the Sinners to dig himself out of this hole, if only temporarily. He wouldn't exactly be taking an innocent life—there was a reason they were called the “Nation of Sinners,” after all. Most of them were in here for violent crimes of one kind or another.
But that was part of what bothered him. He was in Bluebonnet for a violent crime too. Did that make him a fair target if someone else needed to get in good with their gang? Sure, maybe the Sinner he picked would be doing time for cold-blooded murders. But what if it was just some jerk like him, who stomped someone who needed to be stomped and found himself in this place?
For that matter, what if the target he chose wasn't in here for anything violent? What if he was just some low-level drug dealer from the projects who was trying to feed his family and got put away for his trouble? The Warriors had sold plenty of drugs in their time. It wasn't a capital offense.
Or what if it was some unlucky loser like Raheem, who was only in here because he'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time?
So if he made the decision to execute these guys, could he live with it? Probably not. And if he could, he'd probably still
be caught, tried, convicted, and maybe even sentenced to lethal injection.
And if none of that happened, he'd still be Bull's errand boy. And he'd be goddamned if he'd take orders from Nazis, no matter what the consequences to him personally.
But what about the consequences to Beth? his mind whispered urgently. You can stand tall and be brave all you want, but you know they'll take it out on her. They want her to fall in line as much as they want you to—having another guard on their payroll would be a huge asset to them—but eventually, you know they'll find ways to punish her.
Hank shook his head, trying to clear it. Every time his brain tried to find a way out of this predicament, the snare around it seemed to draw tighter and tighter. When they'd been together yesterday, Beth told him they'd find a way out of this together, and he trusted her. She was smarter and braver than he'd ever imagined she could be.
