Their limp dicks would never touch her, at least not while I was there. I’d get my ass kicked every day and end up in the hole for the rest of my life before I let it happen.
The COs were dirty, hiding behind their badges to get away with everything. The fight club, the mistreatment of the inmates who didn’t deserve it, I’d seen it all over the last ten years, but I wouldn’t think twice about beating one of those fuckers to death if it came to the mistreatment of Lyla.
On the days she worked, she’d pass my cell. I’d stand at the bars and watch her openly. Most of the inmates did. I hated the tenseness in her shoulders and the way she’d hug herself as she walked down the block.
I’d hear the vile things the inmates would say to her and I’d grip the bars with white knuckles, wishing I could shut them up with my fists.
I knew in the back of my mind that it wouldn’t be long before I snapped again. Before I went mentally crazy and ripped one of the COs or inmates to shreds. It was all because of her. I wanted her to stay, but she needed to go. I couldn’t take the chance that I would kill someone. Fighting them and breaking a nose here or there was okay, but murdering was deeper. I wasn’t sure I could do it again. I didn’t think I could handle taking another life.
THE SUDDEN STING of alcohol brushing against the scrape on my elbow brought me out of my thoughts. Luckily for me, Dr. Giles was busy when I was brought into the infirmary and even though I knew she didn’t want to, Lyla had to tend to me.
It caught me off guard, and I hissed at the sting. It wasn’t often I showed my pain, and that was obvious in her expression when she looked up at me.
“Really? After everything you’ve been in here for, you’re going to show pain for a little scrape like this?” she asked.
The side of her mouth lifted in a semblance of a smile, and it made me feel lighter.
I didn’t respond. Instead, I focused on keeping my hands to myself as she continued to clean me up. It was hard work not to reach out and finger her hair or cheek, to fill my hands with her tits and ass. It took a lot to not run my knuckle over her fair skin and touch her soft lips.
I was a dead man for sure. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep it up while living inside my head with the new nurse.
She looked up into my face, looking for more signs of pain, but I didn’t flinch again. The last time was a fluke. You didn’t feel pain when you were already dead inside, and I’d been dead for the last ten years.
Most of the fights I’d gotten into were nothing. It was just me trying to show everyone that I could protect myself. I hated the fighting. Hated everything about it. The men fought me hard, punching me when I gave them a chance, but these days, I didn’t even feel their hits anymore. I didn’t feel anything except for when I was with Lyla. Maybe that was why I was becoming addicted to her.
She was a drug. She made me high, and I waited every day for another hit of her. Closing my eyes, I breathed her in as I listened to Prichard, the inmate I’d fought, bitching on the other side of the infirmary.
“The motherfucker broke my nose, Doc!” he yelled.
I grinned to myself when Lyla turned away to take a blood-soaked gauze to the red Hazmat bag. The mouthy fucker deserved it. He should’ve known better than to come at me. It wasn’t my fault he’d found out his wife was fucking another dude on the outside, and he should’ve known I wasn’t going to back down when he decided to take his anger out on the person in front of him in the chow line.
When she came back into my curtained space with the doctor, he looked over my cuts and then told the COs to return me to my cell.
Thank fuck. One more time I’d gotten away with it without being put in the hole. I knew my chances were running slim.
The COs nudged me to my feet and then escorted me out. The loud doors shut behind me, and we began walking down the block toward my cell.
“Damn, man, she was looking hot today. Her ass is begging for my dick. I’d like to bend her sweet ass over and show her what a real man can do,” Officer Parks said as if I were deaf and couldn’t hear him.
He reached down and adjusted his balls, making anger and disgust roll through my gut.
“No shit,” Officer Stone agreed. “I want to shove my dick down her throat and make the bitch face fuck me. I swear, if I ever get her alone in a dark place somewhere around here…” He chuckled. “Some place where they’ll never hear her screams.”
And just like that, I was done.
My face fell, and the anger that was simmering in my stomach exploded. It filled me, rushing through my veins like hot lava and heating them to a dangerous point.
There was once a nurse who accused Officer Stone of rape, but nothing ever came from it. Instead, she’d lost her job and I’d never seen her again.
When I thought of them doing those things to Lyla, I could feel myself losing control. My body began to shake, and, without realizing it, I began to pull at the restraints holding my hands together.
“I say we tag team that ass. No one would believe her with both of us saying she’s a liar.”
They laughed, and I snapped.
The room around me faded away, and all I saw was red. I turned on them, pulling away from them with a growl and making them step back in surprise. They grabbed for their batons. They knew pepper spray wouldn’t work on me. It’d been used on me too many times already.
I reached for Officer Stone, my cuffed hands going around his slim neck, and I didn’t even feel it when Officer Parks began to beat me in the back unmercifully with his baton.
Stone’s face turned red as I choked the life out of him. When I couldn’t take the aggravation of Parks hitting me anymore, I turned on him. I yanked the baton from his hands and beat him, each hit releasing some of the anger within.
In the distance, I heard the alarms ringing and the other inmates in their cells egging me on, but I pushed it all out of my mind. Instead, I continued to beat the two officers until they were on the ground at my feet.
Their faces morphed into one bloody mass, but I didn’t stop… I couldn’t stop. The monster had been freed, and he was hungry for revenge and chaos.
I felt arms on me, pulling at me, trying to stop me, but I turned and pushed them away. It wasn’t until one of the COs struck me in the nuts that I was brought to my knees.
I gazed up, seeing several COs standing around me before they all moved to attack. It didn’t matter that I’d stopped beating Stone and Parks. I’d attacked two of their own… and that meant I was in for the worse ass beating of my life.
They all beat me at the same time, their fists and batons hitting me everywhere until I was flat on the concrete floor. I felt my skin splitting, old wounds opening, and I could smell the blood all around me.
Flashes of the past rumbled through my mind. The murders—the dead eyes that stared back at me after I’d mutilated their bodies. Sarah.
“Come on, boy!” one of the COs yelled. “Let’s see you fight back now.”
Soon, I didn’t feel their hits anymore. I just felt the pressure of their blows against my head and back. Until, finally, I began to get dizzy. The roar of the inmates filled my ears as the bars that held them back shifted and blurred.
I knew it wouldn’t be long before I was out cold. The last thing I saw before everything went black was the butt of a baton coming straight for my face.
CHAPTER 8
LYLA
TEN MINUTES AFTER the alarms went off, the room filled with chaos. Two COs were brought in, beaten half to death, and Dr. Giles was on the phones calling for an emergency transport.
Officer Parks was unrecognizable, and Officer Stone’s pulse was weak. I rushed to their sides, administering everything I could to keep them alive. The door opened again, and then they were bringing in the inmate who’d beat them.
I couldn’t see his face through all the blood, but I knew by his physique that it was X.
He really was the monster everyone claimed. I’d softened to him over the few w
eeks that I’d been working there. I’d even considered the fact that everyone was wrong about him, but apparently, I was the one who was wrong. So freaking wrong.
He’d beaten two COs almost to death with his bare hands and their own batons while he was shackled and cuffed. I wouldn’t have thought it possible if I hadn’t seen the two officers with my own two eyes.
“What the hell happened?” Officer Douglas asked when a group of COs came in with blood spatter all over their uniforms.
“He fell down the stairs. Lots and lots of stairs,” an officer panted, clearly out of breath from bringing the beast better known as X down.
Obviously, they’d beaten X, but rather than say that and deal with reports and all the craziness, they were all going to agree he’d fallen down the stairs. It was like watching a messed-up prison movie.
“We came in, and he was beating Parks and Stone. I’ve never seen anything like it. Then he just ran. We pursued, but he got caught up on a set of stairs,” another officer agreed with the first. “Poor bastard. It’s not like he had anywhere he could run to.”
Officer Douglas looked at them suspiciously since obviously, they were lying, but then he shook his head and placed his hands on his hips.
“Go put in a report,” he said.
He looked my way and shrugged. We were both shocked. I could tell by the look on his face. X fought, we knew that considering he was in the infirmary all the time, but it was still unlike him to snap on the COs. He was escalating… fast.
The other COs cleared the room, leaving me in the infirmary with two dying officers and the monster who’d tried to kill them. We ran IVs for the officers and prepared them for transport, and once the ambulance came, Dr. Giles called the hospital to warn them ahead of time.
During all this, X was out cold in a bed, waiting to be checked. One minute, everything was moving fast and the next, it was slow. After the COs were done, I found myself standing over X, watching his deep breaths move his hard chest up and down.
Slowly, I peeled his bloody uniform away from his body, reminding myself every few seconds that no matter how beautiful he was, he was evil. It wasn’t hard because every time I closed my eyes, I saw the officers’ faces in my mind.
I cleaned him up, putting more stitches in his body and checking for any signs of internal bleeding. He was badly beaten, bruised from head to toe, but honestly, what had he expected? He needed to learn that he couldn’t go around beating on people. As bad as it sounded, I was starting to think that he had gotten exactly what he deserved.
Once Dr. Giles and I finished checking him over and taking his vitals, I sat beside his bed and kept watch as I filled out some paperwork. All the while, I tried to process what had just happened. The images of the beaten officers were flashing throughout my mind.
My head spun with the onslaught of grotesque pictures. My mind flipped from X, to Officer Stone, back to X, and then to Officer Parks. Constant back and forth, like my body was swaying in a rowboat. Not long after, my raging headache began. Thankfully, the infirmary remained quiet for the rest of the day. I went home that night and collapsed on my bed, falling in a deep, coma-like sleep.
X WAS AWAKE when I returned the following day for my next shift. Staying away from him as much as I could, I even avoided eye contact. I couldn’t look at him, but this time, it wasn’t because of the severe attraction I felt for him. I was angry for being deceived. I was beginning to think he was a somewhat decent guy, and then he went and did something so monstrous that I couldn’t look at him the same.
We received word that the two officers were expected to make a full recovery, which was good news, but when Dr. Giles told X that information, he didn’t flinch.
How could a person be so cold about another person’s life? Was it really that easy for him to discard their lives like trash? The very thought disgusted me, and it repulsed me more that I was naive enough to think he was simply misunderstood. It wasn’t something I even wanted to comprehend.
I’d just returned from my lunch break when Dr. Giles asked me to please change X’s bandages. I didn’t want to, but I didn’t have much choice. I had to uncuff him and remove his restraints before I could remove his old bandages and clean his wounds, but as I did so, I felt his heated stare all over my face.
“You’re ignoring me.” He stated the obvious. “You’re angry with me.”
He never initiated conversation. I considered not responding, but I was so mad I couldn’t help myself.
“Ya think?” I spat sarcastically.
At that, he did something that angered me even more. He grinned. The sick bastard had the audacity to smile at me.
“You think this is funny, Christopher? You think you can just go around and beat people within an inch of their lives, and nothing’s supposed to happen to you?” I asked rhetorical questions. I didn’t want or expect his answers. “Well, you can’t.” I cut him off before he could even think about answering. “You got exactly what you deserved.”
I knew the minute his entire body tensed that I’d pushed too far. It wasn’t my job to punish the inmates. It was my job to nurse them back to health and send them on their way.
His eyes darkened, his brows pulling down into an angry expression. It was then that I realized I was there, standing over a dangerous murder, and he wasn’t cuffed or shackled. There I was chastising a man who could reach up and choke the life out of me for being a bitch to him.
Quickly, I scanned the room for the COs in case I needed to scream for them. And when X lifted his arm to scratch the back of his neck, I flinched as if he were about to hit me.
His expression shifted from anger to rage, and his lips tightened. He moved closer, tugging me into his space with soft hands. My breath stopped as my imagination went wild with all the vile and terrible things he could do to me, but instead, his eyes softened and dipped to my lips when I licked them nervously.
“Lyla, I would never put my hands on you. Never. Do you believe that?” he asked.
My breath hitched when his unique scent swarmed all around me. It was strange to hear him say my name in such a personal manner, and the way he said it knocked me off my game. He was begging me with his eyes to trust him, but I couldn’t do that.
I didn’t believe him. He was a dangerous criminal—a liar—a manipulator. Dr. Giles had warned me about the inmates, and I couldn’t forget that. They lied. They cheated. They killed. I worked in a penitentiary—not in a jail full of men with minor offenses. A maximum-security penitentiary full of murders and rapist—the lowest of the low—the most evil people on earth—and Christopher Jacobs was among them.
“No,” I whispered, earning myself a scowl from the giant. “I don’t trust you. You’re a murderer and a liar.”
He released me and I pulled away quickly, gathering as much space as possible between the two of us.
Something that resembled hurt moved over his expression before his mask slipped back into place. Cold and calculated—sinister. “Good,” he said sternly. “You might survive this place after all.” Lying back, he turned away from me.
Stepping away, I backed into the curtain behind me, and then I left his space and went straight for the supply closet to get away. I needed to breathe, and I couldn’t do that whenever X was anywhere near me.
CHAPTER 9
LYLA
I ENJOYED MY four days off, spending time cleaning my apartment and catching up on laundry at the local laundry mat. Diana conned me into going to her place for dinner and movies, and I opened up to her about some of the things affecting me at work.
She had a thing about men in uniforms, so I told her about the officers. I told her about Officer Douglas, aka Duggie, and explained how he was the nicest CO in the place. Even though I trusted him, I had a hard time trusting the others.
We talked about a few of the inmates. I told her about X and how he was constantly in the infirmary. When she asked what he looked like, I explained without actually revealing how gorgeous he was.
>
“Sweetie, can I say something without you thinking I’m totally fucked up in the head?” she asked before hiding her face behind her massive wineglass.
I laughed. “Sure, but I already know you’re fucked up in the head.”
“That’s the truth. Okay, so this X character you’re going on about sounds fuckable.” She grinned.
“Oh my God, you didn’t just say that.” I shook my head and took another sip of my red wine.
“Yes, honey, I did. Look, I know you’re not really into the hardcore stuff, but he sounds like he could put a serious fucking on a bitch.” She sat her glass down on the table in front of her with a clink. “All I’m saying is I’d like to be that bitch.”
Obviously, she’d had too much wine, but I couldn’t help but shake my head. I didn’t bother mentioning the fact I’d been thinking some of the same things before he went all crazy and tried to kill two of our COs.
“Just think, Lyla, he’s been locked up without pussy for ten years. Could you imagine what he’d do in the sack? Just thinking about what he’d do to my lovely lady makes her drool.”
Covering my face, I laughed. “Your lovely lady? Seriously, Di?”
“Yes. She’s lovely, and she likes it rough.”
Spending the night out with Diana was just what I needed. She was completely unhinged, but she knew how to let her hair down and have a good time. That was exactly what I needed after an extremely stressful four days in the infirmary.
WHEN I WENT back to work, X was still in the infirmary. It was the longest he’d had to stay since I started working at Fulton.
Tossing my jacket over the back of the chair, I went straight to work on the paperwork and kept my eyes away from the part of the room I knew he was. I didn’t want to look at him for two reasons. One was because of what he’d done to the two officers, and the other was because I knew every time I looked at him, I’d think about what Diana said. I knew I’d picture him on top of me, pumping like madman and growling like beast.
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