by C. R. Jane
Get it together, I admonished myself as I shakily grabbed his tray from the cart I had been pushing and started to nudge it into the cell.
Was I actually sweating? Because it was either that or the temperature in the prison, which always ran freezing, had been turned up about five hundred degrees.
A few minutes later, I was still standing in the same spot in front of the cell, trying to get my raging heartbeat under control, mentally berating myself for the bizarre, deer-in-the-headlights response to the hot prisoner.
Realizing my hands were trembling, I quickly backed away and put them on the cart, desperate for something to hold on to and hoping it would help hide how rattled I was. Taking deep breaths, I attempted to calm myself. A static-electric-like hum started spreading all over my body. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. It was getting stronger the longer I tried to ignore it.
He was still staring at me. He hadn’t bothered to pick up the tray I had pushed into his cell, not that I blamed him for that. I was pretty sure that they served slop to the prisoners in this area. Slop like I was served my first night.
I tried to calm my racing heart, to get myself to move, but the energy engulfing me was overwhelming.
Just breathe. Be casual. For heaven’s sake, don’t stare again! As casually as I could manage, I tried to start walking away. But I couldn’t resist one more look back.
His half-lidded gaze was penetrating. It felt like he could see right through me. All my secrets. My damaged soul. And that scared the crap out of me.
Unable to handle the intensity of this man any longer, my eyes quickly darted away, breaking eye contact, only to land on his mouth. A very kissable mouth. Soft, sculpted lips. I couldn’t help but wonder what they would feel like against mine. Soft and giving, or firm and aggressive?
He smiled, like he knew what I was thinking. His smile only made him more attractive since it softened his features, making him seem less menacing.
Despite everything inside of me that was pushing me to get closer to him, I finally dragged my eyes away and began pushing the cart again, practically running to get away.
It was only my imagination that the guard who was watching me seemed to growl as I passed by. Or that I could feel the prisoner’s gaze on me long after I had left his sight.
I was definitely not going to be bored tonight in my cell. The image of that prisoner wouldn’t be leaving my mind anytime soon.
I ignored the part of me that felt desperate to see him again.
It was a good bet that I would be volunteering to serve this section of the prison again.
Chapter 8
A few days passed, and I had convinced myself that there was no way my reaction to that prisoner had been real. Men that hot didn’t really exist. My mind had obviously been tripping, and I didn’t have the luxury of losing my concentration in a place like this. I needed to forget him.
In passing, Alessia had mentioned a library in the prison. That one word had me buzzing, because it offered my mind a chance to escape. To let the words carry me away, to forget the precarious spot I landed in.
Back home, I read most nights to escape the reality of my world and pretend that even amid the darkest events, somehow, things would work out. Mama often called me naive, but some nights it was the only way to get through the darkness crowding in my head.
Pushing aside those thoughts, I traveled down a long hallway toward the library. Guards stood at one end and more at the end. Cameras followed our every move in this section, a passage that made for an easy spot to ambush someone if left unwatched.
I’d barely been here a few days, and already, I thought about dangerous paths and where it was easy to jump someone. Suffice to say, if I got out of here, I was definitely not going to be the same kind of person as when I’d entered. .
Other inmates brushed past, nudging into my shoulder. Keeping my head low, I moved quickly.
But their eyes were on me... I felt them. Mostly the men, trying to catch my attention. The girls ignored me… for now anyway. But I knew the drill. Once word spread about what I was, the women would toss hate my way. I loathed the jealousy. For one, I couldn’t control the influence I had over others without even trying. Second, what happened to women supporting women?
Swinging right at the end of the long corridor, I followed the sign on the wall toward the library. I stuffed my hands into the pockets of my prison pants and walked briskly down a brightly lit hall. Farther ahead, two enormous wooden doors stood closed, making me feel more of a dwarf in comparison. Snakes were carved into the dark wood, and black door handles waited to be used. A tinge of excitement pooled in my gut at what the library could look like if the doors were anything to go by. Maybe I’d spend every spare moment I was allowed here to pass the next year.
There were no other doors nearby, and the sign pointed this way to the library, so I guessed this was the right place. I remembered that Nightmare had an ability to reveal itself differently to everyone, so it could be just me seeing these impressive doors. Please let the inside be just as stunning. In my mind, I pictured rows and rows of bookshelves made of dark wood, ornate ceilings, and that heavy gothic feel from an old library. I knew I’d be disappointed, but a girl could dream.
Footsteps quickly closed in behind me, and I shuffled aside to let them pass, but so did the echoing steps.
I glanced over my shoulder, my heart beating faster at having someone coming up behind me that quickly.
“Hello, pretty little thing,” a man droned as he leered at me, standing too close for my liking. Hair black as the night was slicked back. His skin and lips pale. Red veins streaked the whites of his eyes. When his mouth parted, fangs slipped out over his lower lip, and he feverishly licked them.
Sickness swirled around in my stomach. It seemed as though I looked straight in the face of a demon, except this was a vampire. Close enough, in my opinion. Except, this vamp looked sick. He twitched and wasn’t blinking at all, and he didn’t have the otherworldly handsomeness that Julian and the rest of his coven had either.
I glanced around to find no guards or cameras. Just me and this sicko. “Look, I’m not interested,” I said shakily.
He lashed out and snatched me by the arms before shoving my back up against the wall. “I never asked if you’re interested.” Drool seeped out from the corner of his mouth.
He stood like a mountain over me, his fingers iron around my arms, holding me in place. As much as panic strangled my chest, I had to use my wits to survive.
I swallowed hard and blinked at him. Then I forced a smile on my lips. Drawing on every inch of bravery I had, I pushed out the sweetest voice. Behind it flowed the surge of my limited power. “I think you should step away from me now.” My voice streamed. Energy pricked down my arms. If I had the power of my song, he’d flinch away in a second.
But the vamp just stood there, dumbfounded and confused like he’d suddenly forgotten the English language. My remaining ability had no influence over this crazed vampire. And I knew then how much shit I’d just landed in… I’d seen this look before.
Starved.
Ravenous.
Deadly.
Fuck!
He was overcome with bloodlust. And nothing could influence a bloodsucker in such a state.
Then… he attacked.
It happened so fast, I couldn’t make sense of it at first.
Claws ripped down my arms, and I screamed.
He twisted one of my arms behind my back. His face shoved so close to mine, I sucked in the smell that lingered around him… That stale scent. Then he hurled me across the hall, and I was flying, my scream rushing past my lips. I hit the wall with the back of my head and somehow managed to stay on my feet as stars danced in my vision.
Fear flared over me. The fiend whipped in my direction, all craze-eyed and wild. I wasn’t a fighter, but my fists clenched. He barreled into me, his face smacking with me. I accidentally bit into my lower lip, ripping it open as I fell and hit t
he ground fast and hard. I barely had time to react.
I writhed against him, punched and kicked. Panic swallowed me. All I cared about was getting him off him. But when his hand clasped over my throat and pinned me down, dread closed in around me.
Jerking my head up, all I saw was this monster and my death in his eyes. I never stopped fighting while my lungs yelled for oxygen.
Darkness surged through me, growing, festering like a virus.
I knew things would be horrendous in prison. I knew I’d be in danger. But I wasn’t ready for this. I’d at least expected guards to be around 24/7, and for the prisoners who were truly dangerous—like this one—to be kept in their cages.
His body was heavy on top of mine, and he made this disgusting hissing sound. Releasing his chokehold, he wrenched my head to the side, exposing my neck.
The predator pinning me down bared his teeth.
Terror collided with me about what would come next.
I went ballistic, fighting him as best I could. Thrashing against him, I screamed.
In a flash, he was flung off me.
I scrambled backwards, my brain and body numb of feelings. Crouching against the wall, I stared up bewildered. A guard dressed in black and wearing a hood wrenched the vampire away by the scruff of his neck. But the fuckhead swung around and launched at the guard.
They broke into a vicious battle, hitting the ground hard. Arms. Legs. Punches. Snarls.
My heart raced while my head swayed. I’d never seen a guard fight with his bare hands before. They always used weapons.
Rolling on the ground, the guard straddled the vampire before slamming fist after fist into his face. He was unstoppable, moving with supernatural speed. What exactly was he that he could overpower a blood starved vampire so easily?
The loud snap of bones reverberated from the fight. Next thing, the vampire was flung across the hall. He slammed into the wall and crashed down to the floor. Unmoving. Was he dead?
I could only hope.
I sucked in sharp, ragged breaths, my eyes glued to the guard.
He lifted his chin in my direction, the hood he wore now pushed off his head. Shadows danced over his face… I somehow knew that this was the guard who had been with me earlier during my food delivery to the maximum security sections.
Except staring at him now, able to see his face, a familiarity struck me. I’d seen him somewhere else too.
“Did that fucking rat bite you?” he asked in a deep baritone voice that left me buzzing.
I shook my head mechanically and blinked at him, studying his strong features, striking cheekbones, dark hair messy like he’d just dragged himself out of bed. Striking haunted green eyes met mine, and something in my mind clicked.
Oh. Fuck. I did remember him. It couldn’t be.
A gasp fell past my lips. “Keon?”
Fuck!
The last time I saw him was at the bar on my last night of freedom. It felt like a lifetime ago, even though it had just been a few weeks.
I lost my breath. And all I could picture was him pulling out his large cock before he took me up against the wall in the stairwell.
He didn’t speak right away but stared at me like he waited for me to get over my shock. Except, my heart was plunging right through me.
Then he laughed, eyes wrinkling at the corners when he did. “You remember me now?” That deep sexy voice drew me out of my frozen state, and I frowned at him.
I felt all the blood drain from my face. I wasn’t supposed to ever see him again. He was my one-night stand, the man who took what I refused to give Julian and didn’t ask questions. And now, he was in this prison with me and had just saved me from a crazed vampire.
His body slid closer to me, his large presence making me aware of how much smaller I was next to him without my heels. I was no fool to ignore how incredibly built and stunning he looked in his crisp dark uniform. How those broad shoulders slanted down to a narrow waist, how my mind kept flashing back to our first encounter at the bar.
I’d had sex with this stranger, and now he stared at me like he pictured me bent over with my skirt shoved up to my waist.
My cheeks burned… in fact, my whole damn body burned, now that I really paid attention to him.
“All that blood on you suits you,” he said nonchalantly. “It brings out your eyes.”
I glared at him, wiping the back of my hand across my busted lip. Nerves clung to me. “You often pick up girls covered in blood?”
That stunning grin split his mouth, his white teeth on show. The corners of his mouth curled upward deviously. “If I remember right, you did the picking up.”
Sweat collected at the small of my back, my pulse pumping fast through my veins. Suddenly, I was breathing hard like I had been back at the bar before we had sex. That anticipation of being with him left me burning up with heat again. My gaze fell to his full lips, remembering them on me. A tingle zapped through me and dove to the deepest pit in my stomach. All I could picture was me pinned to the wall, my legs wrapped around his hips. Maybe it was pathetic to think that was the hottest sex when he’d been my first and I had no one to compare to. There’s no way it was really as good as I remembered.
I shook my head free of the fog, coming back to where I was and who stood in front of me. “You work here?” I felt stupid the moment the words fell past my lips. I sighed. “Well, of course you work here. Look at you in that uniform.” My eyes slid over how his clothes fit perfectly over that sexy body I wished I’d spent more time exploring in the stairwell. I was burning up just remembering our time.
“How’d you end up in here?” Up close, he studied me as if searching for something on my face and neck.
I tilted my head back, chin high. “What are you looking for?” On purpose I ignored his question, not ready to talk about my shitshow of a life that led to me being dumped in this place.
“Looking for cuts and bites,” he answered. “Vampires tend to go for major arteries on your neck for quick access to fresh flowing blood.” He gently pushed the strands of hair off my face and over my shoulders. Soft hands traced my neck. His thumbs stroked the length of my collarbone, feather soft, leaving me trembling under his touch. There was something intimate and almost dominating about the way he searched my neck.
I sucked in a breath at his touch, trying to steady the desire coiling tight in my gut. “Thanks for saving me.” I pointed my chin in the vampire’s direction and drew away from Keon’s reach before I did something insane like asking him for a repeat of the scene in the stairwell. “You killed him, didn’t you?”
He was shaking his head, then tapped something in his ear before calling in the incident and requesting back up for collection of the vampire.
A wave of dizziness flared through my head, and I used the wall at my back to hold myself upright. The whole time, I couldn’t stop staring at the sharpness of the angles on Keon’s face. His eyes were such a deep green, they looked like a meadow after a storm. Add to that, a touch of something hiding behind his gaze I couldn’t decipher.
When he turned his attention completely toward me, offering me a cocky grin, I stiffened. I refused to let him see the impact he had on me. I huffed and blew an upward breath to send the bangs off my brow into a flutter. I put just enough frustration in my action to appear bored and unimpressed by his presence. In truth, I wished the world would crack open and swallow me whole, so I could just run away and hide.
The things I’d let him do to me in the stairwell had fire climbing up my neck. “Well, I better be off then.” Evidently, I wouldn’t be making it to the library today.
I couldn’t move fast enough when the world started to tilt around me. On the inside, I was a complete mess of bad luck and decisions. But I’d been taught early on the importance of concealing my real emotions, so I schooled my face.
“You’re bleeding,” he said before I could get more than a few steps away.
“I’ll be fine.” I brushed it off, then looked down at
my arms where rivulets of blood rolled down to my fingertips from where my attacker scraped his claws down my arms. Shit!
My head whirred, the motion sending me into a tumble toward the wall.
Strong arms looped around my waist and drew me back. “I got you.” Keon pressed my back flush against his solid chest. “You’re not going anywhere,” he whispered in my ear, his breath dancing on my cheek.
My insides were melting from being so close to him.
“You keep saving me,” I murmured, my head blurry and thoughts a jumbled mess, but I wriggled out of his embrace. “That’s three times now.”
Next thing I knew, he whisked me into his arms and cradled me against his chest. The whole hall twirled, and I clasped onto his tailored uniform jacket to make my head stop moving.
“Everything’s spinning,” I murmured.
“I’m going to say you hit your head and lost quite a bit of blood,” he explained.
He walked with me in his arms down the hall, just as two guards stormed past us and toward the vampire.
“Three times, hey?” Keon repeated. “I only counted two.”
Thinking straight was close to impossible with the lightheaded sensation settling over me. I pressed myself closer to Keon, his arms tight around me, not letting me go. On the way out of the hallway, I closed my eyes and tried to settle my pounding heart. With each inhale, I just breathed in his masculine and woodsy scent. Its familiarity calmed me. As strange as it sounded, his presence offered me something I missed terribly. A connection to the outside world. A reminder I wasn’t one of the monsters here. Someone to just hold onto and pretend everything would somehow be alright.
“At the bar,” I finally answered his earlier question. “The third time you saved me was at the bar.”
“Ah, yes, with that older man hitting on you.”
That wasn’t what I had meant, but I just let him believe it. Thoughts were too tangled in my mind to explain anything right then.
We traveled in silence for a long while, and I let myself soften against him, pretending I wasn’t in prison.
