Prisoner (Criminals & Captives #1)(11)

The sessions go by quickly. Griffin’ll be doing a piece on a collection of beer mugs he was given by an elderly neighbor. I encourage Teke to get deeper into the experience of the day his dad got out of prison. A few of them talk about becoming fathers. It makes me feel a little bad about the way I thought about dumping this project.

Grayson’s last. He takes his chair, casually crossing his ankles like tree trunks between us, settling his hands onto his thighs. His heat fills the space. How does the prison even hold him?

I smile nervously and cast my eyes to the other side of the space, where Dixon halfheartedly watches over the guys. Still, it makes me feel better, knowing he’s there.

He’d protect me if anything happened. Wouldn’t he?

I look back to find Grayson’s sharp eyes twinkling, lashes dark and thick, all that knowing allure. My breath speeds up, and my hand flies to my glasses as if to adjust them even though they’re perfectly straight. Sometimes I just need to do that.

“Let’s see.” I shuffle the papers, finding his. For a second my gaze strays over to the corded muscles of his forearms, brushed with a smattering of hair. The strange design, like a white tattoo. But it’s not a tattoo. It’s a scar. Even chained together, his hands are muscular, massive, capable.

I picture him standing in front of me and touching the bottom of my chin, lifting my face to look up at him, running a finger down my neck. I imagine his thick finger resting against the tender divot at the base of my neck.

“I’m excited about the journal,” he says, startling me.

I straighten. He sounds genuine, as though he really is excited about it. God, what am I doing? “I’m glad,” I say.

He nods. “I like the idea of different voices filling the bandwidth. It’s what the f*cking Internet is for, right?”

I nod eagerly until I realize he’s just feeding me my own sentiments, crudely rephrased. I slide over his papers. “The journal is memoir. Not fiction.”

He cocks his head. Regards me warily.

“And what you’ve given me…”

His eyes darken. His voice is husky. “You calling me a liar, Ms. Winslow?”

My mouth goes dry. “I don’t think it’s a real story. Or at least, it’s not your story.”

He looks at me long and strong, and my pulse goes into overdrive. I can’t read him, but it doesn’t take a genius to know he’s not happy with me. Again I look down at his hands.

He finally speaks. “You don’t think it’s real?”

I swallow and place my hands in my lap. “I don’t.”

His massive chest rises and falls with his every breath. I wonder what he did. I wonder what happened to him. How can he not know baseball? Why does he have the scar design? What makes him seem so different from other guys?

“You know why I’m in here?” he asks suddenly.

I shake my head. “That’s not something they tell us.” I get the feeling he knows that, and that the question was designed to taunt. I glance again at Dixon, who’s out there talking with the guys in front of the block of desks. When I look back, I find Grayson eyeing my hands, still in my lap. Or maybe he’s just eyeing my lap.

The line running between us pulls tight. I’m in charge, but he has all the power. I shouldn’t allow that. I shouldn’t like that.

I remind myself that I know more than he does about stories. I know that when you tell a fake story about yourself, it’s because you’re protecting the real story.

He seems excited about the journal. So I use it. “You’ll get credit for doing the writing, but you can’t get into the journal with anything fake.”

His eyes glitter.





Chapter Seven




Grayson


The class is about getting out of this place. I remind myself of that over the three weeks we spend on what Ms. Winslow calls drafting. But I get into it a little.

She’s standing beside the desk when we shuffle into the library classroom. I think it makes her feel safe and in control. She greets all us guys by name, as if to prove that she remembers us. That we matter.

The sound of my name from her lips makes me tense, just like always. I never get tired of those pencil skirts. Does she know how the fabric hugs her? She couldn’t look hotter in a goddamned bikini. I want to run my hands over her hips, tracing her shape through the fabric. Wouldn’t even need to undress her. I could come just from that.

I walk over and take my place at her desk. Take her chair. Her space. She doesn’t look at me, but I can tell she feels it—there’s something that connects us, like underground electric lines. My gaze rests on the tan canvas bag she brings to class every day, full of books.

She heads to the side of the room. “Today we’re going to journal with a prompt,” she says, adjusting her glasses. It didn’t take me long to figure out they’re her protection, the way she pushes them up on her nose when she’s nervous, shifts them while she thinks. “Close your eyes for a moment and imagine you’re falling. Is there a parachute? Where are you falling from? What do you see on the ground? How does it feel?”

I close my eyes and imagine my hand sliding underneath her tight skirt, between her legs. Two fingers working the fabric of her panties over her clit. It’s become an obsession of mine, all the ways I could make her come without really touching her.