Prisoner (Criminals & Captives #1)(12)

Her sexy voice intrudes. “Do you feel scared? Exhilarated?”

Yeah, both of those. It’s been that way my whole life, a feeling of falling. Sometimes I wake up at night with a jolt, arms raised to protect myself even though nothing’s there. No one’s been able to hurt me for a long time, and I keep it that way.

Though lately I’ve been waking up with a hard-on. I have to beat off just to get some rest.

So really, she’s the one who’s making me come without touching me.

“Don’t take the first word that comes to your mind. I want you to really think into it, feel it. The right word is so important, you guys.”

She walks up and down the side, eyes bright. She wants us to feel so much. She cares. It makes me want to shake her or something. Warn her about caring too much about people like us.

Because sometimes we start to care back. And that wouldn’t be good for her.

“The right word makes all the difference,” she continues, “and finding the right word has nothing to do with vocabulary. The right word is already inside you. You just have to dig in and find it. And I know you can. Don’t settle for a vague word either. You’re better than that. Go for the precise word. Dig deeply. Challenge yourselves.”

She turns, strolls the other way, seventeen pairs of eyes following her ass. A strand of dark hair has fallen from her bun. I picture tucking it behind her ear, real gentle. That would be a challenge: being gentle.

“Go ahead and write, then,” she says in her encouraging tone. She means it. So sweet my teeth ache. I want her to use that voice to say other things. Go ahead and kiss me, then. Go ahead and lick me, then.

Go ahead and f*ck me.

Yes, Ms. Winslow.

This is getting to be a problem. I’m in class for one purpose—to escape. Nothing kills my hard-on faster than thinking about captivity. I can’t stand walls. I don’t even like ceilings. The bars… I’m f*cking allergic to the bars.

I spent the first week in lockup in full-on panic. Shaking, throwing up. Yeah, it was a regular carnival ride. Then the public defender—he was a good guy, actually—started making noise about the situation, so they brought a psych in.

That was the worst.

They shot me full of so many drugs I couldn’t see straight. Couldn’t stop the nightmares from coming. The only thing I hate worse than lockup is being drugged, so I actually worked with the psych, doing his bullshit breathing techniques and saying this and that to myself. It works—most of the time.

It’s not falling that scares me. At least there I’m out in the open. It’s the cage waiting for me on the ground that f*cks with my head.

I look up and find her watching me from the side of the room. “Question?” She pushes off the wall and moves toward me.

“I can’t think of anything,” I say.

“It looked to me like you had an idea.”

“Not the kind that’s fit to print,” I say. “Especially not in a vignette, if you know what I mean.”

I meant to put her off guard, like it was something X-rated, which partly it was, but she just looks at me, unblinking and unafraid. Again I have this feeling of knowing her even though I don’t. I wonder if she feels like she knows me too.

“Can’t you imagine falling?” she asks.

I don’t need to imagine it. I know how it feels.

I look around, but everyone’s busy writing. “You know that game little kids play where they stand in a circle and one falls and the others catch him? Not one motherf*cker in here would ever play that game. Any one of us would rather get punched in the face. So you think we’re going to be playing that game on paper?” I cross my legs. “No one here wants to think about falling. Giving up that kind of control.”

“Including you? You won’t play the game, not even on paper?”

I shrug. “You’re saying you want the truth, so…”

“Are you refusing to do it?”

“I’m being honest here. Giving you something you say you want.” Christ. She cares so much about guys being honest, she has me telling her something none of the other guys ever would. I feel like I’m in the mind-f*ck hall of mirrors.

But then her eyes change. Smile eyes without the smile. She appreciates it. “I guess honesty about falling is a little bit like falling,” she says finally.

I snort, because she’s smart, and I like that. “Yeah.”

“Trusting somebody to catch you,” she adds, looking at the far wall, eyes full of thoughts. I get the feeling that she’s talking about herself suddenly.

Something lights deep inside me, like a wire sparking in the darkness. I seize it. I don’t know why; I just have to. “Will they?” I ask. “Will they catch you?”

Her gaze finds mine, and something flares in me. Because I would catch her. And the hottest thing is that I think she knows it. Maybe nobody has ever caught her, but I would. I would catch her. I would keep her. Make her mine. As soon as I get the thought of her as mine, I can’t get rid of it. It fills me like a fire, and I need to tamp it down because this is a thousand miles off my plan.

She nods at my forearm. The crossed battle-axes. “Did that feel like falling?”

My mind goes back to us boys scratching away on each other in the basement. The pain felt like love and fury and freedom. “The opposite,” I say. “Exactly the opposite.”