Prisoner (Criminals & Captives #1)(14)
The chains clink softly as he raises his hands to my face—slowly, as if he doesn’t want to break the trance he holds me in. My pulse races.
His movements are strong and steady. His pointer fingers alight on the outer edges of my glasses. Oh God, he wants to take my glasses off.
“Don’t,” I whisper.
“Don’t what?” He takes hold of the corners of my glasses, watching me with that deep brown gaze.
“You can’t take my glasses.”
His mouth is just inches from mine, words warm on my nose. “I think I can.”
My heart pounds—it’s fear and something else. “No,” I say. “Don’t, Grayson.” I try to suffuse my tone with warning. “You want me to call Dixon?” It’s the last thing I want to do, though. Grayson would be thrown out of the class. Possibly into solitary.
“I don’t think you’ll call Dixon,” he whispers.
My breath hitches as he begins to pull them off, as the ends slide along my temples, grazing the tender skin, leaving a trail of sensation that’s sweet and dark.
He lowers them and looks into my eyes with nothing between us, making me feel him, feel his heat.
Now I’m the one falling, right into a black hole. I feel dizzy, breathless.
What the hell am I doing?
I snatch the glasses from his hands and put them back onto my face where they belong. “Step back, prisoner.” I give him a shove, and he steps back, lips twisted in amusement.
“Yes, Ms. Winslow.”
My blood races, hands tingling from the feel of his chest where I touched him. It scares me, how easily he invaded me, took me over.
I adjust my glasses, defining the boundary between us, trying to get some control back, because this is all wrong. “You want to have a piece in The Kingman Journal?”
He shrugs, but it’s too late because I know he does.
I hit him in the one spot where he’s vulnerable. “Then you’ll write the truth about when you were a little kid. The truth.”
Chapter Nine
Grayson
The next time in class, Ms. Winslow rearranges the seating to be in alphabetical order, starting in back. She acts like she’s doing it to split up a few of the guys who’ve been talking, but we both know that’s not why. She wants me out of her desk, out of her space. Being that my last name is Kane, that puts me in the middle back. Zieman gets her desk.
I’m good with the new arrangement. More than good, because my job here is to get a piece into the journal, get my message to Stone and the rest of my guys. As long as they see it, they’ll come through. I can trust them like that, and they trust me enough to know that if I have a plan, it’s solid.
You’re either weak or strong, and I’m stronger than whatever is between me and Ms. Winslow. I have to be if I want to get out of this place.
So I sit in class and listen hard without making eye contact. I absorb her lessons without thinking about how her voice sounds. I try to use the shit she suggests, and I block out everything else, like the way her hands felt on me. The feeling of taking her glasses. The way she looked up at me. The way she felt like mine.
Ignoring her just makes it worse. I see her even when I don’t look at her. I feel her move around class, feel her moods. Back in Franklin City, near our hideout, there are these signs that say: DANGER: BURIED ELECTRICAL LINES. That’s how I feel in class. Buried electrical lines running between us, way the hell deep down.
Chapter Ten
Abigail
They say there are two types of fear—the kind that has you running far, far away, and the kind that shakes you so deeply that you can’t look away.
For me, Grayson is the second kind of fear. I rearrange the seating to get some distance from him, because what happened in the back office was so, so wrong.
But sometimes at night I think about it with this horror and fascination swirling in the pit of my belly. The memory of it is a contraband jewel I absolutely shouldn’t possess, but I can’t help taking it out and looking at it.
The new seating seems to work; in fact, Grayson seems to want to ignore me as badly as I want to ignore him. No more knowing glances, no more wicked smiles. He applies himself to the work like it’s a matter of life or death.
So I give my lessons from one week to another. I walk up and down the side of the room while they write.
If somebody were observing the class, they might think I was the most aloof and professional teacher ever, and that Grayson is just a number to me.
They’d be wrong.
Grayson touches me deeply, over and over, kills me, really. Not with his hands or eyes, but with his words. His vignette is shocking. Raw. Heartbreaking. It’s about a boy being held prisoner in a basement, though on the face of it, it’s the story of a boy’s pet rat, Manuel. Only this rat doesn’t have a cage or a little water bottle or a wheel to run on. This rat lives in the walls. It’s a rodent, the kind that should be killed with a trap, but it means everything to the boy. He coaxes it out and feeds it. There are other boys here. These boys seem to be trapped with no TV, no games. I don’t understand what’s going on or who is holding him. He doesn’t have enough food to eat, but he breaks off little bits of pizza crust so that Manuel will come back.