Prisoner (Criminals & Captives #1)(2)

The feel of brutality that hangs about him is compelling and…somehow beautiful.

I drink him in from behind my book—it’s my mask, my protective shield. But then the strangest thing happens: he cocks his head. It’s just a slight shift, but I feel his attention on me deep in my belly. I’ve been discovered. Caught by searchlights. Exposed.

My heart beats frantically.

I want him to look away. He fills up too much space. It’s as if he breathes enough oxygen for twelve men, leaving no air for me at all. Maybe if we were in the library and he needed help finding a book or looking something up, then I wouldn’t mind the weight of his attention.

No. Not even there. He’s too much.

Two sets of bars on the gate. Handcuffs. Two guards.

What do they think he would do if there were only one set of bars, one guard?

My blood races as the guards draw him away from the window and toward the inner door, toward where I sit. His heat pierces the chill around me as he nears. His deep brown eyes never once meet mine, but I have the sense of him looming over me as he passes, like a tree with a massive canopy. He continues on, two hundred pounds of masculine danger wrapped in all that beauty.

Even in chains, he seems vibrant, wild and free, a force of nature—it makes me feel like I’m the one in prison. Safe. Small. Carefully locked down.

How would it feel to be that free?

“Ms. Winslow. Ms. Winslow.”

I jump, surprised to hear that the woman has been calling my name. “I’m sorry,” I say as a strange sensation tickles the back of my neck.

The woman stands and begins pulling on her jacket. “I’ll take you to the library now.”

“Oh, that’s great.”

That shivery sensation gets stronger. Against my better judgment, I look down the hallway where the guards and the prisoner are walking off as one—a column of orange flanked by two thinner, shorter posts.

The prisoner glances over his shoulder. His mocking brown gaze searches me out, pins me with a subtle threat. Though it isn’t his eyes that scare me. It’s his lips—those beautiful, generous lips forming words that make my blood race.

Ms. Winslow.

No sound comes out, but I feel as though he’s whispered my name right into my ear. Then he turns and strolls off.





Chapter Two




Grayson


I collapse onto the hard cement floor, cool against the sweat and burn of my arms and shoulders. Teke’s up on the top bunk, scribbling in a notebook. He’s been buried in that thing the whole hour I’ve been doing pushups. What the hell is he writing? It’s weird, him writing, and when you’re locked up, you notice anything weird.

I yank out my earbuds and turn off my iPod, and the heavy bass is replaced by the tormented cries and mindless noise that goes on 24-7 in this place.

He catches me looking. “What?”

“You Stephen King up there or what?”

“Maybe.”

I grunt like I don’t care, but now I need to know. I sit up and mop my face with a threadbare washcloth. Teke never offers information for free. Putting me in here with him, it’s just another punishment. Teke is dangerous, yeah. But not to me.

Guys inside, they’re like dogs. They smell what you are the moment they meet you. Decide right off whether they can f*ck with you. I work a kink out of my neck, hoping he offers more.

“Telling my story.” He flips a page. “It’s therapeutic, man, don’t you know?” His tone drips with sarcasm.

Now I really do look at him, because when you’re inside, you don’t reveal personal shit. That’s how you survive. “The f*ck?”

“My years as a poor misunderstood brown boy. For English class.”

English class. That explains it. Teke’s been working hard to better himself through education, or at least pretending to. I can’t blame him. He gets time knocked off for educational achievements, and he has parole coming up. A family on the outside. A mother who still thinks he’s innocent.

Nothing I do will cut my sentence or make my time easier. When you get convicted of killing a cop, you’re done.

They put guys like Teke in prisons close to their family system so they can keep up their relationships with a hope to go straight.

It’s the opposite with me. They put me hundreds of miles away from my crew. They took my phone and letter-writing privileges. No contact with the outside world.

Makes it hard to escape. But not impossible. Nothing stops me and my crew. Killing a cop is one of the only bad things I haven’t done.

Teke keeps scribbling. “Just some tragic shit from high school.”

“You’re putting true shit in there?”

“Ms. Winslow knows when you make it up.”

Ms. Winslow. My body stills as I flash back to her sitting there in that metal folding chair. The way she looked at me over her book.

That look was a bolt through my gut.

She had these fine features, like a doll or something, and her brown hair was up in a bun like some f*cking librarian. Hiding behind her book. The kind of woman nobody sees, but I saw her. I saw the way she shifted. Saw myself twisting that long brown hair around my fist as I f*cked her face.

I see you looking at me, I thought at her. You take a good long look, baby.

I’ve been told I’m beautiful. By women. By men. I hate it every time.