Prisoner (Criminals & Captives #1)(48)

He trails two fingers from the base of my neck, between my breasts, down toward my belly. “All right, I touched you. I f*cked you. Did you think I wouldn’t?”

No, I knew he would, even before he escaped from prison. Everything in me pointed toward him.

“It’s how this works, baby,” he adds wearily. “It’s just how this works.”

I stiffen. This? It’s just how this works?

I go silent for a second because of how much he admitted in one simple sentence. That what’s happening is a thing he understands all too well. A thing he learned when other kids were learning baseball.

The final piece of the puzzle falls in. The basement. The other boys. All those years.

It wasn’t some custody dispute that got him on that milk carton. I know what happened to him sure as I feel his hand pressing my wrists together. I’m filled with a sense of grim triumph.

“What would you have done,” I whisper, “if I hadn’t picked your story for The Kingman Journal?”

He smirks. “I knew you would.”

“Why?” I demand.

His eyebrows shoot up. He’s surprised I’m not freaking out still. But I have a long history of coping with insanely violent situations. “Because you’re easy,” he says.

My indignant huff only makes him smile, a little smug.

“I knew that if I gave you a sob story, you’d fall for it. And you did.”

“It was pretty genius,” I say. “By focusing on the most peripheral details, you could leave the horror at the center to the reader’s imagination.”

“Thank you for your kind assessment, Ms. Winslow,” he says mockingly.

“You only had to get those details just right, and the reader fills it in for you. It’s the best kind of lie to tell. One that’s true. Nothing’s quite as effective as truth, is it?”

Grayson freezes. Wondering what I know.

“It’s what Hemingway did. Stayed on the edge of it. One raw line of truth and then another.”

His hands tighten on my wrists. “And now I’m free.”

But I’m not through with him. “How does it feel?” I ask. “To be on the other side?”

“Don’t.”

A shiver runs through me at the fury in his voice. But when you’re stuck in a ring with a crazed animal, you’ll use the weapons you have. I need him emotional. Not seeing straight.

“Six years. That’s a long time. Are you strong enough and bad enough yet that they can’t touch you ever again?”

His expression tells me I made a direct hit. And I know I can hit him as much as I want and he won’t hurt me—not physically. In a perverse way I know that I can trust him because of his thing about protecting me. His code. It’s a f*cked-up code, but it’s a code all the same.

I frown. “No? Not quite?”

He sneers. “You think you know me?”

“I know how it feels when your stomach hurts like it’s trying to eat itself. I know what it’s like to fight with a grown-up and lose.”

His draws his lips close to my ear, so close it tickles. “Like you’re doing now? Fighting with a grown-up and losing?”

“Yeah,” I whisper, knowing that this is a dark and powerful line that connects us. “I know what it’s like to hate what’s happening. And to hate that you like it.”

I feel him soften. He keeps hold of my wrists but he’s loosening. My words are potent. Powerful. I can use the truth as a weapon, just like he did.

I say, “I know what it’s like when you want something so wrong. When you crave it.”

“It’s okay,” he says softly, as if to comfort me, gaze tender. “It’s okay to feel like that. It’s not your fault.” Everything’s shifting, and I know he’s going to kiss me.

I watch his eyes close, see the dusky curve of his lashes against his skin. He doesn’t have any right to look both sexy and sweet. Doesn’t have any right to sink on top of me—but God, he does.

His lips are soft and warm, so incongruous it makes me sigh against him. And even though he’s broad and heavy, especially because of that, it feels like a caress. His whole body embraces me, his mouth on mine, his hands on mine, his legs straddling my thighs. I’m wrapped in a cocoon made only of Grayson, where it smells like musk and tastes like man and wipes away every thought I should have.

Like getting away. Like fighting him. I had a plan here—to lull him with a sense of comfort and connection. That connection he so badly needs.

But the truth is a double-edged sword. Because I do crave him when he’s heavy on me, kissing me. I don’t want him to stop.

And his words made me feel better somehow. Or at least less alone.

His tongue nudges my mouth open, and I let him in. This is what he did to me in my memoir class, paying close attention, turning in every assignment. He thinks I want this kiss, because I do. It’s the best kind of lie to tell—one that’s true.

“What happened last night?” I whisper. It’s the same question I asked before, only different now. Different because I already know.

His voice is rough when he answers. “It didn’t hurt. I didn’t hurt you.”

He drugged me…and he f*cked me…and he knew it wouldn’t hurt. There’s a sick kind of tenderness in that. A twisted sort of care. My heart breaks a little, because I think this is the only way he knows how to be kind. And that’s what makes me reach for him.