A Pound of Flesh (A Pound of Flesh #1)(21)

His ambivalence was frustrating as all hell, and he had a smugness that could force any sane person to drink. In spite of all that, Kat had the overwhelming desire to put things right, to help.

That was her debt, after all.

Kat nodded in resolve.

“What?” Rachel asked. “What are you thinking?”

Kat smiled, her fortitude rising to the surface. “I’m thinking Mr. Carter is going to have to start dealing with being around me more often.”

*

“Harder!”

Carter grunted.

“I said harder! I didn’t feel a thing!”

Carter grunted again, louder this time as his fist slammed hard into the red protective shield that the prison’s gym officer, Kent Ross, was holding in front of him.

“My three-year-old hits harder, and she’s a girl! Again!”

Carter’s eyes clenched and his knuckles turned the same shade of white as the bandages around them when, with a terrifying yell, he began pummeling the shield with everything he had. The hate, anger, desire, need, and want burst from him through his fists with such force that Ross staggered backward.

After thirty seconds, Carter’s arms began to slow as the adrenaline burn began through his intricately inked shoulders, down his equally patterned biceps, and into his forearms, which screamed under the relentless pounding. He gasped and panted, and almost kissed Ross’s ugly-ass face when he said they were done.

Carter loved the workout; it was the only part of his anger management he enjoyed. The in-house shrink had suggested Ross work with Carter after one of his notorious tantrums, in an effort to vent some of the tension.

Carter slumped against the blue mat he’d been standing on and lay on his back, his chest rising and falling heavily. He really needed to quit smoking. His knuckles smarted and his face throbbed from where the guard had smashed him into the wall during Miss Lane’s class. He was drenched with sweat.

“You did good,” Ross muttered, peering over Carter’s limp body, holding out a bottle of water.

“You nearly killed me,” Carter replied, taking it from him with a shaking hand.

He groaned when he sat up, his muscles protesting immediately, and downed half of the bottle in three giant gulps, dribbling some down his back in an attempt to ease the heat.

“You need to quit smoking,” Ross grumbled, making Carter laugh. “You pushed hard, though,” he continued. “More than usual. Something on your mind?”

Ross and Carter had built up a straightforward relationship over the twelve months they’d been working together. Carter respected Ross’s no-bullshit attitude and liked the way he demanded more from him. Nevertheless, Carter wasn’t entirely convinced that he could tell him what he wanted to know. He scoffed inwardly because Jesus if even he knew what he could say to describe the f*cking carnival currently taking place inside his head.

Truthfully, he was amazed it was only a desk he’d thrown in Miss Lane’s class. He’d never in his life been so completely filled with fury that the only way for it to manifest itself was to pick up the desk and hurl it as hard as he could. In retrospect, it was a dumb idea, but he’d had no control of himself.

The one thing that did bother him, and had since he walked from Ward’s office after the “incident meeting,” was the fact that he was subsequently banned from Miss Lane’s lessons. Indefinitely. He wasn’t allowed near her or her lessons and, for some reason that was not sitting well with him, it pissed him off.

The irony was not lost. He’d bitched and moaned about being enrolled in a class. Yet there he was, confused as all hell because a part of him wanted to be in her class, listening to her wax lyrical about poetry and shit he already knew. He wanted to sit in his seat at the front of her class and stare at her, trying to intimidate her.