Lifers

  “You’re kidding me! You put that stuff into your skin?”

  “Well, yeah. There’s a lot of empty time when you’re inside. Gotta find somethin’ to do. When I got to prison, one of the guards could be bribed and he brought in colored ink. But I gave it up after a while.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t want to stay in for the rest of my life. I’d already had time added to my sentence, and 180 days for the first time I got caught tattooing another prisoner. Even then, I knew there was more to life—more I wanted from it.”

  “Tell me what they all mean,” I said. “I mean, the barbed wire is kind of obvious. What’s this one?” I pointed to a teardrop, weeping from one of the wire points.

  “An unfilled teardrop is the death of a friend.”

  “Oh. And this one?”

  “That’s a swallow.”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What does it mean?”

  He sighed. “Swallows don’t fly far from land into the ocean, so when sailors saw them, it meant that land was nearby. It’s a symbol of hope.”

  “I like that,” I murmured. “And the dolphin?”

  “Duality: a creature that lives in the water, but needs air to survive. I don’t know—I just liked it.”

  “I think I can guess this one, but what does the spider’s web mean?”

  He smiled sadly. “Being caught in prison.”

  I started to say more, but then I felt a tug on my line and the bobber dipped down into the water.

  “Ooh! I think I got one! What do I do?”

  “Reel it in slowly, don’t jerk it.”

  I panicked and pushed the pole into his hands. “You do it! I don’t want to lose it.”

  I watched, enrapt, as he played the fish—reeling it in, letting it out, and reeling it in again, his arm muscles and shoulders showcasing his amazing physique. Who’d have thought fishing was so hot.

  A minute later, he’d landed an ugly old fish the length of my arm, whose eyes gazed at me pitifully, while its mouth gaped.

  I was mesmerized and appalled at the same time, watching it thrash out its last few minutes of life.

  Jordan saw the look of horror on my face.

  “Go wait by the truck, Torrey,” he said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  I was happy to leave him to it. I knew it was hypocritical, but I preferred my food a little less lively.

  I mooched back to our blanket and threw myself down. I seemed to be spoiling everything today. At least the fire was still smoldering. I threw on some more of the dried wood that Jordan had found and built it up again. Even though it was a warm day, the flames were comforting.

  He came back a few minutes later, with the poor fish impaled on a stick. I was relieved he’d already done the nasty bits and in deference to my squeamishness, he’d removed the head, too. Thank God! I couldn’t have stood having it looking at me as it slowly cooked. I’d be waiting for it to blink.

  “You okay?” he asked, concerned.

  “I’m fine. Sorry to be such a wimp. I’ve always been more of a city girl. Dad never did stuff like sleeping in tents or hiking with me. And I hated the idea of summer camp so much I made him promise never to send me. But as long as I have someone to gut my fish, it’s all good.”

  He gave me a look like he wasn’t sure he believed me, but didn’t argue the point. I watched, feeling like Jane in the jungle as he arranged the fish over the fire, making a crossbeam with two longer sticks. When he finished, he stretched out on the blanket next to me and closed his eyes.

  I took a moment to appreciate the view. His long legs were clad in jeans today, not the baggy shorts I’d gotten used to. His gray t-shirt stretched over his muscular chest, which at that moment was pulled up slightly, showing a strip of taut stomach with a sprinkling of light brown hairs pointing below his waistband.

  His arms were thrown above his head, and I could see the beauty and simplicity of the tattoos twisting around his biceps. Long lashes fanned out over his cheeks, and his lips were slightly open, making me want to lick between them. The small frown between his eyebrows was less pronounced than usual. I leaned down to rub my finger gently over the faint lines, hoping to erase them.

  He jumped slightly, and his eyes blinked open.

  “Sorry I startled you. Again.”

  He smiled and ran a warm hand down my side. “I like it when you touch me.”

  “Yeah,” I breathed, “works for me, too.”

  I was just about to lean further in to kiss those lips when he sat up suddenly.

  “Shit! The fish!”

  He was right: the poor creature was looking a little black around the edges. He turned it quickly, so the other side could cook, then gave me a flirty smile.

  “You are very distractin’, Miss Delaney.”

  “Are you blaming me? You were the one lying on the blanket looking all delicious and sinful!”

  He laughed out loud. “Delicious and sinful?”

  “And you know it,” I huffed out. “I practically had to stop Bev mounting you in the coffee shop when she met you.”

  His gaze turned hungry, his dark eyes boring into me.

  “There’s only one woman I’m interested in, and she’s sittin’ right next to me.”

  I gave a delighted laugh even while sweat broke out all over my body, my skin heated by the fire in his eyes.

  “That’s good to hear. Well, how about you feed me, and we’ll see about some sin for dessert?”

  He closed his eyes and groaned. “The things you say, woman!”

  He shook his head as if to clear it then stood up. “I’ll be right back.”

  He jogged over to the truck and returned carrying a couple of plates, knives and forks, and a carton of something that he wedged under a rock by the water’s edge, presumably to keep it chilled. I wasn’t sure how well that would work, as the water was being warmed by the late summer sun.

  I watched him carefully cut the fish in half, then kick sand on the fire to put it out. He used one of the long sticks to dig out our potatoes, juggled them in his hands while he pulled off the tin foil, and set the food out on plates.

  “Lunch is served, ma’am.”

  “Smells wonderful! You’ve got some sharp cooking skills there, cowboy!”

  “Don’t forget I’m sinful, too,” he said, running his lips across my cheek.

  A shiver ran through me, and it definitely wasn’t from cold.

  He handed me one of the paper plates and the smell of the hot food wafted up, utterly enticing. Despite my misgivings, the fish was amazing and completely distracted me from thinking about it thrashing around in the water just half an hour earlier. The baked potato was good, too, although I missed being able to slather it in butter.

  “This is really great, Jordan,” I mumbled greedily, through a mouthful of food.

  He smiled happily. “Good!”

  We ate in silence as I carefully avoided swallowing any fish bones. It would be too bad if that old trout had the last laugh, and I choked to death on one of the bones. I was pretty sure Jordan would give me mouth-to-mouth, but I had other ways of testing that theory.

  Finally, I pushed my plate away and rubbed my full stomach. “Fabulous.”

  “It’s not finished yet, sweetheart.”

  “There’s more?”

  He winked at me and headed to his truck again, reappearing seconds later with a packet of chocolate chip cookies. Perfect. Then he retrieved the carton from the lake.

  I laughed out loud. “Jordan Kane, you are too smooth for your own good! You brought me milk and cookies?”

  He shrugged, looking a little embarrassed. “I didn’t know what you liked, but I figured girls like chocolate, right?”

  “I’m sure there are some women in the world who don’t like chocolate, but I’ve never met any of them. Thank God. I think this makes you officially perfect,” I said, pulling open the packet and popping a piece of sweet, sugary goodn
ess in my mouth.

  I moaned around the chocolatey crumbs as my eyes rolled back in my head.

  Jordan sat down next to me, looking uncomfortable.

  “What?” I said, eyeing him with amusement.

  “It’s nothin’.”

  “Spit it out, whatever it is.”

  Then I noticed that he had a rather prominent erection beneath his jeans.

  “Oh my God! Watching me eating cookies is turning you on? You’re such a pervert!”

  “I cain’t help it,” he complained. “You’re there a-moanin’ and a-groanin’ and lickin’ your lips. It just does things to a man!”

  I threw a cookie at him. “Eat this. It’ll take your mind off of that monster in your pants.”

  “I doubt it,” he said darkly, but ate the cookie anyway.

  I opened the carton of milk and chugged some of it, wiping my mouth with my arm. I stared at him and licked my lips slowly.

  He growled and pulled the carton out of my hands, slopping at least a quarter of it onto the sand.

  He pressed me into the blanket and planted hot, open mouthed kisses across my chest and throat.

  “Damn, woman! I cain’t get enough of you.”

  I wanted to tell him that I felt the same, but instead, I tugged his t-shirt up his back and dragged my nails down his skin. He hissed and writhed above me, pressing his hard cock into my belly.

  He grabbed his t-shirt from the back of his neck and yanked it over his head, giving me acres of smooth flesh to drool over.

  My shorts went one way and his jeans another. Neither of us had underwear so it only took seconds before we were naked under the sky.

  He was more patient this time, learning how my body responded to his touch, and the look of triumph on his face when I came on his fingers would have made me laugh if I wasn’t panting and breathless.

  “Condom!” I gasped, aching to feel him inside me. “In my shorts!”

  “Shit!” he cursed. “Where the hell did you toss them?”

  I was treated to the sight of his tight ass as he ran across the sand to retrieve my shorts from a nearby bush. On the way back, I could see his erect dick bobbing up and down expectantly.

  “Goddamn! Remind me not to do a streak with a boner again—freakin’ hurts!”

  I couldn’t help laughing.

  “Hey, you’re killin’ the mood!” he said, laughing with me.

  “I’ll take your mind off it,” I grinned, snaking my hand up his thigh.

  His breath caught in his throat as he kneeled down beside me. I sat up and straddled him, then ran my tongue up his neck and bit his full lips.

  “Goddamn,” he breathed out.

  I slid back a short distance so we had room to maneuver, then I took the condom from his nerveless fingers and rolled it on.

  His whole body shuddered and he drew in a deep breath that made his nostrils flare.

  “You have no idea how it feels to have your hands on me, sweetheart,” he whispered. “Every touch of yours is pure gold.”

  My God! How did this man who had endured eight long years of brutalizing treatment hold such love in his heart? It stunned my soul. I attacked his lips and felt the rising heat of raw passion pour from him.

  I pulled myself back onto his lap and let out a long wail of pleasure as I impaled myself on him.

  His breathing was fast and erratic as he tugged me forward so my chest was flush against his, then he bucked into me repeatedly.

  “Torrey!” he gasped. “Goddamn, Torrey!”

  I could feel him swell inside me, and he moaned louder.

  Suddenly he tipped me over and my back crashed onto the blanket. Then he pulled my ankles over his shoulders so I was almost bent in half. His eyes were closed and his biceps bunched as he pumped hard. I cried out and his eyelids flew open, the intensity of his gaze thrilling me. His back arched and he shuddered as his body pulsed into mine, almost an entity of its own; a life force passing between us.

  He cried out and collapsed onto me, his crushing weight forcing out the small amount of breath I had left from my lungs.

  Then he rolled onto his back, tugging me with him so I was splayed across his broad chest.

  It took several minutes before either of us was capable of speaking.

  His dick slipped out of me, but I still couldn’t move.

  “You okay?” he whispered, his hands stroking up and down my spine.

  “Mm-mm.”

  “Is that a ‘mm-mm, yes’ or a ‘mm-mm, no’?” he asked, a smile in his voice.

  “That’s a ‘mm-mm, shut the fuck up’,” I yawned.

  He laughed quietly and sat up slowly, letting me slide from his chest and onto the blanket.

  I couldn’t open my eyes but heard the telltale snap as he pulled off the used condom, tying a knot in the end.

  He lay back down and looped his long body around mine, snuggling against me, and peppering tiny kisses over my shoulder.

  I stretched out my well-exercised muscles, impressed that his vigorous love-making hadn’t snapped me in two.

  He wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me in even tighter.

  “Every time,” he breathed into my hair, “every time I think it couldn’t be better than the last time, but every time it is. You. Are. So. Special.”

  He paused, as if waiting for me to reply, but I was too comfortable, too replete, too entirely exhausted to speak.

  He sounded hesitant when he spoke again.

  “Christ, Torrey, I hate soundin’ like a fuckin’ juvenile, but ya gotta tell me, sweetheart, how was it for you?”

  I almost snapped back some sarcastic answer, but his words exposed his vulnerability. I didn’t want to hurt him that way, knowing that a word from me was all he needed.

  “Well,” I said, rubbing my finger in a small circle over the back of his hand, “every time I think it couldn’t be better than the last time, but every time it is. Every time I think I’ve had the best there is, you teach my body something new. I can’t get enough of you, Jordan Kane.”

  The breath rushed from his lungs, and I felt him tremble. He clutched me to him with painful pressure, as his body shook behind me.

  I lay in his arms, my back against his chest, stroking his hands and wrists, twining my legs with his, letting him lose his tears in my hair.

  After several minutes, he stilled, and I felt his body stiffen with embarrassment at his loss of control.

  I twisted in his arms so I was facing him and kissed the tears from his long lashes.

  “It’s okay, Jordan. You’re safe with me.”

  He took a shuddering breath. “I love you, Torrey Delaney. You don’t have to say it back to me, but I love you. I didn’t believe life was worth living ‘til I met you. I’m so, so happy I was wrong.”

  Any chance of a reply dried in my throat. His arms tightened around me and I waited for the moment when I freaked, afraid of what he’d said, afraid of the intensity of his emotions.

  But the panic didn’t come. Instead I leaned into his strong, solid body and held him just as tightly.

  Jordan

  This woman.

  What she did to me. I felt as if I’d been in a dark cave for years and she was the sun exploding around me. She’d stripped away every layer of skin and poured her kindness and compassion into my body, healing me from the inside out.

  I watched her lying beside me at the fishing hole, her hair tumbling across the blanket, her golden skin glowing in the sunshine, trusting me with her thoughts, and memories, and feelings—and with her body.

  It scared the shit out of me to feel so much.

  I’d spent eight years keeping every emotion frozen and numb, trusting no one.

  In prison you’re caged alongside other people like you, close but untouching and untouchable, until all the anger and rage and frustration explode in violence. Every second you have to watch your back, and if you show any weakness, you’re fucked. Sometimes literally.

  Parole had come as a sho
ck. I’d been turned down so many times, year after long year, that I’d pretty much given up any hope that I’d ever be released. I sat in that chair in my white pullover shirt, my hands cuffed, watching the indifferent faces of the review board in front of me.

  My past misdemeanors were listed: fighting, wounding another prisoner, prohibited tattooing, poor attitude, disrespecting the guards. But then, apparently, I’d shown ‘progression in my rehabilitation’. That was news to me, but I’d take anything I could get.

  I was surprised—stunned into incomprehensibility—when I learned that my parents were going to take me back as part of my parole package plan. I hadn’t expected that. In fact I’d been certain that I’d never see or hear from them again.

  The day I was released was a rollercoaster ride of emotions.

  I was excited, I was nervous—fucking terrified if I’m being honest. I knew how to be a good convict, but I didn’t know anymore how to live out there. I had to find a new way of relating to ordinary people, learn to read a different set of signals. I couldn’t take the prison mindset into the real world. I had no fucking clue how to behave.

  Seeing my parents was the biggest mind fuck ever. For years, I’d believed that they’d washed their hands of me. There’d been no letters or cards, no phone calls, no communication whatsoever. I might as well have been dead to them.

  So to find that they were willing to take me home: it raised all sorts of hope inside me. And I had questions … a lot of questions. They all started with ‘why?’

  I was up early on release day, mostly because I hadn’t slept. I was given some crappy clothes to wear and escorted from my cell. I had a couple of paperbacks in a box and some of the sketches I’d done for tattoos, and that was it. That was my entire life for the last eight years.

  The corrections officer took me into a room where a man and a woman were sitting—my parents. It was a shock. They looked older, of course, but I hadn’t been expecting it. In my mind, they were frozen in time, the way I’d last seen them, at my trial, in tears.

  I could see them scanning my face, searching for something they could recognize of the boy they’d known in the man before them. Dad’s eyes followed the lines of tattoos on my arms, and he frowned. I could see him trying to work it out—how had I gotten them in prison?