Maura stands up and dusts off the butt of her uniform. “You drive a hard bargain, woman. If you get caught, don’t say you got this from Maura. Blame Tony.”
“Why?”
“That guy’s an ass,” she tells me. She uses what I assume is her own punch code to get into the library. I follow her inside and look around, remembering the way Beast made me feel last time we were here. Remembering the feel of him inside me. Good God, that man knows how to please a woman.
I look over at Maura as we pass through the area, headed toward the hall. “So what do you know about him? Is he really bad off?”
She lifts one shoulder, but I notice that she tries not to look at me. “See yourself. Down this hall and down some stairs, then it’s solitary.”
I stop walking as a wave of anxiety prickles through me. “How will I even see him? I’ll get caught in a second.”
She shakes her head.
“No?”
Maura smirks. “We’ve got a new kitchen girl today. Brings plates down to them.” Her smirk turns into a mischievous smile. “I locked her in a closet.”
“What?”
She nods proudly as we stride into the hallway. “See, the hit on Beast is from Juan Juarez. I fucked that motherfucker, and he’s nasty.” She turns up her nose.
“What do you mean…nasty?” I’m pretty sure I might not want to know.
“Nasty like he gave me the clap.”
Oy. So I was right. I didn’t want to know.
“I’ve been looking for a way to get him back, and now I found it. See, he’s got the Julios thinking he’s a good replacement for Beast.”
“What’s a Julio?”
“Hispanic. There’s the Mexicans—that’s his people; Juarez is their man—and then a bunch of others, too. Like Puerto Ricans, Cubans. They’re kind of separate, but they’re kind of together. They’re all Julios.”
I nod slowly. That’s why the men were chanting “Julio” at me the day I first came to the prison to talk to Holt. They assumed I was Hispanic.
“Is Beast considered a Julio, too?”
She shrugs. “They don’t think of him as anything, not till Juarez got them thinking he and Beast are just alike. He says if Beast can’t do the job, he’ll fill in. And then yesterday, all of a sudden, he starts saying Beast is going down. Something about betrayal in the money market. That man is crazy.”
I nod again as we turn a corner, and all of a sudden, there’s a thick steel door, behind a door that’s just a bunch of bars.
“This is it,” she says, as if it’s no big deal. “Solitary. Your Beast is right down the stairs.”
I grab her arm. “You’re not coming with me?”
“I can walk you down, but I can’t stay. Tommy’s code’s okay for that, but I’ve got another job right now. If I don’t put my code in over there, I’ll be tracked.”
“What’s your other job?” I ask, feeling suddenly suspicious.
“I’ve gotta deal with something on Guerrilla row.”
“What’s Guerrilla row?”
“They’re one of the black gangs. Mostly people from the inner city. Not war vets. Black war vets have got another group. Guerrillas are sneaky bastards. They can get in and out of anywhere. I think they’re the most likely to escape.” She holds her hand out. “Can I have my money now?”
“Put his pass code in first.” I nod at the keypad to the right of the door. “I want to see it work. Then you can have the money. But before that, I’ve got a question.” I nibble one of my nails. “Your friend, the one in the camera room— when does his shift end?”
“He’s on all day.”
“And even though he disabled that one camera, he can still see me in here, right?”
She nods. “But he’s a lieutenant of Beast. Those two are like brothers, him and Nose.”
She steps up to the key pad and starts to punch the number—then slides her gaze over to me. “You know how important this is?”
“How important what is?” I ask.
“I’m letting you into solitary. I don’t know anybody who’s ever been down there that shouldn’t. Well, besides me, but that was just for sex. It’s just me and you—Holt’s girl. I must have lost my mind.”
She nods at my bag. “You don’t have a gun or something?”
“No. Of course not.” Only Mace, but that’s none of her business.
“Okay.” She lets her breath out, then her fingers come in contact with the numbers on the pad. She punches in a few, and a small green light flashes. I’m shocked when the barred door retracts into the cement wall, and the steel door makes a hissing sound, as if it was pressurized and now it’s not.
Maura presses on it somehow—I can’t tell how—and, to my shock, it opens like something out of Raiders of the Lost Ark. On the other side of it is a small-looking staircase. As I step over to it and hesitantly start going down, I can see our destination is a long, ordinary-looking hall. I see a row of doors on each side. Unlike the doors on most of the regular cells upstairs, these doors don’t have bars. They’re solid steel.
Maura walks down ahead of me, and as she steps down onto the cement floor, one of the doors opens, and a guard steps out.
I gasp.
Maura laughs and turns to look at me. “Calm down, girl. He’s on your side.”
“He is?”
“This is Rocker Joe.”
I blink. Rocker Joe is Mexican, with a moustache and a well-worked upper body on top of short, stout legs.
“He’s in a Metallica cover band on weekends. They’re amazing.”
Rocker Joe grunts a little, then nods at me and goes back into the room he came from.
“He hates Juarez,” Maura tells me. “The other guard down here today is on a break for two hours. So you’re cool.”
She waves down the short, narrow hall. “Six doors on the left, and six on the right. One he just went into is the office, others are all rooms. This one here—” she taps the one closest to us— “that’s Beast.” She looks down at her watch. “You good to go? I can have my money?”
With a cautious look around, I turn myself into the corner by Beast’s room and dig into my bag. The last thing I want is to get caught paying her on camera. When I’m pretty sure I can’t be seen, I slip her the wad of hundreds.
She bends down and slips it into her sock. When she stands back up, she looks a little more lighthearted.
“Come out the way you went in, no later than ten o’clock. After ten, it’s shift change for some of the junior guards. I’ve only got it covered for the early morning.”
She knocks me on the shoulder with a loose fist. “Try to talk to him. Try to get him to wake up. Tell him what’s coming. No one will be in while Rocker’s here. He’ll keep everybody out.”
I frown at the thought of relying on one of the guards to keep a bunch of other people out, and she says, “2-4-6-8-1. That’s the pass code you just bought.”
Maura tugs her gaze away from mine, and without looking back over her shoulder, she says, “Later, Julio.”
I wave, then stand there staring at the door.
CHAPTER 6
Annabelle
I know before I even punch the pass code in that it’s going to be bad.
She told me without telling me. Wake him up… Tell him what’s going on…
Those are bad things.
Those things make me scared to open the cell door.
I stand there with my legs locked tightly together, trying to keep my breaths slow and even. I feel like the ice skaters in Adrian’s little ice rink toy—led across the ice by an unseen magnet underneath the plastic rink. I feel like I have no control over my feelings for him. Over the choices I’m making to help him.
For one crazy moment, the riot inside my head is so loud, I think of leaving.
You don’t have to do this.
You could get in trouble.
He won’t even care.
You don’t even know him.
But I do
n’t believe my conscience.
I think sometimes you can know someone even though you haven’t been around them very much. Certain souls, when they encounter one another, throw out anchors, and their ropes get tangled and the anchors get hooked all together in a messy barb. And it holds. It doesn’t make sense, but it just holds.
I’m going inside. I’m going to check on him, even if it’s stupid and I only stay long enough to be sure he’s alive and tell him about the Juarez hit. And if I’m going inside his cell, I might as well do it now.
I punch the pass code in and the door clicks open.
I push my face into the space between the door and door frame, tugging air into my lungs. I’m terrified that it will smell like mold or worse. It doesn’t. The air is cool, and it smells clean. Like…antiseptic.
Prickly heat spreads down my chest and out through all of me. I step inside, and somehow, my wobbly legs actually carry me.
I don’t know what I’m expecting. A rusty cot in the corner and a grimy, barred window? Rats on the floor? Brick walls with chains hanging out of them, and the business ends around his wrists?
I don’t know what I’m expecting, but it can’t be worse than what I find.
The room is empty.
It’s a small, white room with no window, no cot, nothing. No one is in this room.
“WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK?”
I whirl around, infuriated, brutally disappointed, already thinking of what I’m going to do to Maura. That lying, stealing—
Strong arms wrap around me from behind, and I’m pulled up against his chest. I know it’s him because it feels like him.
“Beast?”
“No. Just…fucking no,” he growls into my ear.
His words are half-moaned, but his body, wrapped around mine, is strong enough to scare me as he carries me across the room, into one of the corners. The door slams shut behind us and I glance around, taking in the limits of my new captivity, even as he squeezes me against him.
As my eyes flicker around the room, I notice the ceiling. Holy shit, it’s covered with pictures. Horrible pictures. Pictures from the wreck.
Bile sloshes up my throat as I remember these moments in the awful Technicolor of memory. I jerk my eyes down as Beast sets me on my feet. He frowns, then grabs my hands and shuts his eyes.
“No,” his hands squeeze mine. “Not you, too, Angel.”
When his eyes peek open a second later, I hold his wild, dark gaze because I expect at any moment it’ll turn lucid. Half a second, though, and I can tell it’s not going to happen.
My eyes roll down him—hungry; scared; assessing.
He’s nude. Leaner. His cheeks are lightly bearded, his hair long enough to shag around his ears. His strong, kissable lips are dry and cracked. But it’s his eyes that get to me. They’re so…wild. As they search my face, then roll down my body, his dick begins to harden.
“This shit is too much,” he whispers. “You,” he says as his hand moves to clench around my bicep, “are too much.”
I grab his wrists. “Beast—how? What about me is too much?” My gaze implores his, trying to figure out what’s wrong with him. Trying to find sanity there. “I don’t get it,” I say gently.
He crushes me into his arms and presses his lips against my hair. “I kept waiting for you. I begged them to see you…but you’re not real.” His voice drops a notch. “I don’t want to see you dead, too.”
“I’m not dead.”
He shakes his head. I can feel his cheek against my hair. I can smell the heady, spicy scent of him.
“I’m not dead, Beast. Look.” I press my palms against his cheeks and drag his heavy head up. “Look at me. I’m me. I’m not dead.”
His eyes meet mine. “They’re all dead.” His eyes flicker up to the ceiling, and I think I understand.
I grab his arm. My fingers walk down it, looking for bruises or red marks. When I don’t see them there, I run my hand down his strong, hard abs and “v” of his hips, and down his thigh, which trembles slightly underneath my touch.
His mouth finds my neck as he presses his dick against me. “Angel.”
I shiver at the touch of his lips on my skin, but I duck out of his grasp and look down at his thigh again.
Yes, I’m right. It’s bruised: a bunch of little green and blue and yellow circles overlapping in one area. I wriggle out of his reach and tilt my head back, so I can see the full sick splendor of the ceiling.
Every last one of them is familiar: a picture quilt of images from that night. My hands grab onto his waist and slide down his thigh.
I look into his face. His eyes are wide, his mouth open.
“Angel.” He bends down to kiss me again, and I can’t seem to stop him. “You really are my Angel. Coming here. You don’t look like the others. You still look alive,” he murmurs in a low, scratchy voice.
I can feel his hands tremble against my waist…my belly. “God.” His fingers struggle with the button of my jeans, and I help him undo it. His palm glides down my mound. His fingers find my folds and part them gently. I must be wet because he slides inside with ease.
“Oh God.”
“If you’re real,” he murmurs, kneeling down, “you’ll scream.”
*
Beast
It’s such a strange hell, this place. Every night—some nights?—he comes in here and has the thing to stop my cravings. No more gnashing of teeth or screaming in my sleep. It stings when he jabs the needle in but then I’m floating through heaven. For a few moments, at the start of every time, I think it’s heaven.
And then I start to focus. Start to see what’s really there.
Uma. Guy. Brody.
They’re all dead and I can smell their blood. My blood? Their blood? I start getting restless but when I look around to find somewhere to go, it’s never-ending, white eternity. I end up in the corner, hugging my knees, trying not to look up but I always get so tired. I’m on my back, I’m looking up, and Angel is nowhere nearby this time.
I killed them all. I understand why this hurts. It’s because I killed them. Hell… This isn’t heaven. This is hell.
I never sleep in hell. Every time my eyes are open I’m gritting my teeth and pulling at my hair and wanting things I can’t even fucking see.
My chest feels hungry and my eyes are dry.
It’s going on and on. I don’t know for how long. All I know is I’m lying in a corner, by what I think might be a door. I’ve seen it before, but nothing makes a lot of sense right now. It never does lately.
And then Angel is here. She’s down here with me, and she’s not bloody, though I know she must be dead.
“I know you’re dead, and you should go away,” I murmur up against her thigh, “but I can’t let you go yet. I just have to taste you first.” I lick my way toward her cunt. “If you’re still here when I’m done, I’m going to fuck you—hard.”
I spread her with my fingers and I can smell her before I taste her. Sweet like fruit. A luscious, dripping fruit. I press my tongue and lips over her sweet pussy and start to lap her up.
“Oh God!”
I drag my tongue up, gliding slickly around the soft bud of her clit, teasing just enough so her legs give way and I’m easing her down onto the hardness of the floor. I spread her legs. I lift her legs over my shoulders, so I’m holding her up. Her ass is off the floor, her pussy lifted to my face like an Angel buffet.
I ease my tongue down in between her slit, over her warm, plump flesh and down to where the wetness pools. I push my tongue into her sweet center, and her legs grip me.
“Beast! Beast! Fuck!”
She’s pulling my hair, and I like it. Fucking love it.
I’ve already got one finger shoved inside her. I push another finger in. She grunts. So full. I like her full of me.
I start to pump inside her, spreading my fingers out a little, getting her ready for my cock. It’s been a while and I am jonesing for her.
Up and down and up and down
. I drag my tongue smoothly over her, always flicking just inside her entrance—then skating over her smooth, smooth inner skin and up around her clit. She arches up. She’s going wild, pinching my neck. She rocks into my face and I lick her like a succulent desert.
“God! I’m close!”
She hugs my head against her cunt and I fuck her ruthlessly with my fingers and my tongue. Working her up into a frenzy. Making her legs scissor atop my back. Making her ankles bend around my neck. My Angel grunts and groans and—yes—she even screams.
I feel her soft flesh spasm, and I lower her down to the cold floor. Push her legs open. And before she’s even finished panting, I aim my cock head for her core, work my thickness into her, and give a mighty shove.
Now…this is heaven.
*
Annabelle
He splits me open with his huge sword of a cock, and I can feel my body meld around him. God, his dick is huge. So crazy big and hard he can barely fit as he pushes in so deep his balls are pressed against my taint.
“Shit. Oh shit!”
“You like this, Angel?” He grins vacantly over me. I don’t care if he’s drugged, if he’s different. He still fucks me like Beast, and I still want him like I always do. I nod. I like it.
He drags himself out, moving so slowly I shudder, then rolls the full, plump head of him around my slickness and, when he’s coated in my juices, he shoves back in.
I slide across the cement floor as he grabs onto my forearms and we start rocking.
“Oh Beast!”
“Say it, Angel.” Two fingers grab my nipples, roll them. Tug them. “I want to hear you tell me who owns this sweet pussy.”
He’s thrusting faster. In and out. I’m drunk on lust, lifting my hips for him, letting the thick head and long, hard shaft move deeper into me than anyone before; his shaft parts my inner lips and rubs against them as his fingers roll over my clit. I’m so slick there. Swollen and ready for him.
“God, I missed this!”
In and out. When he’s in, he seems to touch the very core of me. My mind blanks out, and all I am is a place for him to shove his cock. God, he’s thick and hard. I’m so tight around him. Feel so stretched. My hips lift higher off the ground because I want to take in more of him.