My heart pounded as I rolled up to the gate. What the fuck am I doing here? played on repeat in my head.
I hesitated as I entered to sign my paperwork as usual but as a visitor not as an employee. I should have been a thousand miles away from this city by now, but after my encounter with Laius’s friend, Fort, as I’d learned to call him, I needed answers to the million questions what he told me carved in my brain.
Going through with the security check I should have been accustomed to by now, I still hated that pat-down as much as every time. Being touched for any reason was an intimate thing. Intimacy and I were strangers. I had no father, my mom’s arms were ripped off me when I was eight, I’d been confined in a boarding academy for ten years after, and I’d only been intimate with one man in my whole life.
I was led down a long hallway that I hadn’t passed through before to a dull, packed with loved ones of inmates waiting area. Anxiety wrapped around me as I waited to be called. It seemed like a thousand hours, and I contemplated leaving a thousand times. I brought a book out of my bag and began to read to take down the anxiety, but even my favorite hobby failed to take the edge off. I grabbed a pen and a sheet of paper and started writing. A list of the questions I had for Laius so I wouldn’t forget any. Then I wrote down a reminder to burn this note as soon as possible. After the things Fort had told me, danger was much closer than I thought it’d be.
The guards called out a long list of names. Laius Lazzarini wasn’t one of them. I started to worry this was going to be a blank visit. Did he refuse to see me? Or was he still in solitary confinement? Fort had told me I’d caused such cruel punishment. But he’d also told me, Laius’s charges would be amended to self-defense and he’d be out soon. That meant the solitary punishment would be overruled.
“Laius Lazzarini!” the guard yelled the last name on the list. I spoke too soon.
My stomach tightened when they pulled open the door to the visitor’s area. Out of instinct, I scanned the room to choose the most secluded table with the least surveillance exposure. There were two, but the best of them was taken by a beautiful woman my age in a sexy dress accentuating her massive breasts. I took the next best table and pressed my sunglasses up my nose.
My leg rocked under the table as I waited for the inmates’ arrival, the room full with the low chatters and children’s play sounds. Then the doors buzzed, and blue denim and chambray shirts streamed in.
There was no missing Furore even from across the room. He’d stand out with how beautiful he was whether it was a prison or a frat party. I was concerned about his safety as a very attractive man in a harsh place such as prison. Even with a body built to ruin and maim, and I knew he was feared and fully capable of taking care of himself, I needed him out of here. I needed him safe.
When his eyes locked right on me, I froze. He drew closer, my heart a wild rhythm with every step. I brought myself to rise and braced against the table. When he was in front of me, a man in front of a woman, not a student before his teacher, everything was different. My body primed with an attraction that no force or will could stop. My breath caught as I stood in his space, feeling the dominance he exuded wrapping around me, breaking my walls brick by brick, stripping me bare of the barricades I’d long set around me.
We stood rock solid for a long moment before he wrapped his arms around my waist and held me against his body. I gasped, but it came out muffled against his firm chest, and his scent filled my breath. Then I closed my eyes for a moment, a sudden peace falling over me when I was wrapped tight between his arms.
Something brushed the top of my head, and a sharp inhale followed as he pressed what must have been his nose to my hair. Then something hard dug into my stomach.
He didn’t try to conceal it or pull away, as if he wanted me to feel him. Heat rushed between my thighs as desire unlike anything I’d ever known took hold of my body. “Laius,” I whispered.
“When you say my name like that…” He broke our hug almost violently.
Instantly, I missed his warmth, feeling a painful, abrupt loss. I looked up at him, tongue tied. He didn’t say anything either, but the way he was looking at me revealed more than words could. I ducked my head as I took a seat at the table, trying to pretend I didn’t feel anything, not his hardness for me, not my wetness soaking my panties for him, not the inexplicable, shameful need to crawl back into his embrace and stay.
He didn’t sit across from me. He took the seat to my left. It was probably so that people couldn’t hear us, like I’d chosen the table away from the cameras. Or maybe it was because he wanted to…be closer to me.
Get these silly thoughts out of your head and do what you came here to do. “Thank you for seeing me,” I murmured, mouth dry, unable to meet his eyes. I stared at the ink that covered his neck and chest. My fingers itched to reach out and touch the designs, so I folded them together in my lap.
“There will never be a time when I won’t want to see you, Miss Meneceo.”
I swallowed. “I’m glad you’re out of solitary. I hate that I caused it.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“You defended me.”
“Something I’ll be happy to do over and over.”
Reflexively, I lifted my head to meet his gaze, those dark pools of green penetrating every part of me until they hit my soul. “I…I met your friend. He told me you sent him.”
“I did. I trust Fort with my life. He’s the best man to look after you while I’m here.”
“Look after me? Is that what you call it? Did you know he jumped me at my building? He scared me to death.”
Fury marred his face. “He did what?”
I didn’t want him to get angry. He, for some unknown reason, was trying to look out for me, defending me and sending his friend to alert me. The last thing I wanted to do was causing Furore more trouble or be the cause of anything violent. “He said this wasn’t his town. It belonged to someone else. He didn’t know the best locations where no one would be watching. He didn’t want to risk being seeing together so he used that trick to get me to meet him without being spotted.”
“Did he fucking hurt you?” he asked with the same fury as if he didn’t hear me.
“No, Laius. I mean, he’s built like a wall and fighting him until he pushed me into my apartment has caused some inevitable bruises, but those are self-inflicted. He didn’t hurt me. I wished there had been a more peaceful way to get me to meet him, but with how stubborn I was, it was probably the only way.”
His gaze turned pensive, and his face calmed. Then he smirked. “You fought Fort?”
I chuckled. “I tried.”
“You’re a badass, Miss Meneceo.”
I bit my lip, proud to hear it from him, and too aroused at the way he said my name. “Um…is it safe to talk here?”
He nodded once. “You chose a good table. Not the best, but it’ll work.”
“I have so many questions.”
He leaned forward, his lips parting to speak, but then he paused and looked at my mouth. “You’re so beautiful. Do you know how many times I pictured kissing you or how many times I said fuck it and almost did it right there in the middle of your class?”
I took a longer pause while my heart tried to beat out of my chest. My lips shivered, and I averted my gaze in a futile attempt to get a grip. “How long has your friend been following me?”
“A couple of weeks. I sent him to keep an eye on you for protection but without being noticed.”
“So when he was at Belle View, he was watching over me? But he didn’t say anything so no one would know who he was?”
“Brava.”
I couldn’t tell if it was genuine praise or he was making fun of me. “How do I know your friend isn’t lying about the things he told me?”
He touched my chin with his finger, inducing another shiver as he directed my face back on his. “Ask me anything.”
“Fort told me about the family that’s looking for a lost Irish girl,” I whispered. “They thought I was her, and they asked you to find out if it was true.”
He nodded.
“So you’ve been lying all this time about everything—”
“Everything I’ve ever told you is the truth. I was never gonna give you to them. I’m not like that, Jo. I might be a monster but not that kind. From the second they showed me that photo of the little girl, I wanted to protect her. All I was doing was buying myself some time to show them I was game for my boy’s sake.”
“But you were trying to figure out who I was.”
“Because I was convinced you were that girl. I wanted to know for sure so I’d make all the right moves to keep them away from you.”
“And the time you tried to make me take off my sunglasses? What if I was her? How was that protecting me?”
“No one was looking. They were all focused on their homework, and you were standing too close to me, bending over, my body was shielding you from their eyes.”
“But why?”
His tongue darted out of his mouth and licked his lower lip. “I’ll tell you the same reason I told you then. I was tired of imagining the eyes I looked into when I fucked my fist every night. I wanted to know what they looked like for real.”
My cheeks burned, and a wave of scorching heat descended down my neck and engulfed my breasts, which heaved in his face, and he stared.
“My eyes are up here,” I said, but it didn’t come out as either a warning or a complaint.
“But you’re still hiding them from me. Until you quench my thirst for them, I’ll feed my imagination with something else.”
“You’re so inappropriate.”
“And you’re not in a classroom anymore, Miss Meneceo. You’re a single woman, visiting an inmate in prison, who is single, too. What do you think the nature of such visits is, baby girl?”
My jaw hung low. “I’m not here for…that.” I protested even though baby girl caused not one but two throbs between my legs.
“Why are you here, Jo?”
Yes. Why was I here getting burned in a new hell I should do nothing but escape? Had I not had enough flames devouring me whole and spitting me flayed? Why could I not leave without seeing Laius Lazzarini one last time when I knew it’d only make me want to stay? Why was I here melting at words that would forever stir my wet dreams? Why was I here wanting, needing, them to be more than dreams? I cleared my throat. “I… I’m here to thank you for protecting me.”
He chuckled. “I don’t like to be lied to, especially when I’ve been nothing but honest with you.”
“I’m not lying.” I was only telling half the truth.
“Well, bless your heart, Jo. I stuck my neck out for you when you ain’t even that girl. I’d been fucking myself in the dark, talking to myself like a crazy man because of it. If you’re really here to thank me, a few words ain’t gonna cut it, baby. You gotta show me how thankful you really are,” he drawled like a Texan.
God, that accent turned my brain into mush. “What… How would you like me to thank you?”
“You see that table over there?” He didn’t point. He just tilted his chin toward the secluded table I wanted to sit at but was taken. I nodded once.
“Do you know what people do when they sit there?”
I blinked toward the table. I could barely see the woman who sat there, and the inmate she was visiting didn’t appear at all from here. Sweet Jesus. Now, I knew why she was wearing that sexy dress. Why did I have to be so naïve all the time? I had no clue people would… Not here. Not with all these people around. Not with the risk of being caught…or watched. I blushed hard. There was no question as to what Furore wanted.
He rose to his feet and subtly adjusted himself. Fuck, the glimpse of the outline alone was huge. “When I tell you to come, come.” Then he winked. “Pun intended.”
“No, Laius. I will not—”
He ignored me and was now talking to the people at the table. In a second, the other inmate was on his feet, protesting yet complying with Furore’s wishes. Furore nodded for me to join him. Despite the other frowning man and glaring woman coming my way, who looked like they were about to murder me, I didn’t have the courage to leave my seat because I knew deep down if I went there, I wouldn’t have the willpower to deny Laius. Honestly, I was starting to think I’d give that man anything he asked for, and that was what terrified me the most.
