“Don't sleep,” I told myself as the mattress gave way below my ass.
I didn't have to check the tags to know it wasn't a name brand mattress. There weren't any actual springs poking me in the back, but it was one step away from it. It smelled like strong detergent instead of anything nastier, at least.
I laid back and rolled to one side. Fatigue continued to spread over my body, and despite my desire to stay conscious, I knew it was a losing battle.
“Stay awake.”
Fucking talking to myself again.
Rolling over with the hope movement alone would keep the sandman away, I heard the springs below me groan in protest. I was immediately reminded of another small, crappy bed in the heart of the Arizona desert. Inside of my head, I could hear the rhythmic sounds of the squeaking wrought iron bed as I pounded into Lia.
My hand releases her neck, and I grab her hair instead.
“My cock feels so good fucking you,” I growl into her ear. “You like that? Huh?”
A groan is the only response I get, but it is enough.
I slam into her harder, hold myself deep inside for a moment, and then slowly slide almost all the way out. I would have pulled all the way out, but it would be too awkward to get back inside of her without getting her back up on her knees again, and I like having her all splayed out under me the way she is.
She likes it, too.
“Do you know how easy it would be,” I moan, and my voice is gravelly and husky in her ear, “to fuck you in the ass from this position?”
I feel her tense, and there are goose bumps springing up over her neck and shoulders. I smile slightly—she’s never taken a cock up the ass before. My lips press against the skin below her ear.
“Not this time,” I whisper, and I feel her relax underneath me for a brief moment.
I never did have anything other than straight sex with Lia. As many times as I had fucked her in that cabin while she was there, I never did take her in the ass. Other than that single comment when I had been on top of her, I hadn’t thought about it much. I would have taken her any way she was willing, but unlike any other woman I had ever been with, my cock’s focus was all on her pussy.
Reaching up to my head, I grabbed the thin pillow and pulled it to my chest. It smelled like cheap detergent with a hint of bleach, but I tried to ignore the burning in my nose as I pressed my cheek to the pillow. I wanted to recreate the feeling I had when I woke up that morning with my head on Lia’s stomach and her hand running through my hair. I closed my eyes briefly and immediately felt consciousness trying to leave me.
“Not yet,” I whispered into the empty room. “Need to have her in my head first.”
Maybe I’d dream of her if I did. It was possible, wasn’t it? All the dreams started again shortly after I came back from that cabin, so shouldn’t I be able to conjure up a dream of her?
“Please?”
I thought about the feeling of her skin under my hands and the way she smelled the next day—like she’d had me in her all night, which she had. I remembered the sound of her panting breaths and low moans as I first entered her body. I could still taste her tongue in my mouth after she’d borrowed my toothbrush in the morning.
I tried to fill my mind with thoughts of her sad smile as she glanced over her shoulder and walked up the steps of the bus. She didn’t want me to drive her to her mother’s house, and I couldn’t have left my post long enough to do so anyway.
She’d just been a girl, lost in the desert.
She should have meant nothing to me.
When I returned to Chicago, I had tried to forget everything—especially the lost girl I had taken to my bed and held far too closely in my mind. I kept myself occupied with my work and with a whore, but I knew that I had actually lost myself in that cabin as well—lost myself in her eyes as well as between her thighs. That loss was what drove me over the edge and brought me to this tiny bed in a tiny cell, just as Lia had been brought to my small bed in a one-room cabin.
I couldn’t hold sleep off any longer, and even though I knew my chances of success were nil, I continued to try to fight it.
I lost.
The dreams came.
I woke up screaming.
“You got a call-out, Arden.”
The words flowed around in my head, but I didn’t find them very interesting. I was far more focused on trying to hold on to the memory of soft, dark hair through my fingers and the way my soul seemed to relax into Lia as I lay my head against her stomach.
“Come on, Arden—scheduled appointment.”
I didn’t remember having one, but at some point a couple of the guards and the unit manager came in and dragged me down to one of the private visiting rooms. The handcuffs around my wrists were checked, and then the other end secured me to the arms of a chair. I lifted my hands slightly, but they weren’t able to move far.
I pressed against the floor with the balls of my feet and tried to keep the panic at bay as the metal lay across my wrists, but the movement wasn’t distracting enough. I frantically tried to think of something to keep my mind off the restraints. I tried to think about what I would do if there was an itch on my nose. I thought about the last soccer game I had watched and wondered if I would be able to watch any of this season’s games from inside. I wondered what Lia was doing right at the moment and if Odin liked staying with her. I was sure he did and was comforted by the idea that he would like living with Lia.
A few minutes after I was placed in the chair, Rinaldo Moretti walked into the room with a tall, lanky guy in a suit behind him. The look in my boss’s eyes was stern and closed—nearly unreadable, except I knew exactly what he was thinking. I was supposed to come to him if I got to the point of breaking, and I hadn’t.
The problem was once you have crossed that line, you don’t exactly think rationally. It was sort of the definition of breaking.
My throat seized up. I couldn’t look at him and opted to look straight down at the table instead. My lungs couldn’t seem to get enough air, and I had to force myself to breathe through my nose. I balled my hands into fists to keep them from shaking and making the chains rattle.
Rinaldo cleared his throat, and I glanced up.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I said with an uncharacteristically shaky voice.
Rinaldo just stared at me, his eyes flickering from the emotionless façade he was trying to maintain to fury. There was tightness around his eyes and definite tension in his forearms. His fingers flexed once as he leaned back in the metal chair.
“We’ll have that discussion another time,” he said with promise. “Don’t doubt that. For now, I’m here to introduce you to your attorney.”
“Michael Beard,” the young man said. “I specialize in cases where the defendant has suffered from PTSD. I understand you’ve been given this diagnosis? Can you tell me precisely when?”
I looked over the man in the suit. He wasn’t much older than I was, and I doubted he was beyond thirty. For a moment, I considered that Rinaldo had found me a shit attorney to make sure I went away for a long time, but that didn’t make sense. If he wanted me out of the picture, he wouldn’t be here at all, let alone with a lawyer in tow. He knew all my money was cash and inaccessible from inside, and he would have just left me to rot with a public defender if he wasn’t serious about getting me out.
What he’d do to me after I was released, well, that was anyone’s guess. He wouldn’t have spent the time and effort to get me out to kill me, though. That would be a waste of money when he could accomplish the same thing cheaper with a bribe to a guard or an inmate.