AllFreeNovel
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They wanted your goddamn book? Well, if it was a guard? You were just screwed. If it was another inmate? You better be willing to fight for it if you actually wanted it.
And so a deep-seated feeling of needing my shit to be mine and only mine had developed.
It also hadn’t abated.
Hell, just last week Astrid had walked up to my plate and started eating off of it.
I’d had to seriously control my knee-jerk reaction in yelling at her.
It wasn’t that I minded sharing…I just felt like it was something that needed to be asked first.
Crossing my arms over my chest, I looked down at the woman and studied her, wondering how long it would take her to realize I was there.
The answer?
Never.
“Ahem,” I cleared my throat.
She sighed and squirmed, drawing attention to her tight black tank top. It rode up slightly over her belly, and I had to fight the urge to trace my finger along the line of exposed skin between her shirt and her high-waisted pants.
Pants that were seriously high. Like, I’m talking, almost up to the bottom of her ribs high.
She must’ve been sleeping hard if her shirt had that much time to ride up that far.
I cleared my throat again, this time causing her to shift all over again, bringing her pink-socked foot up and out, causing her pants to ride up slightly, making the fabric at the apex of her thighs rise slightly. Meaning the fabric pushed between her pussy lips, giving me a very real indication that she probably wasn’t wearing any underwear.
I felt myself harden.
In order to hide that fact, I cleared my throat even louder and then said, “Ma’am?”
She blinked her eyes open, and once again I was hit with those light sea foam green eyes.
She frowned in confusion but didn’t freak out when she saw a six-foot-five-inch man standing over her. Nor did she really show any reaction to me at all—other than annoyance that I woke her from her nap.
“What?” she snapped, bringing her arm up to glance at her watch. “Ugh, I still have an hour!”
My lips twitched. “Still have an hour?” I asked.
“Yes!” she said. “To make my nap goal.”
“Your nap goal,” I found myself saying. “Who has a nap goal?”
She pursed her lips. “I do.”
I didn’t know what to say to that other than, “Well, I’m sorry to bother you. You know, since you’re outside and in the yard, and I’m probably not the only one that will wake you up today.”
She curled her lip. “You are. Everybody else knows to leave me alone.”
I opened my mouth and then closed it.
“I just literally had my bike five feet away from your head,” I said. “How was I supposed to know that you were sleeping toward your goal? Not to mention you’re in the middle of a neighborhood where anyone or anything could make noise. Hell, I could’ve gotten out my lawn mower and done that without even knowing that you were there.”
She closed her eyes again.
“Those things don’t bother me,” she said. “What bothers me are men waking me up with their loud mouths.”
“You’re telling me the pipes on my bike didn’t wake you up?” I said. “My mouth did?”
She nodded. “Glad you could get that through your thick skull.”
I opened my mouth and then closed it.
“How?”
She sighed and blinked one eye open to glare at me.
“I grew up around motorcycles. I get my best sleep when one’s humming in the background,” she said. “My house is too quiet, which is why I’m out here at all. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to the rest of my nap.”
I crossed my arms over my chest.
“Well, now that we’re on that subject, I do mind,” I said stiffly.
That was about the time that the screen door of her house creaked open then slammed shut.
My eyes lit on the large man. He was tall, about six-foot-two or so, with dirty blonde hair that was perfectly styled and a complexion that screamed ‘I have a nighttime skincare routine.’
He was wearing a nice pair of khaki slacks, a button-down shirt, and a brown leather belt.
I couldn’t see his feet, but I could almost guarantee he was wearing a pair of loafers.
“You okay, Harleigh?” he called.
Harleigh gave a thumbs-up without opening her eyes.
“This man was just about to leave me alone,” she called out.
Actually, I wasn’t.
And my next words said so.
“You’re in my hammock,” I said softly.
She opened her eyes and stared. “No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are,” I said. “Those trees that that hammock are attached to are my trees as well. You’re in my yard.”
She glanced around, causing her hair to pull up from its near-precarious position of scraping the ground.
“Bullshit. This is Dre’s property line.” She gestured to where my driveway started.
“Ummm, no,” I disagreed immediately. “If you were going by that, then at least a quarter of the brick on the side of my house would belong to y’all.”
