“That’s what they’re saying.”
No. This can’t be happening. She can’t just leave. That couldn’t be the last time I saw her. I have to see her again. I have to make sure she’s safe. She has to listen to me and let me explain. How could she leave just like that? Fuck.“When are they gonna get me out of the hole?”
“Don’t know, but it’s earlier than a week. You should be grateful. Eat your dinner, count your fucking blessings and get your ass to sleep.” His eyes disappeared, and his footsteps echoes away.
How much longer I still had to spend in here was going to be the longest time of my life.
CHAPTER 17
Jo
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.”
