Chapter Nine #2
Someone kneed him in the back. He didn’t know who was holding him, and it didn’t matter because it wasn’t going to stop him. When they were shoved through the gate, that should have been the end, but it wasn’t. Jameson lifted the truncheon again. It was all Samuel needed.
He broke out of the CO’s hold, ripped the weapon from the man’s meaty hand, and flung it into the gate with a clang like a gunshot. He was going to beat the man until he was pulp on the wall. He wanted it. Was looking forward to it.
A hand seized his arm. “Puppy, don’t—”
Samuel shrugged him off. He’d just seized hold of Jameson’s shirt, his fist drawn back, and was snapped taut as 50,000 volts of vicious electricity shot into his body from the four small electrodes stuck into his back.
Tased. Again.
It was worse knowing what was coming—the horrible crunch when his body would met the floor, his muscles immobile.
Then would come the interminable wait as he spasmed and spasmed, the scream in his throat, cut off and frozen.
But there wasn’t a crunch. Someone had caught him, and then, a brief eternity later, even the spasming was interrupted as the line broke, his body becoming his own once again.
The stun gun was on the floor, as was the CO it belonged to. Eli dropped to his knees on the floor beside him. “ Samuel, are you alright?”
The tremors were still there, and he didn’t feel confident enough yet to speak, but he made a clumsy grab and managed to get a hold of Eli’s jumpsuit.
When he tried to sit, Eli stopped him. “Not until you’re steady.”
But he fumbled some more, pushing his hand up to Eli’s shoulder where the truncheon had hit hardest. His words and mind were still jumbled, but he managed the words. “Hurt you?”
“This? Please. Hailey hits harder when I give her movie spoilers.”
Eli’s tone was light, but his eyes and face were cracking with worry.
It bothered Samuel to see it there. It bothered him a lot.
He tried to sit up again and this time he insisted, fighting the resistance, and pulled the neck of Eli’s shirt aside.
The skin there was warm and beginning to swell.
“Ice,” he said, his reason returning. “Norm can give us. Or the clinic. Clinic’s closer. Can you— ”
It was the click-click of the heels that stopped him.
He only ever heard heels from two sources, and his sister was never on this side of the gate.
He straightened his back and was more or less composed when the warden came into view.
Her face went through a quick series of contortions before smoothing out.
Warden Cruces’s face was a mix of anxiety and exasperation—mostly exasperation. “What did you do now, Fuller?”
An arm slid around his shoulders. Eli, putting his body between him and the new threat. Safe .
“I got married. Chesterson was just congratulating me.”
Chesterson, who had recovered her stun gun and shoved it back into her belt, was on her feet. “He became violent, started going for Jameson. I did what I had to. You can check the cameras. I—”
The warden held up her hand. “You can wait in my office. You too, Jameson.”
Chesterson was glad to make her escape, but Jameson’s already puffy body swelled with indignation. “I can’t very well leave you alone here. That boy is a loose cannon. Remember the time with the ear? When Alvaro saw that he threw up all over himself. Nasty boy. Like an animal. He—”
“My office, Jameson.”
Jameson huffed and let the tip of his truncheon bump up against Samuel’s shoulder, a reminder that he wasn’t done with him.
Good. Samuel wasn’t done with him either.
He waited until the man had gotten his lumpy ass out of sight before he turned back to the warden.
“Don't cost Eli any visitation privileges. It was my fault and won’t happen again. I’ll—"
“Enough, I'm not going to do anything. No, it looks like you and your trophy wife have gotten the worse end of it already. But you need to start thinking before you act, Fuller. You’ve been fortunate so far. No permanent injury, but one of these days—”
“He’s in prison,” Eli interrupted. “ Your prison. How fortunate can he be?”
The warden glared. “If you think you’re going to guilt me, Thompson, you don’t know your audience.I know who I’ve failed, and I never forget their names. Fuller, can you stand?”
“Yes.”
“Then take your ass to the dormitory. The guards will want to see you being nice and docile. And Thompson? Whatever you think you’ve seen, the reality is worse, and the only reason you don’t know it is because you’re being protected.
Remember that in here it goes by rank and experience.
That makes Fuller older and wiser than you.
Make sure you listen. You’ve made things hard enough for him as it is. ”
Eli didn’t care about getting ice, he just wanted to get to a phone and reassure Nathaniel he was all right. Samuel had to bribe Bertie to get off his call. He always kept bribes on him—mostly candy. It was amazing just how many big murderous convicts had a sweet tooth. Hell, he was one of them.
Bertie hung up for a Snickers, and Darnell decided he would practice the virtue of patience for a while longer for some Doritos. He was negotiating with his next esteemed client when Eli handed over the phone. “Your sister,” he said.
Mystified, Samuel pressed the receiver to his ear.
“You’re still with the professor?” He was glad of it, but a little surprised.
He assured Jenny he was fine and conveniently left out the part about getting tased.
He’d tell her later, unable to lie, but didn’t believe in giving her too much bad news at once.
He was wrapping it up with her when he heard a new voice in the background. “Let me say hi! Let me say hi!”
And then the voice was in his ear directly. “Samuel! Guess what!”
“Hailey?” he guessed.
She laughed, familiar even when he’d never heard the sound before. “I was so excited I forgot that part. Yes, it’s me. And guess what? I finally wore mom down!”
Her voice was so sweet and bright—the antithesis of everything the prison stood for—that he instinctively clutched at the receiver, trying to pull that sunshine and warmth inward. “You mean—”
“I finally get to see you and daddy! Isn’t that amazing?” And then she laughed again, the sound like pealing bells on a summer day.
“Does your—did you tell me first?”
“Tell you what?” Eli demanded. He’d taken over the negotiation with Cleaver where he’d left off.
“Don’t tell him!” came the shout. “I want it to be a surprise.”
Eli was already at his elbow. “Something wrong?”
His brain churned, spun, and failed. “Jenny finally got her skin tag removed.” He didn’t know where the excuse came from, but with it he knew he’d just doomed himself to prison for life.
If he ever left its protection, Jenny would wring his neck.
Skin tags. As if she had anything like a skin tag.
But Hailey’s laughter was in his ears again, so maybe it was worth it.
“There’s a big line now, isn’t there? I guess I’ll let you go, but I’ll see you Monday! Love you! Be safe!”
When she hung up, he was left with the dangling receiver, shaken by his transformation.
Abruptly, he wasn’t Samuel the murderer, but Samuel, Hailey’s friend.
And someone she loved? Maybe she’d just said the words out of habit.
It was a common way to end phone calls, after all.
But her voice had been so warm he could almost convince himself that she’d meant it.
But the cost of that conversation was high, mainly because with it he then had to endure the god-awful anxiety of awaiting her arrival.
Would she find him boring? Weird? frightening?
He really hoped she wasn’t frightened. And what if the other prisoners tried to speak to her?
Or said something inappropriate? He knew they didn’t have any pedophiles on the block.
He’d made sure. But you didn’t need to be a pedophile to be gross.
He could try to warn others off beforehand.
But no, that would only make her more of a target.
And that wasn’t even his only worry. He still had to convince a supremely invested group of prisoners that he was, indeed, prison-married to Eli. He’d done some thinking about it beforehand, but that didn’t mean he was prepared for the reality of it. Like their first shower together.
It began with a smack to the ass. “Ready, hubby?”
He commandeered the offending towel and tossed it over his shoulder. “I’m not washing your back.”
“I guess it’s staying dirty then. Can I wash your hair? I miss doing Than’s.”
“No.”
Eli clicked his tongue. “Stingy.”
Samuel washed up first, and that meant keeping his eyes closed under a stream of water and facing the wall.
But then he switched positions with Eli, and that meant looking— really looking.
He couldn’t just avert his eyes, or better yet, turn around and face the opposite direction entirely.
They were meant to be lovers, after all, but he’d been a fool to think he could manage it.
He got one look at sudsy, streaming-wet and naked Eli, and felt like he’d been punched in the gut.
He didn’t look at Eli’s dick. Not directly.
But even his peripheral vision was enough to tell him what he didn’t want to know. The man was hung like a studhorse.
“I thought Nathaniel was the only one who could blush down to his chest,” Eli said. “You white boys really are something.”
Samuel broke character to snarl at him to shut up.
He was mortified and nervous and something even worse.
He grabbed his towel and wrapped it around his waist. He wasn’t hard.
That’s what he told himself as he fled the bathroom.
Not hard. Not even half-hard. But something.
Something like what had happened when Nathaniel had been grinding up against him.
For the first time in his life his dick was awake, and no news could have been less welcome.
He dressed so fast he still had traces of soap left under his clothes.
He didn’t care. His heart was thundering like the Kentucky derby, and he was the horse without a jockey.
He pressed his face against the cool metal of the bunk.
“Jenny,” he whispered, but she didn’t materialize, and even if she had, what could she have done to help him? “I don’t like this. I don’t like this.”
Eli did materialize, and considering his skimpy towel and dripping wet body, he was something Samuel very much could have done without.
He didn’t even pretend to look at the man, focusing all his attention on Eli’s book collection instead, too distracted to even read the titles, especially when Eli dropped the towel and leisurely began to sort through his collection of clothes.
This was something Samuel had told him to do.
Where before he’d advised modesty, now he demanded the opposite.
Eli was taken, and that meant flaunting that fact to everyone who cared to look.
It meant eyes. A lot of eyes. Samuel wasn’t even the one being stared at, but just his proximity to such laser focus was making his skin crawl.
But Eli didn’t seem bothered by it at all, in fact, if Samuel didn’t know better, he’d say the man was enjoying himself.
He was humming as he selected his pajamas.
Well, not really ‘pajamas’ in the real sense of the word.
Just cheap commissary sweats. But with the show Eli was putting them on it might as well have been a boudoir photoshoot.
And choosing the clothes was only the first step. Samuel didn’t realize just how bad it was going to get until Eli pulled out his container of cocoa butter. Then he felt the blood drain from his face.
Eli sat down on his bed, nude as the day he was born, and began to apply it.
Samuel allowed the wolf whistles. He allowed the cat calls.
But when Forest Chuck freed himself from his pants to make liberal use of the show, Samuel was called to action.
He crossed the room in large but unhurried strides, seized the man by the beard, and dashed him onto the floor.
He did it so quickly that old chuck still had a hand on his cock.
Well, it didn’t stay there long. He let the bastard rise onto all fours before he kicked him hard enough to lift him off the ground.
Then he grabbed him by the back of the head and slammed his face into the bedpost. It was all he managed before Mathews and Carnivore grabbed him.
That part was necessary too. He’d warned Eli to expect another night in solitary, and though Eli had argued, and even pleaded, Samuel had wrangled unwilling agreement out of him to accept it in the end.
He kept his head high as he was led away.
“The next animal to disrespect my husband won’t get off so easy.
” And he smiled as he said it, Mad Dog again.