Chapter Ten
The Android
It was oddly quiet down in solitary. No screaming crazies, no whistling assholes.
Just him and a couple of other relatively normal prisoners.
He was glad for it. He really needed to decompress.
He also needed sleep, and he had a better chance of doing it down in solitary than next to Eli after both the shower and moisturizing scenes.
Or so he thought. But when he collapsed onto the shitty foam mattress and closed his eyes, Eli’s body popped back into his head in high definition.
Every inch of the man had been seared into his mind.
The beautiful symmetry of his arms, the way the water ran down between the gully of his pecs, the clinging drops of moisture on that ripe peach of an ass.
His dick twitched.
No , he begged his body. Please no . But trying to force the thoughts away only strengthened them. Inside his mind, Eli smiled at him. Not the usual smile, friendly and open. This was a smile of intent. The smile of someone who knew exactly what he was doing—and liked it.
“Shit,” he hissed when he dared to peek under his jumpsuit and found what he’d already known. He was hard. For real hard. A real erection inspired by a real person.
He didn’t know what to do. Real people usually made his dick shrivel, and the more attractive they were, the limper he became.
His fear had been a protection in prison—until now.
He let his head sink back onto the mattress with a groan.
He already had too much on his plate. He didn’t need new things to worry about.
At twenty-five, almost twenty-six, he was too old to be having a sexual awakening.
Go to sleep , he told himself. Sleep and forget .
But he didn’t sleep, and with his eyes closed, Eli wasn’t going anywhere either.
He was in the shower again, but this time instead of the utilitarian motions of a man trying to get clean, Eli was putting on a show.
It was easy to imagine because he’d just witnessed something like it with that damn cocoa butter.
Eli’s skin was so smooth. He’d touched it before, but only a little at a time.
What would it be like to press up against it?
Press up to him the way they had in the visitors’ room, only without clothes, and in a bed.
Eli would be gentle. He knew it. Not just in the way he’d hoped Mr. Edwards would be, but really knew it.
Eli had touched him before. His hair, his neck, and it was always so sweet.
So careful. He put a hand to his crotch to check on things, hoping he was starting to deflate—a mistake.
Because things weren’t deflating, and now he had his hand on his dick.
It felt good.
That was the second shock. He didn’t like to masturbate.
Even if he was doing it to the thought of someone fictional, or even no one at all, he was frightened, antsy.
It didn’t help that when he did try, he’d get flashes of being held against the wall and that sharp tearing pain, but there was no room in his mind for Mr. Edwards or the prison’s predators.
His head was too full of Eli. Big and gentle and so beautiful he thought it might burn his eyes.
And then his hand was slipping under his pants, and he was pulling at himself before he could stop to think about how crazy that was.
He’d seen plenty of masturbation before.
There was always at least one guy going at it in the dormitory.
He didn’t know how they could do it like that, surrounded by others.
He’d never be able to get hard if he thought someone was watching, but some of them enjoyed being watched.
One of the predators was like that. When Samuel had first come to the prison, Legs had always liked to whip his out whenever he thought he might be looking.
He’d do it anywhere. In the showers. In the cafeteria.
Hell, he’d done it once in the visitor’s room.
Legs was gone now. Transferred out. But there were still plenty of what he called “serial masturbators.” He’d even asked one guy why he was always doing it.
Morris (that was his name) had only shrugged and said, “It feels good, doesn’t it?
” Samuel wasn’t so sure. Even before prison, when he would get erections, they’d often wilted before orgasm, and even when he did make it to the finish line, the dreams that would come afterwards were never worth it.
He’d wake up soaked in sweat and with a horrible phantom pain in his ass.
Since being incarcerated he’d never tried.
It meant that every week or so he’d wake up with a small wet spot on his boxers—nighttime emissions, the sign of every healthy man who wasn’t getting off, but that was a small price to pay for peace.
He was perfectly content to continue that pattern for the next ten or so years until he got out—or at least, he had been.
Now, he didn’t know what he was doing. Or rather, he knew what he was doing, he just didn’t know why he was doing it, as there couldn’t be anything sadder than a self-imposed celibacy champion jerking off to a married man while trapped in a prison cell.
But reasoning wasn’t a part of it. Nothing was, really, save his uneven breath, the imaginary Eli with his 1000-watt smile, and a dick rapidly approaching orgasm.
“ Shit ,” he hissed again, and came all over his jumpsuit.
He stared down at it, stripes of semi-translucent white on a background of bright orange and let his head drop down with another groan.
The embarrassment came as he knew it would, but his feeling of helplessness was worse.
It stole over him like a smothering blanket.
He rolled over onto his side, irrespective of the mess, and shut his eyes tight, but he couldn’t hide from himself.
What was he doing? He didn’t know. And worse, he didn’t know what was coming next.
He liked him. Maybe more than liked him. It was ridiculous, but it was also the truth. The man was becoming too important, too fast, and those feelings were far more dangerous than anything else in the prison. Just go to sleep he begged of himself. Stop thinking and go to sleep .
He did go to sleep, a dreamless sleep of the dead, and he must have slept a really long time, eight hours at least, because the next thing he knew the door was being pulled open.
“Morning, Fuller. Sleep well?”
It was The Android.
Samuel swung his legs off the pallet and stood. He didn’t like being alone with The Android and wanted to minimize that time as much as possible. He headed for the door. “Fine, thanks. And yourself?”
“No sleeping for me. I was on duty last night. Down here.”
“Oh?”
He didn’t care, but he found it best to keep people talking when he was nervous.
“Yup. Quiet night. Just you and Pepper. But you like the quiet, don’t you?”
He wasn’t sure what the right answer to that was.
They were walking down the hall. All he had to do was make it up the steps and down another hall and he’d be back in the cafeteria.
Eli was probably making breakfast. He knew it was too much to hope for the pancake sandwiches again, but anything would have tasted good just then.
He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed eating meals with someone. “I like it all right.”
“Of course you do. You’re not like the others here. You appreciate the important things. ”
The conversation was starting to feel weird. He tried to steer it in another direction. “You should tell that to the Warden. She thinks I’m the source of all trouble.”
They’d reached the door to the stairwell. He pushed it open and held it, waiting for The Android to follow, but the man paused in the doorway.
“I heard you’re a married man now.”
His pulse stumbled. “Oh, that’s just—”
“Is he who you were thinking about?”
“What?”
The Android reached out and traced his hand down the dried mess of his jumpsuit. “Last night.”
Samuel flinched back, his heart racing, his blood screaming. He saw . The words were raw, branded across the surface of his mind. He watched me. The whole time. He was there .
The Android followed him into the stairwell before the door could shut.
Samuel’s back hit the handrail, but The Android kept coming, stepping into his space, looking up into his face.
Inescapable. “You’re best when you’re alone.
Pristine, you know? Like a white sand beach. Don’t you want to keep it that way?”
He couldn’t think. He couldn’t breathe. His mind was screaming. PREDATOR . He needed help. He needed to run. But he was frozen, and The Android was leaning closer. He could feel warm breath on his mouth. “Quiet is what you need. An endless quiet.”
When The Android’s chest touched his, he finally came to life, cracking free from whatever chrysalis was caging him in.
He pushed and suddenly he was free, the fear everywhere, but free.
He crashed up the stairs, the adrenaline giving him speed he didn’t normally possess, faster and faster, running, sprinting—
He was caught, slammed to a halt, and fear whited out his vision. He wouldn’t freeze again. He would fight, scream, whatever he had to—
“It’s me! Puppy, it’s me.”
He didn’t hear the words. Not individually. But he heard the voice. Knew that voice. And the arms—it wasn’t a cage, but arms, the safe ones, that held him.
“What happened? You’re about to—”
His legs gave out. They lurched forward, but Eli had him, was already shoring him up, taking his weight like it was nothing. Good. They needed to go. They needed to run .
“Quick. We have to—dangerous. We have to—”