Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 98561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
I reached the doorway. I could hear the guard talking to other guards in the hallway just outside. I opened my mouth to call for him…
A hand landed on my shoulder and spun me quickly around. Gabriel’s thumb lightly pressed against my lips, warning me to be silent. That’s when I registered the handcuffs, open and dangling from one finger of his other hand. I looked up into his face. He had something between his lips: a twisted paperclip. He turned his head and spat it out, and there was a metallic clatter as it landed in the trash can.
He followed my eyes to the handcuffs, then spun them nonchalantly around his finger in a shining circle. He leaned down and put his lips to my ear. “How do you think I escaped from the other places?”
He held out his hand. “Trust me,” he mouthed. Trust him: a thief, a con man, a master deceiver…
I wasn’t worried about what he might do. I was worried about what I might do. Wide-eyed, I looked over my shoulder at the door…
And then I took his hand. He closed his fingers around mine, my hand almost disappearing in his, and his warm grip felt so good I wanted to weep. He led me gently back down the room and into the curtained-off exam area.
“Couldn’t leave it like that,” he told me. “Couldn’t not see you for a week, knowing you were upset.”
I felt like I was on a cliff edge, pinwheeling my arms as I teetered on the brink. Behind me was the nice, safe world I’d always known, the one with rules and limits. The one that had always felt so right. In front of me was a yawning dark chasm filled with nothing but danger. I’d already lost the job I loved. This place was my last chance, literally the only place that would take me. If anything went wrong here, I’d never treat another patient again. It should have been simple.
But when I looked up into those molten hazel eyes, all I wanted to do was hurl myself forward and fall.
“Why?!” I asked helplessly. Why was he so concerned about me? He barely knew me, we’d met twice—
He let go of my hand and his hands lifted to my shoulders. Just before they touched, he hesitated, his fingertips hovering a fraction of an inch away from my white coat, as if trying to slow himself, as if he was worried that if he didn’t, he might hold me too tight. Then his hands pressed against me, the heat of him throbbing through my clothes as if they weren’t even there.
He gazed into my eyes and the lust I saw there made me draw in a shuddering breath, my nipples peaking and hardening, my groin tightening. But there was something else in his eyes, too. An urgency, almost desperation. His fingers tensed on the backs of my shoulders once, twice. His lips parted to say something—
“Doc?” The guard’s voice…and it wasn’t coming from out in the hallway, it was inside the infirmary. “You about done? We’re outta time, I gotta get Kain back to his cell.”
His footsteps approached, moving fast. All the other exam areas had their curtains pushed back: he could see we were in here and he was heading right for us. That’s when I remembered that Gabriel’s cuffs were off. I looked up at him in horror. He reacted quickly, getting a cuff around one wrist. But handcuffs aren’t designed to be put on by the person wearing them and when he tried to fit the second cuff, it slipped off his wrist.
There wasn’t enough time and when the guard came in and saw them half off, Gabriel was headed to solitary, or for more years on his sentence.
The curtains opened…
I jumped in front of Gabriel, shielding his hands with my body.
The guard looked at us: at my flushed face, at Gabriel standing behind me. It certainly didn’t look like I was examining him. “Everything okay here?” he asked suspiciously.
I froze for a second. I had to report Gabriel now. If I didn’t speak up and the guard saw his cuffs off, I’d be in trouble too. I opened my mouth to speak—
“Fine,” I heard myself say. “Everything’s fine. We just finished.”
The guard looked from me to Gabriel and then back to me. Like Louis, he’d worked here a long time. He’d had years to hone the art of sniffing out prisoners’ lies and staring them down until they confessed. Meanwhile, I was a rank amateur at lying. What the hell am I doing? Every cell in my law-abiding body was telling me to tell the truth. I could say that Gabriel had told me to lie, that I was scared of him…
But then Gabriel would be in even more trouble. I lifted my chin and stared resolutely back at the guard.