“What if I would have fallen in love with someone else and got married?”
He clenches his fists by his side. For a man that’s been gone for years he’s got a jealous side when it comes to me. I’m finding I’m quite fond of it. “You didn’t,” he grits out.
“No, I was too busy writing letters that went unanswered and thinking about you.” I drop my hands from the bars. “Were you thinking about me too?” I ask.
“You were my place.” His head drops, but he releases his clenched fists. “The hardest part of my training was survival. The shit they did to us.” He shakes his head. “Part of our teaching was employing dissociation within the mind. It’s a psychological defense mechanism where your mind goes to a pleasant space away from what is happening around or to you. Mine always went to you. And what it would be like if you were mine. I would get lost thinking about the life we’d have together if I made it out of whatever mess I’d gotten into.” His mouth pulls up into a half smile as if he’s thinking about the place now.
“Biscuit,” I whisper. This man has me all over the place. One second I think he wants to get away from me, and another I think I’m his entire world.
“I always think about you, Mel. You’re the only girl I’ve ever thought about.”
“Then why—” I stop talking when my alert starts to chime. I glance over to my bag sitting on the floor next to the desk Frank’s been sitting at to be close to the cell.
“Expecting a call?” He walks over to my bag.
“Don’t!” I shout as he picks it up.
“Who is it?”
“It’s not anyone. Give me the bag,” I order, holding out my hand through the bars. “Biscuit!” I snap. He reaches into my purse, pulling out my phone. He glances at the screen.
“Low glucose?” His brows pull together. “The hell does that mean?”
“It means give me my bag!” I snap. He walks over, unhooking the door and hands me my phone and bag.
“You have diabetes?”
“Great. Another reason for you to treat me like I’m glass.” I pull back the sleeve of my shirt and press my phone against the sensor to get my reading.
“What’s it say?” He tries to look at my phone.
“That I need sugar.”
“I’ll get something.” He starts to rush away.
“I have something.” I pull out a snack-size bag of Skittles and pop a few into my mouth.
“Why don’t I know about this?”
“Seriously?”
“Yes, fucking seriously.”
“I don’t know, maybe because you think I’m a person incapable of taking care of or making decisions for myself.”
“I don’t think that.”
“Really? That’s why you ask me anything when it comes to the idea of you and me?”
“You just stormed out of here to get away from me but now you’re saying there is a you and me?”
“Is there?” I toss back at him.
“For me, there's only you and me. How many times do I have to say it’s only you, Mel?” He runs his hand through his short hair, clearly frustrated with this conversation. That makes two of us. I swear we speak two different languages.
“You don’t act like it’s only me.” I could be his sister with the way he acts sometimes. Besides the soft brush of a kiss against my lips, that’s all there’s been. Plus a bit of cuddling.
“How do you mean?”
“You know I’ve never been kissed. That one yesterday doesn’t count. Never!” I actually stomp my foot, my anger getting the best of me now. “How pathetic is that?”
“Yesterday counts,” he says. “And unless you count the time I had to give junior CPR, which I’m not, I haven't been either.” I let out a gasp of surprise. How is that possible?
“Really?”
He closes his eyes, taking a deep breath. I’m really pissing him off now. “I’m going to say it one more time, Mel.” He closes the space between us. “Only you.” He drives his point home before he claims my mouth with his.
CHAPTER 11
FRANK
My control snaps like a worn rubber band that has been stretched too many times. “I left you because you were young. Because you had dreams. I left you here because you were fifteen, Mel,” I growl against her mouth. “Eighteen-year-old men can’t be looking at fifteen-year-old girls like I was looking at you. Can’t be fantasizing about what I was fantasizing about.”
The nights I spent in that basement bathroom, jerking off feverishly to visions of her with her legs spread, her juice dripping onto my tongue, her tits heavy in my hand. Want makes me dizzy. I kiss her deeply, imagining that it’s my cock inside of this wet heat instead of my tongue. I lick the roof of her mouth, behind her teeth, across the top of her own velvet tongue.