Page 24 of Caged Kitten

For all my tough-girl inner monologues, standing in front of Elijah now made me feel awkward and small. I only made it up to his shoulders, and when he sighed, I got the distinct feeling he wasn’t thrilled about having me in here either.

“Come on…” He breezed by, bringing with him the scent of brimstone and raw, untamed masculinity. My belly looped and my pussy pulsed with interest. Not good. Not good at all. The dragon cast me a sidelong glance as he passed, headed away from the ovens and toward a cluster of flour-dusted tables. “We have a million rolls to prep.”

Swallowing thickly, I padded after him, my shoes silent to me but probably swishing along like cannon fire to a shifter. I wasn’t sure where the nondescript white slip-ons had come from, but one evening they were just there, waiting for me at the end of my bed. Although a touch too big, anything was better than navigating the prison barefoot, and days later, with my roughened feet practically singing, I still had no clue who to thank for the gift.

Which bothered me.

Because—now I was in someone’s debt.

And I hoped to all that was good in this world that it wasn’t Deimos.

Elijah stopped at one of the larger prep tables, a mountain of dough piled high in front of him, along with a stack of metal baking trays. He grabbed the top one and set it down slightly off to the left of him, and I positioned myself around the table’s corner, cheeks hot, unsure where to look.

I’d seen gorgeous men in the supernatural world for years, but Elijah exceeded them tenfold. This shifter had to be Apollo—he was everything the legends promised, a golden god, youthful and handsome and dripping with vitality.

“So, you just roll them out to about yea big,” he told me, snatching a clump from Dough Mountain and rolling it between his palms. Fifteen seconds later, he had a perfectly round little sphere roughly the size of a golf ball, made even smaller by the sheer heft of his hand. “Twenty to a tray. Full trays go in the pantry over there.” He pointed to a metal door embedded in the wall, shrouded in shadow. “They’ll proof overnight, then tomorrow we bake them.” His chocolate-brown gaze slid my way, and he arched a golden brow. “Questions?”

I shook my head, not trusting myself to talk around him yet—not with my every cell utterly drawn to him.

Not when he set me on fire with nothing at all.

Definitely getting worse. Worse every day, and I feared the more I fought it, the worse it would get.

Would I spontaneously combust? Was he doing this to me, even with that leather band around his neck?

Was I cursed?

Would I—

“I swear I’m not stalking you,” Elijah muttered, placing his ball on the baking tray between us before going for the doughy mountain again. “I didn’t know you’d be assigned here.”

Obviously he knew I’d been avoiding him; I hadn’t exactly been subtle. With a quick glance his way, I went for the massive pile myself, ripping off a substantial enough chunk of soft, sticky dough to make a few balls before needing to go back for more.

“This is Rafe’s detail anyway,” he carried on as he set his second perfect sphere on the tray, “but vamps can’t work during the day because no one fucking accommodates for them here now that the weather’s turned, so someone else has to pick up the slack…” His jaw gritted, muscles briefly dancing. “Otherwise the vampire gets punished. So, I… I… Normally I’m in the metal shop.”

Guilt’s icy cold fingers plucked at my heartstrings, and I swallowed thickly, unsure why I felt like this—because I shouldn’t. It shouldn’t matter that I’d been purposefully and obviously distancing myself from a dragon who, from what I’d seen, was a good guy. It shouldn’t matter that we shared some weird connection, that he set me on fire just by standing close. I didn’t owe him anything. I didn’t owe him my feelings. Elijah Greystone was a stranger. Fact.

So… Why the guilt?

I shook my head, more at myself than anything, and peeled off a hunk of dough from my little pile. Maybe I felt shitty because I’d misjudged him; who else would voluntarily take on another work assignment in prison? It was sweet that he stood in Rafe’s place—kind, really.

And apparently, he was better at making dough balls than me.

Sonot the typical alpha shifter we all heard about.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured, peeling the plucky, tacky dough from my fingers and dipping them into the little bowl of flour. A good coating should stop things from sticking—I knew that much, at least.

“What?”

“For how I reacted to you,” I told him, distracted enough by the dough, by trying to match the bit in my hands to his so that the buns would all be uniform, that I didn’t completely notice what had just fallen off the tip of my tongue. “In the…” When I finally did, my mouth dried up, and suddenly the dough between my palms looked more like a flattened penny than a ball. Great. A quick peek his way showed that I’d caught his attention, and I cleared my throat, the fire in my belly exploding across my cheeks. “That day in the shower was mortifying and scary and I just—”

“It’s okay,” Elijah said gruffly, adding a third and fourth ball to the tray, miles ahead of me already. “I get it.”

“No.” I pursed my lips, some of that curious fire sharpening to frustration. “I don’t think you do.”

Elijah’s hands stilled, and out of the corner of my eye, I noticed him frowning. Yeah, hadn’t expected that, huh? While I so appreciated him standing up for me in front of Cooper and Phillips, it just wasn’t that simple. I glanced over my shoulder and found the guard studying us, the glare from his phone giving off an unattractive underlighting that made it look like he had a serious double chin. Clamping down on the inside of my cheek, I hurriedly formed a dough ball, nowhere near as neat and smooth as Elijah’s, and plopped it on the tray just to look busy.

“You made people look at me,” I insisted under my breath, knowing that despite the ever-present grumble of the ovens across the room, the spark and hiss of their flames, Elijah could hear every last word. “Deimos, the guards… I’m a woman in a co-ed prison. I’m a witch surrounded by criminals and strangers, and I don’t have my magic or my wand or my familiar.” My throat tightened, breath catching, just the thought of Tully—where he was, what had happened to him, was he still mine—throwing me for a loop. But I steeled myself, getting better at shaking off the panic every day I was stuck in here; show no weakness, not even to Elijah. Just another one of the new rules I had to live by. “Look, I want to fly under the radar. I don’t belong here, and I just want to find a way out, and you drawing attention to—”

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