Page 211 of Felonies are Forever

A man.

Jesus, a big friggin’ man.

He stands like a mountain carved by war, his presence swallowing the surrounding space. His gray prison-issued shirt clings to his torso as he steps forward into the horrible light, stretched taut over a chest that looks like it was built to withstand bullets.

The short sleeves barely contain his biceps, the fabric threatening to tear at the seams as his muscles twitch. Broad shoulders block the dim overhead florescents, casting deep shadows that seem to bow to his command. His forearms, lined with veins and ink, flex as he crosses them, the motion slow, deliberate, like a predator conserving energy before the kill. Even the simple act of breathing makes his chest expand in a way that demands attention, as if the room itself must adjust to accommodate him.

“About time,” he rasps, his voice a jagged, sour thing, like whiskey over gravel. It slides into my veins, warming me from the inside out. His mouth twitches, not quite a smirk, more like a slow, predatory claim that thickens the air, turning it from crisp and sterile to something molten and suffocating, like the moment before a thunderstorm breaks—charged, expectant, on the verge of ruin.

I swallow. What am I doing here again? I gather the bundle of letters against my chest like armor, though I know nothing could protect me from the way he’s unraveling me with his metallic blue eyes.

“Traffic was murder,” I quip, but my voice betrays me. It’s breathy and weak, crushed beneath the weight of him.

His eyes flicker from sky into storm, and my stomach cinches into a knot. “You know the rules, sweetheart. You don’t talk back. You are not too old to have that ass turned bright red.”

The words are a live wire down my spine, my nerve endings snapping awake, my body hyperaware of every charged inch between us. He steps forward, and suddenly I’m drowning in his scent—dark spice and cedar, mixed with something distinctly male, something that makes my skin tingle and my lungs tighten.

“Those my letters?” he asks, his sandpaper voice wrapping around me like a vise.

“Of course,” I breathe, barely recognizing my own voice as I lift the bundle I’ve guarded like a secret. “I wouldn’t forget those.”

His fingers brush mine as he takes them, and the contact is incendiary. A spark that ignites something reckless in my bloodstream, a fire that has been smoldering since the first stroke of ink on paper.

TWO

Salvatore

I’ve been patient.Too damn long. And patience isn’t something I’ve ever been good at.

Out there, before the bars and the concrete walls, I took what I wanted. Ruled with an iron fist, my name spoken in low, wary tones.

In here? Nothing changed. I made sure of it.

From the second I stepped into this place, I carved my throne at the top of this shit heap. Not through words. Not through deals. Through dominance. And blood. And fear.

Those are the currencies of power and I wield them like no other.

It’s a battle that’s never truly over. There’s always some fool who wants to test the biggest man in the yard, see if they can knock me down. But I don’t fall. I don’t break. I don’t bow.

Gray hair snaps at my temples and weaves through the former solid onyx that covered my head, but in the past two weeks I’ve taken down an eighteen-year-old prizefighter and listened to him beg for mercy.

You can’t contain what lives inside me. There is no training that gives you this kind of rage.

When I walk through the yard, men lower their gazes. The few who dare to challenge me learn the hard way that I don’t forgive, and I sure as hell don’t forget. I miss some of my former life’s luxuries on the outside, but I live well here. A bottle of my favorite blue label scotch is delivered every Sunday. My list of weekly requests taken with a compliant smile by the guards and delivered promptly by the staff.

I even got them to paint the walls of my cell emerald green. The color of her eyes.

And yet, none of it matters. None of it fills the hollow that yawns wider inside me with every passing day.

That darkness is only pushed away by her.

Lenore.

Her letters became my salvation. A tether to something pure in the filth of this place. I devoured them, memorized every teasing word, every confession buried between the lines. I let them consume me, played them out in my mind at night as I stared at the cracked ceiling, imagining her voice, my fingers clenched around my cock as I pretended it was the warmth of her touch.

Jerking off so hard it’s a surprise I didn’t send myself to the infirmary with a dislocated cock. Roaring as I shot off load after load that should have been inside her, or on her tits, or dripping off her chin.

Her words became my world,. I spent hours doing push-ups while I mapped out the things I’d do to her, the ways I’d claim her, how I’d take back the time these walls had stolen from me. She didn’t realize it, but she owned me before she even walked through that door.

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