Page 37 of The Care of Broken Things
But the cost of that conversation was high, mainly because with it he then had to endure the god-awful anxiety of awaiting her arrival. Would she find him boring? Weird? frightening? He really hoped she wasn’t frightened. And what if the other prisoners tried to speak to her? Or said something inappropriate? He knew they didn’t have any pedophiles on the block. He’d made sure. But you didn’t need to be a pedophile to be gross. He could try to warn others off beforehand. But no, that would only make her more of a target.
And that wasn’t even his only worry. He still had to convince a supremely invested group of prisoners that he was, indeed, prison-married to Eli. He’d done some thinking about it beforehand, but that didn’t mean he was prepared for the reality of it. Like their first shower together.
It began with a smack to the ass. “Ready, hubby?”
He commandeered the offending towel and tossed it over his shoulder. “I’m not washing your back.”
“I guess it’s staying dirty then. Can I wash your hair? I miss doing Than’s.”
“No.”
Eli clicked his tongue. “Stingy.”
Samuel washed up first, and that meant keeping his eyes closed under a stream of water and facing the wall. But then he switched positions with Eli, and that meant looking—reallylooking. He couldn’t just avert his eyes, or better yet, turn around and face the opposite direction entirely. They were meant to be lovers, after all, but he’d been a fool to think he could manage it. He got one look at sudsy, streaming-wet and naked Eli, and felt like he’d been punched in the gut. He didn’t look at Eli’s dick. Not directly. But even his peripheral vision was enough to tell him what he didn’t want to know. The man was hung like a studhorse.
“I thought Nathaniel was the only one who could blush down to his chest,” Eli said. “You white boys really are something.”
Samuel broke character to snarl at him to shut up. He was mortified and nervous and something even worse. He grabbed his towel and wrapped it around his waist. He wasn’t hard. That’s what he told himself as he fled the bathroom. Not hard. Not even half-hard. But something. Something like what had happened when Nathaniel had been grinding up against him. For the first time in his life his dick was awake, and no news could have been less welcome.
He dressed so fast he still had traces of soap left under his clothes. He didn’t care. His heart was thundering like the Kentucky derby, and he was the horse without a jockey. He pressed his face against the cool metal of the bunk. “Jenny,” he whispered, but she didn’t materialize, and even if she had, what could she have done to help him? “I don’t like this. I don’tlikethis.”
Elididmaterialize, and considering his skimpy towel and dripping wet body, he was something Samuel very much could have done without. He didn’t even pretend to look at the man, focusing all his attention on Eli’s book collection instead, too distracted to even read the titles, especially when Eli dropped the towel and leisurely began to sort through his collection of clothes. This was something Samuel had told him to do. Where before he’d advised modesty, now he demanded the opposite. Eli was taken, and that meant flaunting that fact to everyone who cared to look.
It meant eyes. A lot of eyes. Samuel wasn’t even the one being stared at, but just his proximity to such laser focus was making his skin crawl. But Eli didn’t seem bothered by it at all, in fact, if Samuel didn’t know better, he’d say the man was enjoying himself. He was humming as he selected his pajamas. Well, not really ‘pajamas’ in the real sense of the word. Just cheapcommissary sweats. But with the show Eli was putting them on it might as well have been a boudoir photoshoot.
And choosing the clothes was only the first step. Samuel didn’t realize just how bad it was going to get until Eli pulled out his container of cocoa butter. Then he felt the blood drain from his face.
Eli sat down on his bed, nude as the day he was born, and began to apply it. Samuel allowed the wolf whistles. He allowed the cat calls. But when Forest Chuck freed himself from his pants to make liberal use of the show, Samuel was called to action. He crossed the room in large but unhurried strides, seized the man by the beard, and dashed him onto the floor. He did it so quickly that old chuck still had a hand on his cock. Well, it didn’t stay there long. He let the bastard rise onto all fours before he kicked him hard enough to lift him off the ground. Then he grabbed him by the back of the head and slammed his face into the bedpost. It was all he managed before Mathews and Carnivore grabbed him.
That part was necessary too. He’d warned Eli to expect another night in solitary, and though Eli had argued, and even pleaded, Samuel had wrangled unwilling agreement out of him to accept it in the end. He kept his head high as he was led away. “The next animal to disrespect my husband won’t get off so easy.” And he smiled as he said it, Mad Dog again.
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 knewexactlywhat 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. Helet 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 thingsweren’tdeflating, 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’dnever be able to get hard if he thought someone was watching, but some of them enjoyedbeing 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 hedidmake 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, hehadbeen. Now, he didn’t know what he was doing. Or rather, he knew what he was doing, he just didn’t knowwhyhe 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.
