Page 24 of Hidden By the Convicts
She clasped her hands on his cheeks and pulled his lips to hers, and kissed him long and hard. His hands rested on her hips, barely touching her, as if he was afraid to scare her by gripping her.
When the kiss ended, hazel eyes stared at her. “I never thought you’d go for me.”
As crude as he’d been, this man had changed, grown, in the few short weeks she’d known him. He was trying to be better, and he didn’t have a mean bone in his body toward her. He didn’t know how very sexy that was, how sexy he was.
“All this stuff you’ve done for me. . .”
“Gavin thinks I’m trying to get in your pants with favors. I’m not saying I’d turn you down, but I’m not expecting it.”
“Then why take these risks for me?”
He shrugged. “I like your smile. That first day, when you smiled at Gavin, it did something to me inside. I remember thinking,I want that.”
“You mean you wanted me in your bed?”
“No, I meant that smile. You looked at him as if he was your world, like he was important to you.”
“He was. He is, I mean. All of you are.”
“Maybe. But you don’t look at me like you look at him. Not yet.”
She tousled his hair and laughed. “That’s what I love about you. You’re optimistic and you don’t give up.”
“You mean I’m fun. Especially compared to Bowen.”
“I need to add conceited to that list.”
He grinned. “Just part of my charm. You’ll learn to appreciate all my finer qualities in time, unlike Mr. Serious.”
“If you don’t like Bowen, then why are you in a unit with him?”
“I never said I don’t like him. I mean, I don’t hate him. He’s just so serious all the time. But he’s smart, and he watches out for us. You need that on Narkos. Someone to watch your back because the men here will do whatever they can to screw you over.”
“And here I thought you were a troublemaker.”
“I can be. Depends on who pisses me off.”
“Then it’s a good thing you have Bowen. Someone who thinks before acting.”
“Gavin’s told me as much, too. I’ve only been here a year, princess, and I feel like I’m going crazy with all the rules and the fucking superiority attitude of the guards. I didn’t deserve to be sent here.”
“That seems to be a theme.”
“More than you realize.”
“What did you do to get lowered to a 4?” she asked.
“Honestly, not much. Two years ago, I was a Level 1. Then, I got a new manager. I’m impulsive at times and he didn’t know how to deal with that, except to lower me to a 2 and then a 3 four months later. I guess the final straw was when I blew up the lab.”
“You blew up the lab?”
“I made sure no one would get hurt. And it wasn’t exactly the whole lab. Just his end of it. I got tired of him yelling at me, pushing me to ignore basic safety protocols to get faster results, which is something I never do. So I gave him a little demonstration of what it meant to ignore those safety protocols.”
Harlis leaned against a tree. “Try proving to HR that your boss was threatening you to ignore safety protocols. He said I was wild and uncontrollable, that I ignored the lab’s protocols against his orders. His word over mine.”
“I had a similar scenario. My boss’s word over mine. And he doctored vids to convince them I was stealing from The Company.”
Harlis sucked in a breath. “Ouch. Theft against The Company. That’s worse than blowing up a lab.”
