“Agree to disagree,” I singsong before I turn to start walking back to my cell. I have a smile on my face the entire way while he stalks beside me, and when we get there, he slams my cell door shut with a clang.
“Okay there, big guy?” I ask, spinning to sit on my bed.
“You hit me in the balls. What do you think?”
The intense scowl he wears makes me have to stifle a giggle. “Sorry.”
He scoffs. “No, you’re not.”
I grin, unable to hold it back, and his scowl cracks. For a second, his eyes soften as he sweeps over my face. “You have a nice smile.”
Taken aback, I sit up straighter, my smile falling. Even Rook seems surprised that he let that confession slip from his lips. For a moment, we just look at each other. I have no idea what he’s thinking, but my stomach churns.
I forgot who I was talking to for a second. Zen pretty much told me flat-out that Rook is the person who’s in cahoots with Alpha Bowen to try to kidnap me out of here. But for a few minutes, I forgot all of that. I even forgot about my visit with my mat and pat. He succeeded in distracting me with our handcuff game, and I didn’t even realize how much I truly needed that distraction until this moment.
But it came from an enemy.
I smiled. Laughed. Played. Tail flicked. At the enemy.
Not good.
Suddenly self-conscious and not knowing how to act, I clear my throat and look down at my lap. “Thanks for the distraction,” I mutter.
“Anytime.”
My eyes snap up, drawn to the huskiness in his voice. His anytime was definitely insinuating a distraction of the sexual variety. My tail wags inside my pocket, and I slap my hand over it. Rook smirks and then turns to leave.
“Hey!” I say, shooting to my feet and racing over to the bars. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“Oh, right.” Walking backward, he digs into his own pocket and then tosses me all three packets of Pop Rocks. Cherry flavor. My favorite.
I smile at the bags lovingly. “I’ve missed you.”
I hear Rook’s low chuckle echo down the corridor as he walks away. I drown out the sound with Pop Rocks candy explosions and tell myself that there’s no chance in hell that I’m falling for the enemy.
It’s not my style.
Nope.
Not in a million years.
6
“I’ll give you five cup-a-noodles, ten assorted king-sized candy bars, and free pruno for a month,” a witch offers to my left.
The small crowd around me starts to grumble as they assess their offerings or complain about the bid being upped.
“Oh, that’s a good one,” I observe. “But you lost me at pruno. That stuff gives me serious heartburn, and I don’t like feeling like a Drake,” I tell the witch, while simultaneously mock-spitting on the ground to curse the Drake name. Dragons are the worst.
Her face falls slightly and then immediately brightens again when she thinks about something else. “How about shower head for a week instead?” she offers, and I choke on air at her words.
I perk up. No one’s offered me sexual favors yet. Totally taking that as a compliment.
I clear my throat and try not to ruin my rep by staring at her wide-eyed like a newb. I’m two months into my twelve month sentence, and I have quite the thing going for myself here. Okay, fine. Zen has quite the thing going on here, but I go through daily prison life with a Zen umbrella over my head, and you’ll hear no complaints from me about it.
Rook still hasn’t made his move and tried to break me out yet, but he is making other sorts of moves. As in, his head. He’s become more and more head wobbly with each week that passes. He’s even had to resort to tying his tail down to keep it from shimmying and flashing all his pretty tail feathers for me. I still smile and feel all kinds of giddy when I see him with his tail tied to his leg. Maybe his attraction to me is holding him back from taking up Alpha Bowen’s offer to break me out of this place. I know that my own tail is constantly being shoved in my pocket. Whatever his intentions are, I can’t deny that we’re ridiculously drawn to one another.
Meanwhile, my shank business is booming.
“Do we have any other bids?” Zen calls out, saving me from having