Caged Kitten (All the Queen's Men #2) - Rhea Watson Page 0,22

thing. As the breakfast chatter rose, all the cellblocks fed and seated, we finished the rest of our meal in silence. At one point, it seemed like a super in a grey jumpsuit was about to make a move and claim a stool at our table, but when we both glanced his way, he scuttled off and eventually ate standing up near one of the guards. Willow rolled her eyes as she ripped open her orange juice carton, watching him with a scowl.

“That will get you punched. Don’t hesitate. He should know better.”

“Speaking of, uhm, knowing…” I pushed my tray to the side, officially done with the scrambled eggs and their grey tinge. If you picked off the burnt bits, the plain muffin wasn’t half bad, and even though I still tasted the metallic tang with every swig of juice, at least the sugar would give me a boost for an hour or two. “You can totally say no, but… do you know anything about the supers in my cellblock?”

“They opened your block just after mine came close to capacity, so I know a bit.” Chin propped up on her fist, Willow pushed her untouched eggs around her plate with a sigh. “Anyone in particular?”

My mind flashed immediately to Elijah and Rafe. Two men with ridiculously sculpted bodies, obvious from the way their jumpsuits stretched across strong chests and taut arms and thick thighs. Elijah was broader than his vampire counterpart, the sunrise to Rafe’s sunset with a head full of sandy-gold waves that probably curled when they were long enough. Tanned skin. Caramel eyes. Worn hands, like he really worked with them outside of this place.

All that from a fleeting introduction yesterday. I had a feeling he stuck with me because not only was he handsome, but that huge shifter was like sunshine. Warm and alive, a little reminder that there was a big wide world out there. Rafe, meanwhile, had the whole gorgeous, brooding vampire thing going for him. Sharp jawline. Intense eyes. Black hair, brows, and stubble. Pale, but not in a sickly way. Like moonlight. The sun and the moon—Elijah and Rafe.

I blinked a few times when I realized Willow had been staring at me for… well, however long I’d been daydreaming about a pair of inmates—possible criminals. Yeesh. Not a good look on my part.

“Uh, no, no one in particular,” I babbled, cheeks hot and chest tight under Willow’s scrutiny. “All of them, I guess. I’m just not really sure what I’m in for…”

She studied me a few beats longer, the weight of her clouded eye pinned squarely on me more unnerving than I cared to admit. However, after a blink, it seemed like I’d passed the test, and she nodded. “Right, okay.”

I bit the insides of my cheeks, belly looping. Had she just spotted a weakness? A chink in my armor? Something told me I’d need to keep my physical attraction for Elijah and Rafe—and maybe my connection to anyone in here, including Willow—under wraps. No sense in giving any of the real criminals something to manipulate, and besides, I wasn’t here for connection. It was pathetic to get swept up in a pair of muscly male bodies and breathtakingly gruff good looks anyway, because just about every super out there was hot. It gave us an edge over humanity—and I ought to be used to it by now. There were attractive guys aplenty in my community; Elijah and Rafe were just two other smoke shows in a sea of smoke shows.

Time to let them go. Now.

“Cellblock C is pretty quiet from what I hear,” Willow remarked, back to pushing her eggs around. “Deimos, that demon, apparently collected souls too early on the deals he made… It’s a crime in Hell too, so I bet he’s happier to be here than down there again. He smuggles cigarettes in through one of the guards, both the magic and human kind, and rumor has it he’s trying to get into harder stuff.”

Perfect—just what we needed. High shifters and supers, snorting wolfsbane and hotboxing the already stuffy cellblocks. Although Willow merely glanced his way, I turned fully around to scope out Deimos. Surrounded by his Cellblock C posse, he appeared to be engaged in a salacious conversation with some dark-haired beauty I’d never seen before—vampire, given her jumpsuit, her straight black hair thick and glossy as it spilled over her shoulder. She leaned over him, murmuring in his ear, and the second his black gaze started to