Caged Kitten (All the Queen's Men #2) - Rhea Watson Page 0,31
help a little.
Help my mental health, anyway.
Fleetingly.
Thompson motioned me through an open doorway with a toss of his head, and once inside, I found myself in a much more cramped workspace than I’d anticipated. What hit me first was the heat, six old-school ovens burning to my left. Sweat gathered at the nape of my neck, made worse by the fact that I hadn’t had anything to tie my hair back with in almost two weeks. What I wouldn’t do for a hair elastic and a pair of underwear; maybe commissary had something utilitarian I could spring for once I had enough money.
Illuminated by more dull artificial lighting and the tiniest of slits open to the outside world, the bakery was hot and claustrophobic, the ceiling low. Haphazardly built, almost like a badger burrow, the familiar stonework didn’t extend to the dirt ceiling, from which thin roots hung, reaching for us. Huge metal towers on wheels cloistered together dead ahead, square with slots to fit baking trays into. Every table in sight—wood, for the first time, not metal—had a dusting of flour over its top.
Small and tight and dusty and earthly and hot as balls…
But comforting. In a way, it reminded me of the back of the café on a summer’s day.
My eyes prickled with tears I refused to let fall; I had shed enough sorrow in this place already and I wasn’t even through the first month yet.
“Greystone.” Thompson’s bark made me flinch, and I all but wilted beside him when a familiar face emerged from behind the ovens. Elijah Greystone, towering dragon shifter—overprotective hottie who made me feel… things.
His rugged face glistened with sweat, which he wiped dry on his sleeve, and his yellowing apron had seen better days, splashed with flour and whatever made those damp, dark smears.
“New recruit,” Thompson announced, nudging me deeper into the bakery with a stabby finger between my shoulder blades. “Show her the ropes.”
“The ropes I learned this morning?” Elijah growled back, his arms folded, biceps deliciously prominent, the dragon very obviously not looking at me, refusing to meet my eye. We hadn’t spoken since our encounter in the cafeteria last week; I wasn’t proud of my behavior, not after what he had probably been through in solitary, but it had happened. No taking it back.
“Yeah, you should be a goddamn bread master by now.” Thompson took a sharper tone with the shifter than he ever did me, scowling, his hand resting loose over his wand. No surprise there: Elijah had been on every guard’s shit-list since that day in the shower.
All because of me.
Because of what he did for me.
Pummeling those pervs—it had been satisfying and terrifying and totally unnecessary.
And I’d been going out of my way to avoid him since. Anytime we were around each other, something happened. Gross men acted like gross men. Elijah would react. Inmates would stare—and someone would take an interest in me, probably just to rile him up.
That couldn’t become our thing.
I refused to be on anyone else’s radar because of a dragon shifter who lacked self-control.
A dragon shifter who, whenever he did lock eyes with me, made me taste… fire.
Not that I’d ever tasted fire before, but heat burned in my chest, scorched up my throat. Distinct, the scent of campfire smoke tickling my nostrils, reminiscent of days spent at our old family cottage, the nostalgia both comforting and heartbreaking. Still, it coaxed me to be brave, to spit those flames at every pushy jerk who made eyes at me and watch while they burned.
Especially when it sparked between my thighs, insistent and brilliant and strong. Almost impossible to ignore and getting worse with every encounter.
I’d never met a dragon shifter before, but they couldn’t all make me feel like a walking inferno.
Right?
Either way, I wasn’t thrilled about the fact that anyone at Xargi could physically influence me, and, in no mood to spend the day with him, I quickly scanned the space for another jumpsuit.
Only to come up empty. Nobody here but us and Thompson—then another guard seated next to the door, on his phone, wand on his lap. I’d never seen him before, but he waved distractedly when Thompson nodded on the way out, and seconds later, it was just me and Elijah and this baby-faced warlock swiping through that supernatural dating app feed…
What was it again?
Oh. Right. Cinder.
Fantastic.
Better than spending the day in my cell, I guess, but that wasn’t exactly a high threshold to beat.