Caged Kitten (All the Queen's Men #2) - Rhea Watson Page 0,61

slowed, closing my eyes and sucking down a deep breath. Sometimes I was too harsh on him; he was just trying to be a good guy. If he knew what was wrong, maybe he thought he could fix it.

But he couldn’t fix it.

And despite being a good guy, despite our bond, it felt like he was taking advantage of something that I still didn’t understand. Rafe had stopped pushing days ago. Fintan didn’t seem to notice something was off despite following us around like a lost, pampered puppy. Elijah wouldn’t let it go, and I’d made my feelings about that clear.

And…

I just wanted to go home.

I missed the café. I missed my job, my people, my neighborhood.

I missed Tully. So, so, so much. One day in this place was too long—almost two months illegally detained in a prison run by a sociopath was torture.

Tears made themselves known with a painful sting when I opened my eyes, and I meandered toward the shipment crates a little slower. Unfortunately, the telltale sounds of Elijah’s heavy footfalls lit a fire under my ass, and I sniffled back the sadness, then blitzed around the corner, headed to the rear of the bakery to unload my prepped loaves into the shipping containers. Of course none of this gorgeous bread went to the inmates. We sometimes tried to guess where the prison shipped it off to; the writing on the label suggested somewhere English-predominant, and the artisan stamp told me they charged a fortune for it.

Teeth gritted, I balanced the tray on the corner of the wooden crate, then started unloading my haul, neatly arranging the loaves on top of what was already in there. Beyond everything else I missed, I deeply craved the use of my own magic again. It was all there, swirling inside me, flickering in my fingertips and shivering in my chest, but I couldn’t access any of it. In time, it would sour from lack of use. All this work, the full nine hours of it, could have been knocked out in one or two with a few simple phrases and a flick of my hands. Sure, my magic had always been a bit unstable without a wand, but it would get the job done.

“Can you just stop for a second?” Elijah growled as soon as he entered my personal bubble, looming over me, statuesque and broad and imposing. As if it wasn’t hot as balls in here already, his presence sent a wildfire ripping through me, starting in my chest, in my fluttering heart, and flooding out to every limb. I had recently managed to put my pathetic earnings toward a pair of underwear and a hair tie now that I had access to the prison shop. No bra yet, but that was a work in progress; at least the black stretchy elastic kept my hair away from my neck during bakery shifts.

Elijah set me ablaze regardless. Which was also just… great.

“Can you?” I fired back, glaring up at him and distractedly swiping a hand over the back of my neck. Yup, sweaty. My jumpsuit collar absorbed a lot of it, but that didn’t make me any more comfortable. So, as per usual, not only did Elijah fluster me mentally, emotionally, my mind struggling to understand the pull between us, but he affected me physically too. And right now, that definitely didn’t help his case.

He clenched his strong jaw, muscles briefly rippling beneath the coarse brownish scruff, and, narrowed gaze still fixed on me, he dumped his entire tray into the crate. Just. Plopped it all in, no organization, no regard for the rows of neatly stacked loaves I’d started.

This was the first time he wasn’t careful with his work.

Again—not doing himself any favors.

“For gods’ sake, Elijah,” I muttered, immediately diving in and straightening everything out. The dim overhead lighting flickered, and in any other scenario, I might have blamed it on my magic, on the tempestuous storm brewing inside me, the air crackling between us. But there was no magic in Xargi—not for us, anyway. Shitty lights.

Shitty everything.

Panic lanced through the flames dancing inside me, vicious and sudden. I’d outright refused Lloyd’s offer, preferring incarceration to whatever that psycho had in mind for me, and at no point did I want word to reach him that I was bad at my job. The guy would probably use any excuse to kick me off a work assignment that so many other inmates considered cake; a guard who barely paid any