Page 8 of Jackson

Suddenly, I felt something wet against my ankle.

Jumping away from it, I clutched the side of the table and looked over to see what it was. I spotting a familiar dog wagging her tail as she watched me curiously.

“Yo, what the fuck?” Tyson said.

Relaxing back into my seat, I brushed a hand over Roxy’s head a few times, smiling when her tongue began to loll to the side of her mouth.

“Sorry about that,” said a voice from behind me. “She doesn’t usually run off like that.”

My entire body stiffened, but not uncomfortably. No, this was much different as I felt an electric pulse race up my spine.

I felt him before I managed to look up, Jackson’s looming presence hovering over me.

“How’s your hand?” He nodded down at it.

“Fine,” came my automatic response.

I could feel Tyson giving me a weird look, but he kept his comments to himself while shoveling the rest of his food on his plate into his mouth. He was smart to do so or else he’d soon find my shoe kicking him in the shin.

“You sure?” To my surprise, Jackson swung around to my left side—opposite of Roxy—and sat on the stool. “Let me take a look at it.”

I didn’t fight him when he grabbed my wrist in a firm hold, flipping my hand over until it was facing palm up. My cheeks suddenly felt flushed as my fingers twitched, trying to suppress them from shaking at the contact.

How sad was it that the mere touch of an attractive man was practically making me melt in my seat?

Carefully, Jackson peeled the bandages off of my hand and tossed them onto the table. Roxy’s face dug into my lap until her head was comfortably resting nuzzled against my stomach, much like the last time we’d met. I grazed my free hand over her soft fur, letting it distract my mind while Jackson continued to poke and prod at me.

“This doesn’t hurt?” he asked, pressing along the outside of the burn where it was still bright pink. “At all?”

I never was any good at lying, especially when it came to pain. And I was sure my wince told him as much. But the alternative was to admit that I’d been up with it all night, and that was a littletooembarrassing to own up to by now.

He chuckled at me and shifted his body to the side to pull something out of the pouch at his hip. “Good thing I brought this with me this morning.”

Jesus, am I that transparent?

He took out the tube of burn cream that he’d used a day earlier and uncapped it with a quick flick of his thumb. The dollop he squirted onto my hand was generous, much more than the one he’d given me yesterday.

Did it really look that bad?

Sure, it hurt like a bitch, but I’d had broken bones that felt worse.

It then occurred to me that he probably wasn’t up for dealing with any of the paperwork that would follow me complaining to the work program board if I let it go untreated. I wasn’t too aware of what the long-term effects of an untreated burn were, but I doubted he’d want to get questioned by the board about it. Not like they’d ever do anything formebut it could cause Jackson and the rest of his crew a headache of paperwork.

Unfortunately, as government property went, we were expendable to only a certain extent. When it came to ‘damaging’ said property, the kind that could result in some kind of lawsuit, that’s when things down the pipeline moved rather quickly in our favor.

It wasn’t ever much, but prison healthcare beat the unforgiving nature of being out on the streets without it.

After capping the tube and setting it down onto the table, Jackson shifted my hand between both of his. His thumbs rolled gentle swirls around my skin, massaging the cream into it thoroughly.

It felt nice as I watched his fingers work, enraptured by them gliding over my skin again and again.

Physical touch was always my weakness, even with my ex. I loved to be touched and not just sexually. To have fingers coarse through my hair, to have a pair of arms wrapped tightly around me, to have a body fit perfectly against the curve of my back.

I missed a lot of it, now that I wasn’t allowed to have anything in prison. Tyson had offered a few times to relieve the tension that every man in that facility felt at some point, but I never liked the idea. Sneaking around behind the guards watching in order to get in a quickie felt dirty to me. At least in the way that being used purely for sexual gratification did.

My ex had been my first lover and had spoiled me rotten when we first met. There was a time in my life where I wanted for nothing and those had been the best, most blissful years of my life.

Until he somehow got it into his head that I owed him. That’s when the real downfall began.

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