Page 66 of Wilder Heart

“Yeah, baby, do it, do it. Let me see it.” Cash smeared open-mouthed kisses across his chest, bending to suck a nipple into his mouth, and fireworks went off behind Wilder’s eyelids.

His back arched as he came, squeezing his eyes shut and groaning. Above him, Cash moaned, thrusting into him hard and shuddering as he followed him over the edge, his cock jerking in Wilder’s sensitive hole.

Deep inside Wilder, something slotted into place. Like he’d been walking around with an open wound all this time, and now someone had finally put a balm over it and snuffed out the pain. He couldbreathefor the first time in years, and his throat tightened at the realization. The pain might not be truly gone, because the wound was still there, but it wasn’t killing him anymore. The moment he’d met Cash, it had started to heal.

The angry boy he’d once been and the jaded man he’d become were both soothed. This was an experience he should have had years ago. Like Lain starting his family and getting married, Wilder was now taking steps to become a fully realized human being. No more bars caging him in. Just freedom, here in the arms of a good man.

His breath hitched, and Cash raised his head to look down at him in alarm.

“Baby,” he said, taking Wilder’s face in his hands.

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” he whimpered, trying to hide his face only to have Cash bat his hands away.

He pulled out gently and rolled them, letting Wilder hide against his chest as sobs wracked through him. One hand swept up and down his back, and the other combed through his mussed hair, soothing.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Cash said softly. “You’re okay. I’ve got you. Everything’s gonna be okay, you’ll see.”

The wildest thing was that Wilder believed him. Now that he had Cash, now that he had his freedom, now that he was picking up the pieces of the life he’d left behind when he was sentenced, everything would be okay. The system had thrown him out into a world he no longer understood, and he’d flailed and kicked and struggled, but somehow he’d figured out this whole swimming thing, and now his head was safely above water. He was going to be okay.

When his tears finally dried, he moved up the bed until he and Cash were sharing a pillow, face to face with their hands clasped between them and their legs entwined under the blankets. Neither of them spoke for a while. Cash seemed to be in no hurry to break the silence, and Wilder needed time to work himself up to what he wanted to say.

“When I was sent to prison, I was a scrawny, eighteen-year-old kid,” he croaked, his eyes firmly on the way their fingers fittogether. “You said you’d heard the clichés about prison—well, a lot of them are true. Plenty of guys when I went in called me ‘twink’ and made threats about getting me alone in the shower or whatever. I was scared out of my mind. One minute I was going to high school and working the ranch, and the next I was a murderer trapped behind bars with a bunch of guys that were somehow a hell of a lot worse than I was.”

Cash made a noise of understanding but didn’t interrupt.

“I grieved for a while, cried myself to sleep in my bunk at night and hated myself for screwing up my life. It felt like I was in a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from. But eventually, I had to pick up the pieces and make do with the hand I’d accidentally given myself. I might’ve been secretly gay, but that didn’t mean I wanted to bend over for the first guy who laid claim to me in there. Which meant I needed to give myself a different reputation. I couldn’t be the scared kid who cried all the time and wanted to go home. I knew I had what it took to protect myself, because I’d done it with Dad. So, when the first guy tried to catch me off-guard in the shower, I fought back. I don’t want to go into a lot of detail, but I sent him to the infirmary with multiple injuries.”

“Good for you,” Cash murmured.

Wilder chuckled. “I adopted this permanent scowl on my face, hoping it would scare others off. Kept to myself. The next guy who tried me, same thing. It turned into a fight, and we both wound up in the infirmary. After the first year, I got this tattoo.” He turned their hands and gestured to the five dots between his thumb and forefinger. “It’s a prison symbol. The prisoner is in the center, and the dots around him represent four walls. It was a reminder to myself that I had to make do with the situation I was in. ‘This is my life now,’ that kind of thing.”

“Jesus.”

Wilder’s mouth twisted. “After that first year, I’d made enough of a reputation for people to know not to fuck with me, but I still had some who saw me as a challenge. It became more about beating me and showing the others they were bigger and badder. Another year of that, and I got the next tat.” He brought his other hand up between them, showing Cash theEWMNon his knuckles.

“Evil, wicked, mean, nasty?” Cash guessed.

Wilder blinked in surprise. “You know what it means?”

“Clyde told me. He had a cousin who did time.”

“Ah. Well, yeah. I wanted it to be a sign for people to leave me alone.”

“Did they?”

“Some. The crowning achievement of my dangerous-felon persona came when my cellmate, Randall, came to me and said the skinheads were giving him trouble. Randall was mixed race, you see, and he was also a heroin addict. Skinny and vulnerable. He, uh.” Wilder stopped, wondering how much he should say about his and Randall’s agreement.

“No judgment, remember?” Cash whispered. “Not from me. Not ever.”

Wilder sighed. “He wanted my help. He wanted me to kill the skinhead who was fucking with him, and since he didn’t have anything to pay me with, he offered—other services. And by that point, I’d been in for two years with no relief but my hand.” He gave Cash an imploring look.

Cash shook his head, leaning in for a sweet kiss. “No judgment, baby.”

“I’d have killed that particular skinhead for free,” Wilder confessed with a wry smile. “He was an asshole. Randall was a nice guy who needed somebody to have his back, and he was the only one who’d ever offered me anything. Everybody else just wanted to take. Randall wanted a mutually beneficialarrangement—and a blowjob from somebody I knew couldn’t overpower me sounded ideal. So I took him up on it. Used a strip of fabric from a blanket, caught the skinhead alone, choked him out.

“The knife tattoo was Randall’s idea. He told me what it meant. The tattoo artist confirmed it. After I got it, everyone knew I was the one who’d offed the skinhead, but people messed with me less. I had a service they might want to take advantage of now. There were two others over the years. One offered me cigarettes, which is basically currency on the inside, and since I don’t smoke, it set me up nicely. The other one was a young guy, toward the end of my time. He didn’t have a damn thing to offer me, and he wasn’t jaded enough to even think of offering sexual favors. He… He reminded me of me, I guess, when I first went in, so I did it as a favor to him. Wanted to be there for him in a way no one was for me.”

“That was kind of you,” Cash said.

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