Page 64 of Tempt Me

Idon’t want to wake up.

“No! Stop! Leave us alone! Why are you doing this?”

They were right there. So alone, so confused, so…easy to extinguish.

“Ahh!” I bolted upright as if a guard had wandered inside these cell walls and stuck those zapping prods up my ass. Larry was leaning on the far back wall of the cell, bouncing a ball back and forth on the cushy walls.

“You gonna’ let those dreams of yours get in your head, Judie?”

Larry was a comfort. I held my naked chest, trying to steady my erratic heartbeat thrumming underneath my palm. My tattoos were dancing on my skin, the illusion potent in my mind that they were ripping free of my body and flying away into disintegrated dust.

Larry stood up, walking over to me, his long black hair falling in his face while he reached his hand to cup my cheek. Before he made contact with my face, another lower voice vibrated around the dimly lit room.

This cell was a fucking square. Instead of tying me into a straight jacket, they just tossed me in this basement. It reminded me of a brig on a ship, and it was clear it hadn’t been renovated yet. Guess our oldest bro of all of two minutes had his hands too full of Zee’s tits and pussy to give a damn about making this shit hole livable when it came to what the fancy investors couldn’t see.

Sell out.

“Nightmare again, Little Chip?”

The masculine rumble of the voice filtered over to me, and Larry growled before disappearing into his other world. I used to be angry that I couldn’t do the same…just close my eyes and evaporate into the wind.

Would anyone even notice?

I sighed and walked over to the big metal doors where the slit hole for food allowed me to lean down and see the big hulking form of my ‘guard.’ This man had some balls of steel. I all but cut his neck open with some makeshift glass, and he hadn’t left my cell since. I was pretty sure he was sleeping down here.

He called me ‘Little Chip’ like a cup that wasn’t yet shattered but broken enough. I don’t know why I called him Liebling. Maybe because he was a gorgeous distraction, or maybe because his voice made me want to claim him somehow.

He was looking at me, sitting down from a long day in this windowless shit hole. It smelled, and even out there, I knew it was drafty enough to be cold. This ass-weed had brought me a blanket. Technically, it was not allowed, as I could have strung myself up and swung on the top bars above me, but I was too damn cold to care.

“Nothing I can’t handle, Liebling,” I said with a chuckle. The fear in my voice made me irritated.

He sighed, rustling with something in his lap.

“Why haven’t you run off back to the top floors, city boy? I can’t see how this broken piece of shit jail is comfortable for you.”

He laughed, and the sound made my cock twitch. I wanted to shut his pretty mouth by slamming it down his throat. That thick black throat would hold me well.

“Someone has to help you behave yourself, Masters.”

I snorted. “My name is Judas. Masters was my deadbeat daddy, and my moron brother Pharaoh who was trying to fit into society after being deemed a leper. So unless you wanna call me daddy...”

Randall looked at me through the slat in the door, his creamy brown eyes vibrant against the dank black and gray of the stone walls around us.

“You don’t think people can be redeemed? That they deserve a chance to return back to a normal life? Your brother was innocent. He deserves just as much of a redo as any of us.”

I thought about that—a redo, a second chance to make myself something that this fucking asylum hadn’t ripped away from me.

Hell, I missed Chester, the checker eater. Maybe he would have made himself into something more. Jillian, Megan, fuck, there were so many names that were now just a scribbled mark on a wall. The great downfall of Hospital Twelve. A massacre. They got the wrong damn people.

Christian and Vetty were nowhere to be found, hell maybe they were responsible for this shit show. The hot Russian nurse was ganked. Most of the toy soldiers were only marks on the wall, too.

I remembered that night and how petrified the little cop was. She was smacking me to move. Maybe I could have done everyone a favor by just standing still that night. Come get me, Joey.

“I wouldn’t do anything different,” I stated, sitting against the door opposite the guard.

He was silent for a minute. “You would still choose to kill that girl?”

My head throbbed. The same fucking way it did every time I ever thought about that fucking woman. I couldn’t remember shit. It was like a damn black cloud I couldn’t see past. It caused physical pain, and I gripped my head.

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