Hard Time by Cara McKenna Read Free Book Online Page A

array of deadly implements that can apparently be fashioned from three feet of steel wire. As he handed me the pencil, our fingertips brushed for the thinnest moment—quick and hot as a static shock.
    “All righty. Shoot.”
    “Darling,” Collier began, only loud enough for me to hear. His gaze jumped up to pin mine. “That’s how it should start.”
    Darling,
I wrote. My stomach soured, and even I wasn’t deluded enough to pretend I didn’t know why. Fuck me, I was penning a love letter to his frigging . . . who knew what. Wife? Girlfriend? Ex? Stalkee? Fine. If this didn’t get me over my stupid infatuation, nothing would. I eyed his arm, but his sleeve covered the tattoo I’d spotted from the office window. Whose name might be hiding under there . . . ?
Get a grip.
    “Go on,” I said.
    “I missed you since your last visit.” He watched my hand as he spoke, as his words took shape, drawn by my fingers with an ease he’d likely never know, himself. The act felt strangely, intensely intimate.
    “A few minutes a week with you is almost more cruel than it’s worth,” he continued. “I miss—”
    “Hang on.” I scribbled, catching up. I sensed his posture tighten with annoyance or impatience, and I couldn’t blame him. I was a stranger, after all, being asked to transcribe his feelings in a place where emotions were as dangerous to bare as pulse points.
    “Okay, go on.”
    “I miss you every minute we’re apart. And I watch the clock every morning when I think I might be seeing you again.” He paused, waiting until my hand did the same. “I miss how you smell. Like spring and grass. There’s not much grass here. I miss your face . . . And the way you smile sometimes. I want to make you smile like that.”
    I ignored my jealousy, that hot snake twisting in my belly as I imagined such things. “Okay.”
    “I miss your voice. The way you talk.”
    I like the way you talk. Where you from?
    The snake slowed. Changed direction, coiling low.
    “I wish I could see you, away from here.” He put his forearms on the desk, leaning closer, speaking even more quietly. “I wish we could be together . . . in ways I haven’t been with a woman in five years. Sometimes, when I see you . . . Sometimes I can’t even listen to what you’re saying. All I can do is watch your mouth. I watch your lips and I think about kissing you, when I’m alone at night. Though I’m never really alone here. But I imagine I am—alone with just you. I think about your mouth, and about kissing you. And other things.”
    . . . other things,
my hand echoed. My neck was hot—hot like sunburn. My cheeks stung. My loose clothes bound me.
    “Sometimes I watch your hands,” he went on. Watching my hands. “I watch your hands and imagine them . . . on me.”
    I was trembling, and surely he could see it. His words had turned jagged, pencil pinched between my bloodless fingers.
    “I imagine—”
    “I think we better leave it there,” I breathed.
    “We’ve got three more minutes still.”
    “Yes, but this is getting . . . I’m not sure it’s appropriate that I write this sort of letter for you.”
And I’m not sure it’s appropriate how wet it’s making me. Not sure at all.
    “Right. Well, I guess that’s just about what I wanted to say, anyhow.”
    “Good. I . . . I could have it mailed for you. If you have her address.”
    That dark gaze jumped from my hands to my eyes and I flinched, too much heat going too many places. For a moment he just stared—not cold, not mean, just . . .
telling.
    “I don’t know her address,” he said quietly.
    I shivered. My hands felt icy, my throat tight. My belly warm and heavy and damning.
    His attention dropped to my hands. “Maybe you could hang on to that for me. Until I can remember.”
    “I can leave it with you.” I tore the page carefully along the perforation, but he was shaking his head.
    “You hang on to it,” he repeated. “It’s real