With Good Behavior (22 page)

He too felt rapid contractions below and an upsurge building while his fingers raked up and down her slender back. Trembling, he experienced a crescendo of pressure, thrusting and plunging into her, rising and building, mounting, peaking, soaring, until finally he reached a sky-scraping climax and his body sank back into the mattress, spent. Utter euphoria enveloped them as they clung together, their breathing gradually slowing to match each other breath for breath.

They lay with a sheen of sweat covering their reddened skin. As Grant had imagined earlier, their bodies fit together perfectly. Her cheek rested just below his chin, and her luxurious hair tousled across his chest. Her long legs encircled his, ensnaring her prey. They melded together like lock and key. Only they were no longer locked away—they were free.

As he gently stroked his hand through her strawberry locks, he murmured, “Can you spend the night?”

“Sure,” she said, and he felt her smile against his chest. “I hope Kirsten won’t worry. I can’t call her since you don’t have a phone hooked up yet.”

Continuing to pet her soft hair, he observed, “I bet we are the only two people on earth who don’t own cell phones.”

“Maybe one day, Parolee Madsen,” she teased. “Soon we’ll both be grown-up enough to own phones.” Lifting her head and staring into his half-lidded eyes, she asked, “Will you text me? When we get phones?”

“Of course,” he responded. “As long as you’ll text me back.”

“Deal,” she nodded. “Um, Grant, if I’m going to stay tonight, do you mind if I take a shower?”

“Jeez,” he muttered with feigned disgust. “You buy me sheets and towels and now you think you own the place.”

She chuckled and bit her lip. “Are you saying that as the owner of this apartment, the only way you’ll let me use your shower is if you take one with me?”

His eyes widened and he thought for a moment. “Yesss,” he said, nodding, a grin lighting up his face. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“I thought so.” Her smile matching his, she propped herself up and stepped out of bed, extending her hand to him.

Taking her hand in his, he allowed himself to be led into the bathroom.

She kept her eyes glued on his lower body. He cleared his throat. “Do you see something you like, Taylor? Feeling in
spire
d?”

Expecting a nervous laugh since he’d caught her staring, he was surprised when she confidently held his gaze.

“I was thinking about our earlier conversation at the ballpark,” she said in a sultry voice. “I wonder, do you think I can fit that 
whole thing
 into my mouth?”

He had never moved so quickly toward a shower in his life.

N
aked, they snuggled together front to back, wrapped between the sheets, clean and content. Grant’s cheek nestled over Sophie’s left shoulder and brushed against her long hair, still damp from the shower. He had curved himself around her body with his knees tucked in behind hers and his left arm folded over her. It was not possible to get much closer. They had no need for a blanket as their colliding skin and the summer evening provided more than enough heat. With a satiated sigh, Grant felt his eyelids droop.

Sophie did not feel so at ease. Although spooning with McSailor was precisely the blissful experience she had imagined, her mind would not stop processing an image that had caught her eye in the bathroom. In the act of soaping each other’s bodies under the pulsating shower, Sophie had seen an angry scar on Grant’s lower back. Slightly below his waist on his right side—a line of raised skin, pink and jagged. She figured he would tell her about the scar one day. She really wanted to respect his privacy by letting it go. But her analytical, inquisitive brain would not allow it.

Her faltering voice sliced through the darkness. “Grant?”

“Hmm?”

He sounded so tired. She bit her lower lip, wondering if she should proceed.

“It’s nothing.”

There was silence, but then his piqued curiosity got the best of him. “What is it, Sophie?”

She took a deep breath, deciding to go for it. “I don’t want to be nosey, but … um, how did you get that scar on your back?”

She felt his body bristle immediately and just as quickly regretted her question. “Forget it,” she backpedaled. “I—I, um … I shouldn’t have asked you.”

He felt his face redden as he remembered the sting of the belt on his four-year-old body, snapping and cutting into him frighteningly. But the sting was nothing compared to the words spat out by the drunk, black-haired man. 
You peed in your pants, you fucking baby! Do you need a diaper?
Sarcasm had dripped from the towering tormentor’s mouth.
 Karita, get the boy a diaper!

Grant blinked several times as he refocused on the bedroom, dimly illuminated by city lights, and realized he had been holding his breath. The scar was where his father’s belt had always found his backside, and though the other welts had faded, that mark stayed. His father had branded him.

Sophie felt Grant exhale slowly, and she waited for him to speak. His voice warbled with emotion when he told her, “It’s okay. You can ask me anything. Our stupid pact is shot to hell by now, anyway.”

Sophie smiled in the darkness.

He attempted to sound nonchalant as he explained. “It happened during military exercises. We, ah, we were doing maneuvers in the Atlantic, and I was, uh, running to deliver coordinates to the radio operator, when I—I slipped and crashed into a pump handle. It had a sharp edge that cut me.” Producing a fake little chuckle, he added, “The lieutenant sure was pissed off at me for getting blood everywhere in the passageway.”

It could not have been more obvious that he was lying. Why he lied was beyond her comprehension, and it instantly frightened her. She was painstakingly crawling back toward dignity after losing it all to the biggest liar and deceiver there ever was, and she did 
not 
want to repeat her mistakes.

Her mouth tightened. “Maybe I should go home.”

“No!” he insisted, all signs of fatigue vanishing as he gave her arm a gentle squeeze. Could she tell he was lying? Did she know the shameful truth behind the scar? More quietly, he implored, “I don’t want you to go.”

She lay in his arms quietly, pensively, tensely for several moments. She didn’t really want to go, to leave the cocoon of his warm embrace, but she could 
not
 get hurt again. She was terribly frightened of being deceived, of being manipulated, and something about this situation felt oh-so-familiar.

“After the incredible day we’ve had—finding this apartment, the game, dinner, shopping for sheets, um, well, making the bed—”

She couldn’t help but grin at that.

“—taking a shower, you’re going to leave 
now
? You can’t do that. It would be crazy.”

She considered his entreaty. After that mind-blowing sex, how in the world could she think of leaving? It had been magical, the most romantic evening she’d ever experienced. She would probably never find a man like him again.

Bravely taking a deep breath, she confessed, “I guess I’m scared.”

“Scared?”

She swallowed hard. “Scared of …” She hesitated, the words 
scared of falling in love
 popping up in her mind. “Scared of getting hurt,” she finished instead.

Grant squeezed her a little tighter in his arms. “I’m scared too,” he said solemnly. “I don’t want to be alone in this new apartment. I’m scared …” He paused dramatically. “Scared of the dark.”

She burst out laughing when she realized he was joking, and it was joyous to feel her body shake with giggles in his arms. He nudged his mouth closer to her ear and whispered, “You can’t leave, Sophie. The monsters under the bed might get me unless you’re here.”

“Well, I’m staying then,” she said. “I can’t leave you all alone in the dark, your first night in an unfamiliar home, forced to fend off the monsters all by yourself.”

He brushed his fingertips lovingly across her cheek. “Thank you, Bonnie.”

“You’re welcome, Clyde.”

Feathering a kiss below her ear, he explained, “It was either Bonnie or McShrink, and I figured you’d like Bonnie better.”

“Mmm, good choice, McSailor.”

His soft touch and melodic voice made her sigh deeply, nestling into him a little tighter, a little deeper. It was okay to let go. It was okay to trust him—he had promised not to hurt her. She felt a drowsy wave roll over her, and her eyes fluttered shut.

Now 
his
 eyes were wide open in the dark. Feeling her smooth skin pressed against him, Grant wondered if he would be able to sleep. Disjointed phrases swam in his mind: 
How did you get that scar? … I’m scared of the dark … Monsters under the bed.

Closing his eyes, he tried to stem the tide of painful memories. With an ache in his chest, he recalled pleading with someone else not to leave him alone in the blackness of his bedroom, lest the monsters emerge. It had not been a joke that time. It had been an earnest plea, and the someone he had begged had been his brother.

A short time later, Grant was dreaming.

They paused outside a thick steel door with peeling dirty paint, and he felt the CO release his arm as the guard whipped out a set of keys. Taking a step toward the rusty lock on the door, the CO instructed, “Don’t move, Madsen.”

“Yes, boss.”

Once the CO unlocked the door and pushed it forward, the hinges groaning, Grant could see the consequence of standing up to his father: a dank, dark hole in the wall. So, this was solitary. The pitch-black space made Grant’s heart thump with terror, and suddenly there seemed to be not enough oxygen in the hallway.

The CO grabbed Grant’s handcuffed wrists and roughly unclasped the metal bindings. “Get in there,” he growled.

Grant’s feet felt glued to the floor as panic coursed through his bloodstream.

“I said—” The CO’s upper lip twitched with anger as he gripped the back of the prisoner’s light-blue button-down shirt, “—get in there!” Grant was shoved forward, and he yelped in pain as his bruised ribs made contact with the doorframe before he stumbled into the darkness.

Regaining his balance, Grant turned to find the CO’s beefy figure silhouetted at the door. “Enjoy the next two months in here, con!”

Grant rushed back toward the light just as the guard slammed the door with a deafening thud. The jangle of the key sliding and turning in the lock would be the punished prisoner’s last contact with anyone for days.

Blindly turning around and stepping backward until he made connection with something solid, Grant’s back slid down the wall and he slumped forward. He could see nothing, and all he could hear were his panting breaths and the pounding of his heart in his eardrums.

You can do this
, he told himself, nausea building in his gut and a heavy tightness constricting his throat. The walls seemed to close in, though he had been in solitary for mere seconds. His bruised, beaten body ached, and the cold, hard floor provided little comfort. Drawing his knees up, he hugged them to his chest and rocked himself in a huddled ball of misery.

Dead silence greeted his ears in the soundproofed cell. He was alone with his thoughts. He mentally replayed the fight in the yard. It had taken every ounce of strength Grant possessed to stand up to his father, only to be rewarded by Enzo allowing rapists to beat the shit out of him. His brain flashed back and forth between the blows from the prisoners and the lashings delivered by his father when he was a child. Grant could not distinguish past from present anymore.

Sixty days? He didn’t know how to get through sixty minutes. He should have just obeyed his father, accepted his protection by renouncing Joe. An image of Enzo’s cold charcoal eyes seared into him. The man who had whipped him and tossed him into a closet some twenty years ago had done it again. He would never escape his father.

Prisoners got sent to solitary all the time. Why the hell was he freaking out so badly? He must be weak, pathetic, cowardly—a basket case. “You fucking baby,” he heard himself cry out. His voice dissolved into raspy whispers. “You fucking baby. Do you need a diaper, baby?”

Like the fucking baby he was, Grant began sobbing.

Time passed in the dark hole as Grant lost his grip on reality. He had no idea how long he’d been in there.

Then a blinding light pierced his retinas, and his hands flew to cover his eyes. His heart and mind raced. His body felt wet. Where in the hell was he? What day was it? Gruff male voices began to crash through his consciousness.

“Christ, what’s that smell?”

“… don’t know what’s wrong—he wouldn’t eat anything for days.”

“Get a doctor down here.”

“Fuck, he’s gone j-cat.”

“… whack shack population just increased by one.”

There were disdainful laughs.

Then there was a hand on his forearm, shaking him gently, nudging him awake. Grant opened his eyes and gradually focused on a man sitting next to him with a gray-bearded face. Grant’s eyes widened and with a start he sat up on the bed, scrambling back toward the wall as best he could with his hands cuffed in front of him.

“It’s okay, Mr. Madsen. You’re safe.” The man attempted to assure him, though no assurance was to be found in this strange, unfamiliar room.

Grant glanced down at his pristine white jumpsuit, nervously darting his eyes around the sterile environment, then daring to look once again at the older man staring back at him kindly.

“I’m Dr. McIntyre. You’re in the psych ward, and it’s March 27, 2006. You came here yesterday after spending three days in solitary. Do you remember any of that?”

Grant slowly shook his head. His voice sounded strange and groggy as he inquired, “Why was I taken here?”

Dr. McIntyre hesitated. “You were not doing so well in the hole, son. You had not been eating, and you were, um, unresponsive. Now, I need to perform a mental status exam on you. I’m going to ask you some questions, and I want you to do your best to answer them, okay?”

Still disoriented and upset, Grant tried to be obedient. “Yes, sir.”

The psychiatrist asked several simple questions. Grant guessed he aced the exam because Dr. McIntyre gave him a reassuring smile.

“The medication seems to be working,” he said.

Grant’s voice rose with alarm. “What medication?”

“You’re on olanzapine, an antipsychotic, Mr. Madsen.”

“No! I don’t want any medication!”

“I’m afraid it’s not your choice. You had a psychotic break in there.”

“No, I’m fine. I don’t need any drugs.”

“You were catatonic, Mr. Madsen. And you, um, well, you had urinated all over yourself in the cell.”

Once the words left the doctor’s mouth, Grant knew they were true. True and devastatingly shameful. He quickly averted his eyes, turning his body toward the wall, away from the prying gaze of the shrink. Helplessly he felt hot tears rolling down his cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” Grant murmured, ducking his head low as his restrained hands came up to cradle his face. He felt naked and exposed as tears of disgrace flowed. He just wanted to disappear. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

A river of regret and humiliation streamed down his face.

“Grant, wake up!”

He felt a warm hand cradle his face, tapping him gently. “Grant, honey, it’s okay, wake up.”

With a startled flinch, he opened his eyes and stared into Sophie’s worried gaze, the contours of her face visible in the dim light. He lifted his hands, surprised when they were not handcuffed together.

“You were having a nightmare, Grant.”

Bringing his hands to his face, he was shocked to find his cheeks wet with tears. Clambering into a sitting position, he frantically passed his palms across the sheets, praying he would not find those wet too.