Reaching out, I ran a single finger over her cheek and down the side of her mouth. “I’m fine now.” I dropped my hand to my side when Giles pulled the curtain back and reentered.

“If I had a dollar for every stitch I’ve put in your body, I’m be a rich man,” he joked, his gravel-filled laugh filling the space around me.

I’d always pictured Giles as a father figure. Sure, I was a hardened inmate and he was a doctor, but if I’d had a different life, he would’ve been an amazing dad. It made me wonder if he had children of his own. The staff in medical was smart, they knew better than to talk about their personal lives. I knew a ton about the COs, but next to nothing about the nurses and Giles. I supposed that was the point.

The side of my mouth lifted at him with his words and the sound of his happy laughter, and if I wasn’t mistaken, a gleam reached his eyes that portrayed a level of comfort that wasn’t allowed in our respective positions. It made me long for a family and a life I no longer had.

Quickly, I looked away and kept my eyes on Lyla as Giles worked to stitch up my arm. As if she couldn’t handle the heat between us, she left the space and went to the desk to work on paperwork.

Tossing his bloody needle onto the metal tray, Dr. Giles pulled off his latex gloves and smiled at me. “Your arm’s all done, but because of that noggin of yours, I’m going to have to keep you here for a few days. I can’t send you back to your cell with a busted-up brain, now can I?”

I shook my head.

He didn’t know it, but he was actually doing me a huge favor. I wanted to be around Lyla and if I had to use my head injury to do it, so be it.

When Giles left my side and went to her to tell her I was staying for a while, her eyes flittered my way and a tiny smile spread across her lips. She wanted me there just as bad as I wanted to be there, and it was time I took full advantage of our situation.

FOR TWO DAYS, I watched Lyla flitter around the room like a little dragonfly. She took care of patients and blushed every time she felt my eyes on her. My cock grew hard every time I imagined her without her oversized scrubs. And every time she let her hair down before pulling it back up, I imagined what those strands would feel like against my chest as she rode me.

I was a sick man, but I was a sick man who was about to explode from wanting Lyla so much. Everything about her was turning me on, and it had nothing to do with the fact that it had been ten years since I’d had sex. It was her smile, her smell, and the curves of her body, which I could see through her clothes when she leaned certain ways or reached for supplies.

On the second day, I’d reached my limit. When she came in to check on me, I took advantage of the closed curtain. The infirmary was quiet, no new inmates in the room. Actually, I was the only patient that day. Douglas had taken the silence of the room as an invitation to nap, and Dr. Giles was going over patient files in his office.

She checked my blood pressure, her latex-covered fingers grazing my arms and sending chills down into my stomach and deep into my balls. They grew heavy as my cock grew hard, and the urge to reach down and relieve myself was almost more than I could stand.

The skin of her fingertips was blocked by a barrier of latex, and I longed to feel her skin against mine. Reaching out, I took her hand in mine and slowly peeled the gloves from her fingers. She swallowed, her eyes meeting mine, but she didn’t stop me.

“Christopher.” My name rushed from her lips in a whisper.

Lifting her hand to my chest, I sighed when her fingers grazed my chest hairs. “Say it again.”

She closed her eyes and ran her fingers over my hot skin, leaving me panting for more breath. Leaning in, her eyes a swirl of hypnotized greens, she whispered my name again.

I lost it.

Standing, I pulled her to me and her small frame molded against mine. Without regard for the sleeping officer outside the curtain or Dr. Giles, who could walk in at any moment, I crushed my lips to her and took everything I’d been dreaming of from the moment she joined the block.

I tasted her, fed on the sweetness of her mouth like the greedy criminal I was. She moaned into me, swiping the air from my lungs and making my cock strain against the zipper of my khakis painfully. My balls ached between my thighs, heavy and ready to be unloaded.

Fuck the rules. Fuck solitary, which I was sure to get when we were caught. Fuck it all. I wanted to crawl inside of her. Explode into her depths. And it was more than obvious by the way she began to climb me, lifting her leg on my thigh and rubbing herself against my hard dick, that she wanted it, too.

I was a murderer, at least allegedly. A filthy criminal who had no right to touch her sweetness or taste her thick desire, but fuck it. People took things they didn’t deserve all the time. Why should I deny myself when no one else ever did?