I sighed the moment the scalding hot water hit my skin. Almost instantaneously, every bone and muscle in my bone groaned and relaxed. My mind went blank for about thirty seconds and I nearly slid down the stall of the shower room when my knees threatened to give –if they could even be called stalls. There was no such thing as privacy in prison, and the shower rooms were no exception. The stalls had no doors. Anyone walking by, be it guard or inmate, would get a good view.

I had every intention of spending what little time I had to shower with my back to the wall. If there was one thing I’d learned so far; it was to never turn my back on this prison or any of its inmates.

I had entered the shower room to find it empty –much to my immense relief—and had chosen the very last stall where there was minimal chance of being seen bathing with my family jewels out to gawk at. And knowing my miserable luck and that fact that I seemed to be a strong magnet for every pervert, rapist and murderer out there, they would want to do more than just gawk.

“Not these family jewels,” I mumbled to myself.

I’d found some hygienic utensils sitting on my bunk. I hadn’t questioned whether they were meant for me and had taken them, thankful to whoever had put them there. I extracted the green wrapped bar of soap from the plastic bag, removed the paper wrapper and shoved it into the bag which I dropped at a corner of the stall, taking care not to drop it anywhere near the disgusting green mold growing on the wall out of cracks. The shower room was as filthy and unhygienic as I had expected it to be, so no disappointment there.

I rubbed off some of the soap on the palm of my hand and lathered it over every nook and cranny of my body. As I did, my mind recalled what had happened back at the boiler room. Heat crawled up my neck, and my face turned a beet red color at the memory of Schneizel’s brazen declaration –a declaration he had no right to make!

“How dare you?” I’d growled once we were the only ones left in the boiler room.

So nonchalantly it was as if he hadn’t ruined the rest of my life by declaring me a prison ‘bitch’, he had said, "What seems to be the problem?"

Rage, powerful and hot, had consumed me. I had started to swing my broken arm, completely forgetting that it was still bandaged and had regretted it immediately. Blinding pain had shot up my arm, fazing me instantly. Wincing, I had shut my eyes against the throbbing ache, waiting for it to subside.

And then I had felt hot breath fanning my eyelashes. My eyes had shot open and I had reflexively stepped back. His hand had grabbed my nape in lightning speed and held me in place with a strength I had no hope to overcome. My heart had started racing and I had feared he could hear it pounding. His hand had been so hot on the back of my neck that it had sent chills slithering up and down my spine. They hadn’t been the bad kind of chills.

My wary gaze had collided with his and locked. We’d been so close that my heart still galloped at the memory. He’d even bent down to my level.

“Listen very closely to what I’m about to say, Aiden. This is lesson number one, the most important lesson of all. There is no such thing as an act of kindness in prison. Everything anyone does for you here is done with the intention of you paying them back full in some way or another, and God help you if you can’t or refuse to pay back.”

“W-What are you saying?”

“What I’m saying is—” he pulled my face even closer to his till our noses touched “—to not expect my protection to come for free.”

“And the price is for me to be your girlfriend?!”

“Yes.”

I had seen it coming from a mile away, had seen it in the wicked glint in his electric blue eyes, and yet when Schneizel’s lips had smashed into my own, every nerve ending in my body had very nearly exploded in shock. I had been immediately overwhelmed. Stunned, the breath had hitched in my throat and my knees had instantly given. If it weren’t for his hand at my nape, I would have crumpled to the floor. His hand had then crawled up to my hair and he’d pulled downward, expertly tilting my face upward in the process to do with me as he’d wished. An electrifying chill had sizzled down my spine like a bolt of lightning, rousing a trail of Goosebumps across my body in its wake. My heart rate skyrocketed.

As weak and helpless as I was, there had been nothing I could do against the taller, larger man coercing me except to pound at his solid chest like a flushing schoolgirl. It felt as if I’d been pounding my fists at a wall of bricks. Schneizel’s lips had molded and shaped mine to his liking, his kiss rough, demanding and overpowering. When his tongue had darted out to slide across my lips in a sensual way, a moan slipped out of me.

Horrified, my fluttering eyes had snapped wide open.

I started to shove at him then, needing to disengage my swollen lips from his long enough to take in a breath of fresh air. To quell my measly efforts, Schneizel had snaked a hand around my waist and had pulled me against him. His massive erection had ground against my own. I had been so utterly horrified to realize I was hard as well that I had involuntarily gasped. Schneizel seized the opportunity to slip his tongue into my mouth. He’d explored and probed my mouth, dueling with my own tongue.

Eventually, my lungs started burning from the lack of oxygen. As if sensing it, Schneizel broke the kiss.

“Y-You...B-Bas...tard.”

Schneizel had had the audacity to grin in response.

When I had finally regained my bearings or at least enough of it, I had pushed away from him and had backed away to the boiler room’s door, keeping my eyes on him lest he had thought to pounce on me again.

“If this is the price of your so-called protection, then I don’t need it. Stay the hell away from me. You’re no better than Raven or Gerard!” I had tossed at him in a blind moment of anger, positively seething.

I’d also been very angry at my own body’s traitorous reactions to him.

Schneizel’s grin had fallen just then. His eyes had dropped to the bulge between my legs and then had risen back to meet my eyes again. My heart had skipped a beat and more heat had shot up my neck to suffuse my cheeks a deeper shade of red. A moment later, his face slipped into an icy mask.

“You think you can survive here without me?”

“Yes!”

“So be it, then. You’re on your own.” When his piercing gaze had grown too hot and probing, I slipped out of the boiling room and raced back to my cell like a bat out of hell.

I squeezed the soap bar so hard it shot out of my hand like a bullet. It slid around for a time until it settled between my legs. When I bent down to pick up the now soiled bar of soap, the small of my back hit the shower knob. I was forced to maneuver around and face the wall in order to bend down again and pick it up.

Big, colossal mistake on my part, that was.

A hand came down on my ass so hard; I jumped fifty feet into the air.