A Pound of Flesh (A Pound of Flesh #1) (5 page)

She opened her eyes, clenched her fists, and filled her lungs. “HEY!”

Rendered speechless, everyone stared at Kat as her yell ricocheted around them. Riley, who was standing at her side, trying his best to shield her from whatever shit was about to fly, blinked in disbelief. The awed silence lasted all of thirty seconds before the door flew open, and Ward stormed in with a face like thunder.

“What the hell is going on here?” he roared.

The group surrounding Kat slowly began to disperse when two officers appeared in the doorway. Kat took another shaky breath and rubbed her drenched palms down her trousers. She cleared her throat and turned to her boss.

“Nothing to worry about, Mr. Ward. Just a differing of opinion. As you can see, they’re all fine now. Aren’t you, Corey?” She leveled a look at him that demanded obedience.

He nodded sharply, still glaring at the back of Jason’s head.

“It didn’t sound like nothing.” Ward eyed the room, throwing a pointed stare at each inmate until he was seemingly satisfied that they were under control. “I’d like to bring in your new student.” He turned his head toward the door. “Carter?”

* * *

Carter had been standing in the corridor with Officer West, grinning and listening to Ward try to assert what piss-ass authority he thought he had. He pushed from his place against the wall and wandered into the room, dragging his feet with every step.

The first thing he noticed was Riley across the room, acknowledging him with a nod and a smirk. He then glanced casually at the others in the class, trying to discern where he came in the pecking order. He was almost always at the top, but he made it a point to check first.

In this case, Riley dominated. Just.

He sneered when he took in the other faces. Jason could be cocky, but he knew his place and Sam was as quiet as a mouse. No problems there. Corey Reed, however, was a pain in the ass. Carter glared and smiled when he slumped down into his seat. An annoyed feminine cough pulled him from his visual tormenting of the little bastard.

He turned toward the origin of the noise, finding the delectable Miss Lane, arms crossed over her ample chest, eyeing him in a way that made his hackles rise. She, like every other person not in coveralls, thought she was better than he was. He didn’t have to be a mind reader to know it. She may have hidden it well behind her sexy blouse and heels, but she was just like them. They were all the fucking same.

He shifted his weight casually onto his right foot and stared right back at her.

“Carter, this is Miss Lane. Miss Lane, this is Wes Carter,” Ward explained.

“Just Carter,” he spat, keeping his glare firmly on his new tutor. Ward knew better than to use his first name, for Christ’s sake.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Carter,” Miss Lane offered.

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, whatever.”

“You can take a seat.” She gestured to a desk and chair behind him.

Carter ignored her, surveying his surroundings.

“Take a seat, Carter,” she ordered.

His stare snapped to her. Her mouth was pressed into a hard line, almost daring him to defy her. Game on. His eyes wandered lazily down her body. Hot. Curvy in all the right places, with an ass that would look spectacular with his hands all over it. He smirked at that particular image.

Carter was tall, at least six-two, and broad-chested. He towered a good nine inches over her and carried at least seventy pounds more than was on her feminine frame, yet the feisty redhead stood firm, not moving an inch, meeting him glower to glare. If her stick-up-the-ass, bitchy attitude hadn’t riled him so much, he might have stopped to consider how turned on he was by it.

Damn.

“Here, Carter.” It was Rachel’s voice, which broke the strange electric mood enveloping the room. She motioned to the seat closest to him.

Carter, as loath as he was to break his gaze with his tutor, took a deep breath, and moved toward the seat. The air shuddered out of him when his blue irises dropped from Miss Lane’s wide green ones, which flickered with fire.

“Well,” Ward murmured, “any problems … you know where I am.”

He gave a tight-lipped smile and, after they uncuffed Carter, left the room with the two officers.

* * *

Kat was unable to tear her eyes from the new addition to her class. He was fine to look at with his buzz cut; wide, strong shoulders; two days’ worth of stubble; and long legs that stuck out from underneath the desk, but his attitude made him sharp around the edges. There was a dangerous aura around him that screamed
No entry
. She noted a lick of black ink poking out from the collar of his coveralls, curving up his neck.

How very badass.

She’d seen the way he’d taken in the other students in her class—conceited and arrogant—and she didn’t like it. He was obviously an egotistical jerk who saw himself as above everyone in her class, including her, which irritated her beyond distraction. Despite his ability to shut everyone up with his dark scowl and brooding hostility, it was her classroom. Not his.

Kat’s aggression was surprising and uncharacteristic, but the adrenaline still pumped through her body after the almost-fight, and the last thing she needed was a cocky jerk like Carter adding to it.

Kat took a second to compose herself and then started the activity, explaining it quickly and clearly, and within five minutes, they were on task. It appeared the altercation had been forgotten, or, knowing Jason, been left for another time.

She walked with purpose toward Carter’s desk and placed an A4 book in front of him. He never moved to acknowledge her request for him to place his name on the front of it.

“Carter,” she said again, annoyance creeping up her spine. “Could you please write your name on the front of this booklet?” She noticed the corners of his mouth twitch. “Is something funny?”

His eyes met hers, crystal blue, fiery, and furious, but he never said a word.

She pulled a pen from her pocket. “Is this what you need?”

She could have sworn his eyes softened, but it was a change so minute and fleeting, she shook the thought away. He raised his hand and took the pen from her, allowing the tip of his finger to catch the side of her knuckle. The contact was like bare skin to a naked flame. The burning jolt of heat shot from the tip of her finger deep into the pit of her stomach.

Bewildered, Kat watched Carter write his name across the top of the booklet, before throwing the pen down and sighing sarcastically. He sat back in his seat, looking like he owned the place. Kat had no doubt in her mind he thought exactly that.

“I know you’re behind, having just joined us today, but I’m sure you’ll catch up.”

His face showed no emotion or thought, so she continued regardless, explaining the word association task the class had done twenty-four hours before in preparation for their creative writing assessment. “So, you can start with that,” she said. “Write a word that means something to you and then all the words associated with that.”

Still nothing.

She bit her tongue and placed her hands on her hips. “Once you do that, you can write about why that word is important to you.”

He sneered.

“I’m sorry,” she ground out. “Is there a problem?”

He glared at her, his face strong and terrifying. “Do you think I’m stupid?”

She blinked. “No. Why?”

He snorted. “It’s a little bit basic, wouldn’t you say, Miss Lane?”

Her jaw tightened. No matter how intelligent Carter assumed himself to be, his attitude made her want to rip the smug smile off his pretty face. And what a pretty face it was. The lashes that framed his baby blues were sickeningly long, lying on cheekbones that were sharp yet masculine. His mouth was plump in all the right places and puckered when he conjured up his smirk. His nose looked as if it had been broken a couple of times, with the small bump visible on its bridge.

“We’re starting with these tasks before we dive into the literature,” Kat explained through gritted teeth. “All roads to every answer start with the basics.”

“Nice,” he retorted, pulling his eyebrows together in a way Kat could only determine as condescending. “Read that little gem in a fortune cookie, did ya?”

Kat placed her palms onto the desk in front of him, invading his personal space, smelling smoke and warmth. “No, I didn’t,” she hissed. “So just do what I ask. Otherwise, there’s the door. Don’t let it hit you on your smart ass as you leave.”

The entire room pulsed with blasting silence. Carter stared back at Kat for mere seconds before he sat up straight in his chair, leaning even closer. She was momentarily shaken when his hot breath whispered across her cheek.

“Watch your mouth,” he seethed.

The guard shifted closer. Kat swallowed.

“No, Carter. This is my class, not yours. So do what I ask or leave. The choice is yours.”

She spun on her heel and walked toward Riley, whose wide eyes and open mouth suggested he was as shocked as she was that she’d tested the patience of the most volatile person in the room. Kat couldn’t explain it. She knew her conduct had been risky and maybe a little unprofessional, but she couldn’t allow her students to behave that way. She had no idea where her bravery—or stupidity—had come from. Maybe it was a deep-rooted need to assert herself after her mother’s unsupportive words from the night before; maybe it was the fear that still prickled her skin from the confrontation between Corey and Jason.

Something about Carter set her on edge. If she weren’t so angry, she might have enjoyed the energy suddenly flooding her veins.

She managed to ignore Carter for the next fifty minutes, glancing at him occasionally to see him sitting in smug silence. She hadn’t seen him even attempt to do what she’d asked.

Asshole.

The officers came to collect her students as she was finishing her closing plenary.

“Later, Miss L,” Riley chimed, following Jason and Rachel out of the door.

Carter barged past everyone, including her, with no regard whatsoever.

“Yeah, see you later,” she muttered.

As soon as the door shut, Kat sank back against her desk and exhaled. It was glaringly obvious that Carter was going to be a difficult son of a bitch.

Great. Just what she needed.

Pushing off the desk, she collected her students’ booklets and pens. She looked reluctantly at the last booklet, placed on the desk where Carter had been. She stared at it, gnawing on her bottom lip in frustration.

What was it about Carter that had her so wired?

She approached the booklet as a soldier would an undetonated bomb and turned it around, opening up to the first page. Her eyes widened and her breath caught when she read the word that meant so much to the man who had conjured so much emotion from her.

DEBT.

For twelve hours, Carter had done nothing but fume and ruminate over the ways in which he could make his new tutor’s life hell. He was still astounded that she’d spoken to him the way she had.

No one spoke to Carter like that.

No. One.

Fucking. Ever.

For hours after their meeting, he’d been unable to rid himself of the rage she’d sparked within him, the absolute fury at being spoken to in such a way and, unbelievably and more infuriating than all of that combined, the wild lust that had shaken his entire body.

It was almost as if an electric current had shot between them when she spat her words at him. Goddamn her heavy breaths and her venomous tone, which made parts of him twitch and pulse—parts that had been dormant for a long time, parts that made him want to do wild and wicked things to her all over his desk until she knew how he expected to be treated. He was seething at himself for thinking those things about a woman he’d met for all of fifty-five minutes.

Yeah, she was hot; any red-blooded male could see that, with her auburn Dana fucking Scully hair, full pink lips, voluptuous ass, and killer rack. Christ, her fire was sexy as hell. The desire and hunger which slammed into him had been so unexpected, it had caught him off guard, and in a place like Kill, that was some dangerous shit.

Miss Lane was a sanctimonious nobody who needed to learn fast that he would not tolerate her speaking and acting so … unafraid of him.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose, remembering the look on her face when she hissed at him. There was not an inkling of fear or a spark of anything that would suggest he intimidated her. She’d burned with energy so fierce he could taste it in the air between them. He’d even done what she’d asked from him and written the one word he lived by every day.

Not that she’d understand, let alone have experience of it in her pretty, perfect little existence.

The other thing that had irritated him was the fact that the other guys in the class seemed to like her—even Riley, who’d laughed while Carter had fumed and spat out his incredulity during a cigarette before lunch. Carter couldn’t deny he’d been unprepared for the protective tone in Riley’s voice and the hint of warning in his eye.

“You expect me to respect some broad who was probably born with a silver spoon in her fucking mouth and hasn’t had to want for anything?”

“It couldn’t hurt,” Riley had answered with a nonchalant shrug.

Carter had snorted and shaken his head. There was no way.

“So,” Riley had said, breaking the silence. “She’s hot, right?”

Carter couldn’t stop the laugh that erupted. “Oh yeah.”

Riley had slapped his back hard enough to make him flinch. “That’s one for the spank bank, my good man,” he’d offered with a wink.

* * *

The following morning, after several cups of coffee, Kat began setting up her classroom. After a relatively good night’s sleep, she’d started seeing the situation a little more objectively. She’d surmised that Carter was in a highly tense and emotional environment, and her demanding him to do what she wanted was not going to make him any less uncooperative. It was going to be hard as hell, but she’d decided she was at least going to try. She glanced at his empty seat, imagining his slouch and his penetrating stare. Lord. This was going to be harder than she thought.