I could barely recognize myself in the mirror.

Prison changes a man, obviously. But it usually makes him harder, not softer

Last night, she’d been so ready to go. She’d been begging me. She taunted me, knowing I’d bite, wanting me to. And her lips - oh, fuck, her lips. Softer than cashmere. Her mouth was the land of milk and honey. And her body, all lithe and tight and so. Damn. Fuckable.

But I’d stopped her. I’d stopped both of us. Why? Because she was tipsy? She had four drinks! Same as me. And I’d stopped it. Went to bed hard as a rock, woke up the same. All night long I dreamed of what would have happened if I’d caved. If I hadn’t felt that awful tugging in my stomach that said it wasn’t right. It wasn’t the right way to do it.

For the first time in my life, I felt like I had a reason to care about how a woman might feel in the morning.

So why the hell was Misty any different than the others?

I knew that women could mean more to people. Lord knows my father taught me how much damage a woman could do. My old man was a pure addict. He snorted women like cocaine. Every last one of them broke his heart, and the next minute he was out finding a new one to cure his shakes.

I must plenty come through our door growing up, and not a single one of them stayed. Not the ones I hated, and not the ones I loved. At some point, I stopped loving them, because I knew how quick they’d be gone. I don’t know if he drove them away, or if he just had a taste for walkers, but either way I learned a thing or two about women growing up. Namely, that they would come and go quicker than you could blink, so you better take what you want from them while you can.

Misty had offered herself up on a silver platter, and I didn’t take anything more than a bite.

A bite that left me ravenous.

God, she tasted good. I woke up with her taste still on my tongue. She wasn’t up when I got up, which was more than understandable given her late night. I could see the the dent she made in that bottle of vodka, and she’d eaten the rest of the casserole. I had to assume she would be pressing the snooze button a few times.

I’m not ashamed to admit I imagined things went different. I could almost see her on that table, spread for me. This time, she was naked. This time, I had my hands on her perfect little tits, making her squirm. This time, I bit into her neck while I buried myself inside her and felt her tight little pussy take me in. I could almost feel it quake and clench as she came with my name on her lips and her nails in my back and that fucking taste in my mouth…

I knew I couldn’t sit around all day thinking about lost opportunities. For now, she was still Millions’ sweet and innocent little girl. His precious jewel, perpetually off limits.

Yup. That was me. Rev Daly, paragon of respectability.

Anyway, I had shit to do. We had shit to do. She wasn’t working, and I needed a ride. A couple of rides, actually. Today, I was looking for Clint. Red-haired and freckled with a milky eye; it made him a lot easier to hunt down than his supposedly nameless Irish boss. People don’t pay enough attention to detail these days, but nobody forgets a man with a fucked up eye.

When I left my bedroom the second time I found her sitting on the couch. Her eyes were red, her cheeks puffy. All that tension inside me came rushing right back. She glanced up and sighed before she even spoke.

“We’re not talking about last night.”

“No,” I agreed. “We’re not. But we are getting you something to eat. A woman like you can’t live on midnight casseroles and vodka alone.”

She managed a wan smile and picked up her keys. She wore a short white sundress decorated with daisies. It clung tight to her taut stomach, molded over the small hills of her chest. Following her, I let my eyes fall on the swell of her ass. Before she opened the door, she looked over her shoulder, and caught me in the act.

“I was drunk,” she said, as though I needed reminding.

“I know.”

“And…well…” she blushed now, and I guess she wasn’t actually going to ream me out for staring at her ass. “Thanks. For not. You know.”

I nodded, torn between regret for “you know” and happiness that it had been the right thing to do after all.

Fuck this woman and her effect on me.

Of course, fucking this woman was something I couldn’t get out of my head.

Midway through breakfast, a hearty plate of hashbrowns, eggs, and bacon at the local diner, Misty was nearly back to normal. Her eyes were bright and keen as ever. She nodded as I told her the itinerary. The Pied Piper, Gino’s, and wherever that might lead us. Then she’d be taking me to my first parole meeting to round it all out.

“And, you know, it’ll be better if you…you know. Stay in the car.”

That stopped her nodding, and earned me a glare.

“Why’s that?”

“You think anyone’s gonna be comfortable talking about you, in front of you?”

“Why wouldn’t they? If they want to help me…”

“They’ll feel more comfortable doing it indirectly. They trust me to keep a secret. Not to…”

“I can keep a secret.”

“Sure you can. But a lot of women can’t.”

“So this is about me being a woman? That’s fucked. It’s my life that’s at stake here. I want to be involved in my own damn rescue! I’m not gonna be the princess in the castle!”

“No,” I shot back. “You’re going to be the princess in the car. The one who’s smart enough to trust the man she hired to take care of this.”

Her eyes narrowed. She always seemed to have an issue with that word. Whenever I said it, trust, she got the same look on her face. For a woman who’d been throwing herself at me less than 24 hours ago, she sure was giving me shit on this.

“I don’t like it,” she said.

“I don’t expect you to. There’s not much to like about any of this. You’re a good woman, Misty. People like you - they really love you. They want to help, but…you’re too close and too distant at the same time. You don’t live this life anymore, so they don’t trust you to know how to act when shit hits the fan. You can take care of yourself…but you need to take care of everyone else, too. The people who want to help you, I mean. You have to make sure they don’t get swept up in the shit.”

She chewed slowly on a bite of bacon, considering all this.

“But they trust you,” she said.

“For good reason. The district attorney would have let me walk out of that prison any damn time I pleased if I was willing to roll over and start talking. I kept my mouth shut.”

“That’s admirable.”

The way she said it could have been sarcastic. But it wasn’t. Millions’ daughter knew a thing or two about the value of someone who never talks. She understood that even a man like me can have ethics and principles.

“It’s why your father liked me,” I offered.

“Yeeeeah,” she said, drawing the word out as though it reminded her of something she didn’t want to remember. “He did like you, Rev. But I’m starting to think my father’s standards might have been a little off. I’ve spent a lot of time letting his opinions be the measure of my life.”

She paused, studying me.

“You’re alright,” she finally said. “But not because my father thought so.”

“Oh no?” I couldn’t help but grin. And it forced a grin out of her, too. One that I was damn happy to see. Stupidly happy to see. “Why, then?”

“Because you make a really good casserole,” she said. “And you’re a good…”

She stopped herself before she could say it, but it was too late for her to hide the blush in her cheeks and the widening of her eyes. I was a good something or other, and I had a decent idea of what that was. I chuckled, signaled for the check. When I looked back at her, she was holding her head in her hands, clearly wondering what the hell was wrong with her.

“Don’t worry, sweetness,” I said. “I won’t tell anybody that you swooned over one of my kisses.”

Now, she glared at me, which made me grin even wider.

“Not unlike his close relative, the baboon, the wild criminal tries to impress a female with a display of his bright, red, protruding ass. Unlike the baboon, his attempt is a miserable failure,” she intoned in a fake British accent. I was still laughing when the waitress brought our check.