The Reaper (Eastward Prison)

Chapter 2

CHAPTER

TWO

JACK

He grit his teeth. He could have an olympic medal for the amount of tenacity with which he could grit his teeth. It felt like his body was smashing through a pane of glass. Consciousness was a sheet of something hard and sharp and his body crashed through into the world of the living.

He cried out, he heard himself, he felt his lips crack as he did so. He struggled up, pulling himself painfully into consciousness, though every part of his body hurt. He opened his eyes. One felt puffy, it didn’t open properly. He forced himself to breathe in and out, as deeply as he could, which was not very much at all, as his chest hurt.

He was in a hospital ward. Big, big windows to outside, on one side. Windows to the corridor inside, also. Blinds were drawn, it was dark, there were lights on. He tried to move his body, tried to sit up a bit, everything hurt.

He wasn’t alone though. There was a throng of people buzzing around him. Noise, voices, trying to be quiet and somehow managing to be loud. Anxious and shocked.

She was there.

He saw her face, hovering above him, blonde hair falling off her shoulder as she bent down. Her fingers worked to insert his IV line, getting saline and antibiotics, into the back of his hand. Not his Reaper hand. They all worked on him, a hushed volume, yet everyone in the ward was wired. Fraut.

The man in a suit stood with his hands on his hips. He looked like he was in charge. Jack’s eyes strained to read the ID badge on his lanyard. Prison Governor. “He shouldn’t be here. We aren’t equipped for this-”

Prison? What the fuck?

Someone else chattered, “He’s pinging on the system, we took his finger prints, Jack Winters. His profile is locked down, which means-”

“He’s probably witness protection-”

He wasn’t fucking witness protection. Was he?

“He is a fucking Reapers MC member, look at the tattoos on his hands.”

Jack glanced down but couldn’t see his hands. He was fighting the urge to lash out and run. Everything hurt and his mind whirled.

“He said he couldn’t remember anything, why he was left outside Eastward, he’s got no idea why he’s in this condition-”

An older man in doctor's scrubs was cutting open his shirt, while his blonde angel fumbled with inserting an IV line into his hand. Her hands were cold.

“Hannah, you shouldn’t be working on him, it’s a breach of protocol, you shouldn’t be treating someone you know-”

“How well do you know him?” another voice piped up in a sneering tone. What the fuck was up with him? Jack craned his head as much as he could to see. A uniformed police officer. Why was a police officer even here? Jack immediately didn’t like him. He wasn’t sure what it was, maybe his tone, his face… something about him bothered Jack.

Hannah let a little smug smile sneak onto her lips now.” He’s my boyfriend,” she said, calm and clear as a bell.

He didn’t need to look up to see that everyone in the room exchanged glances.

The officer voiced what they probably all thought. “I’m sorry, you… you are dating… this…?” he scoffed.

There was a blood pressure monitor strapped to Jack’s upper arm. He had tried to move, was it the bedsheets just tucked in too tight, or was it his muscles that refused to work?

“Yes, he’s mine,” she said simply. Jack felt his head release back into the bed, he felt his muscles relax. He felt a sense of peace. He took a breath.

“How in the actual fuck,” the police officer snorted with derision. He glared up at him. PC Roper, his name badge said. He looked like a bug eyed frog that someone had stepped on. “How in the actual fuck were you with him?”

The suited Prison Governor shot the policeman a loaded look. “What I think PC Roper is asking, is-”

“Hannah, you moved on quick, I’m surprised, and with… someone like him -”

“Alright, Paul, I know you two have a history, but-”

Jack’s neck hair raised. The police officer was her ex. Jack felt a carnal need to rip his eyes out of their sockets.

Hannah tossed her blonde ponytail over her shoulder, out of the way, as she gently taped the IV line into place. He thought her fingers twitched, almost reaching for him.

He wanted to pretend they were holding his hand, reassuring him.

“You, little miss prude and prissy-” Roper continued.

“Enough, Paul,” The Governor said.

“-with him, the big bad wolf? This fucking Reaper? A MC member? How in the name of ever loving fuck did you two meet?” Roper nodded his head at Jack, who felt like a piece of meat, lying there, unable to move, unable to speak. Unable to fight back and defend himself. Defend her. He could hear, he could partially see.

He couldn’t remember anything.

He remembered a flash of blonde hair. Gentle hands, soft voice. A caring, kind face, a familiar face. Hannah. Thinking of her name even left him feeling warmer. He had a girlfriend. A beautiful, strong, smart girlfriend called Hannah.

He was woefully underprepared for this. He felt his heart jump out of his chest.

Suddenly he had a flashback. Shocking himself, it was a moment of him orgasming. Hot, wet, he heard himself cry out, he heard a woman cry out. He saw blonde hair. An incredible orgasm. He heard himself roar out loud. Fuck, he felt it again, his balls pulled up, his dick twitched, remembering that physical release, that emotional release. He blinked, now getting an erection, hoping everyone would go, wanting to think, wanting to feel that, to remember. It was shocking, pornographic, almost indecent if it hadn’t been for the swell or emotion that came with it.

Now he just wanted to make her come. Hard. This blonde woman who trusted him implicitly. Hannah, whose cool hands took his and reached through more than just the air between them to touch him.

He wanted to come, too. He wanted not just physical release, he wanted to set himself free, the caged animal inside him, he wanted a release for that, too. He wanted his ugly, angry beast to soar next to her, this little blonde angel, this beautiful, svelte, pure creature who claimed to be his.

But he had no other memory of her. Nothing else. Just one of her looking down at him, and one of her orgasming along with him. Or was it wishful thinking? He couldn’t tell, he wasn’t sure.

The Governor raised his voice now, “Stand down, PC Roper. Hannah will no doubt be questioned by the appropriate office. We’ve called it in and we’ve got Detectives from Scotland Yard coming, they said keep him in custody-”

Jack felt a weird sense of panic at that. Sudden and visceral.

“It might be good to have Hannah here, it might help his amnesia,” the male doctor said.

Amnesia? Fuck. He felt the panic rising in him further. He’d quashed it, of course, he didn’t panic, he had trained hard and had it drilled into him not to panic. His panic turned to frustration, aggression. That’s how he’d been trained, reprogrammed over the years. He didn’t know much, but he knew that. Why did he know he’d been trained to disregard panic? Why did he know his heart rate would probably be about 60 beats a minute and he could swat this doctor on the back of the head to knock him unconscious and get himself out of there? Why was he thinking about how to get out?

“So, just replay things again for me, you found him behind the bins, in this state? And he’s your boyfriend?

“Yes,” she said, trying to sound calm, but he could hear her voice trembling.

“You didn’t know he was going to be there?”

“No.”

“You didn’t know anything about him being beaten up and-”

“No, nothing,” she said, moving on to dressing his ribs slowly.

The blackness kept threatening to pull him in again. He had to blink, he had to keep blinking and breathing. He didn’t want to sleep anymore.

“It’s okay, Jack, I’m here now,” she said, somehow knowing. But of course she would know.

Hannah, his blonde, pretty girlfriend, said his name. Jack. He knew at that moment that he didn’t really recognise it. He wasn’t sure he was Jack at all. Who was he? His mind reeled. It was all a blur, a haze. He couldn’t remember. He didn’t know.

Hannah. The thought of her was like balm on the angry prickle that the word ‘prison’ had induced in him. Somehow, he felt pulled towards her. Yes he was confused, he was aching all over physically and couldn’t remember anything, nothing about himself, or her, except a few snippets that were really quite useless, in terms of the practical facts. Yes, he had a strange sense that he didn’t belong, that all of this around him wasn’t quite right. But he did know he wanted more of her. He wanted more of her company, more of her presence. If he was honest with himself, he wanted her body, he wanted that orgasm that was flickering like a broken video behind his eyes on repeat.

He was feeling foggy. He was feeling like he needed to fight, he didn’t want to sleep, he wanted to remember.

He snapped out of his head for a second and realised another nurse was injecting something into his cannula.

“It’s a sedative, it will help you rest, you need to rest,” she said. The nurse blurred in front of him. “You have amnesia. You have a very bad head injury. You were left, all beaten up, this is Eastward Prison-”

He groaned again at that word. Prison? What the actual fuck?

“Broken ribs,” he heard the older man doctor supervisor mutter, as he tried to take the dressing from Hannah’s hands.

“Gentle with him!” she exclaimed, batting the hands of her supervisor off.

“Hannah, you shouldn’t be in here for this, you should go-” The hands of her supervisor took back the dressing.

But a hand shot out lightning fast. And clasped onto her wrist. His hand. His tattooed, blood caked hand. And he held onto her wrist, tight. He held onto her, the salvation, the redemption she offered. The blinding hot passion and the soothing safety he felt in every cell of his aching body.

“She stays,” he commanded. His voice sounded like thunder.

Everyone in the room stilled. “I don’t know fuck all about anything else, but the one thing I do know, Hannah is fucking staying.”