As Cold As Ice Read Online Free Page A

and her large hands shot out to grab it, yanking
it forward with a clatter against the plastic table.
    It happened so fast, and the woman moved so
quickly, that Jessica jumped up. Food thief confirmed.
    A guard shouted, but she barely heard
him.
    The person she’d just shared a table with
wasn’t a woman at all. It was a man. A young, thin man who happened
to have long hair. Some of it was getting into the last of
Jessica’s meal as he scooped up the mashed meat with his hands and
stuffed it into his mouth. His cheeks were hollow, like he’d been
starving, and only then did Jessica realize he didn’t have a tray
of his own at the table.
    A hard force with the strength of a truck
slammed into her. The ground flew up to meet her face and body
hard, and the heavy weight of one of the guards stayed on top of
her, keeping her down.
    The pained yells of her eating companion
followed. Jessica struggled, but she couldn’t quite get up to see
with the guard on top of her.
    She didn’t need to see. The sound of
something hard smacking against flesh was enough to know that a
nightstick had come out, and it was being used on the man she’d
been sitting with.
    “ Stop it. I gave it to him!
I said stop it!” Jessica screamed, flailing beneath the
guard.
    He grabbed her wrists and yanked them behind
her back. He latched a chain on her shackles that would keep her
virtually helpless; she heard the clink of the metal links when he
pulled them out.
    Panic rose up inside her like a wild animal.
Jessica managed to wiggle her wrist free before he could latch the
chain onto her shackle. Their bodies were a mess as they tangled
together, but she managed to spin around on the smooth tiled floor,
putting herself on her back with the guard on top of her.
    He wasn’t wearing a helmet; none of the
guards in the cafeteria were. The shouting from the other prisoners
as they were rounded up was so loud that no one seemed to notice
the fight happening between Jessica and this man.
    She slammed the heel of her palm into his
nose. Even with the lack of space for her to draw back her wrist
and really get a good, strong hit in, it was still painful enough
for the guard to yank his face back and cry out. There was even a
little blood flow.
    That was all she needed. Jessica hooked her
leg around the back of his thighs and pushed hard. She spun them
around, using the momentum to put herself on top of him, even with
his superior weight.
    Rage took over. She didn’t think, just let
her fists fly, and fuck the consequences of that. She’d been buried
beneath this building for so long, forced to put on shows for the
people who watched her, forced to kill to save her own life, and
forced to try and forget that there wasn’t anyone watching her
whenever she needed to use the toilet, or the tiny shower with no
curtain to hide herself.
    She was filthy and tired, and her body was
working without her brain to make someone pay for what she was put
through. Someone was going to suffer, and this guy was the only one
she had in front of her at the moment, so it was going to be
him.
    The man couldn’t defend himself well, which
was good. It allowed her to really get her aggression out. His nose
was bleeding, and his blood got onto her palm every time she
slammed it into his face. When he tried to lift his hands to defend
himself, it splattered onto his fingers and uniform, as well.
    A hand clamped down on her shoulder, and
another one on her wrist.
    Guards surrounded her, and Jessica flew at
them, too.
    She was smaller than they all were, but not
by much. All the same, the guard immediately behind her didn’t see
it coming when she arched her spine and threw herself between his
legs.
    She kicked him in the balls on the way
through just for good measure. Guys were normally a lot more
protective of their male parts than books or television led people
to believe, so she figured it was a good time to get a shot in
while the guard was stunned with her move.
    He bent