Birdy (Upper Echelon Duet Book 1)

this Monday fuck fest kick for a few weeks now. Best way to start the week if you ask me.”
Except this would be one of the last times I felt the same. In just weeks, I’d be so caught up in my Benita Adriana Villanueva dilemma, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.

♫ Get You Some - Captain Planet & Brit Lauren
“Benni, wake the fuck up, coño.” Selena’s raspy morning voice brings me to. “They’re gonna call count in like five.”
I don’t know how I manage to do it, but I crack my heavy eyelids open and immediately regret the decision when the bright fluorescent lights nearly burn through my retinas. Hissing like a fucking vampire, I squeeze them shut again and force myself up onto an elbow, rubbing at my eyes furiously. “How is it morning already?”
Lena chuckles and jumps down from her bunk, going about the motions of straightening out her sheets. “Bad night?”
“Yeah,” I scoff, mostly at myself. “Something like that.”
Bad is only an understatement. I laid there for hours after the lights went out, tossing and turning over and over again. I couldn’t get comfortable. Couldn’t drift off.
Why, you ask?
CO Bala, that’s why.
His face was seared in my mind, taunting me with hyper-realistic images of scenarios that can never—and will never—happen.
The way he looks at me… I’ve seen that look before and know all too well what it means.
“Think the new hottie has first shift today?” Lena asks, shooting my shoulders up to my ears.
It’s like she was reading my mind.
“Probably. He’s still training. You know they make them pull twelve hours plus the first week.” I sound indifferent—which is exactly what I was going for—but on the inside, I’m hoping he’s not, praying like all hell that he’ll miraculously be third shift, so I don’t have to relive yesterday.
I can’t afford to.
Though subtle and silent, exchanging those heated looks with Bala is a dangerous, dangerous game, and four years of dick-deprivation has me giving in to temptation faster than a bitch in heat. I’ve always knocked hoes who get involved with CO’s, but I kinda get it now if a mere look is all it takes to spark a flame. He smiles at me like that again, and I’m so fucked.
Que Dios me ampare. My God help me…
Once Selena’s got her bed made up perfectly, she yanks me onto my feet and goes about doing the same to mine. “Get dressed, puta. They call us out and see you’re not ready, you know what’s gonna happen.”
I nod. Depending on who’s running count for job assignments, either a shot or I’ll get sent straight to the hole. They’ll write it off as me refusing to go to work, too, and I won’t get a single say in it, ‘cause you know, it’s their word over ours. Always.
My eyes almost roll free from their sockets. Sighing at yet another day of this bullshit, I rip off my sleep shirt and throw on my uniform, tossing my hair in a messy bun.
And to think I still have another three years to go.
Despite everything I’ve done to stay in line and earn my good behavior stripes, nothing seems to be enough to get me out of here early. I’ve had three shots, if that, and have only been to Seg once. I do my job and stay in my fucking lane, but nothing is ever good enough.
Or maybe it’s just me ‘cause Lena’s currently shaking her head at me in disgust. “Oh, no. I’m not letting you go out there like that.”
I don’t even need to say what the fuck out loud. It’s written all over my face. “Like what?”
She motions up and down my body, emphasizing my head most. “Like, you’re not even trying…”
Trying for? “What am I supposed to be trying for again?”
“Ayyy, please.” She smirks, arching a dark brow. “You gonna make me call you out again like yesterday at lunch?”
Yesterday at lu—
 Oh. She’s talking about Bala.
“There’s nothing to call out. Like I told you: we looked at each other—so what?” I shrug it off like it’s nothing at all, but she’s not having it, lips pursing to relay as much.
“That’s not a regular look, and you know it. He was staring at you, B—hard.”
I wave her off. “He’s not the first, and he won’t be the last.”
Not a complete lie. Some of the COs that have come in and out of here are absolute pigs. Mack is one of them. I can’t tell you how many times that comepinga has told me he wants to fuck my tight little Latina pussy.
His words, not mine.
Her lips purse harder, dark curly head falling to one side. “You’re really gonna stand there and pretend like you wouldn’t fuck him if the opportunity presented itself?”
“I don’t need to pretend, Lena. The opportunity is not going to present itself and—
The telltale muted chime of the PA halts the words off the tip of my tongue, snapping my eyes up to the speaker. “Good morning, ladies,” CO Walker’s gentle, yet commanding voice rings out. “You know the routine. If you’re on work release or job assignments, line up at the east wall. The rest of you, find something to do until chow call, and let’s try not to have a repeat of last night while we’re at it.”
Three seconds later, that obnoxious-ass buzzer alerts us the doors are open, prompting Lena and me to quickly slip on our shoes and head out. We have to. We’re expected to be out there in under a minute. Anything more screams suspect to them and demands a CO's attention.
I’ve got one foot out the door when I feel the bun on my head collapse, the long tresses of my hair spilling around my face and down my back.
“Told you, I wasn’t letting you come out here like that,” Selena whispers in my ear. “Now run your fingers through it. He’s right there, and I’m willing to bet he’s about to