Chapter 18 Jagger
JAGGER
Back downstairs, I was unsettled.
I wasn’t used to being unsettled.
Moral quandaries weren’t really my thing.
It was why I’d left my career in finance.
I’d gotten tired of cosplaying as a good citizen, being looked at with respect just because I wore an expensive suit and drove an expensive car when everything I had was bought with money I earned betting on the rise and fall of other people’s fortunes.
That’s all the stock market was really: a casino where people like me — like the person I had been — bet on other people’s lives.
It had been easy in the beginning to ignore that part.
Looking at the tickers on my phone and computers — seeing them in my fucking sleep — I could view the symbols as the companies they represented and forget about the real people behind them.
People who needed their jobs and their 401(k)s and their health insurance benefits.
Then some guy who’d lost his job because of a merger shot himself on the floor of the market on live TV and that had been the end of my blissful ignorance.
Early morning sun was streaming through the windows, Vigo rinsing his cup when I got to the kitchen. “She good?” he asked.
“I think so. I’m going to make her something to eat.”
“Shit. I should have offered her some Oreos.”
“She doesn’t need Oreos. She needs real food,” I said. “And she’s allergic to peanuts.”
I opened the fridge and looked at the stacks of prepared meals we ordered online. We could all cook the basics, but most of the time we didn’t bother, preferring to microwave one of the ready-to-eat meals that arrived packed in dry ice or order takeout.
But I wasn’t going to give Cassie a microwavable meal after her night in the tunnels.
I pulled out the eggs and butter and took them to the commercial range we’d had installed when we’d renovated the house.
Vigo hopped on the counter. “Not gonna lie, I’m psyched to have a sweet little virgin.”
“I’m glad somebody’s happy about it,” I said, cutting open a pack of bacon.
“Why wouldn’t you be happy about it?” Vigo swung his legs back and forth. “We’ve never had a virgin.”
“Because it makes things more complicated,” I said. “And things are already complicated enough.”
“It doesn’t have to be complicated.”
“Only if you’re a sadist.” I started cracking eggs into a bowl. “Or a moron.”
“He’s right.” Hawk stepped into the kitchen and grabbed an apple out of the bowl of fruit on the island. He’d changed into clean jeans and a T-shirt, his hair damp from the shower. “It’s complicated.”
I looked at him in surprise. Hawk wasn’t as… unfiltered as Vigo but he was every bit as unhinged.
“Why?” Vigo asked. “She knew what she was signing for. And she said she wants to lose her virginity.”
“It’s simpler for her than it is for us,” I said.
Hawk sat on one of the leather chairs at the island. “Exactly. She just has to decide she wants someone to pop her cherry. Being the ones to do it is a bigger deal, especially because she’s Bram’s little sister.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with Cassie’s virginity,” Vigo said.
“It has everything to do with it,” Hawk said. “It’s one thing to know your sister is getting fucked. It’s something else to know she’s never been fucked and is about to get fucked by three guys at the same time.”
I was a little surprised Hawk gave a shit.
Giving a shit wasn’t Hawk’s style, and it wasn’t like he had sisters.
None of us did. Then again, the specter of Bram’s wrath loomed large.
It had been easy to shrug it off in the tunnel where we made the rules, where Bram himself had once made the rules.
The real world seemed far away during the Hunt, possible consequences to our actions so remote they were rendered meaningless.
But aboveground in the harsh light of day?
I wasn’t going to lie: I was starting to wonder what we’d been thinking when we’d claimed Cassie Montgomery.
I started laying slices of bacon in the pan. “We should’ve cut her loose.”
“We’d already marked her,” Hawk said around the bite of apple in his mouth.
He was right. By the time we’d known Cassie was a virgin, we’d already marked her with our blood, had already put our collar around her neck.
“Still.” I was starting to spin, looking for a way out to stem the rising tide of anxiety in my gut.
“It’s too late now,” Hawk said.
“So who gets to do it?” Vigo asked.
I glared at him because Vigo had no impulse control, and that was going to be a problem with Cassie Montgomery living in the house.
“To be determined,” Hawk said.
He was trying to sound cool, but I heard the tension in his voice, knew he was already dreaming about being the one to give Cassie a great first fuck.
I didn’t understand the surge of jealousy that rose in my body. Hawk, Vigo, and I shared everything, including women. I actually couldn’t remember the last time I’d fucked a woman alone, or the last time I’d even wanted to.
The problem was that our tolerance for excitement — for danger — had been stretched to the limit by design. It wasn’t just the way we made our living, which would have been enough danger to send any normal person looking for a nice quiet accounting job.
It was the way we lived, the bargain we’d struck when we’d gone all in with each other, Vigo ditching his professor gig while I quit my job on Wall Street (the FBI had already been in Hawk’s rearview at that point).
Our high-octane ethos made anything regular seem boring, including fucking a woman alone and without all our toys. Novelty was our drug and we were all addicts of the highest order.
“That bacon’s gonna be burnt in another ten seconds,” Vigo said.
He was right. I flipped the bacon and opened a pack of bread, then put two slices in the toaster.
“So how are we going to do this?” I asked.
“How are you going to do what?”
We turned toward Cassie’s voice all at once, like she was the sun rising over the mountains and we were trees waking after a long winter.
She looked even prettier fresh out of the shower, her wet hair the color of an old penny, face scrubbed clean. She’d changed into matching sweats in a pale purple that made her eyes look like emeralds under light.
“How we’re going to fuck you,” Vigo said, hopping off the counter. “Because of the virginity thing.”
Her cheeks turned an adorable shade of pink and I felt the uncommon urge to rescue, to shelter. It was an urge I wasn’t eager to share, even with Hawk and Vigo, and I worked to keep my voice cool when I told her to take a seat.
She hesitated, then slid onto a chair at the end of the island, leaving an empty one between her and Hawk. “That bacon smells amazing.”
I removed the bacon from the pan, drained all but a little of the grease, and poured the raw eggs into it. “Nothing fancy but hopefully this will get you by. Figured you need sleep more than anything.”
“I’m definitely tired,” she said, “but I have some questions.”
“Your questions can wait,” Hawk said. “First we need to talk about Bram.”