Chapter 24
Paint It, Black
I slept with Jagger last night. He was quiet, broody, but still hugged me tight until I fell asleep.
I don’t know exactly what happened to him to give him those scars and turn him into a zombie as soon as he heard the word fire, but after last night, I know it was bad.
I wish he would talk to me, open up, but I know that’s not his way.
He thinks he has to be the strong one, the boss always with his shit together for everyone else.
The pressure must be exhausting. Especially when he’s carrying around so much trauma.
When I snuck out to find breakfast, he was still fast asleep in bed.
I took the opportunity to have five minutes to myself and made scrambled eggs and buttery toast with coffee while I listened to one of my playlists.
Ash and Cruz haven’t stirred either. I guess last night took a toll on all of them.
I’m just thankful this place is so safe.
I shove open Jagger’s bedroom door with my hip and place the plate and coffee down on the bedside table.
He rolls over, his sleepy eyes running over me.
“Breakfast.” I offer a half smile, not sure what else to do.
His fingers wrap around my wrist, and he tugs me back into bed with him, rolling on top of me and looming down in that way he does, with his sleep-messed hair hanging half over his eyes. “Did I say it was okay for you to go make breakfast alone?”
I roll my eyes. “I’m not asking for permission. You would think after weeks of me disobeying your rules, you would learn it’s pointless and give up.”
He forces one of his knees in between my legs, his body oozing power over me. “Spread your legs,” he growls when I fight against him.
I stare back up at him, wondering how to navigate him when he’s like this. “Jagger. You need to eat something, it’s almost midday.”
His eyes narrow, and I feel my cheeks heat. “Food is the last thing on my mind. I need you at my mercy.”
My chest heaves, my heart working overtime. He wants to screw right now? He looks like a lost little boy, not himself at all. And as much as he turns me on when he’s being all bossy, Jagger like this is unusual, and I’m not sure it’s a good idea. “Last night…”
He cuts me off. “We’re not talking about it.”
I try to roll out of his grip, but he takes my hands and pins them above my head so I can’t move. “I want to talk about it. You can’t just keep brushing me off and screwing when you’re feeling out of control.”
With my hands gripped in one of his, he uses the other to run over my silk sleep shirt, taking a handful of my breast. “Why the fuck not, flower. Talking never made me feel the way fucking you into submission does.” His hand continues to travel down, slipping under my shorts. His finger slides over my pussy.
Oh no he doesn’t. I suck in a breath and find some courage from deep within. “You panicked last night, lost control for the first time since I met you. That must have been scary.”
His eyes whip up to meet mine. Then he cracks his neck. I know I’m getting to him, but right now, I don’t care. We’re more than fuck buddies, and he’s going to treat me like it. He sucks in a labored breath. “The last fire I was stuck in should have killed me.”
“But it didn’t.”
His face is unreadable. I mean, I know he’s irritated, but I’m not sure what he’s about to do. He reaches past me and takes a belt from his bedside table, and brings the thing up to my wrists where he binds them together.
“What are you doing?” I gasp, trying to wriggle free.
His eyes meet mine again, and they’re deadly serious. “You want to talk, we do it my way.”
Fuck, I’m not quite sure what that means, but the scatter of goosebumps that rises over my skin tells me it’s probably going to hurt both of us.
He hooks my bound hands over some chain thing that’s attached to the upholstered head of his bed, trapping me.
I stare up at him. “You’re not doing a lot of talking.”
“You still have too many clothes on.” He starts with the top button of my sleep shirt, concentrating on each button as he releases it. Then he pushes it open, revealing my breasts.
I can’t help but squirm as he goes to remove my shorts as well. “Jagger, I can’t have a serious conversation with you while I’m naked.”
He grips the shorts and tugs them off. “It’s that or we don’t do it at all and I fuck you anyway.”
My eyes narrow in on him. “Start talking,” I warn, seeing as now he has me how he wants me.
His eyes run leisurely over my body, inspecting every inch.
“My brothers found me just in time. Seconds later I would have gone up with the building.” He says it with no emotion in his voice.
It sounds hollow, and I don’t know how that can be possible when he’s telling me about how he nearly died in a fire his father had something to do with.
There are so many fucked-up layers to that, it would have to cut him deep.
“What happened, Jagger? Please let me be the person you can be vulnerable with. I want to help you.”
He rolls his lips, and I think he’s going to shut up and not tell me. The palms of his hands come to the inside of my thighs, and he shoves them out wide.
I gasp in shock, not expecting the sudden movement.
He runs a finger through my slick folds, spreading my juices as he goes.
“Syd left me for dead. Beaten by a couple of the thugs who worked for him and passed out in the desolate police station that had been abandoned years earlier. He had every intention of letting me die that night.” He pushes two thick fingers deep inside me.
Heat spreads through my body. His story is so sad, it kills me, but the way he’s toying with me has my body on edge and practically begging for more. I know this is what he wants, to distract me so he doesn’t have to talk. “So last night when the fire started, you got trapped back in the past?”
He curls his fingers in a way that makes me feel even more full. “You can’t change the family you’re born into, flower; you know that as well as I do.” His thumb strokes leisurely over my clit. “But I sure as fuck made sure that cunt paid for what he did to me.”
“What did you do?” I whisper, my body already so damn close to tumbling over the edge.
“Sloane wanted him dead, wiped off the planet, but that would have been too easy, too humane for that piece of shit. I needed him to suffer. And as fate would have it, the Morettis needed something from me, so we cut a deal. He lost everything he cared about that night, his club, his men, his sons. After he was removed from his position as the Iron Strykers president, I was put in charge. A few years later, I was told Emilio Moretti found a place for him within his organization, but I couldn’t give a shit that the slimy fucker clawed his way out of the hole he created.
He could live so long as he never came back here.
” He ups the pressure and speed, taking me to the point of no return.
I cry out as I cum, my arousal coating his fingers, but he doesn’t stop. He keeps fingering me ferociously. His head drops, and he laps me up hungrily, desperate.
I try and hang on to something, anything, but I can’t with the way my hands are tied. All I can do is moan into the room, getting louder with every fresh flick of his tongue. It’s all too much and not enough at the same time. “Jagger,” I whimper his name as a plea for mercy.
He smiles up at me cruelly, then takes my ankles in each of his hands, pushing my legs back so I’m folded in half.
“Stay like that,” he demands as he removes his boxer briefs.
His cock is thick and hard, pre-cum beading at the tip.
He kneels in between my legs, and in one move, plows deep inside my pussy.
“Fuck, Jagger,” I cry, so full all of a sudden. Like this he’s so deep.
He brings his hands up to either side of my face and stares right into my eyes. “Who owns this pussy?”
“What?” I murmur, my eyes rolling back in my head as I try and take his brutal fucking.
“Who fucking owns you, flower?”
“You,” I cry, knowing this is about more than him and his brothers owning me.
He needs the control back, he needs to be the one in charge so he doesn’t have to deal with the horrible pain of when he wasn’t and it nearly cost him his life.
He’s so messed up, but it only makes me fall for him more, because instead of brushing me off today, he let me in.
And him saying he owns me is as close as he will ever be to telling me he loves me, and you know what, I think I prefer it.
I smirk back at him. “You own me, Jagger, and I own you.”
His lips drop to mine, and he kisses me savagely, the two of us tumbling down a rabbit hole of messed-up pleasure together. I have no idea how I ended up here in this twisted world, falling for all of them. All I know is I never want to leave.
Jagger’s shrill ringtone pierces the air. He pulls back from me just slightly to see who’s calling. “Fuck,” he mutters, his attention coming back to me. “Don’t fucking move.”
“How can I?” I pull on the restraints.
“This better be fucking important, Mal,” he grumbles into the phone.
“You wanted a fatality head count as soon as we could manage it,” I hear his brother say down the line.
His eyes come to mine, the haunted look back in them. “Go on.”
“Twelve. Two Serpents with bullets in the head, the rest innocents, caught up in the fire.”
Innocents. My eyes cloud with tears. What a disaster.
Jagger’s forehead creases. “Leone?” he snaps.
“He must have escaped,” Mal mutters.
My skin goes all clammy, and I really wish I wasn’t tied to Jagger’s bed right now.
I didn’t think I wanted to hear he was dead, but maybe I did.
When we got home last night, an overwhelming calm had come over me, knowing he was gone and I didn’t have to fight my family over marrying him anymore.
I know that makes me an awful person, but I can’t handle this any longer.
“Find him. Someone must have seen him leave and who got him out of there. That place is riddled with our cameras.”
“All destroyed within minutes of the fire starting. The Serpents and whoever else was working with them were ready for us.”
“The location wasn’t announced until half an hour before the fight,” Jagger snips back.
“They knew. Just like they knew which of our men to disguise themselves as. We can’t trust anyone in our organization right now.”
A chill comes over me. This has my brother written all over it. They said he was out of the country fixing up some mess, but he has other people to do that shit for him. “He’s not going to stop until he gets what he wants,” I mutter.
Jagger’s eyes come back to me, dark and enraged. “Anything new, let me know.” He disconnects the call, throwing his phone. He paces the room, a hand running through his hair.
“Untie me, Jagger,” I ask, feeling way too vulnerable tied to his bed when he is about to lose his shit.
“I want to know every fucking last detail about your family’s organization.”
“What?” I stare back at him. “They didn’t tell me shit, Jagger. I’m a girl,” I murmur back, not liking where he’s going with this.
His knee hits the comforter, and he leans over me, our eyes locking as he scrutinizes my face.
“I’m not lying, Jagger. If I knew anything that could help, you think I wouldn’t tell you? I want this shit to stop as well. I want you all safe.”
He turns away from me, staring at his wall. “I believe you.”
“Maybe it’s time you let me talk to them, work this out?” I suggest. I know he hated the idea last night when I brought it up, but maybe now he’ll listen to me.
“Your family doesn’t respect you. Talking to them will only cause more trouble.”
His words creep under my skin and make me feel like shit. They might be true, but that doesn’t mean I want to hear it from his lips. I kick at him, getting him in the back. “Untie me, fucker. I’m done with this shit.”
He leans over me, undoing his belt and setting my hands free.
I sit up in a rush and pull my shirt back around myself, covering up my chest. Then I grab for my shorts and stalk for the door.
“I know it hurts…” he calls after me.
“You have no idea how much this hurts,” I cut him off, spinning back to him, ready to completely bite his head off. But he’s right there behind me.
He takes me in his arms and holds me close. “It’s not that I don’t want your input. It’s just I won’t put you in danger by having you talk with your family. It’s not worth it, flower. I will find another way to fix this.”
“Maybe this can’t be fixed. My family is powerful, and if they want me back, they will make it happen. I knew it when I ran away. I was just hoping for a little time to live. Really, I have had more than I ever imagined I could meeting you guys. Maybe the fun is over.”
His muscles tense. “It’s never going to be over.
And your family will learn they aren’t as powerful as they think they are.
When it comes to you, the Strykers will always win.
” The determination in his eyes scares me a little, but it also does something else.
It makes me feel more powerful and stronger just by being in his presence.
Every time I want to just give in to stop this madness, he gives me the push to keep fighting.
I pop up on my toes and press my lips to his. “You’re right. We keep fighting until they give up and see my life is with you boys and I won’t be going home, ever.”