Chapter Seven
The Village
Jagger
It was safe to say, Jagger was not a morning person.
So after he spent the night at her place, Jag did not wake
up with the dawn.
He woke when he woke, refreshed, and since he was at
Archie’s and the sun had no direct shot at getting into her pad, he had no idea
what time it was.
But when he turned to the side, saw the bed was empty save
him, and got up on an elbow to scan the space, he saw her in the kitchen
wearing the white tank she went to bed in and a pair of wide-legged satin pants
that were a rosy color.
She had a mug of coffee cradled in both hands and her hip
against the counter.
“Why are you over there?” he groused.
She lifted her mug as answer.
“Get over here,” he ordered.
She didn’t move.
She said, “You’re almost irresistible, watching you sleep in
my bed.”
“I’m not a fan of the ‘almost’ part of that,” he told her.
She grinned into her mug before she took a sip.
Watching her do that, his cock, semi-morning-hard, got
harder.
“Archie,” he warned.
“Baby, I wanna suck your cock,
like bad,” she declared.
You could safely say his woman was honest and direct.
Annnnnnd…
Yup.
Now his cock was harder.
“I don’t see a problem with that,” he told her.
“I want candles and wine and good music and munchies on hand
for energy, and time, lots and lots of time, and nothing at all edging in, just
you and me, when I first take your dick in any part of me.”
“Fuck,” he muttered and dropped to his back, because he
wanted that for her and for him too.
It was just difficult to want that for either of them when
his dick wanted something else.
He stared at her ceiling, which was mostly beams and
ductwork painted black, and took pains with trying to control what had quickly
become a raging hard-on.
This endeavor was significantly hindered when he heard a
thump, looked left and saw Archie bent over the tray by the bed.
She’d deposited two mugs of coffee there.
And then, no hesitation, and lithe as fuck, she put a knee
to the bed and swung over him so she was straddling him.
Again, no hesitation, she settled on top, tits to chest,
pussy to cock with too damned much in between.
“Are you trying to kill me?” he asked.
“Okay, this was a mistake because that feels nice,” she told
his mouth.
Her eyes had gone dazed, and, moving like she couldn’t
control it, she squirmed a little against his dick.
Since that burned through his balls and up his ass, he put
his hands to her hips and called, “Archie.”
She lifted her gaze, focused and said, “You don’t snore.”
“Neither do you.”
“I thought you’d go little boy on me when you slept, your
face all soft and vulnerable, but you didn’t. When you sleep, you look like a
badass who would call a couple of bullies motherfuckers even if they’re only
twelve.”
“That’s because I am a badass who would do that,”
he returned, then took over. “Let me guess, you’re a morning person.”
She shook her head, some of her hair brushing across his
shoulders and chest.
Annnnnnnd…
Yeah.
Staying hard.
“Nope,” she contradicted verbally. “I’m a
whatever-the-day-brings person. I can be morning. I can be night. I can be
lazy. I can be energetic. I just go with the flow. I have staff to open so the
flow goes with me too.”
“Good being boss,” he noted.
“Let me guess, you’re not a morning
person.”
Jag nodded. “Total night owl.”
“Even being boss, I have to work today,” she announced.
“I do too,” he shared.
“So what’s on for us? Work then you want me to cook for you?
You cook for me? Or we go out to eat? Then movie? Hit a club? What?”
He slid his hands to the small of her back, letting one keep
going up her spine, the other he wrapped around her waist, and teased, “I see
you’re already taking me for granted.”
She copped to it immediately. “Absolutely, and going with
that theme, you cook for me. I wanna see your space.”
“It isn’t as cool as your space,” he warned her.
“I don’t care.”
“It also isn’t as clean as your space.”
“So you can be a boy, because a grown man looks
after himself.”
He started laughing as he said, “Life is too short to spend
time cleaning. I do laundry and hate every second of it. And that’s all I got
in me to waste on that kind of shit.”
“So you cook here.”
He shook his head. “My baby wants to see my pad, I’ll make
sure shit is picked up and presentable and so you don’t run screaming into the
night when you see the bathroom.”
She got a smug expression. “I see how deep you are for me.”
“No, Archie, I’ll send prospects over to clean my place.
Though, just to say, I’m in deep, but another reason I don’t waste time doing
that shit is because of how much of it I had to do when I was prospect. So I
earned bustin’ the guys’ chops and I won’t hesitate
to do that, especially when something as important is going to happen as you
coming to my crib for dinner.”
“Works either way.”
It did, it was just that this way, without him scrubbing
toilets, was better.
“There’ll be clean sheets, sweetheart,” he told her. “So
come with whatever you need since you’re spending the night.”
Her eyes warmed.
He moved his hands to either side of her waist and gave her
a squeeze.
“Now, slide off, I need coffee.”
She slid off, and he pushed up to rest his shoulders on her
mountain of pillows. But being Archie, she rolled from him in a way that she
was up on a forearm in the bed beside him with her pelvis pressed to his hip
and her leg thrown over his thigh.
He twisted at the waist and reached for the mug she’d been
drinking from, and he did it back to fighting his rock-hard dick that hadn’t
gone soft because after last night, this morning and now her message couldn’t
be clearer.
He was owned.
However, he didn’t fight the warmth that thought burned into
his gut, because when that happened between people, it went both ways.
He handed her the mug, got his own and lay back against the
pillows.
They both sipped and then he asked, “How worried do I have
to be about these Harris brothers?”
She caught the side of her bottom lip with her teeth, and
Jag was not a big fan of that.
So he muttered, “Terrific.”
“Okay, they were in group. And you’re right. They’re bullies
and motherfuckers. They got kicked out. But they don’t need close
proximity to rain havoc. The kids all go to school together so they have a
captive audience there for whatever shit they want to pull.”
“Backtrack,” he demanded. “Explain group.”
She sipped and said, “So, you know this ’hood is not in a
high-income bracket.”
He nodded.
She nodded back.
“Freya, the teacher that lives up front,” she tipped her
head toward the wall that separated her apartment from the next, “she teaches
at their school, has lived in this area for years, knows everyone. We were out
on the fire escape, having some wine when I first moved in. She shared about
some of the issues people face. I had an idea, I told her my idea. She thought
it was a great idea, so with her help, we did it.”
“And?” he asked when she didn’t follow through.
“Childcare isn’t cheap. If it’s a double-parent household,
to get by with still mostly just basics, both parents have to work. If it’s a
single-parent household, things are a whole lot tighter and sometimes that
parent has two jobs. Some of the kids were latchkey. Some of the parents were
hanging on by their fingernails, some sliding off. The kids suffered. Parents
did. Families…”
Was she saying…?
“So, I take the kids in that age group,” she declared.
Yes.
She was saying that.
“Twelve, thirteen years old, one girl is fourteen,” she went
on. “They hang at the soda fountain. I have an area in the back for them to do
their homework. They also have a TV back there. I give them stuff to do to help
out around the store, and when they do, I throw some cash their way. Nothing
huge, but enough they know their time and energy isn’t taken for granted. And
this surprised me, but they like that the best. Guess it shouldn’t surprise me,
though, because anyone likes to feel useful. They also like having cash in
their pockets. I also think it makes them feel grown up. Sometimes I come up
with fun shit they can do. Or my staff does. Like they play DJ and spin tunes
for the shop, shit like that. Sometimes we do field trips.”
She shrugged.
And then she kept talking.
“The Ethiopian restaurant up the way is run by a big family.
They pay a couple of local teenagers to clean, bus, do dishes, but the kids
also watch a few of the younger ones. They have some space above the
restaurant, and since they have a big family, there are lots of people to keep
an eye on them. Gina, my fourteen-year-old in group, sometimes she’ll go down
and stay with them if they’re busy in the restaurant and there isn’t anyone
that can be around for the kids. Not for long, though. They usually have five
or more kids, that’s too much for Gina for too long. Those kids also sometimes
come here if there are too many of them. And if there’s overflow, or if one of
the kids isn’t feeling well, the dry cleaners across the way is run by a
couple, and her mom lives with them. She’s too old to work the machines, but
she isn’t too old to look after kids and she loves doing it.”
She took another sip.
Jagger stared at her through that sip.
Then she kept going.
“Obviously, to be included, the kids have to behave. They
have to do their homework and follow rules. That’s how the Harris boys got
kicked. It sucks, but I had to do it. They were messing up the others. Behavior
problems sparking through all of them because the Harrises didn’t have their
shit together and wouldn’t get it together. Then again, their parents are
fucked up, don’t care where their boys are or what they’re doing. This is why I
think Mal started acting up and he also had to go. He was stealing. There was
backtalk. He was being ugly to the other kids. I worried that something was
happening at school. Freya said she wasn’t seeing it. I asked Mal, he wasn’t