Jagger: A Caldwell Brothers Novel (10 page)

“You listen here, Law,” I sneer as I push past him. “You okay, Totty?” I ask, knowing she’s not.

She dives into my arms, crying, and I keep her pulled securely to me.

“You know damn well she and I had nothing to do with this, and you have no fucking warrant, so is this fucking necessary? Do you get off on victimizing the victim of that monster?” I practically scream.

Her body trembles against mine, and I hold her more tightly.

“You are walking a fine line, Caldwell,” he snaps. “I am investigating a murder here. Blunt force trauma to the back of his head caused the fall that broke his neck and killed him.”

She covers her ears with her hands, not wanting to hear it.

“And she didn’t do shit! You know it”—I point to him, wanting to do more than point—“and I know it. She’s standing here—came here willingly—and you just keep driving the bullshit—”

“You could be arrested—”

I shake my head. “For what? Come on, little one.” I start walking toward the door, still holding her tightly.

“Aiding and abetting,” he says in a low tone. “I know you had her.”

“Cut the fucking scare tactics, Law Man. There would have to be a crime.”

“She was seventeen,” he hisses.

“I can assure you, she turned eighteen at midnight, and not a damn thing happened between her and me.”

“He won’t even touch me,” she says, the sadness in her eyes nearly crushing me.

“Totty, it’s not like that. We’ve gotta get you strong, get you standing on your own two feet.”

“But—”

I shake my head, stopping her. It’s none of Johnny’s damn business.

I look at him. “Anything else?”

“Do you know anyone who would want your father dead?” he asks her.

She shrugs. “Honestly, no. I never left the apartment building with him except for when he made me come here and press charges, and I only left twice without him.”

He nods, seeming to accept her answer. “Don’t go too far.”

“She’ll be with me.”

“I’m sure she will. I hope to hell you’re serious about helping her get strong on her own.”

“Serious as fucking cancer,” I say as I walk out, holding her hand.

I glance over at her often, still holding fucking hands, and it isn’t long before she looks to be less shaken up.

“You all right?” I ask, hoping her response is yes.

She nods. “As long as you’re here.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Totty.” I open the car door and she slides in. Then I walk around and climb in the other side. My phone chimes, and I see it’s from Law Man.

“Rand is being cremated. No service.”
I read his message aloud. I look over. “You wanna see him first?”

She shakes her head.

I start up the car, and she places her hand on my thigh, leans back, and closes her eyes. One tear escapes, and I forget all about how fucked up it is that she feels like she can touch me whenever she wants. Don’t get me wrong, I like it—I like it a lot—but what if she thinks this kind of good touch is all right with anyone? I feel my blood boil.

Jealousy?

Fuck, I’m screwed.

“Totty,” I finally calm down enough to broach the subject. “Did you touch Cobra like this?”

“No.” She gasps and pulls her hand away. It immediately lands over her chest while she looks away from me and out the window.

It pisses me off.

I quickly pull over, and she looks at me like she’s afraid. That pisses me off too, so I hop out and pace.

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

I need to run, to hit something, to break shit.

I hear a door slam and look over to see she’s out of the car, heading in the other direction fast.

I run to catch up to her. Tears are flowing, and she looks as angry as I feel when I stand in front of her, blocking her. When she looks up at me with anger, confusion, and fear, I feel the weight of it on me.

“Where you going?”

“Home.”

“Why would you wanna do that?” I ask, shaking my head.

“Where else should I go, Jagger?” She doesn’t wait for my reply, only keeps going. “You clearly don’t want me the way I want you.”

“I want you.” My voice drips with need. I can’t help it. “But I don’t want you thinking you owe me shit, Totty. I want you to be free.” I reach out and run my thumb over the scar on the side of her face, and she pushes her face against it. “I want you so fucking bad. Can’t you see that? I’m trying to do the right fucking thing here. I want you to experience the good in the world. I don’t wanna hold you back.”

“Don’t
you
see? You are everything good in this bad, bad world of mine. Hold me back, hold me any way you want to, but please, I beg you, just hold me and don’t let go.”

No restraint.

No willpower.

Not twenty men could keep me back right now if they tried.

I wrap my arms around her and hold her so fucking tightly I’m sure her ancestors can feel it.

“Please,” she cries against my shoulder. “Please tell me that it’s not because of the way I look, the scars, the—”

“Did you not fucking hear me last night, Tatiana? You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”

“I thought that was why.” She cries harder, and I feel drops hitting my face.

I look up to see the rain falling.

“I thought you didn’t think—”

“Damn it.” I pick her up and carry her into the alley as the rain starts pouring down. “I want you. I want you now. Don’t tell me no.” She leans back and looks up at me. “This isn’t the fucking way you and I should be, but fuck if I can hold back anymore.”

“I don’t want you to hold back. I want you and I want your touch, good touch.”

I push her back against the brick wall and pull her long black cotton skirt up. Then I shove her underwear to the side, grab a condom out of my pocket, and tear the wrapper open with my teeth before sliding it down my rock-hard cock. “Is this what you want?”

“This is what I wanted the first time I came to you,” she cries. “I didn’t understand it that night, but after last night I know I need you this way. I need you so bad.”

“This isn’t gonna take long, and from what I understand, it’s gonna hurt, little one.” I pull her leg up and rest it on my hip before pushing my knees between her legs and lifting her. I rub my cock against her slick, hot pussy and groan. “I promise I’ll more than make up for it later, but right now, nothing can stop me. This is what you want. This is what we need.”

I push into her, my eyes locked on hers. When her eyes open wide, I still, and she moans, a sound that’s sweeter than any fucking bell I have ever heard ring in a fight. Then she wraps her arms around my neck, and I pull her other leg up, pushing in farther as I do. Her nails sink into my back, and her breath hitches.

“More,” she purrs.

I push in farther, and she digs harder into my back and tenses up.

“Relax,” I say as I sway my hips, trying to loosen her tight little pussy up.

“More,” she cries, and I can’t hold back. I drive in fully as she cries out, “More,” again.

“Couldn’t stop me if you tried,” I grunt as I ease out and back in slowly at first. “It hurt?”

“Yes, give me more,” she moans. “Harder.”

“Fuck!” I roar as I pump in and out faster and harder.

Her head falls back as she cries out my name. While I lick the exposed flesh of her neck, then suck hard, I grip her ankles behind my back with one hand and push her shirt up with the other, squeezing her perfect little tit.

Her hips begin meeting mine, and she looks up at me, her eyes full of heat. “More.”

I can’t hold back. I fuck her hard, licking and sucking on her neck and squeezing her tit, rolling her tight little nipple between my fingers. She meets me thrust for thrust, her eyes closed, head back, crying out my name.

Her pussy tightens around me, and she sinks her nails into my back again. “Oh God…Oh, Jagger, oh.”

“Come, little one. Come all over my cock. Don’t ask me to stop fucking you,” I grunt. “Don’t you ever stop asking me to fuck you!”

“Never.” She pants as her body tremors through her release. Her head falls to my shoulder, and she holds on more firmly.

I can’t stop. I am out of control, a man possessed.

Her teeth scrape up my chin until her lips find mine. “I love you.”

Immediately I come.

When I am empty, spent, fully drained, I hold her tightly and whisper, hoping she doesn’t hear me, yet to weak not to say it, “Don’t stop doing that, either.”

I am holding her hand when I pull over in front of the gym. “Quick stop. I need to check on the place.” I jump out and run around to open the door for her. She gets out, and I can’t help smiling. She smiles back.

“This is where you train?”

“And where you will.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.”

“I do. You’ll learn some moves.”

She looks at me curiously. “You want me to fight?”

“No.” I shake my head and smirk. “I want you to learn how to fight back. Self-defense. Not today, but soon.” I lean in and give her a quick kiss. “Let’s go.”

When we walk in, Kid is standing by the office with a man in a suit, and I tighten my grip on her hand.

“Jagger.” Kid waves me over. “This is Shaw’s attorney.”

“Bill Boles.” He sticks out his hand, and I shake it. “You got a minute?”

I nod.

He looks at Tatiana.

“You got a problem with my girl?”

He holds both his hands in the air. “Nope. No, sir. As long as you’re comfortable with her seeing the will, I have no problem.”

“Good.” I nod to the office door. “Let’s talk.”

He sits in the last chair available in the small office—Shaw’s. I don’t feel right about sitting there, and obviously neither does Kid.

“I’ll read. You stop me if there are any questions.”

He begins reading, and I interrupt.

“How about you tell us what he wants, and then we can look over it?”

“That’s a little unconventional, but if you insist.” He nods to both of us.

“We insist.” Kid nods back.

“In a nutshell, he is leaving you two the gym. Kid has a record, so given his past, it shouldn’t be in his name. He says your word is good, Mr. Cald—”

“Jagger,” I correct him.

He nods. “He wants you two to make something good out of it. He also has a five-hundred-thousand-dollar life insurance policy. Four hundred thousand goes to his deceased wife’s church and a hundred thousand to you both, but it isn’t…in his words, ‘a GD handout.’ It’s to give the place a facelift. He wants you to promise that you will do something better with it and your lives.”

He sets the folder on Shaw’s desk. “The check should be here in about six weeks. The deed to this building and the one next to it that he used as a residence is in here already. You sign it, Jagger, and I will file it. The deed will take about thirty days to process. My suggestion is to open an account when the check comes in using a business name. Any questions?”

Stunned, Kid and I both shake our heads.

He looks at Tatiana as if he’s trying to figure something out.

“Do you have a problem with Tatiana?”

“Rand?” he asks, looking in his black leather briefcase.

“Yeah.” I stand up, putting myself between them.

Bill holds his hand up. “Mr. Caldwell, I met with Mr. Rand three years back. Miss Rand, I am sorry for your loss.”

I look beside me as she peeks around. “Thank you.”

“After we get all the police reports back, I will want to meet with you again.”

“Concerning?” I ask.

“The building, for one. It is Miss Rand’s now. And I believe”—he looks through his briefcase again and pulls out some paperwork—“he is to be cremated and his ashes poured in the river. There is a tenant…” He shuffles through more papers. “I can’t seem to find what I’m looking for, but she knows the whereabouts of his safes. He didn’t believe in banks, so whatever he has goes to his next of kin, and that is you.”

I look to see her reaction, but her expression is blank. When I take her hand and give it a squeeze, she looks at the floor, yet squeezes mine back.

“Mr. Caldwell, if you could just sign.” He pushes the folder forward. “Then I will be on my way.”

I bring her hand up and kiss it. “I gotta let go for a minute. You good?”

She nods, releasing my hand.

While I’m signing, she disappears out into the gym. When we leave Shaw’s—mine and Kid’s—office I see her kick one of the heavy bags. Then she looks around and doesn’t see us, so she does it again before she taps the bag.

I put my hand out, stopping Kid’s progression into the gym. “Just stay here a minute.” I want her to have this moment for herself. Find her fight within.

“The fucking hands-on shit needs to stop, Caldwell,” he growls. “You don’t do that shit to a man who spent the last seven fucking years locked up.”

“I’ll try to remember that.”

“You better.”

I don’t respond.

We both stand there, watching her play with the bag until the bell on the door catches her ears. She waves goodbye to Mr. Boles and then looks around, still not seeing us. She kicks at the bag a few times, then punches it twice.

“You gonna let her keep doing that? She might hurt herself.”

“She’s got a lot to work out,” I say, watching her. I glance over at him. “So do you.”

“I needed to sleep,” he hisses.

“You need to figure out a different way to do it. You’ll piss hot when you see your parole officer, and then you’ll be back to needing to jump when someone’s behind your ass.” I walk away. “And some fucking soap on a rope.”

I walk quietly over near her and start working one of the other bags: left, right, dead-on, and kick. I do it over and over, observing her watch me out of the corner of her eye, then mimicking my moves. I try to take it easy, but she seems to get bored.

Harder,
her demand echoes in my memory.

I can’t hit it hard enough. I can’t find a pain deep enough to pull out of the muck in my mind.

First, someone killed my father. The cop thinks Jagger or I had something to do with it. On the other hand, he seems to understand we are innocent. Sure, I did give him the pills that put him to sleep, but that isn’t what he died from. The report said…

My father is dead. He won’t be able to hit me again. He won’t be able to take out his life’s frustrations on me.

I can breathe. For the first time in my life, I can breathe. So why does it feel like I am still suffocating? Why do I feel like the weight of the world is on my frail shoulders?

Mr. Adkins, the police officer, knows Jagger, but for whatever reason, he wants to push him and this situation with me. I know it’s his job, but wasn’t it also his job to look out for me when my father was alive? I don’t understand it. Then again, there isn’t much I do understand about Jagger.

I punch hard into the bag. Kicking, I try to make the bag move. It doesn’t. I want to scream, but not in pain. I want to cry out for everything I never had. I want to cry out for everything I dream of one day having. I want to cry out for everything that is completely uncertain in my life right now.

Peeking to my left, I watch him move out of the corner of my eye, my second issue running through my mind—Jagger Caldwell. I am in over my head. Every touch is electric and makes me crave more. My body goes into overdrive and my mind shuts down whenever he is around.

Good touch.

Oh my…good touch, the rain, the passion, the intensity—I couldn’t get enough. Thinking about it, my girlie parts come to life, deliciously sore.

What does Jagger think of me? I went wild against a building in the rain with him. Is that normal? It can’t be normal. It hurt, but not like I thought it would. Then, the more he moved in and out of me, the more the fire built inside. Every stroke had my nerve endings tightening. Feeling him inside of me, really inside of me, connected to me…Just thinking about it makes me want more. If it wasn’t for the blood, he probably wouldn’t have believed I was a virgin.

He does that to me, though. Does he see it? Does he realize it’s just him for me? He makes me wild with need, want, and only he can satisfy me.

It’s more than good touch. It’s this connection.

Am I crazy? Am I some lovesick fool?

Jagger Caldwell feels like everything right in all the wrongs. He feels like the only good to keep me afloat in all of the bad.

Jab. Jab. Kick
. I try releasing everything into the apparatus in front of me. Still, it doesn’t move.

As I look at the black weight bag in front of me and start laughing, Jagger stops hitting the one beside me and looks at me.

“It weighs more than I do, doesn’t it?”

“The heavy bag?” He points to the bag I have been hitting. I nod. “Yeah, Totty, it does.” He smiles, causing heat to flood through me.

I laugh more as I stand with my hands on my hips, looking at the unwavering obstacle in front of me. It stays still, and I move to it to rebound off time and time again. Every punch, kick, and hit I land merely bounces off.

That’s how my life has been. I get knocked down, get back up, and get knocked down again. The biggest muck filling my mind is,
What do I do now?

Jagger’s rough fingers cup my chin and pull my gaze back to him. “You’re not alone, Totty.”

I swallow the lump in my throat. His touch has me licking my lips and feeling like a dehydrated survivor in the desert, wanting a simple drop of water. Only I want a simple touch of Jagger Caldwell.

“What do I do next?” I ask, my voice cracking on each word.

“Whatever the hell you want,” he answers.

He rubs his thumb over my jaw before moving his hand to my waist. Then he pulls me to him and holds me close, and I inhale his scent and allow his strength to wash through me.

Everything feels right with him.

The apartment is quiet when we arrive. After Jagger unlocks the door from behind me, it swings open, and I merely stand in the entryway.

Nothing is out of place. Everything is exactly how it was when I left. Did he even live here while I was away? Mentally, I try to calculate how long I was gone before he was killed. Only two days, so I guess in his worry for me, he didn’t have much time to make a mess. Honestly, I thought it would be ransacked. I imagined I would find pillows tossed, tables turned over. Did he only take his rage out on me?

As memories flood me, I reach up and touch the scar on my cheek, and the pain seems to slice through me even though it has long since healed.

A hand on my lower back makes me jump.

“You’re safe,” Jagger whispers in my ear, guiding me inside enough for him to shut the door.

I walk into the small kitchen and drag my finger along the countertop. The cold laminate does nothing to soothe my heart. I look to the stove and fridge, thinking of the many times I messed up and paid for it at his hands. How can I move past the memories?

“You don’t have to stay here,” Jagger says, as if it solves all my problems.

I guess I should share with him my biggest problem, the thing that is sitting in the back of my mind, waiting for someone to figure it out.

“Jagger, I may not be able to stay here.”

He raises an eyebrow in question.

“I don’t know if I’m actually allowed to be in your country.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“My father brought us here when I was a baby. He doesn’t believe in banks. He only paid taxes so the government wouldn’t show up and investigate. He always told me if I asked for help, they would send me back to Russia. Mr. Adkins, he can send me away.” Tears prick my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall. I will face this however I have to.

“Did Johnny fuckin’ say that?”

“No. He didn’t mention my citizenship at all. I just know what I have been told my entire life.”

“Well, your old man wasn’t the most upstanding of people, so maybe he was holding that over your head and it’s not an issue. Until someone comes knocking, try not to worry about it.”

“I can’t get sent back there,” I whisper, letting the fear win.

“I’m not going to let that happen, little one.”

I wish I could be so sure. I wish I could feel like everything is going to be okay. I can’t, though. This is just another way my father still has a hold on me.

Moving through the space, I wonder to myself what a real home would feel like. I used to dream of having one of the empty apartments to myself. I could wear my slippers and I could display my treasures. More than anything, I could breathe. I wouldn’t be counting the day away, wondering what the evening would bring when he arrived home. I wouldn’t have to worry about him coming and going and getting everything just right. As I think of the future, I wonder what it would really feel like to be excited in anticipation for someone’s return home. How would I feel to enjoy the company of another person each evening rather than feel the dread of what was certain to come?

Jagger’s phone starts ringing. While he answers, I go to my father’s room, where his bed is a complete mess and his clothes are everywhere. Absently, I start picking them up and making the bed. Then I gather everything I can into a basket and start to head to the door.

Jagger stops me. “Where are you going?”

“To the first floor to do laundry.”

He looks into the basket. “Totty, are those his clothes?”

I nod.

“He’s not coming back.”

I drop the basket and sob, and Jagger wraps his arms around me.

“Shhh,” he whispers, stroking my hair.

I know he’s not coming back. Old habits die hard, though. Will I ever be normal? I shouldn’t feel sad. I should be filled with happiness that I don’t have to be at his beck and call.

I am free. I am free to be me.

Only I don’t know how to be me without being the person he wanted me to be. Clothes washed, house clean, food prepared, and good grades—that was my life. Now what?

“It’s okay to be lost, little one.”

Once again, Jagger Caldwell soothes my problems away, and I hold him a little more securely. Could I find a way to hold on to him, hold on to this for the rest of my life?

“Together, Totty. Together, we will pick up the pieces. I lost my momma. My brothers and I have fought hard to pick up the pieces. We did it along with helping Livi, Hailey, and Marisa. I’m here, Totty. We all are. We’ll help you pick up the pieces, too.”

I squeeze him. “Good touch, Jagger Caldwell.”

He groans, kissing the top of my head.

“Everything good,” I whisper into his chest. “You are everything good.”