by Sophia Gray
“Yeah, I have a key,” Jagger said.
Abby huffed out a humorless laugh, stepping closer to Jagger. “What? And you think that’s okay? Give it to me.”
“No, it’s mine,” Jagger said, confused as to why she was suddenly so angry.
“So, what, you can just come and go whenever you fucking want to? What if I was undressed? What then?”
Jagger burned with embarrassment at the images that popped up in his brain in response to Abby’s hypothetical question. “I, uh, I’ll knock next time, okay?” he stuttered out, his brain still flooded with thoughts of Abby in her underwear.
“Not good enough,” Abby said, shaking her head furiously. “You could lock me in whenever you wanted, and I know you’d just love that, wouldn’t you?”
In all honesty, she was right. Jagger had been considering using his key to keep her in the compound, where he knew she would be safe. He got the sense that it wouldn’t go over well with Abby if he said that, and he was already losing this argument as it was. “Look, I won’t lock you in, okay? Just stay here, and there won’t be a problem.”
Abby smirked at him a little bit, and Jagger was wondering what he said that could possibly be construed as funny until she spoke again, waving the handful of papers around in his face. “Too fucking late. I already went to see my patients today. So, suck on that.”
It took a second for the words to sink fully into Jagger’s brain, but when they did, his heart immediately pumped harder, sending his blood rushing painfully through his veins. “What?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
He saw a flicker of uncertainty pass over Abby’s face, and she backed up a little until her legs hit the bed behind her. “I went to see my patients today.” Her voice was small and tight.
“How?” Jagger demanded. He remembered that she didn’t have a car.
Abby shrugged then, trying to appear as nonchalant as possible even as Jagger’s temper built under his skin. “Tony took me.”
Jagger immediately turned on his heel and marched through the door, out into the hallway and toward Tony’s room across the hall. He swung the door open without knocking to find Tony tangled up in a pile of blankets on his bed. “Tony!” he shouted. “Tony, wake the fuck up!”
Tony twitched his way awake, opening his eyes slowly as Jagger continued to shout his name. “What the fuck, man?” he mumbled.
“You took Abby out of the compound? What the fuck is wrong with you? You could have both been killed!”
Tony slowly shifted until he was sitting up in his bed, crossing his legs and rubbing his hands through his hair. “Yeah, so what? You weren’t here, man.”
“She’s not supposed to leave the clubhouse, Tony. It’s not safe. Somebody’s out there looking for her.”
Realization slowly dawned over Tony’s face. “Oh. So, she lied to me, then.”
Abby had appeared in the room behind Jagger. “Not exactly!” she said. “I just - omitted some things. It’s not like Jagger is the boss of you, right?” Tony was silent, staring blankly at Abby to communicate the obvious answer to that question. “Oh. Well, that’s sad,” Abby said with a sheepish smile.
“No more fucking field trips, all right?” Jagger said before turning and marching back out of Tony’s room, allowing his MC brother to collapse onto the pile of blankets and fall back asleep.
Abby followed him back into her room, shutting the door behind them. She knew this was about to get loud. “What the hell, man?” she asked as she looked up into Jagger’s eyes.
“You know you weren’t supposed to do that,” Jagger said through clenched teeth. Anything could have happened to her. Both she and Tony could have been killed. Jagger was having a hard time understanding how she could be so stupid, so foolish to risk her own life like that.
“Supposed to?” Abby parroted back in a mocking tone. “What are you, my elementary school teacher? Newsflash, Jagger: You’re not the fucking boss of me, even if you are the boss of every other sad sack in this club. Where do you get off telling me what to do?”
“It’s not—” Jagger cut himself off when he realized he was yelling. He didn’t want to scare her, but he was just so fucking mad. “It’s not about me bossing you around. It’s about keeping you safe. You did something incredibly dangerous and you just happened to get lucky.”
Abby glared at him, her jaw set. “Do you realize you’re acting like a Neanderthal right now, tugging a woman back to the cave or some shit? You don’t fucking own me. I’m not your property, I’m not your responsibility, so back off!”
“You are my responsibility!” Jagger argued back, stepping closer to her until their breath mingled. “I have to keep you safe! It’s my job.”
“Says who? You?” Abby demanded to know, her brow furrowed in authentic bewilderment. “You appointed yourself my protector and now that means you get to tell me what I do with my days? That’s not fair!”
Abby’s eyes had started shining, the blue and grey and green shades within becoming clearer with each passing second, catching the fading light from the sunrise outside. She looked so gorgeous, it was almost distracting Jagger from his anger, but in the end, his rage won out. “You don’t know what you’re doing. I understand you feel like you have a responsibility to your patients, but you can’t exactly help them if you get fucking killed. Which is exactly what’s going to happen if you don’t start listening to me.”
“How do you know, huh?” Abby asked. “You don’t know who the arsonist is. You don’t even know if it’s one guy or twelve different ones playing a stupid prank that went wrong. Where do you get off bossing me around? I’m not a little child, Jagger! I know what I’m doing!”
“Oh, is that right?” Jagger asked, stepping impossibly closer to Abby’s panting chest. “You don’t know what you’re doing. Unless, of course, you want to be in danger. Unless you want to die. Is that it? Is that what it’s about? You want to get hurt, Abby?”
Abby scoffed again and turned her head away, tearing her eyes away from Jagger. But the frown on her face told him that he hit a nerve with his last question. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she muttered, but it didn’t sound particularly convincing.
Jagger felt his anger transform into something sharper, harder, something that threatened to pierce his chest and tear out his heart. Pain, thick and heavy and unbreakable. “That’s what it is, isn’t it?” he said softly. “You want to get hurt.”
Abby shook her head but still refused to look directly at Jagger. “You don’t know a thing about me,” she whispered.
“I know you deserve to live,” Jagger said, stepping a little closer still until their chests brushed together.
“You don’t— You don’t know that,” Abby murmured. “You’re just a biker punk with control issues. You don’t know me.”
“You don’t know me either,” Jagger said in an accusatory tone of his voice, his anger returning quickly. “You don’t know thing one about me, or about this investigation, or about…” He trailed off, running out of accusations.
“Fuck you, asshole,” Abby muttered, her voice getting louder with each syllable. “Acting like you fucking own me, acting like you know what to do. You don’t know a goddamned thing. You’re just pretending to be this big tough man, but you’re—”
Jagger slammed their mouths together, caressing her lips roughly with his. After a second, Abby returned the kiss, opening her mouth to allow his lips and tongue inside. “Mmm, oh,” she murmured in between their mouths, kissing him more and more deeply with each passing second, grabbing the back of his head to encourage him on.
Jagger reached down and wrapped his arms around Abby’s lower back, pushing her closer until he could grab her legs and wrap them around his waist, holding her by her ass so that he wouldn’t drop her. All the while, Abby licked her way into his mouth, pulling at his bottom lip with her teeth. Jagger groaned into the kiss, tangling one hand in her hair to make sure she didn’t stop touching him. Jagger felt like if he stopped
touching her, he would die like she was a supply of fresh sweet blood that he desperately needed to survive. He bit down on her lip, causing her to cry out, a beautiful, high sound that made his skin prickle. He wanted more of that sound. No, no— He needed it.
After they pulled apart several moments later, gasping for air, Abby turned a deep shade of red before jumping out of Jagger’s arms. “Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God, no,” she muttered, rubbing her mouth with her fingers as though she’d just been burned.
“Get out, get out, please get out,” she whispered, walking away from him and turning to the window.
“Abby…” Jagger said, unsure of what else to say.
“Please. I can’t do this. Not right now. Please, get out,” Abby said, sounding more desperate and sad than he’d ever heard her.
“Okay,” he murmured, quietly turning to walk out of the room, freezing when he heard Abby speak again, barely audible this time.
“I’m…. I’m sorry. For the way I am,” Abby whispered just as Jagger’s hand touched the doorknob.
Me, too, he thought as he walked through the door, shutting it behind him but stopping short of locking it. Me, too.
Chapter Four
Abby
Abby couldn’t believe herself. She just kept rocking back and forth on the bed, trying to get her mind to calm down and make an escape plan. She had to leave, right? That was the only option here. It was no longer safe for her to stay here, not after they’d kissed. But where could she go? Her place was a pile of ashes now, and it wasn’t like she could afford to find another one right away. Maybe her best bet was to stay in a cheap motel, but those places were dangerous enough as is, even if you didn’t have a psychopathic arsonist-slash-murderer hunting for you. It was a problem without a solution.
Maybe I’ll just look at my patient files some more, she thought, grabbing the pile of papers from where she’d dropped them earlier. She flipped through them until she found the file on the most severe case, Mr. Benson. He was going to die soon if his condition didn’t change. Still, no matter how hard she squinted her eyes and tried to focus, the words slipped through her brain without sticking to anything. She just couldn’t seem to absorb any of the information.
See, he’s distracting me already, she thought. That was another reason she couldn’t afford messing around with some stupid man. Her patients needed her. They depended on her. For most of them, she was all they had. She couldn’t let her attraction to some stupidly hot firefighter with thick, hard muscles keep her from doing her job.
Abby blew out her breath and collapsed back onto her bed, throwing the papers off to one side. It was no use. Her brain refused to focus on anything other than the way Jagger’s body had felt against hers, the way his mouth had gently yet firmly slid against her lips. She grabbed a pillow and pressed it deep into her face so she could groan loudly into it without attracting any attention. Goddammit. She was fucking screwed, and not in a fun way. The compound was the only place where she stood a chance of safely hiding from the arsonist, but it was also the only place where she might get swept up into growing attached to somebody. She just couldn’t do that. Not after Mark, not after everything he did to her, neglecting her and stealing all her money. There was no way she was going to allow herself to get hurt like that again, no matter what.
She turned to stare out the window, straining her eyes to see the lengthy line of cars parked out in the lot in front of the compound. So many people that stayed here, it seemed. She only got a few good looks at the outside of the clubhouse, but she could tell it was several stories high. There must be a lot of rooms like this, she realized. Lots of places for people to stay.
So that’s the solution, she thought, springing up from her bed as new energy replaced her despair. She would just have to switch rooms, staying as far away from Jagger as possible, preferably in an area with lots of people nearby so she wouldn’t be tempted to sneak down and see what Jagger was doing on the second floor. Abby felt sure that this was the way to stay safe from both the arsonist and Jagger’s kisses. If Jagger wasn’t going to allow her to participate in the investigation, she was just going to have to stay away from him entirely. That was the best way to handle this.
Abby straightened her clothing and hair, not wanting to appear as if she’d just spent the last half-hour huddled up on her bed, before exiting her room and walking across the hall to Tony’s bedroom. She hoped she would find Jagger in there, but it just had a dozing Tony still cuddled up on his bed, and this time Abby felt too guilty to wake him up again. She realized that she didn’t know where Jagger’s room was, so she just paced up and down the hallway, looking for an open doorway to peer inside. After a few minutes, familiar footsteps climbed up the steps from the first level. Abby held her breath, waiting for Jagger to appear. God, he looked handsome, dressed just in a white tank top and loose-fitting jeans. He froze in his tracks as soon as he saw her, stopping at the landing of the stairway.
“Hey,” Abby whispered, stepping a little closer to him. “Can we talk… Um… Privately?”
Jagger was silent and still for a moment, staring at her, surveying her body up and down. Abby felt like he was inspecting every inch of her. He finally nodded and pointed down the hallway. Abby turned on her heel and walked in that direction, keenly aware of Jagger’s body just a foot behind her as they walked to the end of the hall.
Jagger pulled out a large set of keys and stuck one in the door they stopped in front of. “Do you have a key for every room in this compound?” Abby asked nervously, feeling a line of heat streak its way up from her spine to the bottom of her neck.
He shook his head. “Just this level. I’m kind of like the landlord of the second floor,” he said with a smile as he pushed the door open and gestured for Abby to go inside. She breathed a sigh of relief knowing his keys were limited to a single floor. She couldn’t stay in the compound if he had control over every single room.
Abby sat down in a small wooden chair opposite Jagger’s bed, crossing her arms and ankles. It was a bad habit she had, covering herself up with her limbs in a weak attempt to protect herself. “Um, so, I was thinking…” she started to say as Jagger shut and locked the door behind them.
“Oh, boy, that sounds dangerous,” Jagger said, a teasing edge to his voice as he sat down on the bed across from her.
“Yeah,” Abby said with a short laugh, futilely trying to cut the tension in the room. “I think… I think that I shouldn’t stay here.”
“In the compound?” Jagger sighed deeply. “Abby, it’s not safe. Why can’t you understand that?”
“No, no, I’m not stupid, I get it,” Abby said, trying not to jump immediately on the defensive. “But I need another room… Not… Not on this level.”
Jagger stared at her with his face screwed up in confusion for a long moment before realization dawned on him. “Oh. You don’t want to be around me.”
Abby wasn’t sure what to say that. “Um…well…”
“You’re scared,” Jagger said. It wasn’t a question either, no, it was a statement. Abby immediately felt like she wanted to deny it, to argue with him, to say that she wasn’t scared of anything. But deep down she knew he was right, and it was hard for her not to be honest with herself, even if the truth was painful. “You’re scared of me.”
“Not exactly,” Abby said. I’m scared of me, she thought, but she didn’t say it out loud. She felt terrified of what she wanted. Or of what she needed. She wasn’t sure what the difference was.
“You want nothing to do with me? Is that it?” Jagger asked. “Do you hate me that much?”
“I don’t hate you,” Abby said, the volume of her voice rising a little. “I just…”
“What?” Jagger got to his feet, standing above her so that she had to look up to see his face, framed by the light from the window. “What is it then? Why are you so afraid?”
Abby felt herself start trembling, her hands shaking as she stood to face him. “Listen, I can’t afford to get i
nvolved with anybody right now. It doesn’t have anything to do with you. I’m just - I’m broken, all right? Please, just accept that.”
Jagger shook his head and turned his back to her. “That’s not true.”
“How would you know?” Abby asked, her voice getting higher and harder as her anger grew. “You don’t know me. You don’t know a single thing about me.”
“I know that you deserve to live, Abby,” Jagger said, flipping back around to face her and walking up until only a few inches separated their bodies. “You deserve to…”
Abby waited to allow Jagger to finish his thought, but when he turned his head away and sighed it was obvious that he wasn’t going to share the end of that sentence. “What?” Abby asked. “I deserve to what? Let you save me?”
That made Jagger turn his head back to stare at her, his eyes burning with something Abby recognized but couldn’t name. “Yeah,” he whispered lowly. “Yeah, maybe. You could let me try, at least.”
