“Raegan, what the fuck are you doing?” Jackson swore.
“I’m getting us out of here.”
“With a fucking grenade?”
“Well, I thought about using a gun, but I’m not the best shot. I’d probably take out you along with all of them. Does an automatic rifle stop on its own or do I have to release the trigger?” I said stupidly, hoping it would deter the bikers from trying anything else.
“Put the pin back in,” one man yelled at me.
“So, how does this thing work exactly? Do I just release this little lever and throw?”
“Lady, you’re holding live fucking ammo. Put the fucking pin back in.”
“I’m not putting the pin back in until you hand him over. Either we drive away or all of us get splattered on the concrete.”
“You’re fucking crazy,” one of them said.
“She’s not going to do it,” another one said. “She would die too.”
“Yeah, see the thing is, I’ve got arms dealers that want to kill me, so if they get me, I’ll probably be tortured to death. This would actually be the faster way to go. So…what’s it going to be?”
The man holding Jackson slowly released him and shoved him my way. Jackson stumbled over to the truck and got in, wincing as he stepped up.
“Now, move your bikes so that we can leave and don’t follow us. I have plenty of weapons in here that I can use.”
The bikers’ faces all went hard, but they walked away and got on their bikes, roaring out of the parking lot. I hopped in the truck and blew out a harsh breath.
“You want to hand over the grenade?”
“What?” I asked, still trying to process what had just happened.
“The pin is still out of the grenade and your hands are shaking. It would be a shame to get us out of that only to die because you didn’t actually put the pin back in.”
I nodded, handing the grenade and pin over to him slowly. He replaced the pin and then put it in the bag in the back seat.
“How about you just stay away from grenades from now on?”
“Well, I wouldn’t have had to use them if you had fought them a little harder. You know, Claire told me that Derek took out like fifteen men.”
“I wouldn’t have had to try and take out ten bikers if you had just kept your mouth shut. And Derek didn’t take out fifteen men at once.”
“I’m just saying, maybe you’re a little off your game.”
“Really? You mean that maybe after battling men at Reed Security, running away with you, walking fifteen miles, and then driving for a few hours without sleep or food, I might be a little off my game?”
“Hey, you don’t have to yell at me. It was just an observation.”
He grumbled to himself about women and crazy ideas. I turned toward the window and laughed, needing to get just one more dig in. “I bet Knight could have done it.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Jackson
We went through the drive-thru for food, seeing as how Raegan was a grouch and would probably offend anyone she came in contact with. I paid for another motel room a couple hundred miles from the last one and finally sank down onto a bed. I was exhausted and needed a shit ton of sleep. It also wouldn’t hurt my sore body to get some rest.
“Oh, crap, that hurts.”
Raegan walked over to my side of the bed and started undoing my shoes and then pulled them off. “Do you want your pants off too?”
“I’m not in the mood for sex,” I groaned, thinking that was probably the only time in my life I had ever thought that.
“I wasn’t offering. I’m not exactly in the mood either. Besides, I still have mud in my ass crack. That’s definitely not something you need to see while you’re fucking me.”
“So, there will be more fucking. Good to know.”
“As long as I get some more food after we wake up.”
She undid the belt on my pants and pulled down the zipper. I couldn’t get hard if I wanted to right now. I lifted my ass so she could pull the pants off me, but that was all I could muster up to help out with. As soon as she put my feet on the bed, I was drifting off to sleep.
“Do we have to get up at a certain time?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I mumbled. I felt her snuggle under the covers and her hand brushed against mine. I didn’t have the energy to pull her into me, so I intertwined our fingers and drifted off to sleep. When I woke again, it was night and Raegan wasn’t in bed with me. Figuring that she was in the bathroom, I laid back and waited, but after ten minutes, she still wasn’t out.
“Raegan?” I called out, but got no answer. Flinging off the covers, I grabbed my pants off the floor and quickly pulled them on. I flicked on the bathroom light, but there was no one there. I shoved my feet in my shoes and grabbed my keys. When I looked outside, there was no sign of her. She couldn’t have gone far and there was no way I would have slept through someone breaking into our room, but that didn’t mean that no one snatched her off the streets. I got in my truck and drove, searching for any sign of her.
The more I drove, the more nervous I got. It seemed like I had been falling for Raegan since the day I pulled her from that shit hole she called a house. She had been bloodied and beaten to hell, but I still felt a connection to her. I wanted her and not just for a night or until I got bored. I wanted her to be mine. I had taken things slowly because of my mistaken idea that she needed time to heal, and it was probably for the best that I had given her that time. But maybe I had given her too much time. When I said I thought I was in love with her when we were walking last night, I meant it. I really did think that, but I was a bumbling fool and screwed the whole thing up. And it hadn’t escaped my notice that she hadn’t said anything in return. That was why I hadn’t pushed the issue. What if I never knew now? What if I never found her and had the chance to tell her how I really felt?
My worry morphed to anger the longer I looked for her. She was being reckless and we couldn’t afford that when we were on the run from arms dealers and a biker gang that would rather see us dead for something as simple as a stupid comment. Who would be after us next? With Raegan, it was very possible she was out pissing people off right this very moment. Did she even stop to think that I wouldn’t know where she was? Did she think about what it would do to me to wake up and see that she was gone?
I gripped the steering wheel tighter and took deep breaths to keep from pulling over and beating the shit out of someone in the hopes of getting some fucking answers. I turned the truck around and headed back to the motel. And that’s when I saw her. A man was gripping her shoulder and then he shoved her to the ground and landed between her spread legs. Murder flowed through my veins as I drove the truck up on the sidewalk and slammed on the brakes, barely shifting into park before I was out of the truck and yanking the man off her.
“Motherfucker! What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
I threw him to the ground as Raegan scrambled to her knees. “Jackson, don’t!” Her hand shot out to grab my fist before I could slam it into his face. That’s when I saw that the guy was at least sixty. “Fucking disgusting piece of shit!”
Raegan quickly moved to his side and felt at his neck, then started pumping his chest.
“What the fuck are you doing? Let the asshole die. He was trying to attack you!”
“He wasn’t attacking me,” She said between breaths. “He said he didn’t feel good and collapsed into me. I couldn’t catch him because he’s heavier than me.”
I quickly pulled out my phone and dialed 9-1-1. Raegan continued to perform CPR, but I took over after I got off the phone. The ambulance was fast and they quickly took over, loaded him up on a stretcher, and drove away.
As we stood there watching the ambulance drive away, I scratched the back of my head and then pulled my hair as I tried to let the anger leech from my body. I couldn’t take feeling this way, like I was constantly on edge and needing to kill anyone that got close to her. I glanced over at
her, but she was glaring at me with her arms crossed over her chest and her foot was tapping out an erratic rhythm. Shit. I knew what was coming. Deciding to get ahead of the inevitable beatdown I was about to receive, I grabbed her by the elbow and hauled her up into the truck.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Getting your ass back to the motel.”
“I have bags,” she protested.
I looked around, seeing the bags scattered on the ground nearby. I had only missed them because I was insane with rage. I put everything in the bed of the truck and got in, slamming the door behind me. I drove back in silence and when she tried to yell at me, I just held up my hand to silence her. Her eyebrows shot high and her mouth gaped, but she didn’t say anything.
I took the bags back in the room and tried to ignore the slamming of the bathroom door. Digging through the bags to see what she had risked her life for in the middle of the night, I pulled out muscle reliever, ice packs, Tylenol, and a wrap that I could use for my bruised ribs. Well, now I felt like an asshole.
But instead of apologizing like I should, I took it to the next level, because she shouldn’t have risked anything to take care of me. I was supposed to be doing that for her. I went over to the bathroom door and knocked, but when she didn’t answer, I simply kicked in the door.
“What the fuck? Am I not allowed to piss in private?”
“You’re not pissing. You’re hiding from me.”
“Yeah, because you’re acting like a psycho.”
“Do you know what could have happened out there? You could have been raped and murdered. You could have been taken by the gang of bikers you pissed off. Hell, you could have been found by those arms dealers. And I didn’t even fucking know where you had gone. You just fucking left!”
“I didn’t just leave. I left a note for you.”
“No, you didn’t. I would have seen it.”
She stormed past me out of the bathroom and over to the nightstand table where a piece of paper sat next to the phone. She handed it over to me and I quickly read it.
Jackson,
I went down to the corner store to get some supplies. You look like you’re in a lot of pain even in your sleep. Be back soon.
Raegan
“You still shouldn’t have left. I woke up and I was fucking terrified that something had happened to you. You can’t just walk out on me. We’re supposed to be a fucking team!”
“Are we? I wasn’t aware that we were a team. You just boss me around and yell at me.”
“Because I’m protecting you. I can’t do that if you’re constantly doing what you’re not supposed to.”
“So, instead of thanking me for looking after you and trying to take care of you, you just yell at me and act like I’m an idiot.”
“You are a fucking idiot! Anyone could have taken you.”
“I took your gun with me.” She pulled the gun out of the back of her jeans and set it on the table. “I made sure to watch my surroundings the whole time and I would have only been gone fifteen minutes if that guy hadn’t had a heart attack on me. And I’ll pretend that you didn’t just call me a fucking idiot because that’s just plain rude.”
“Raegan, I can’t deal with this. The way you just ran out of here is not how I protect you.”
“And watching you try to sleep on the bed when you’re obviously in pain isn’t something I could just sit by and watch.”
“Just listen,” I began, but she cut me off.
“No, you just listen. I know that you’re trying to protect me and I appreciate that very much, but you were in pain. Every time you moved, you groaned. Your face was twisted in pain the whole time, and I’m sure as soon as you finally sit down again, you’re going to feel every bit of pain again. Maybe you’re used to women that are delicate and need to be taken care of, but it’s a two way street with me. We take care of each other. That’s the way this goes.”
“The way what goes?” I asked hesitantly.
“This,” she said, pointing to the two of us. “We just fucked last night and maybe that didn’t mean anything to you, but you sort of told me you loved me and I took that to mean that this was more than just a flyby fucking.”
“It was,” I said angrily. “I don’t just go out and fuck anyone in the middle of a field, in the mud, while I’m on the run. That was special just for you and me.”
“Well, it was special to me too! It’s not every day a man fucks me with twigs and mud all around, stabbing me in the back.”
“And there’s no sort of about me loving you. I’ve been fucked up over you since I got you out of that house and I’ve been falling deeper every day. I’m just an asshole who doesn’t know the right words to say because I’ve never been in love before.”
“Well, I love you too,” she shouted, “and if you hadn’t stumbled over your words so much, I would have told you last night.”
“Well, you’re telling me now!”
“That’s right. I am, so stop fucking yelling at me and kiss me!”
“If you would shut your damn mouth for five seconds, I would.” I pulled her into me and crushed my mouth to hers. My hand slipped into her hair and immediately got tangled in the web of caked on dirt and leaves. “You’re so fucking dirty.”
“You haven’t seen anything yet,” she said as she yanked my pants off me.
“No,” I said around kissing her. “You have dirt caked into your hair.” I picked her up by the ass and walked with her into the shower, turning it on without even removing our clothes. The water sluiced over our bodies, mud sliding down and caking the bottom of the tub. I ripped her shirt in two, dropping it to the floor of the shower and then got to work on her pants.
“Yes, get it off me,” she groaned. They were sticking to her legs, so she got down on the floor of the tub and put her legs in the air. “Rip them off.”
I tugged and tugged, but they were practically glued to her. “They won’t come off.”
“Jackson, I don’t give a shit what you have to do. Get these fucking pants off me!”
I slipped out of the shower and grabbed my bag, pulling a blade that I always kept handy. “I’ve never had to use this for the removal of a woman’s pants before.”
“What do you normally use it for?” she asked.
“Gouging out eyes, stabbing someone in the neck, cutting ties, opening packages.”
“I like how you started with the worst and ended with opening packages.”
I grinned down at her as I ripped the pants to shreds. When they were finally off, I helped her to her feet and ripped the panties from her body. She spun around and shoved her ass toward me. “Get some soap. I need your fingers between my legs.”
I quickly obliged her, pouring liquid soap into my hands and then rubbing her pussy. She moaned and moved so her ass hole was right by my fingers. I took that as a sign and slowly started rubbing her tight hole.
“Oh,” she groaned. “That’s it. Clean me. Get that mud off me.” I rubbed the soap around her cheeks some more, taking extra care to make sure there was no mud stuck in any crevices. I got down on my knees and made sure the little patch of hair between her legs was extra clean and then I started on her legs, rubbing my hands up and down her soft skin. “Jackson,” she gasped. “I’ve never had someone clean me the way you do. I need more!”
I practically started laughing at her orgasmic clean talk. “You want more of that? You want me to soap up your body and make sure it’s clean?”
“Yes! Please, clean me. Wash my hair and shave my armpits.”
“God, I love it when you talk dirty,” I groaned as I lifted her in the air and slammed her against the shower wall, taking a washcloth and rubbing it vigorously against her armpits.
“You want some too?”
Before I could answer, she poured shampoo on my head and started running it through my hair. Then she dug her nails into my scalp, massaging away the headache that had been pounding for the last day. I groaned in pleasure and ran
the washcloth over her nipples and down her stomach.
“God, your hair is cleaning all the dirt out from under my nails. It feels so good.”
My breathing was hard and labored as I struggled to keep her up against the shower wall. I lowered her to her feet and then pressed on her shoulders, telling her what I needed. She took my dick in her hand and then her fingers were massaging the dirt out of my pubic hair.
“God, that feels fucking fantastic.” Her hands moved to my balls and back to my ass, a place I didn’t even know I had gotten dirt. Her hand jerked my dick hard, rubbing the soap all over until I was filthy clean.
I shut the water off and grabbed a towel, wiping every drip of water from her body. Wrapping a towel around my waist, I carried her back to the bed and laid her down under the covers. Getting in bed, I laid next to her and stared at the ceiling, panting hard and satisfied.
“Was it as good for you as it was for me?”
“I’ve never had better.”
✯✯✯✯✯
We pulled up to the gates of Knight’s safe house and waited to be let in. Cap came out to meet us, along with Derek and Cazzo. When I stepped out of the truck, I groaned and did my best to stretch, but Raegan came around to my side and put her arm around me, trying to hold me up in case I fell. I didn’t need her help to walk, but I’d let her think that she was helping just so I could have her in my arms.
“We weren’t sure if you were going to make it,” Cap said, slapping me on the shoulder. “We just got here ourselves about an hour ago. We’re not even settled in yet.”
“What happened that you had to take off?”
“That’s something we need to talk about, but we’re still waiting on an arrival.”
I nodded and we started toward the house. Each step was a little more painful and I was starting to regret how hard I had taken Raegan after our shower yesterday. My ribs were aching and my whole body was sore from sitting so long.
“I don’t suppose you’ve had any contact from Craig,” Cap said.
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