Opening the door to the motel room, he walks out and I grab the Target bags filled with our stuff and follow him out of the room. His words stay with me and fill me with so much love and happiness I could burst. He may have told me he loved me last night, but his feelings today show me that not only does he love me but he also wants me to be a part of his life.
When I follow Jagger to the car we stole two nights ago, I throw the bags into the backseat before buckling up in the passenger seat. It's a four-hour drive from here to Albuquerque. We have the entire car ride to talk. He can fill me in on what the plan is and why he trusts Matteo to be a man of his word.
"Did you call your sister?" I ask him as I turn the radio on low and he pulls the beat-up car out of the motel parking lot. I look over at him, admiring how good he looks in his white t-shirt and jeans. He has an unlit cigarette tucked behind his ear and the way he looks is comforting. It's how he's always looked and if he hasn't changed maybe that means nothing else will.
"Yeah. I told her I could be gone for a few days but not to worry and that I will call her soon. If she needs anything she knows to call Ky and he will help her out."
"Did you warn her about Angelo?"
"I didn't need to. Rumors fly like crazy around the trailer park and she doesn't like Angelo anyway. He'll leave her alone."
I turn the radio up and sit back in my seat. I'm ready to drive down to New Mexico and hopefully straighten everything out with Matteo Esposito so Jagger and I can return back to the Evergreen's. We can put all this behind us and hopefully start the beginning of a real relationship.
***
We arrive at the abandoned warehouse in Albuquerque around three in the afternoon. Jagger's meeting with Matteo isn't until six, but he wanted to get here early to scout the place out.
The large brick warehouse is in the middle of an industrial park. The parking lot is made of old asphalt with pebbled cracks and weed sprouting out through the breaks in the gravel. It's a ghost town out here. The perfect place to get rid of someone and no one would hear it.
My doubt is starting to take over.
After we drive around the warehouse we take a single lane road that leads to the next street over and pull into the parking lot of an address I don't recognize. When Jagger drives around to the back of the building and parks with the vehicle facing away from it, I realize why we're here. This parking lot overlooks the street below and the warehouse we're meeting Matteo at in a few hours.
"So is this why you wanted to get here so early? You want your eyes on the place."
"It’s something I learned early on when meeting up with anyone involving a job. Always arrive before they do. I'm sure Matteo will be doing the same thing but most people only arrive shortly before the planned meet-up. I like to get there hours before."
He straightens up, his back slightly arched, as his eyes trail over the perimeter of the building below. Turning around in my seat, I lean over the middle console and start digging through the bags in the back until I have two waters and a bag of potato chips. I hand him a bottle and then open mine before taking a sip. Pulling at the top of the bag of potato chips with both hands, I rip it open.
"Hungry?"
"It’s a stakeout, Jagger. In all my favorite mystery books there's snack food eaten while watching a place. It helps the time go faster."
"Or it's the perfect distraction and you'll miss something important you would have seen if you weren't nose deep in a bag of chips."
He doesn't even look at me as he talks. His eyes stay trained on the building down below while I continue to eat my chips, my hands getting covered in potato grease.
Once I’ve finished half the bag I decide I've had enough and close it up before placing it on the floor near my feet. Jagger has his window rolled down as he smokes a cigarette, his eyes moving across all the buildings below, and then back to the warehouse.
"What are you expecting to see from up here?"
"Not sure, twinkle toes, but I like to know exactly what I'm walking into before I walk into it. We'll see Matteo arrive and hopefully be able to read a little bit of what he has planned by his movements once he gets here. Does he sit in his car patiently, or get out and take a round of target practice? I'll tell you one thing, he's not getting his hands on this money until I'm absolutely sure you're safe and will stay safe."
"Until we're safe, Jagger. He has to guarantee both of our safety."
He peers out at me from the corner of his eye. "That's what I meant, twinkle toes."
Taking one last drag he flicks the filter of his smoke out the window. "When it's almost time to meet up I'm going to drop you off at a diner down the road that we passed before pulling in here. You're going to take the money with you. Don’t move from there until I come to get you."
"Wait, I'm not staying with you?"
"It's too dangerous, twinkle toes."
"I'm not leaving you alone with him, Jagger."
"Yes, you are," he says sternly. "This isn't up for negotiation. I know how men like Matteo work. He'll have less respect for me if I bring you into the meeting with me. I'll have less respect for myself if I bring you with me. Plus, he's not going to touch me until he has the money in his hands so you're my lifeline. As long as you have that money I'll stay breathing if the meeting goes bad."
Jagger stops talking as we see movement down below. Four black Escalades pull into the parking lot of the warehouse and sandwiched between them is a classic blue Monte Carlo. The vehicles stop and park in the middle of the lot and a young, well-dressed man steps out of the driver's seat of the Monte Carlo. This must be Matteo Esposito. Another man, larger than Matteo and dressed a little less flashy, gets out of the passenger side. In seconds another ten men surround them, all coming out of the surrounding Escalades.
"It's a trap," Jagger mumbles under his breath as his vision stays trained below.
"What?" I ask perplexed, looking over at Jagger.
"He's setting me up. The meeting was supposed to be between the two of us. He promised to come alone but he's going to ambush me. If I go down to that meeting I'm not walking out alive."
Looking back down below, the man who was in the passenger side of the Monte Carlo with Matteo walks over to one of the Escalades and opens up the back hatch. The other men surround Matteo, who looks as if he's giving out orders to an army. It's hard to make out what the big man is doing at the back of the Escalade because most of his body is out of my vision, but then I get a glimpse of something when part of his hand is revealed for a brief second.
The man has a gun in his hand. It's easy to paint the rest of the picture now. He's at the back of the Escalade getting the weapons ready, loading them with ammunition.
"What should we do, Jagger?" The tremble in my voice can't be masked.
I knew I should have asked him earlier what his plan B was. I should have come up with a plan B on my own like I had planned, but I let Jagger and hot sex get in the way.
"I'm not sure, but we're not staying here." He sticks the key back in the ignition and starts the car before peeling out of the parking lot and driving out of there like he's in the Indy 500. "It’ll only be a few minutes before those men in the Escalades do what we we're doing now. One of them is bound to come over to the same location we were just in. It has the best view of the warehouse below."
Leaving the industrial park, we pull out onto the main road and head east. "Are you going to call him? Explain that we saw him and maybe set up a different meeting?"
"It's over, twinkle toes. Any meeting we set up with him is going to go exactly as today went. The only difference is he'll be smarter about his pregame and get his men there days before instead of an hour. We are never going to be free–he wants our heads on a platter."
His last words echo in my head and I start panicking, my breathing becoming short and quick. What does he mean we'll never be free?
I lean forward in my seat and place my hands on the dashboard as I try to get control of my breathi
ng. When Jagger notices, he pulls his car off to the side of the road, placing it in park and then he's leaning over the center console and wrapping his arms around me in a side hug.
"Breathe, twinkle toes. You need to take deep breaths. Breathe in... breathe out." I try to follow his breathing pattern as he continues to tell me when to inhale and exhale. After a few minutes I've finally calmed myself down enough to speak.
"When you say we'll never be free, what do you mean by that?"
"I mean Matteo Esposito wants me dead, and since you did the job with me he'll want you dead, too. We can't go back home, twinkle toes. It's too dangerous."
"Where are we going to go?"
"I'm no sure yet, but for now we'll head to El Paso. It's about a four hour drive and by the time Matteo realizes we're not showing, we'll already be halfway to Texas."
I drag a hand through my long hair before pulling the hair tie off my wrist and pulling my hair back in a ponytail. Jagger starts the car back up and pulls out onto the road.
"Jagger," I say his name hesitantly.
"Yeah, babe?"
"We'll be able to go home eventually though, right? He won't be after us forever. It doesn't seem fair that Angelo gets to continue on with his life while we're on the run."
He doesn't respond and just keeps driving, his silence on the subject says everything I need to know. A decision I made two weeks ago is going to affect the rest of my life. I'm not going to be able to go home, which I guess in the big picture isn't a bad thing since I wasn't the biggest fan of the trailer I lived in and my trailer park, but what about Pearl? Will I ever be able to see my sister again? We weren't the closest as far as sisters go, but that wasn't her fault. She was put in the parenting role at such a young age with me, and then between her job and school, I pretty much raised myself. It was what she had to do to give us a better life. Now that she's going to achieve the goal she worked so hard for, she won't have me to help her celebrate all of her success.
Tears pull at the corner of my eyes and I blink rapidly, doing all I can to stop them from falling. Turning to face the window of the passenger side door, I rest my arm on the top of the door where it meets the glass and lay my head down on it. I sleep most of the ride to El Paso, only waking up when Jagger pulls over so we can ditch the car we're in and steal a new car.
He takes out his burner phone and surprises me by calling Matteo. Our meeting time has passed and we're hours from Albuquerque, but getting things out in the open must have been weighing on Jagger's mind.
He keeps the call short, apologizing to Matteo and telling him how sorry he truly is. He never should have listened to Angelo and Damien. He tells Matteo how they set him up and aren't to be trusted.
When he finishes the call he takes the battery out of the back of the phone and tosses the phone into a nearby pond. We drive off in the silver wagon he just stole and get back on the road. My eyes close as I try to forget about all the revelations today has brought.
Chapter Sixteen
When we walk into the doors of our hotel room at the Wyndham near the airport, I practically collapse onto the bed face first. Although I've slept for most of the past four hours, I'm still emotionally and physically exhausted, but I'll take the little victories as they come. The fact that we were able to get a room in this hotel at all is a small victory.
The difference between nice hotels and sleazy motels is sleazy motels will let you pay in cash, but nice hotels want a credit card on file and Jagger didn't have one to give them. He could no longer use the stolen ones in his wallet because by now the Esposito organization might know about them and be tracking their activity.
It took a lot of persuasion, and the hotel manager required a security deposit of a thousand dollars on top of the nightly fee, but we were able to rent a room for the night.
"What's the plan?" I ask, mumbling my question into the comforter that's under my mouth.
"There is no plan, twinkle toes. I'm just as lost right now as you are and we need to come up with something before they have a chance to hunt us down."
Flipping over on the bed I rest my hands on my stomach and stare up at the white ceiling, focusing on all the little bumps and ridges in the drywall. "Well, at least we have somewhere close to two million dollars to help us figure it all out," I laugh out humorlessly.
"Yeah, there's that," he replies quietly as he places the black duffle bag and Target bags into the hotel room closet before joining me on the bed. "We could go to Mexico. We're already near the border. We could cross over and deposit the money in a foreign account. I could wire some money to my sister for her and my nephew, and you could wire money to Pearl and then we go from there. Live down in Mexico for a while until we figure out our next move."
Turning my head to the side so I can see him I respond," I don’t like that idea. Mexico is dangerous right now for Americans. Don't you watch the news? Plus, I don't speak the language, and isn't it a little cliché to flee America and run to Mexico? I've seen it and read about it so many times before. I don’t want to be a cliché, Jagger."
"Well, I don't want to be dead, twinkle toes. I'm okay being a cliché if you're still breathing."
"Can we just talk about all this in the morning? I'm tired and my head hurts. I just need a night to forget all about the chaos our life is in. We literally have the rest of our lives to worry about where we'll live and who is following us."
"Whatever you want, twinkle toes."
I close my eyes, prepared to fall asleep like this, when I feel the weight of Jagger's body fall on me. He kisses the small amount of exposed skin at the top of my chest before sliding down my body and lifting the bottom of my t-shirt. He pulls it up until it reaches the bottom of my bra and then he kisses my soft stomach, starting at my ribs and moving down to my navel.
My breathing begins to falter as his tongue traces the inside of my belly button before his kisses move lower. I squirm on the bed, my skin lit with anticipation.
He unbuttons the top of my jeans and slowly lowers the zipper.
He whispers across my skin, "I have the perfect way to distract you tonight, twinkle toes."
His voice is low and screams sex, turning me on and making me so wet.
Grabbing the waistband of my jeans he pulls them down, past my hips and down my legs. Standing up he pulls them the rest of the way off before pulling himself back up my body and assaulting my aroused flesh with his lips again. He kisses the sensitive skin right above the top of my panties and then he brings his lips lower, kissing my mound over the thin layer of material.
He bites down gently before licking at the dampness between my legs that's seeped through my panties.
"Fuck," I groan out, arching my back as I bring my pussy closer to him. I want to touch him the way he's touching me, but if I move right now he'll stop what he's doing and I need the diversion of his hands and mouth right now.
He raises his head, smiling up at me before his hands dig into the sides of my panties, lowering them off my body and leaving me naked from the waist down.
His hands curl around the back of my thighs and then he spreads me open to him. My neck arches back and I close my eyes as I feel the first trace of his tongue against my swollen flesh as the scruff on his cheeks rub against my inner thigh.
"Jagger," I pant out as he soothes me with his talented mouth.
He teases my clit with the tip of his tongue, applying just the right amount of pressure before sliding his tongue back down and circling my core with the tip. I lower my hands, knotting them in his messy mane and pulling him closer to me. He chuckles against the lips of my pussy and then his mouth is on me again, sucking my clit between his lips before tracing his tongue in a circular motion over and over again against my bundle of nerves.
Oh God, it feels so good. It's just what I need right now. I'm not thinking about anything other than Jagger making me come.
"Don't stop... don't you dare fucking stop," the animal inside me demands.
He sli
des a hand between my legs and pushes two fingers inside me, thrusting them in and out of my wet heat, rubbing me just right against the soft textured spot inside. Spots cloud my vision as all the blood in my body gravitates below and I'm preparing for an explosion so intense, my body won't know what's happening.
His free hand slides up my skin, caressing my covered breasts before moving up further until the tip of his index finger is lingering on my bottom lip. I part my lips and lick the tip. He slides his finger between my lips and I suck on his finger, simulating what I'd like to be doing to his cock and he moans out against my clit... and it pushes me over the edge. I climax, coming hard against his hand, gyrating against his mouth as he continues to rub my g-spot just right. I'm biting down on his finger in my mouth, hoping it'll suppress the screams and whimpers escaping between my lips.
After I finish riding out my orgasm, Jagger moves away from my pussy, his fingers sliding out of my wetness and then he lifts them to his lips and sucks my juices off each finger, groaning sexily as he does it.
I sit up in bed and pull my gray t-shirt off, followed by my bra, and then crawl off the bed until I'm on my knees on the carpet in front of him. Unbuttoning the top of his jeans, I pull them down his waist along with his boxer briefs and his hard cock springs upward.
"What are you doing, twinkle toes?"
"I'm about to devour my new friend," I whisper low and huskily, trying to sound irresistible. Looking up at him with doe eyes, I open my mouth and lick the underside of his cock. His length twitches as he hardens further and I can't help the excitement that floods my veins from seeing him grow. I lick him again and again, caressing his hard cock with my tongue.
I wrap my lips around his engorged head and begin to suck him into my mouth as my hand reaches up and cups his balls, pulling and massaging them as he groans out from the sensation. My other hand comes up to the base of his cock, fisting him tightly and moving up and down his length as I circle the head of his cock with my tongue before taking him in my mouth further.
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