Mikayla
We’re at the top of the bluff, but on a protruded plane. Above is his house, below is what I can only assume is a hotel. I get out of the killer contraption that Jagger drove us in. The lions eyes were a beautiful amber, before he bared teeth longer than butcher knives. Jagger whipped the heap of junk around fast and speed off.
My shoulders tremor as I giggle. The laughter bubbles out of me until it grows and grows and tears are running down my cheeks.
“I wouldn’t let anything bad happen to you, Kayla,” Jagger is at my side, petting my cheek. He was amused at first, now he’s worried.
I wipe the happy tears away. “That was about the scariest thing I’ve ever done. You actually take the cake for all the scariest moments in my life, but…. I-can only assume that the only other people who’ve come so close to a lion have either died or are missing limbs if they’ve lived to tell about it.”
I reach up and hug him tightly. You are more than my scariest moments. My best moments in life all come from you…
As he lets me go, I sigh heavily at the sight of the ocean below us.
“A girl could get use to this,” I murmur the cliché line, with a dreamy look in my eyes. With Jagger at my side, I probably could grow accustomed to any environment, good or bad. “How do we get down there without doing some sort of daredevil act, and without the use of one of your modified vehicles?”
The grin on my face wavers as I glance up at Jagger. So far, today has been one for the books. You could’ve asked me while growing up ‘what was the perfect date?’ And this by far exceeds my imagination–lion included. But what’s with him, we’ve been having the greatest time, and now he shoves his hands in his pockets, hardly glancing at the vast sea.
“My grandfather owned about thirty miles, up and down the coast,” he nudges his head. His beautiful blue eyes mirror the ocean, yet he seems to be looking through it. “Before he died, he sold off much of the land.”
I consider Ghanda’s words, and then ask, “He owned The Blue Cove, that resort south of us, didn’t he?”
“Yup, gave it all away and then offed himself.”
The air is knocked out of me in a harsh gasp.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I reach up to stroke his chiseled jaw. My other hand touches his chest. Though his heartbeat is strong, everything else about him is on guard.
Jagger chuckles sardonically. “Kayla, no reason to be sorry. My grandfather was a sorry motherfucker. My grandmother died of cancer. He unhooked his rowboat from the side of his yacht, a few miles down the way,” he points, “filled up the boat with rocks, and rowed his sorry as out into the sea.”
My mouth opens as Jagger tells me about how his grandfather placed the rocks into his pockets and sunk himself.
“That fucker murdered himself.”
I take Jagger’s hands into mine and search his face until I can feel that he’s nowhere else but here, in this present moment, looking at me, too. “Your grandfather,” I begin, words slow and measured for his full understanding, “died of a broken heart.”
Our eyes stay connected for a moment, and then Jagger hugs me closely.
***
The next couple of days are just Jagger and I, unless you take into account the personal assistant he hardly uses who dropped by with provisions and clothing for me on the first afternoon.
We’ve traveled through the desert, and I’ve even taken the wheel of Jagger’s crazy go-kart contraption. Morning sex, self-defense, followed by evening sex encompasses the routine we have fallen into, which is more than welcoming.
Jagger and I go for an evening run on a trail that leads parallel to the cliff and overlooking the ocean. I recall Ghanda’s words about Jagger building his mansion purposefully above the resort. Off in the distance, people are enjoying a swim and drinks along the coast. But as we jog along the trail, I notice that there seems to be some sort of imaginary line.
Jagger soars past me, pivots on the heels of his tennis shoes and runs backward. I almost gasp. There’s no railing and he’s about a yard from falling over the side of the cliff. He asks the very words that are lodged down my throat, “What are you doing?”
“Jogging, endurance training, right?”
He stops abruptly, forcing me to rush against his steel, hard frame. I brace my forearms against his solid chest. “Jag, damn, I told you the other day that running so close to the edge is scary.”
He shrugs. “I told you to stop being so afraid.”
Rising to my tippy toes I start to brush a kiss on his lips when Jagger grabs my cheeks, puckering my mouth.
“We’re supposed to be training, Kayla.”
He lets up enough for me to retort, “Aren’t we?”
“Then turn around,” he nudges his jaw.
My fingertip travels over the sinew of his rock-hard chest. “I thought a longer run would suffice.”
“Not in this direction.”
I let out a huff. Yesterday, Jagger finally mentioned the woman from when I passed out in Trick’s place. Only, her name isn’t Sinclair, it’s Ava Sinclair, and she’s got a problem with me for reasons that are beyond me. But I love our hard afternoons of training, because to me it’s more than a workout. It’s ‘our’ time. And Jagger is probably no less angry at his grandfather for committing suicide years ago than he is now. So I move to the right, closer to the incline and away from the edge, in order to continue in the direction of my run.
“Let’s run a little longer today, Jag. My endurance is increasing,” I give a wink, continuing to head in the direction of the resort. Before I’ve ran a few steps, his arm has clasped around me and lifting me up into the air. Although, Jagger holds me against him, I catch a slight case of vertigo as I look down.
He orders, “I said not that direction.”
“Pp-put me down!” I stutter. At any second, he could lose balance and we’d plummet over the rocks.
“No games. I’m not always going to be there to keep you safe, Mikayla,” he shouts.
The words rock me to my core. First, I wasn’t playing with Jagger, only trying to learn more about him. But the brute force of his tone hurts, and so does how his diaphragm expands, crushing his abdomen to my chest.
“What if I like it here, Jagger? What if this could be our world, and we grew comfortable? You could drive past the land your grandfather owned and not be angry because there’s so much more important things in the world now.”
He barks. “Like what!”
“Us?”
He sets me down on my feet.
“And your parents, Mikayla? What of them? What of Cree and his friends?”
My shoulders slump. “You said you had an idea…”
His sweaty gold-plated muscles glisten in the sun. “You weren’t ready to hear it a few days ago? Are you ready now?”
I tell him the truth. “Yes, I’m ready because I’d rather stand beside you than return to my old life, without you, Jagger. We’ve been through a lot together.”
He shoves his hair back. “Uthando lwami, the people I killed in Long Beach… shooting at your boyfriend, that isn’t even the tip of the iceberg.”
I rub a hand over my face.
Jagger leans back against the incline. “Are you still in love with your boyfriend, Mikayla?”
The intensity that he stares at me with leaves my emotions raw. Can’t Jagger realize that the last couple have days were everything. “And if I say that the love I have for him doesn’t touch the smallest, most insignificant feeling I have for you, would you let me in? Could we walk down by the beach, hand in hand.” I gulp the lump in my throat. “Jagger, I am falling in love with you.”
The simplest act of me holding out my hand sends sheer terror down my spine. I’m more in fear now than I’ve ever been in any of my past dreams. I could give it all away. The elite education. The logic. Saving lives. Not my family of course, Jagger said he can ‘fix’ that, and I trust him. But in order to stay in this world that I’ve been thrust into, I’d strip myself bare, and it feels like I have as I wait for his touch. “We can overcome our fears together.”
Jagger’s large callused hand takes hold of mine, and my lungs fill with fresh oxygen.
“Mikayla, you want to walk along the beach?” As tall and strong as Jagger is, there’s a sense of vulnerability that ribbons from him to me as he shrugs. “You mean more to me than that fucking resort, the land my family once owned, and the home I’ve made for myself above.”
He continues to clasp my hand, and the moment goes from intimate to serious. “In my world, you cannot be afraid, Mikayla. You’ll learn to shoot a gun for me?”
I nod vigorously.
“Alright, then,” he says, “we’ll add marksmanship and combat to your training, when you’re ready, you’ll take on your first mission.”
“Okay,” I reply with confidence.
“Now, which way down,” he leads us closer to the edge. “We could jump or follow the path that you were so hard headedly set on continuing?”
Now, I’m gripping his hand tighter, while moving my feet closer to the edge. The gravel is lose. A small pebble loosens from beneath the ridges in my left shoe and falls.
“We can jump?” I cock a brow. Did I just present that as an inquiry or a statement of fact.
“That’s what I wanted to hear.” Jagger takes a few steps back with me in tow and we’re running full force before it penetrates in my psyche just what we’re doing.
It’s total chaos, invigorating. I scream as we fall. In a fraction of an instant, I recall falling in pitch blackness in all of my dreams and how afraid I’d be. But Jagger’s holding my hand. The cool water welcomes me from my toenails to my hair follicles as we submerge into the sea. Colorful fish jet away, and once my face breaks the edge of the water, I suck in a breath.
Jagger grabs me against him and kisses me hard on the lips. “I could get use to this,” he says.
I giggle between kisses. “Once was enough.”
“You just agreed to obey me for all time, Mikayla.”
My legs wrap around his waist, and I pull his hard body closer. This love is a drug, and so much better than being numb….