Page 36 of Serpent Darling
Sadie rolled her eyes, placed a foot against his shoulder, and kicked gently. Jagger laughed as he toppled backward onto the floor, looking like a Greek god with the sweat gleaming off his muscled body.
"Give a girl a break for a minute. Jesus," she muttered, still trying to collect herself. She watched as he sat back up, reached out to grab her knees, and quickly shut them with a warning look.
Jagger laughed again and used her knees as leverage to stand up. "I'll leave you alone for now, but I've waited too damn long for this, so don't expect me to wait patiently."
She felt the same and moved entirely onto the bed, kicking the top sheets off that they had made a mess of while Jagger grabbed a warm wet washcloth from the bathroom.
"You okay?" He asked as he tenderly cleaned the space between her legs and her thighs.
Sadie nodded. "Yeah, just a little overwhelmed."
Jagger crawled onto the bed with an extra blanket after tossing the washcloth in the laundry bin and pulled her close to him, wrapping an arm around her waist. Sadie pulled the blanket around them when he whispered, "I am too. In a good way, though."
"In a good way," Sadie agreed.
"I meant what I said, Sadie," Jagger whispered against her hair.
"I did, too," Sadie said quietly. "So what do we do now?"
She could hear the smile in his voice even though she couldn't see it. "Now we close the bar down for the week and stay in this bed."
Sadie chuckled and gently slapped his arm before settling deeply into the covers. "You cannot close the bar down for a whole week. And I have to work with my mom during the day anyway, so you'd be stuck up here alone."
“Ugh, Karen Sweetwater. I wonder how she'll handle this news," he said dryly, knowing how much Karen disliked him. She made sure to make him aware of it every chance.
Sadie rubbed her hands over her face tiredly. "It will be bad, but she'll get over it." She peeked at him from between her fingers, still held to her face. "But I meant, what are we going to do about... us?"
Jagger leaned over her, propping himself up on his elbow and kissing her nose. "You're always going to be my best friend. That's never going to change. The only different thing is now we have mind-blowing sex whenever we want."
Sadie pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers in frustration, but she still had a smile on her lips.
Jagger kissed her mouth this time, and she leaned into him. They moved their mouths lazily, and when he pulled away, his hair hung in front of his face, making him look just like the young version of him she had met in college.
"Sadie," he whispered, locking eyes. "We will figure it out the same way we do everything. Together."
Sadie knew he meant it. There was no doubt in her mind.
And when she responded in kind, Jagger knew she meant it, too.
"Together."
EPILOGUE
Six months.
Six months is all it took for Sadie and Jagger to go from friends to lovers to living together.
The Serpent Pit was bringing in quite a crowd as of late, and the Dregs have yet to be around to bother anyone. They are likely too embarrassed to show their faces since they got their asses handed to them. Jagger's dad, Warren, has officially left the bar to him in his absence but has promised to visit for Christmas. He has also pledged to dole out any other odd jobs to Lethal Lenny and leave Jagger out of it. Jagger got two final roses added to the sleeve on his arm after that call, and when Sadie asked him again what they meant, he told her the truth - that they were in remembrance of the people he had killed when he ran jobs for the Rebels.
Jagger had collapsed into the chair beside his bed with his head in his hands after his confession and waited for her to leave. Sadie simply crawled into his lap and held him until he believed she'd stay.
Sadie continued to bartend on the weekends, seeing as how her boyfriend has to manage the bar anyway, so she might as well help out. During the week, she works full time with her mom and has been enjoying the new freedom of running it herself. Her mother, Karen, decided after a massive fight with her daughter that it was best she take a smaller role in helping with the paper and moved closer to her other daughter, Fiona, to help and spend more time with her grandchildren. The fight had been a necessity; Sadie spoke of how much Karen pressured her to be perfect and that it was causing her to make bad choices for herself to make her happy. Bad decisions like Travis. Karen tried to convince her that she was making a terrible mistake being with "trash from the Southside of Central," but seeing how that "trash" was her best friend and now boyfriend, Karen finally got that slap in the face she deserved. It snapped her out of her controlling haze and made her realize how unfair she had been, which inevitably caused a new chain of events in their lives.
Karen plans to host Christmas for everyone this year since she’s still living in the area.
With their past and parents out of the way, it's been a whirlwind as Jagger and Sadie get used to these new dynamics. But they have enjoyed the learning curve - and curves of each other's bodies while they figure it out.
Jagger has a meeting with a publishing house in New York next week about the novel he's been working on since college, and they are counting on their blessings to have made it this far. Sadie gave up the lease on her apartment a month after she and Jagger started seeing each other and moved in above the bar with him. Jagger tried to convince her that they should find a different place together, but she insisted that this would be better until they were more financially stable and could afford a place to move their playroom. She made it very clear that the playroom was as vital to her as it was to him, and he reluctantlyagreed to stay at the Serpent Pit until they had some more money saved up or things worked out for his book.
