by Sam Mariano
“Jeeze,” I mutter, falling against the bed and watching him unbuckle his belt, tossing it behind him, and unzip his pants.
“Still want my cock?” he teases.
“So, so much.”
“I can make that happen,” he says lightly, sinking against me, positioning himself between my legs.
“What can’t you make happen?” I return with a roll of my eyes.
“Rain, probably.”
I start to laugh, but then he pushes inside me and all traces of amusement are quickly pushed out to make room for desire. He fills me slowly, capturing my lips with his. I wind my arms around his neck to keep him close as he moves his hips, easing out before pushing inside of me. I love the slow torment sometimes, but tonight it’s killing me. I need more. Harder. Faster.
Thankfully, I don’t have to wait too long. Once he’s satisfied that he won’t hurt me, he hikes my legs up and thrusts deep. His unyielding hips pound into mine again and again, pushing me closer and closer with each deep stroke. He claims me with every part of him—his mouth, his hands, his cock.
When he pushes me past my bursting point, I come apart in his arms, pleasure exploding inside me. He keeps up his pace as my pussy grips him, convulsing around his cock.
“Oh, fuck, Meg,” he mutters, closing his eyes and giving one last thrust. I open my eyes in time to see him tense and groan with his own orgasm. I flex my muscles as he moves slowly, trying to give him every last drop of pleasure I can.
Finally, with a sigh, he drops on top of me. I embrace him snugly, dropping a couple of absent kisses on his shoulder.
When we’ve both recovered, but we’re still relaxed, he tells me, “We should do that again in a few minutes.”
I snort, rubbing his back tenderly. “We should keep doing it all night long.”
“I like the way you think.”
---
My second Sunday dinner is a vast improvement over the first.
Mia and I commiserate in the kitchen. Elise doesn’t join in, and I wonder if we should try to include her more. I’m still not super sure what’s going on with her. The understanding seems to be that she’s Adrian’s, and she sits to his right at dinner now, but they never touch or give any indication of togetherness.
When she goes to the bathroom, I nudge Mia to get her attention. “What’s the deal with those two?”
“Which two?” she asks, wrapping foil around a pie crust.
“Adrian and Elise.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She shakes her head, lightly rolling her eyes. “It’s super confusing but Vince really likes Adrian so he won’t gossip about him, and also Vince just isn’t big on gossip at all. Now that I don’t live at the castle, I have no idea what goes on at court.”
I snort at that. “Mateo’s court. Does that make me the queen?”
“I think it does,” she verifies with a smiling nod. “I’m at least a knight’s wife.”
“And you have the king’s favor,” I add lightly.
“Well, knights are dashing, but I’m not gonna say no to new baubles.”
“I’m sure someday Vince will have bauble money. He’s young.”
“I’m not complaining,” she says. “I joke about the shoes, but it’s more than worth living without them to have peace of mind. Though I feel like you’ve mellowed Mateo a little. It’s nice that he has something to occupy his time other than playing with all our lives.”
“I like to think I’m much more fun to play with.”
Mia grins. “I don’t doubt it.”
“You guys should move back,” I decide, dropping my knife into the sink. “Then we could hang out all the time.”
“No,” she drawls, shaking her head. “No, no, no, no, no, no.”
“You sure you don’t need to think about that?” I joke. “Was it really so bad living here?”
“I just don’t want to tempt Mateo.” Glancing my way quickly, she adds, “Not that way. Well, kind of. I don’t know. I just think it’s best for everyone to leave things the way they are. Besides, I have a car now, so I can come over anytime we want to hang out.”
I don’t like the implication that she thinks he would stray, but I decide it’s just because she doesn’t know him the way I do.
We serve our men and take our seats beside them. Mateo doesn’t drop any new bombs, so we all get to enjoy our meals tonight.
I can’t help wondering if there’s been any update though. I don’t feel comfortable asking Mateo about the “business” side of things, but I would really love an update on the Antonio Castellanos situation. Mia’s my only trusted ally, and she doesn’t know any of that stuff either. Adrian surely does, but that’s a step too far—I won’t ask him that.
Chapter Sixteen
“I knew you were bad, but I didn’t know you were this bad.”
Mateo licks the last of his vanilla ice cream from the spoon, then nods at me. “I’ll understand if this is too much for you.”
I got a much bigger serving of ice cream than he did, so I plunge my spoon in and get ready to dump more into my mouth. “You never even finish your dessert at dinner. I never took you for a midnight ice cream sneak.”
“I have cravings.”
Wiggling my eyebrows as I lean into his side on the big, comfy couch, I say, “Oh, so do I.”
He smiles, leaning forward to put his empty ice cream dish on the coffee table in the sitting room, then sinks back into the couch and wraps his arm around me again.
“Why is French vanilla so good?” I ask, shaking my head as I stare accusingly at the spoon. “You shouldn’t encourage me to eat ice cream in the middle of the night. I have dresses to fit into.”
“I figured if I couldn’t sleep, you shouldn’t either,” he returns.
“How kind and thoughtful,” I joke.
“Those are the first words people generally use to describe me.”
Spooning more frozen deliciousness into my mouth, I ask, “Why couldn’t you sleep?”
He shrugs, and I feel it since I’m wrapped in his arms. “Got a lot on my mind.”
“Like?”
“Adrian’s leaving and I don’t want to replace him. Got someone trying to kill me, don’t really want that to happen. Trying to sleep next to someone I just want to wake up and fuck all night long, but I’m trying to be nice and let her sleep.”
“Let’s unpack those first two,” I say, tilting my head back to look at him. “Then after I finish this ice cream, we can get to work on that third thing.”
“I’m not used to having someone like you to talk about this stuff with,” he states.
It’s a simple thing to admit, but it feels important. A man like Mateo has a lot of people around him all the time, but not a lot of actual friends. I remember Mia telling me something like that when I first asked her about him—how what he really needs is someone he can rely on.
I take his hand, giving it a little squeeze. “You never talked about this stuff with…” I trail off, actually not sure who I should ask about. Mia or Beth? Probably Beth, since Mia wasn’t a full-fledged girlfriend.
Not making me figure it out, he says, “I talked about stuff with Beth. Turned out not to be such a good idea.”
“Well, that’s not the case here,” I assure him. “Why is Adrian leaving?”
“Because his time’s up. Adrian’s never wanted to work for me; he was just working off a debt. Now that he’s free to leave, that’s what he’ll do.”
It’s weird to think about life without Adrian. Now that I think about it, Adrian is always around somewhere, usually with Mateo, but occasionally with me. Either way, he’s an institution in this household. “You can’t entice him to stay?” I ask.
He shakes his head and begins toying with the locket hanging around my neck. “I tried. None of his potential replacements are even half as good as he is. Adrian catches shit that most people don’t—sometimes even me, and I notice just about everything. People fear me, I’m the one with the power, but I
keep it by having men like him. I stay alive by having men like him.”
“Then you’ve gotta convince him. Want me to talk to him? I’ll offer him ice cream.”
Cracking a smile, he twists the chain around his finger. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of that.”
“What happens once he leaves, then? I mean, will people stay in line, or…?”
“I don’t know. It would be a good time to make a move on me. Transition is never smooth.”
“You should stay home until you break someone else in.”
Mateo rolls his eyes, but smiles at my concern. “I can’t hide. Quite the opposite—when they’re looking for weakness, that’s when you have to show strength. I don’t want more, that’s why I’ve tried co-existing with Castellanos this long, but you can’t just bow out. At this point it’s more about maintaining what I’ve already got. This greedy motherfucker’s making that impossible though. I still don’t know who my leak is. Plenty to worry about right now.”
I set my ice cream aside and climb off the couch, getting on my knees behind him so I can rub his shoulders. “Well, I don’t know how to help, but if you think of anything I can do, let me know.”
“You just keep doing what you’re doing,” he says. “You’re the only part of my life I don’t have complaints about right now.”
“Yay!” I say, leaning down and giving him a kiss on the cheek. “That makes me happy.”
He catches my head, turning to give me a lengthier kiss.
When I pull back, I go back to his shoulder rub. “Anyway, so what about this Castellanos guy? Why can’t you just have someone take him out if he’s the problem?”
“Well, I can, and I’ll probably have to. Problem with that is that he’s the head of the family and if I move against them that way, it’ll start a war none of us wanted. And I lose that war as soon as I start it, because if I lose—well, self-explanatory, and if I win, I get control over territory I have no interest in. I don’t take control of it, someone else will, someone I can’t control, and then down the road I have the exact same problem. I want peace, and that’s hard to come by in this business.”
“Yeah, I can see that.” I wish I had more to offer than that. It does sound like a real problem, and a dangerous problem. “Can I ask you something sort of unrelated?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the deal with your dad? Obviously not anymore, but I wandered upstairs when we were staying in the servant house, and, well, your dad’s apparently up there.”
“Yeah, fucker won’t die.”
My eyebrows rise, but I continue kneading his shoulders. “So, you’re close?” I ask lightly.
“He’s a bastard. I mentioned him—your necklace.”
“Yeah, I remember. I got the abbreviated version though. You said you told Beth about it when you gave her the necklace. I just sort of got the ‘don’t betray me, there’s a story, take this necklace, let’s have sex’ version. Which, not complaining, but…”
He leans back to smile at me. “Is that a direct quote?”
“Verbatim.”
He sighs, but remains tilted back, looking at me. “It’s a dark story.”
“I’ll bring my flashlight.”
He takes my hand and walks me back around the couch, tugging me down into his lap and holding me. “My father, also Mateo, but everyone calls him Matt. Anyway, he didn’t want to be in the business. He was more like Vince in that regard. He tried to leave the life behind, which isn’t a thing you can just do, especially if you’re the eldest son of the last boss and destined to take things over. He ran anyway. They found him. This girl Belle got mixed up in it—I think she was just a waitress. He was trying to steal her car and she wouldn’t get out, so she ended up mixed up in it. I always heard she did like him a bit then, who knows if it’s true? Regardless, she didn’t once she got stuck with him. The family trapped them together, tied her life to him. They ended up married. My father was okay with it, but she wasn’t. Instead of getting used to him, she actively rejected him. Got bad.”
“Sounds like it.”
“Our bakery, the one Francesca runs, she started working there just to get away from him. There was a male baker…”
“Uh oh.”
He nods. “They had an affair. She got pregnant. My dad tried to kill her, but his sister intervened. She was the paper person, made forged documents and that, so she helped Belle escape with my older sister and this baker. My mom was already on his hook at this point. He had started trying to punish Belle with unfaithfulness—which was a bad strategy, since she didn’t want anything to do with him, but A for effort, I guess. So he and my mom got together, and he spent years torturing her until she killed herself to escape him.”
“Jeeze. That is dark.”
“Not done,” he says, giving me a little squeeze. “So, years after my mom died, his guys finally found Belle.”
“Uh oh again.”
“Yeah. My sister Luciana was in school. My dad sent a car for her so she didn’t go home. He slaughtered everyone else—Belle, the baker, their twins. It was…” Sighing heavily, he says, “I’ve done some bad shit in my time, but my father derives life force from the misery of those around him.”
“Oh my god,” I say, stomach sinking at the scene he’s painted.
“I’m not saying I wouldn’t be vengeful in the same situation, but… I give you midnight ice cream and shopping sprees.”
I lean back to glance up at him. “You definitely do not make me miserable. I’ll put that in another card for you. Man, I’m so free with the—Oh, God, that first time I said I wouldn’t kill myself to get away from you, didn’t I?” I remember, turning to stare at him in horror. “I didn’t know about your mom. That was a horrible joke. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he says easily. “So, that’s volume one. Then he did a whole bunch of other heinous shit. I’m more a mental tormentor; he’s always gone for the physical type. Unsurprisingly also not a great father.”
“You haven’t mentally tormented me—much,” I add, since there was that whole awful crate incident. We won’t speak of that.
“Give it time,” he says lightly.
“I think I prefer ice cream and shopping sprees to mental torture and manipulation. Let’s stick with what works.”
“I’ll consider it,” he says, glancing at the ice cream. “Did you finish that? We have a third thing to get to work on, remember?”
I grab the bowl, scooping up the mostly melted mess. “I’ve been training for this my whole life. Give me a minute.”
He checks the watch on his wrist. “I’m counting.”
“I love that you wear an actual watch,” I tell him, shoveling spoonfuls of melty ice cream into my mouth. “It’s so sexy and I don’t know why.”
“You’re so crazy,” he says, shaking his head, giving up the pretense of timing me. “Why do you like me so much?”
I give an exaggerated shrug as I finish the last of it, slamming it theatrically down onto the table. “I did it!” Without another word, I turn around and straddle him, right there on the couch in the sitting room.
“I thought we were going to bed,” he reminds me, though his hands are already sliding up under my shirt.
“The bed’s kind of far,” I point out, helping him get my shirt over my head.
---
I’m craving kung pao chicken like my life legitimately depends on eating it.
With rice. And an egg roll. Oh, my god.
I don’t know if Adrian is still giving me rides, since Mateo didn’t specify when his last day actually is, so I text Mateo to ask who is responsible for shuttling me around today.
Last stretch of employment or not, Adrian is the one who shows up to escort me.
I’m picky about my Chinese, though. Disappointing Chinese food is one of life’s great tragedies, so I make Adrian drive me all the way into the city instead of stopping at the place up the road.
“Does Mateo like do
ughnuts?” I ask as we head to the entrance of the restaurant. “I’m gonna order some of the doughnuts. They’re basic, but so delicious.”
“Mateo doesn’t like sweets,” Adrian informs me.
“They’re not that sweet though. And he likes ice cream.”
“Only when he’s in the mood for it.”
I shouldn’t be so easily amused, but now all I can envision is Mateo and Adrian spooning in the sitting room, eating midnight ice cream.
“When’s your last day?” I ask him.
Appearing somewhat startled, he says, “What?”
“Mateo told me you’re leaving.”
Seeming uncomfortable, he tells me, “I’ll be at family dinner this Sunday, then I won’t be anymore.”
“It seemed like you were part of the family. I can’t imagine you not being around. Will you ever stop by to visit?”
As if I’ve asked something utterly ridiculous, he shakes his head. “No.”
“So, Sunday’s goodbye?” I don’t try to hide my disappointment. He should know he’ll be missed.
“I’m not part of the Morelli family,” he states. “I never was, I never will be.”
“I disagree,” I tell him, letting him open the door for me.
“Well, it won’t be the first or last time you’re wrong,” he mutters.
“I thought you and Mateo were friends.”
“No. Not friends.”
I think he’s being obstinate, but I don’t bother arguing as I head for the line to place my order. I didn’t consider that it’s lunch time, and they have a lunch special, so the place is crawling with people. It takes forever to get up to the register just to place the order, and then they tell us it’ll be a fifteen-minute wait anyway.
Adrian is displeased.
“I understand your time is valuable, but I might’ve died without kung pao chicken,” I explain to him reasonably.
“Better chance you’ll die with it,” he says, raking an unimpressed look around the little hole in the wall restaurant.
“At least I’ll die happy.”
A few more minutes tick by, then Adrian catches the server’s attention. “You got a bathroom in here?”