by Sam Mariano
“I don’t understand. Did something happen to Mia?”
“Everything is fine,” I type back. “I will see you at dinner and you can tell me what you found.”
I have a hunch Adrian is still dissatisfied with this response, but he’s not my boss; I don’t have to explain myself to him.
With that matter settled, I put my phone back on my nightstand and draw Mia closer. She shifts with me while I get more comfortable with her in my arms, then naturally settles against me, still asleep.
It should occur to me that I’m in trouble when I hold her close and kiss the top of her head while she sleeps. I’m sexually satisfied, she’s not even awake, yet still I want to hold her closer, touch her, kiss her.
It’s been years since I’ve had that urge with a woman. I don’t know if it’s just because Mia is the first woman I’ve had in my bed again—not that I’ve slept with, obviously, but that I’ve brought into my personal space, into my bedroom, into my house.
I tell myself it’s that, but it feels like a lie.
It doesn’t matter. I don’t have to deal with this right now and I don’t want to, so instead I turn off my brain, breathe in the sweet scent of coconut, and try to fall back asleep.
---
When my eyes open again, it’s bright outside.
That’s quite an abnormality for me. Occasionally on Sundays I sleep in, but ordinarily I begin every day before the sun rises. I like it that way.
Of course, I can’t complain about this, either. Mia is still slumbering. She’s a late sleeper if no one wakes her up—I swear to God, the girl could spend 12 hours a day in bed if you let her. I wake her up every morning to fuck her, but when I’m done, she goes right back to sleep.
Her face is serene as she sleeps with her face against my chest, her arm around my waist. Her long hair falls over my right bicep.
I wonder if she’s hungry.
She’s sleeping now, obviously, but surely she’ll be hungry when she wakes up. I grab my phone to see what time it is—9:18. Damn. Half the morning’s already gone. I grab my phone and shoot a text to Maria to see what she’s doing. Her morning routine has been interrupted with Mia’s presence in my room this week. Ordinarily, she would have my bedding changed and my room set to rights by now, but since Mia is on lockdown, she’s unable to do that. Breakfast would also be over by now on any given Saturday, but since I lazed here in bed all morning, I didn’t eat.
Once she texts me back, I tell her to make my breakfast—two plates of it, so Mia can eat with me. She’s probably as surprised as Adrian that I’m home in bed, but at least Maria doesn’t annoy me about it.
As much as I hate to, I ease out from under Mia so I can slip in the bathroom before Maria comes up. I consider taking a quick shower, but then I think about showering with Mia instead. I have uninterrupted hours at my disposal; I can definitely get her in this shower with me.
That sounds so much more appealing than showering alone.
Images of her in the shower warm my blood again. I’m tempted to go wake her up, but Maria’s coming up. I might not have much decency, but I do have enough not to fuck Mia when Maria could walk in on us.
I’ll save it for the shower.
I pull on a pair of black sweats since Maria’s coming in and dig out my laptop. I don’t do much work from my bedroom. I suppose it’s not unreasonable that Adrian assumed I was sick; that’s the only time I ever take days off, and I can count on one hand how many times I’ve been sick in my adult life.
I wonder if Mia’s a baby when she’s sick.
What a fucking weird thing to wonder about.
The indigestion comes back. Maybe it’s not indigestion. I’m not sure what it is, but it’s unsettling. I’m not a man accustomed to emotional stirring of any sort. I don’t flinch when I kill a man at this point, so fantasizing about caring for a damned girl in her time of sickness—it’s fucking stupid, that’s what it is.
Maria knocks at the door, saving me from whatever idiotic things my mind might wonder about next. Her gaze hits me briefly, but she pauses and looks a moment longer when she sees I’m in sweats.
“Are you sick?”
I stifle a sigh. “No, Maria, I’m not sick.”
“You’re not dressed. You’re still in bed at 10am?”
“Am I not allowed to take days off? Is there a rule about it that someone forgot to share with me?”
Maria scowls at me, watches for a moment, then says decisively, “I will make you soup.”
“I don’t need soup,” I state. “As I just said, I’m not sick.”
She ignores me and takes the serving tray over to the bed, her gaze moving to Mia. Although the blankets are pulled up around her, it’s clear she’s naked beneath them. Maria shoots me another look of clear disapproval.
“Still want to make me soup?” I ask, lightly amused.
“This is Vince’s girl, not yours,” Maria informs me.
My humor swiftly evaporates. “Not anymore, she’s not. He gave her up.”
“Because of you.”
“That’s not a good reason,” I state. My gaze drifts to the bed. I don’t want to wake her up and have this be the first thing she overhears. That won’t be a good start to the day. Then she’ll be all guilty and sad. I didn’t take the day off for that. “Thank you for bringing up breakfast,” I say to Maria, so she knows she’s dismissed.
Her lips thin with continued disapproval but she leaves the tray and walks away, leaving a cloud of disappointment in her wake.
I don’t know why she thinks that will work on me. It’s Vince’s own fucking stupidity that he surrendered her the way he did. Someone else touched his toy so he threw it away. Fucking moron. I watched the footage; I know what a dick he was to her in that hallway. He overreacted and he doesn’t get to cry about it now.
Since breakfast is here, I pick up the tray and carry it over to my side of the bed. Mia’s still asleep so I set the tray on the ground and crawl up behind her, sliding my arms around her tiny waist and pulling her back against me. She stirs and I lean in, peppering her neck with kisses. A little mewl of pleasure slips out of her and she turns her head to look back at me with a sleepy smile.
“Didn’t you already get your morning orgasm?”
“I did,” I tell her, between kisses on her shoulder. “I’m greedy, though; I wouldn’t turn down two.”
“You are greedy,” she mutters, trying to snuggle back into her pillow.
I slide my hand down her side and run it over her ass. God, I love her ass. I give it a squeeze and wait to see if she’ll complain. She remains quiet, so I take another inch, sliding my hand between her thighs and rubbing my finger along the entrance of her pussy. I hear her breath catch, but she doesn’t attempt to stop me. I take another inch, slipping my index finger inside her. I play with her for a minute and she doesn’t object, so I take a few more inches, rolling her onto her back and moving on top of her. She’s pliant, opening her legs to accommodate me. I watch her face as I caress her. She meets my gaze while the pleasure is steady, but when I play with her clit and build up her excitement, she looks away.
I want a kiss, so I take one. She doesn’t hesitate to kiss me back this time, but she writhes and tries to scoot away from my hand as I push her too close to an orgasm.
I stop before it hits and withdraw my finger. I want to taste her, but I won’t be able to stop until she comes if I do. Her faint groan of disappointment when my finger leaves her brings a grin to my face. She narrows her eyes at me and I give her another kiss.
“Maria brought breakfast,” I tell her, moving off her and retrieving the tray.
“You’re having breakfast with me?” she asks, clutching the comforter against her chest and scooting up into a sitting position.
“I am.”
“Ooh,” she says, leaning in and closing her eyes as she smells the aroma of the food. “It smells delicious. You like avocado?”
“Nope. I specifically ask Maria to make food
that I hate.”
She wrinkles up her nose at me, then reaches for the orange juice and takes a sip. “This looks super healthy. You’re a healthy eater, aren’t you?”
I assume this is still her mission to learn everything about me, but I nod my head. “Generally, yes.”
“Do you really dislike dessert, or do you just deny yourself?”
I smile faintly. “Does it seem like I’m a man who denies myself pleasure, Mia?”
Her cheeks turn pink and she takes a breakfast pita, carefully moving it closer and eyeing up the toppings. “No, I guess not.” She breaks off a piece of the avocado on top of her pita and pops it into her mouth before peeking up at me again. “So, why are you single?”
Quirking a curious eyebrow, I reach for my own plate. “Unorthodox courting methods,” I offer, dryly.
She bites back a smile, nodding once. “Okay, I concede that point. But you said I’m the first...” Mia pauses awkwardly, trying to figure out how to word it again.
“You don’t have to tiptoe,” I assure her. “I’m a big boy. I can handle it.”
“I don’t want to make it weird,” she insists.
“It’s already weird.”
“Fine, I don’t want to…” She rolls her eyes, as if even annoyed at herself, but she continues anyway. “I don’t want to make you feel bad.”
I offer her a faint smile. “You won’t.” That’s the single most ridiculous thing anyone has ever said to me given the circumstances. I know she avoids conflict, but Jesus Christ, where’s the line?
“Well, anyway, you indicated this isn’t your ordinary method of seduction.”
Damn, I can’t help smiling a little wider. “Am I seducing you, Mia?”
“I don’t know; are you?”
I expected her to blush and change the subject again, but her response doesn’t sound like a joke. It’s just like yesterday, when she was all but begging me to tell her what we’re doing here. I wish I knew what to tell her. Obviously I can’t tell her what the plan actually is, but my plan is holding less and less appeal. I think about this morning with the gun on the end table—did she even see it? Maybe she’s merely unobservant. Maybe she didn’t realize the gun was there. Here I am giving her credit, but maybe she just got lucky.
My gun is still on the bedside table. Before I can talk myself out of it, I get off the bed.
Mia sighs. “Fine, leave me hanging here in suspense again. Where are you going?”
I lower my plate to the surface, putting it down behind the gun. Since I move slowly, she has enough time to follow my movements. I know the moment her gaze hits my gun because her eyes widen and her expression freezes.
As if I didn’t notice, I tell her, “Forgot to wash my hands.”
Mia swallows, her gaze lingering on the gun for a second, then her gaze drops to the bedding. I don’t wait. I simply leave my plate and head for the bathroom.
Dread weighs on me, but I tell myself it’s for no reason. It’s not that I trust her, exactly, it’s just that she was struggling to even say something that might make me feel uncomfortable, so from that to trying to kill me is quite a leap.
The problem right now isn’t that I think Mia will be waiting on the other side of the door with my gun; it’s that if she is, I don’t want to deal with it. I don’t want to deal with her. I’m not done with her. If I walk back in the bedroom and she has my gun in her hands, I’m not sure that will change. Frankly, the thought of her sitting up in my bed, naked, struggling with whether or not she should try to defend herself against me, then deciding to try—well, the sort of punishment I want to dole out isn’t a bullet, to put it that way.
I brace my weight on the edge of the sink, bowing my head and trying to get my shit together. I’m not supposed to like this fucking girl. She’s a witness to Vince’s sloppy as fuck job. She’s a good person who can put Adrian at the scene of a crime.
She’s also the secret Vince kept from me. She’s supposed to be a fucking example I was making, not someone I want to keep.
I wash my hands, but the problem I really need to wash my hands of is sitting naked in my bed, and now I want to see if she’s eating breakfast or trying to escape.
I clear my expression and head through the bathroom door, back into my bedroom. My gaze immediately goes to Mia. She’s still on my bed, looking down at her lap. I move a little faster until I’m close enough to see what she’s looking down at.
Her breakfast.
She turns her head to look at me, offers a tiny smile, then looks back down at her plate. Her hair falls in her face. I raise my gaze to the bedside table and relief pours through me. She didn’t touch the gun. I know she saw it this time, so it wasn’t luck, it was a choice.
I feel a little lighter as I walk around the bed and retrieve my plate, reclaiming my spot on the bed beside her. “Probably shouldn’t have left that lying there, huh?” I murmur, as if just realizing I left the gun out. I could let it go, but I want an explanation.
“Your breakfast?” she asks, raising an eyebrow. “I have my own; I don’t have to steal yours.”
I roll my eyes. “No, the gun. The thing you could’ve used to shoot me. If you’re that hungry, by all means, steal my breakfast.”
She rolls her eyes right back, like I’m being ridiculous. “You don’t have to guard your gun around me. I already told you, you can trust me. Not telling on you, not trying to shoot you—it’s an all-inclusive trust package.”
Is she really referring to the night in the library? “Yes, well, your circumstances have changed quite drastically since you made that offer. I didn’t expect it to hold.”
Mia shrugs, eyeing up the avocado that fell off her pita and onto her plate. She picks it up and piles it back on top. “Well, it does.”
“You still want to be my friend?” I ask, not trying to filter the disbelief out of my tone.
It’s a label, so she latches onto it. “Is that what we are? Are we friends?”
I can’t help shaking my head. “You and your goddamn labels. Do many of your friends fuck you two to three times a day?” I ask, casually.
“Well, no. But I assumed you might not be the traditional sort of friend. Even my boyfriend didn’t do that.”
Her tone drops by the end of that sentence, and I assume it’s the mention of Vince. Before she can fall down that particular rabbit hole, I reach over, grab her around the back of the neck, and pull her in for a kiss. She has to bend awkwardly, but she kisses me back. I take her plate, not breaking the kiss, and put it on the tray. Then I move my own. Once my lap is clear, I pull back the blankets on top of her and lift her, settling her on my lap.
She’s a little flushed, but she doesn’t object when I pull her in for another kiss. Instead, her hands settle on my shoulders briefly, then wind around my neck. My cock stirs, reminding me of the shower I want to take. Damn, I should’ve let her finish her breakfast first.
I let her break the kiss after a minute, but she doesn’t try to move off my lap. Instead she curls into my shoulder, sort of hugging and cuddling me at the same time. “I don’t think friends kiss this much,” she tells me.
I smirk. “Your friends, maybe. Mine do.”
At that, she pops right up, mildly alarmed. “You mean like… before this, or… currently? When would you even have time to entertain other women? Jesus Christ.”
“Well, no, not right this moment.”
Still, she wrinkles up her nose, displeased by this last batch of news.
Now she crawls off my lap and scoots back into her spot, retrieving her breakfast plate.
Damn, instead of reminding her I raped her, I should’ve talked to her about other women before I left her in the room with my gun. That may have tempted her more.
What an odd woman. Of course, I’m an odd man, so maybe that’s all right.
I try not to feel so damn smug, but I do. Her jealousy is insane, but adorable. One might think a woman in her situation would be relieved if I turned my attentions
elsewhere, but now she’s stewing as she eats, wondering if I’m out fucking other women when I’m not here with her.
I found a surefire way to piss her off, I know that.
Not that I want to piss her off.
“I’m not fucking anyone else, Mia.” It should bother me that she expects me to answer to her for something like this, but somehow it only pleases me. When she regards me with tentative relief, it pleases me more. “I wouldn’t have time,” I tell her, lightly. “You keep my cock busy enough as it is.”
She tries not to look pleased, but she’s shit at schooling her facial expressions. I shouldn’t reassure her. I should be trying to piss her off. I should tell her I’m fucking other women every day—anything to piss her off.
As if she can sense my thoughts and she wants to blow them right out of my brain, she looks over at me with a warm smile that gives me that feeling of indigestion again. “Good,” she says, simply.
---
Instead of soup to cure my imaginary illness, Maria comes back an hour later with a folder full of papers for Mia.
“What’s this?” Mia asks, curiously, as it transfers into her hand.
I didn’t know anything about Mia getting any kind of paperwork, so I regard Mia with even more curiosity than Mia does.
“Homework,” Maria says, lifting her chin in the air. It’s at me, not at Mia. She’s lobbing a flaming ball of shit into my nice day off and she knows it. “Vince brought it home for you since you’ve missed the past few days of school. He thought you might want to catch up. If you have time,” she adds, her disdainful gaze sliding my way.
Mia’s a few shades paler now, clutching the pack of papers. “Thank you,” she says, quietly.
Goddamn it, Maria. I narrow my eyes at her to let her know I’m not pleased, but she feigns innocence, takes our breakfast dishes, and leaves us to the fallout.
I can see from the pained look on Mia’s face that she’s thinking of Vince now. It pisses me off—she’s been in a good mood this morning and I was enjoying it. Before she can sink into a hole of guilt, I distract her. “Do you enjoy school?”