by Sam Mariano
Mateo seems amused. “Adrian, huh?”
“No,” I object, my face so hot, I don’t know how I don’t combust. “I don’t really dream of being double-teamed by you and Adrian, but Meg said I wouldn’t be able to bring it, and…”
“And you brought it,” Meg states, warily impressed.
“It’s fiction. All fiction. Those aren’t really my fantasies,” I swear, even though part of that is a total lie. Obviously I can’t tell Meg I’d really like to worship her fiancé’s cock.
Well, not without wine, at least.
“Holy shit, Mia,” Meg says, shaking her head.
“I’m sorry?”
“I can’t have sex yet, so you should be,” she says, laughing a little.
“You can come tell naughty bedtime stories anytime,” Mateo assures me.
“Ugh.” I bury my face under blankets again. “I knew I should’ve said no.”
“I would’ve never accepted no for an answer,” Meg assures me. “I wanted a peek inside your fantasies. Mission accomplished.”
“I already told you those aren’t my fantasies,” I say, still hiding.
“No?” she asks, lightly. “So, if I told you I wouldn’t mind if you relieved my very aroused fiancé by sucking his cock right now, you totally wouldn’t be interested?”
I jerk the blanket back, watching her with wide eyes.
Mateo’s staring at her too, as stunned as I am.
Meg merely lifts a perfect eyebrow in challenge.
I don’t speak, because I’m afraid. Is this a trick? Meg and I are obviously best friends, but she just listened to me very vividly describe sexual relations with her man—maybe I overstepped.
Mateo’s the one who breaks the silence, since I can’t. “Are you serious?”
He’s on the other side of her—we always sleep with her between us when I spend the night, to remind us all of Meg’s place. Rolling to face him, she lets her hand drift down between his legs, feeling how hard he is.
“Just this once,” she says, meeting his eyes and caressing him. “With me watching.”
His hand comes up to cup her face and he kisses her. “Have I told you lately how incredible you are?”
This makes my heart hurt a little bit, but there’s so much promise in the air right now, I don’t even feel it the way I expect to.
Planting one more kiss on Meg’s mouth, he climbs across her body to come to me, and all of a sudden, the only pain I feel is the little pinch of arousal, knowing I’m not going to get off in this scenario. That’s okay, though. As long as Meg’s game, I’m more than happy to serve Mateo.
“Your story was pretty fucking good,” he tells me, his hand reaching for mine. Placing it on his cock. I caress him through the dark grey sweatpants he wears to bed when I’m here. I still can’t believe Meg’s okay with this, so I dart a look at her, just to make sure.
“Just pretend I’m not here,” she tells me, bracing her elbow on the pillow and resting her head on her hand.
That’s impossible. If she wasn’t here, I could kiss him. I could touch him everywhere. I could let him fuck me. How do I pretend she isn’t here?
Mateo sees me struggling so he takes charge, bending to kiss my neck. He comes in at just the right angle, on the right side, and now I can’t see Meg anymore. Now Mateo is filling my senses—the smell of him, the feel of him. His hands roam down my sides, his warm breath on my ear as he whispers, “It’s okay, Mia.”
The reassurance is the last thing I expect from this man, and it turns me into putty in his very capable hands. My hands drift to his bare chest, sliding over his firm muscles, running over his shoulders. God, I wish he could fuck me. I want to hold onto those shoulders as he moves inside me. I want his cock, but not just in my mouth.
I’ll take what I can get, though.
I push him back into my spot on the bed so I can climb on top of him. I can feel how hard he is, but I bend to kiss my way down his chest anyway. Slowly I move my lips down over his abdomen, my heart racing from my incredible attraction to this man. I can’t believe I get to do this.
My fingers hook on the waistband of his pants and I tug them down, sighing a little at the sight of his big cock, already erect from my story. I want him so badly.
I look up at him one more time, then I bring my face down, gripping him with one hand, placing a series of slow, wet kisses along his length.
Mateo sighs. I glance up and see his head fall back, so I dart my tongue out, dragging it along his length, then wrapping it around his head, using the tip of my tongue to play with him.
“Jesus Christ, Mia,” he murmurs, his hand coming down to grip my hair, just like in my story. “Take my cock, sweetheart. Take it all.”
Arousal pulses between my thighs as I obey him, slowly taking him all the way into my mouth. I can feel his head brush the back of my throat and my gag reflex works to push him out, but I focus on his groan of pleasure and force myself to relax. Force myself to take all of him. He waits for me to adjust, then uses his grip on my hair to guide me.
“You like my cock in your mouth, Mia?”
I moan, closing my eyes as I move my mouth over him. Oh, God. It’s not fair. I’m so horny and I have Mateo’s cock in my mouth and I want more. I need more.
My fingers dig into his hip and I moan again as I labor over his cock. His grip tightens in my hair and he laughs, a husky little laugh. “I’m afraid your story was too good, sweetheart. This isn’t going to last as long as it usually does.”
I don’t care. I just want to give him pleasure. I want to hear him cry out and know it’s because of me.
And he does, and as I swallow the evidence of his release, I feel a moment of sheer elation. I’ve never experienced it before with no physical stimulation to my own body, but I do get a spike of pleasure out of knowing I just gave him an orgasm.
For just a moment, he was mine.
And then he makes the pleasure hurt, because he pulls me into his arms, the same way he does Meg. The same way I witnessed the first night I slept in this bed with them. The same tenderness he told me would’ve been mine, if she’d never come along.
But she did. And so even as I curl up into it, feeling like I’ve found my providence, I know it can’t last. I know it’s fleeting. I know it’s going to hurt me more than it feels good, in the long run.
But I take it anyway. Greedily. Like Mateo’s good little whore.
It’s over before I’m ready. He carefully extracts himself from my embrace, gives me a tender little smile, but then he goes back to Meg, and I feel like I’ve been pierced through the heart. I swallow down a lump in my throat as she replaces me in his embrace. As he tenderly kisses her, thanking her for letting him play with me.
Because I’m only his toy.
She’s his love.
Deleted Scene Three
Once Burned
(Alternate ending, Mateo’s POV)
There are too many goddamn things to do in a day.
I should be doing at least one of the things on today’s docket, but I’m too curious about what Adrian is up to. His conversation last night keeps running through my head—he rarely comes to my room unless it’s serious, and he came to my room. Interrupted my Scrabble game with Mia and Meg.
It was a good night.
Adrian is being weird, though.
I’m worried he’s doing something dangerous—too dangerous to tell me about, which means really fucking dangerous.
Maybe I should go find out for myself.
Before I can, there’s a light knock at my study door and Meg peeks her head inside. “Hey, are you busy?”
“I should be,” I remark, with a dry smile. “What do you need?”
“Um, well, Mia just called me.”
“All right.”
“She sounded a little off.”
I sit forward, mildly alarmed. “How do you mean?”
“I don’t know, she didn’t tell me anything was wrong so maybe I’m misinterpreting.
She did ask if you could call her, though. She said she needed to talk to you—asked if you could call right away.” She steps forward but I stand and meet her halfway to save time. She holds out a scrap of stationary with a phone number printed on it in Meg’s scrawl.
I draw my phone out of my jacket pocket and tap out the number. Unease crawls up and down my spine. I told Mia if anything felt off, to call Colin. I made sure she had his number. The number Meg just gave me is not Mia’s number. I’m not even supposed to have Mia’s number, but I obviously know it. She doesn’t have mine. Right now that feels like a mistake. She’s supposed to be at the bakery today. If something has happened, she wasted time talking to middle men when she should have called me or Adrian directly.
“When did she call?” I ask, as I bring the phone to my ear.
“Just now. It seemed important so I brought it right down.”
I nod my head. “Thank you.”
She flashes me a smile. “Of course.”
The rings take forever. An entire lifetime could fit into the pause between each of these goddamn rings. Three rings. Why isn’t she answering?
Answer the fucking phone, Mia.
Finally the ringing cuts off and the sound of Mia’s voice washes over me. I breathe a premature sigh of relief. “Hey,” she says, simply.
“What’s wrong?” I demand.
She hesitates. Hesitation means something is wrong. “I’m okay,” she says, after a second. The way she trails off fills me with dread. There’s no reason to lead with that unless there’s some reason you wouldn’t be okay to begin with. Then she adds, “But I’ve sort of… been taken?”
She sounds apologetic.
My heart stops.
I feel my pocket for keys, but they aren’t there. Of course they aren’t there. Fuck. “Taken?” I ask, going to my desk and ripping open the drawer with the keys to the Escalade.
She stumbles to explain herself. It sounds like she’s worried about aggravating someone—me, or whomever has her?
The thought of someone having Mia sends waves of sickness crashing through my gut.
“Um, some guy came to the bakery. A Castellanos guy, I think. He mentioned Antonio.”
I’ll fucking kill him. Every last one of the fuckers. I have the keys, so I check to make sure I have my gun. Definitely gonna be needing that.
I do, so I head out of the study and for the car.
“I’m not with him,” she tells me, her tone a little higher, like she thinks she’s delivering good news.
Good news, my ass. The only good news right now would be that her captors felt my fury from across the city and inexplicably combusted, splattering bits of flesh and blood all over the fucking walls.
“Mark from the bakery…”
The name gives me pause. Mark? The fucking baker Vince hates? I somewhat expect her to follow up with something like, “Mark tried to intervene and was killed, so someone needs to do clean-up at the bakery” but before she can explain why she’s bringing up the baker, the phone is taken from her and a man speaks.
A dead man. Just give me a few minutes.
“Mark here,” he says, with impressive cheer for a dead man.
“Who the fuck are you?” I ask.
“I work for Salvatore, not Antonio,” he tells me, like somehow this bit of news should make me less angry. “I don’t want to hurt Mia,” he adds, still on his mission to lessen my homicidal urged.
Doesn’t fucking work. I don’t care if he took her to drive her to a surprise party—he fucked up when he put his hands on her. If she has so much as a bruise, I’m going to kick his head in.
Probably not, actually, I’ll probably kill first and ask questions later. Well, I’ll at least fantasize about kick his head in. He’ll already be dead; Mia will already be safe in my arms.
In my arms?
Fuck it, yes, in my arms.
“But I need you to come get her,” Mark tells me, like I’m not already on my way.
“Give the phone back to Mia. I want to talk to her.”
He doesn’t. Instead, the bastard tries to handle me. “Like I said, I don’t want to hurt her; I just can’t have you bringing your goon squad along. I didn’t even intend to do this, but you guys hit our guys, and weirdly enough, nobody’s very happy about it.”
“I could give a fuck less what anyone is happy about,” I tell him. “If any one of you touches Mia—”
“I have no back up,” he interrupts. “I sort of went rogue to save Mia, so… I’d really like to leave this hotel room alive.”
Hotel room?
HOTEL ROOM?
“What fucking hotel room?” I demand, blood raging through my veins so hard, I can barely fucking hear straight. “Let me make myself very clear, Mark. Listen closely. If you touch a single hair on that girl’s head, I won’t just kill you; I will slice you open and strangle you with your own intestine.”
“Jesus,” he says, a little taken aback. “I—” He hesitates a second, then says, “It was just the first place—”
“The first place, my ass,” I shoot back. “You could’ve taken her to a fucking Denny’s. You could have kept her in a car. You took her to a hotel room. I know your name, Mark. I know you have a little crush on Mia. Let me assure you, that’s a crush best left unexplored. I’ve had a minute to think it over, and I’m not sure strangling you with your own intestine is actually a painful enough end. If you’ve hurt Mia, I’m going to make you wish for the peace of that death.”
“Jesus Christ, I haven’t hurt Mia. I’m not going to hurt Mia. Aren’t you the one that hurts Mia?” he asks, a bit slyly, for someone I already want to kill so badly.
“Not compared to what I’m going to do to you,” I assure him, calmly.
“Look, man, you’ve got this all wrong. I took Mia from the bakery so she didn’t get hurt. Antonio sent someone to take her out; I knew what he was there for, so I intervened. I brought her to the hotel room—where we have sat on separate furniture, and I swear, I have not so much as looked at the delicate curve of her fucking ankle, let alone anything else—so I could protect her until you get here. I’m being straight with you, here.”
“So am I. Keep your fucking hands off her.”
“You know, I could’ve called her boyfriend if I wanted to have my ass chewed out. I thought cooler heads would prevail if I called you.”
His ass chewed out—that’s another good possibility. Throw him naked into a container full of hungry rats. They could pick all the flesh off his bones while he screamed in terror. I think I’d light a cigar for that.
“What fucking hotel?” I ask, so I can get there and see for myself that Mia’s all right.
He tries to tell me how to get there since he didn’t get the address. Then he realizes we don’t live in the fucking Stone Age and he looks it up. I put it into my navigation system and get the number of their hotel unit.
Their hotel unit.
My blood boils in my veins.
I hang up and call Adrian, but the fucker’s busy on his covert mission and he can’t meet me at the hotel.
All I can think about is killing Mark. Didn’t even know who he was ten minutes ago, but right now he’s at the top of my to-murder list—even above Vince, and that little bastard usually owns the lead.
I guess he still should. While Mark insists he hasn’t touched Mia, Vince gets to touch her every goddamn night.
Well, not every night. Last night she was in my bed.
Ha, fuck you, Vince.
I suppose it would be more of a “fuck you” if she had been naked and full of my cum instead of curled up in a pair of soft pajamas, snuggling with Meg. Though… well, I can’t complain about that sight, either.
This is not the time for thoughts like these. I shake them off and break every basic traffic law to get to the hotel faster.
The sight of a cheap hotel door with peeling paint has never filled another man so completely with equal parts eagerness and dread. I want to rip the door off
the hinges. I want to storm in and shoot a single bullet into Mark’s forehead without losing stride on my way to Mia.
I suppose that might traumatize her, though. I’ve done enough to traumatize her for this year, at least. I should tell her not to watch.
Before I can further debate how to go about killing this asshole without giving Mia nightmares, the door open and she stands there, looking like a fucking angel. An intact angel. The wind blows her sundress and she regards me anxiously. Who is she worried for? This asshole baker, herself, me? She’s never worried for herself; it’s probably one of us.
As pleasant a sight as she is, I need to see what I’m dealing with inside. Just because Mark said he was alone doesn’t mean he is.
“Move,” I tell her.
She tries to halt me, her eyes going all soft and concerned. She holds a hand up, like she can hold me off. Her gaze drops to the gun I’ve already drawn and her discomfort grows.
Why am I distressing her? Is she really this worried about the asshole inside? Why don’t I know about this asshole if he’s someone Mia cares about?
Why don’t I know about this asshole, period?
She looks back at Mark and tries to keep peace. She begs us take a second, to leave the guns out of this and handle things civilly.
I like her begging, but for my cock, not some stupid asshole’s safety. I like this kid even less knowing Mia wants to protect him.
Why does she have to attract so many goddamn admirers?
That’s a dumb fucking question. If she could draw me in, what chance do these assholes stand of resisting her pull?
“He kidnapped you,” I clip, in this instance annoyed by her instinct to protect those who trespass against her.
Her eyes widen slightly. “He was protecting me.”
My gaze moves over her body, taking inventory again. “He hasn’t touched you?”
Her cheeks flush and she frowns, looking away from me like I’ve embarrassed her. “Of course not.”
I give her a hard look and take a step forward. She moves out of my way, but she no more than steps back and Mark grabs her arm, pulling her in front of him.
I stare at him, envisioning all the ways I’m going to kill him. I told him not to put so much as a fucking finger on her. He’s got five on her right now.