She tilted her head, sending all that thick black hair to one side and exposing her pale neck. “I’ve had some thoughts about those nights in bed.”
The instant, searing image of her arched neck while he buried his hand in her hair had Mateo tearing his eyes away. He looked out on the city. Jesus. She was right, it had been too long. And he didn’t need his little brain casting a vote right now.
She made it sound so simple.
Her money gave him more than the three years of financial ledge-clinging that he’d scraped together on his own, a timeline that had already caused sleepless nights. The only way Mateo could have the Tempranillo Vino Real planted and profitable in three years is if everything went perfectly—no problems with development, no bad growing seasons. Mother Nature could not give him that guarantee. Her deal also prevented his father from taking more drastic measures. The chance for a quiet phone and an inbox free of plans like the one to capture the Monte’s principal irrigation source and bottle it into “Royal Water” with the king’s face on the label was almost reason enough to sign the contract.
Mateo refused to list “regular sex with a gorgeous woman who looked at him like a lollipop” in the plus column. He wasn’t led around by his cock like his father.
And that child; his far-off, mythical heir? The príncipes y princesas of the Monte del Vino Real had been marrying for profit long before Roxanne Medina invented it. He didn’t know what kind of mother she would be, but he would learn in the course of the year together. And if they discovered in that year they weren’t compatible...surely she would cancel the arrangement. After the initial shock, she’d seemed reasonable.
Gripping on to his higher ideals and shaky rationalizations, he picked up the pen and signed.
The nurse plunked an empty plastic cup with a lid down on the desk.
“What the...?” Mateo said with horror.
“Just the final test,” Roxanne Medina said cheerily from the screen. “Don’t worry. Helen left a couple of magazines in the bathroom. Just leave the cup in there when you’re finished and she’ll retrieve it.”
Any hopes for a reasonable future swirled down the drain. Roxanne Medina expected him to get himself off in a cup while this gargoyle of a woman waited outside the door.
He stood and white-knuckled the cup, turned away from the desk. Fuck it. At least his people were safe. An hour earlier, his hands in the dirt, he’d thought he could save his kingdom with hard work and noble intentions. But he’d fall on his sword for them if he had to.
Or stroke it.
He had one last question for the woman who held his life in her slim-fingered hand. “Why?” he asked, his back to the screen, the question coming from the depths of his chest. “Really, why?”
“Why what?”
“Why me.”
“Because you’re perfect.” He could hear the glee in her rich voice. “And I always demand perfection.”
January: Night Two
The next night, Mateo once again waited in an opulent room with one of Roxanne Medina’s minions, once again in jeans, t-shirt, and ball cap. He’d thrown on a blazer, but otherwise opted for comfort for what he assumed would be a first date.
Fuming as he checked his watch—she was forty-five minutes late—he glared at the attorney shuffling papers at the desk of the boudoir-styled hotel suite and congratulated himself for not dressing up for this worst-first-date-of-his-life humiliation.
He’d worked all day to convince himself he could normalize their insane arrangement. He figured he’d pick her up at the Fairmont Hotel at the room number she’d sent, they’d go to dinner, and there, like rational adults, they’d discuss the details of two strangers wedding and bedding. He would take the first steps in getting to know this woman who wanted to be the mother of his child.
Instead, when Mateo knocked on the door of the Fairmont’s honeymoon suite, a salt-and-pepper-haired African-American man opened it. William LaPierre, Roxanne’s general counsel, had introduced himself, asked Mateo to sign more documents, and now seemed content to wait. As he sat on the arm of a luxurious purple velvet couch, Mateo’s temper percolated. Now that he was on Roxanne Medina’s payroll, she must expect him to wait, too.
“Why is she doing this?” Mateo asked, jiggling his leg as he stared at the attorney. “Sir?” The older man looked at him, not unfriendly, through silver-rimmed glasses.
“Why does she want this marriage? A kid? With someone she doesn’t know? Why doesn’t she just go to a sperm bank?”
The attorney smiled with more compassion than Mateo thought was possible from a Medina Now employee. “That seems like a question for Ms. Medina, don’t you think?”
“Por supuesto. And I’d be asking it if she were here,” Mateo said. “But she isn’t and you are. Give me something.”
William leaned back in the leather desk chair, clasping his fingers over his well-fed belly. Finally, he asked, “Do you know much about her?”
Mateo rolled his shoulders, irritated. “I know what Google knows.”
Hours’ worth of Googling during the sleepless hours last night had given him an understanding of Roxanne Medina’s “brand.” Article after article spoke about her childhood spent in poverty, the tiny Kansas hometown where she was from, the absent Mexican father, the single mother. Her fortunes changed when she won a full ride to Princeton. Over and over again, Mateo found the story of how the twenty-one-year-old woman had walked from the lawn of Nassau Hall, where she’d just graduated, to barge into an investor’s meeting five blocks away. With diploma in hand, she’d bullied the roomful of men into helping her buy a failing online fitness-wear company.
He knew she’d “bullied” them because it was the word he read repeatedly, like so many of the matching adjectives from different writers in different publications. It seems the now twenty-nine-year-old Roxanne Medina—they were the same age—had found a way to circumvent the First Amendment and control every drop of information about her. He knew the next detail in her story by heart because he’d read the identical sentence so many times: “Roxanne Medina began her meteoric rise when she sold Heart and Sole Fit Wear for twenty times the purchase price the same week she received her MBA from Harvard.”
“So you know her father abandoned her and her mother?” William asked.
Mateo scoffed. “Sure, it’s in every story written about her.”
“Then you might understand why she wants her child to know their father. A sperm donor would be anathema to Ms. Medina.”
Mateo pushed angrily off the couch arm. “¡Joder! So I’m supposed to share a kid with someone who has daddy and control issues? That’s stable.”
The attorney shook his head as if he were disappointed in Mateo. “Her ‘control issues’ have empowered her to see this company through the worst of financial times without laying off a soul. Her ‘control issues’ allowed her to take on her entire board when they protested her bringing on a black ex-priest with a night school law degree as corporate counsel.”
Mateo looked at the man closely and then rolled his eyes. “I’m seeking sympathy from her number one fan.”
“Who’s my number one fan?” asked a raspy voice from the dark hallway leading into the sitting area.
She had snuck in like a cat.
“I am, Ms. Medina,” William LaPierre said cheerily.
Roxanne Medina stepped into the warm light. “Damn right.” She looked at Mateo, a large cashmere shawl wrapped snugly around her. “Wow.” She approached him as she untucked the shawl at her neck. “You truly are the Golden Prince, aren’t you?”
That stupid moniker. He’d been stuck with it since he was seventeen, when paparazzi had taken pictures of him on the beach in the Maldives. The complexion, the light brown eyes, the blond he got in his hair every summer, the stature and shoulders—they were nothing more than a lucky combination of DNA, “gifts” from
his parents, no more useful than the quick temper he’d inherited from his father and the addict’s need for flan he got from his mother. He used his looks when they were effective tools and ignored them the rest of the time.
But if he was the Golden Prince, she was sexy Snow White. Lustrous black hair hung in a soft wave down her back, and pale, perfect skin revealed itself as she slowly unwrapped. Her blue eyes—just like the sky—stroked over him. She had the audacity to bite into her full, juicy, apple-red lower lip as her eyes traveled over his body. He gritted his teeth as she pulled the final layer of her cream shawl away like Salome’s veils, revealing an emerald-green silk dress that clung to her lush body as closely as Mateo would have liked to.
She was flawless—perfect skin, round hips, full breasts, long lashes, and direct, encompassing eyes. Under any other circumstances, he would have done everything in his power to get this stunning, accomplished woman in his bed.
She extended a slim hand that glowed with creamy luminescence. Mateo took it, enjoying its silky feel.
“Príncipe,” she purred, her smile wide and luscious. “You and I should have no problem making a beautiful little princess.”
Mateo got lost in that soft, throaty voice. Like velvet with tiny hooks in it, soothing and scratching across his skin. But when he thought of her actual words—his child, with this rampaging stranger—his arousal died on the vine.
“Ms. Medina.” He nodded. He let go of her hand. “You’re late.”
“Am I?” the woman mused as she hung her shawl on the back of a chair and fussed in her expensive handbag. “I’m sorry, Príncipe.” Her perfect Spanish lilt when she said his title had the hairs rising on the back of his neck.
But he remembered her apology from the night before: Forgive me. We’ve started on different pages. Roxanne Medina handed out sorrys like tips, effortless dollar bills from a billionaire.
Mateo hung his thumbs in the front pockets of his jeans. “Don’t let it happen again.”
He saw a quick narrowing of her eyes when she turned to focus on him before she relaxed, flicking that thick hair over a shoulder and sitting on the edge of the desk. The move pulled the dress higher and showed a naked, toned leg that shined like satin. She swung it lazily. “I’m glad you’re eager,” she said, disarming him with steamy blue eyes that laughed at him. “We’ll wrap up with William and I’ll make it up to you. I’m told the beds at the Fairmont are very comfortable.”
“Roxanne,” the attorney admonished.
Roxanne Medina leaned back on a delicate hand, looking over her shoulder to roll her eyes at him. “I forget how much of a prude you can be, William.” She looked at Mateo. “Did he tell you he used to be a priest?”
Mateo stared at her. “We’re starting tonight?”
“Of course,” she said, without even looking at him. She nodded at William. “Let’s get to it.”
“Fine,” William grumbled. He looked down at a piece of paper on the desk, and then looked up at Roxanne. “Do you?”
“You betcha.” She winked, and then reached across the desk to take a fountain pen from William’s hand and sign the paper. William pushed the paper close to Mateo and held the pen out to him. “And do you?”
Mateo, with a genius IQ, a PhD from Cornell, and his name on the door of one of the most well-respected viticulture labs in the world, struggled to keep up. “Do I what?”
“Are you willing to enter into an agreement of marriage with Roxanne Medina?”
Now? They were getting married now? He opened his mouth to protest, to express shocked astonishment, to tell her that she was as loca as a... But he glanced at Roxanne Medina, and the satisfied expression on her face as she swung that sky-high heel had him clamping his mouth shut and swallowing his disbelief.
She’d had him spinning since the second she’d walked into the room. No, since the second he’d been foolish enough to pick up his phone without looking at the caller ID yesterday. Mateo knew what she wanted and knew what he would get in return. His attorney had looked over the documents during an early-morning phone call and had complimented the agreement for its cold clarity; Mateo had seen her clean bill of health before he’d even shaken her hand. This wasn’t a marriage; this was a business arrangement. And he didn’t need to behave like some outraged groom. He was an Esperanza, a descendant of kings, and the only hope for the Monte del Vino Real. He would stop spinning and stand tall now.
He leaned one hand on the desk and held the other out to William, forcing the man to place the pen in his hand while he met his gaze. Mateo bent down and scratched his signature onto the document.
“Sí, I do.”
“Then by the power vested in me by the state of California, you are now husband and wife.” William’s words were surprisingly solemn. The attorney signed the document, blew on it to dry the expensive ink, and then placed it and the other papers in his briefcase, without looking up.
Mateo turned his back on them and walked to the window. Here, in the honeymoon suite of the Fairmont, high atop a San Francisco hill, he could stare down at the lights of the Transamerica building and the glowing ships leaving the Bay. He hovered above thousands of people who would never sell their heir in a business arrangement.
He’d never been more ashamed in his whole life.
From behind him, he heard murmured conversation, the shuffle of feet, and the opening and closing of the suite door.
And then he heard her say: “We might as well get the next part over with.”
In no way should getting sex “over with” punch him with desire. He blamed his father. He blamed the nights in his lab and his ignored twenty-nine-year-old libido. He turned on her slowly.
“What about dinner?” he asked, gripping on to the educated, cultured man that he was. Looking at her voluptuous body in that dress made base male lust flood his gut.
She crossed her arms under her breasts. Her cleavage was deep and soft, the delicate cross tickling at the top of it. “I have an early meeting.”
He scoffed out loud.
She raised her chin, daring him to argue. Her bloodred nails, gripping her arms, would rake like talons over his skin.
Fuck it. “Fine,” he said, jerking his cap at the hallway. “Bedroom.”
Those eyes daggered him before she said, “No. Sit on the couch.”
His body’s reaction to that command, in her throaty voice, made him hate himself even more. The last thing he needed was to start panting every time this billionaire cracked her whip. He just wanted to get the fucking night over with.
He stalked to the deep purple velvet couch and threw himself on it, keeping his cap brim low as her legs came into view. He watched her sullenly from beneath his brim as she slipped out of her heels and placed the shoes side-by-side, like good little soldiers. Then her knees wiggled as she pulled a scrap of cream silk down them. She stepped out of her panties, folded them, and then placed them on the couch near Mateo’s hand.
He knocked back his head and met her eyes as she reached for his button fly.
“Are you going to help at all?” she huffed as she worked to open his jeans.
“You’ve got it under control,” he said through gritted teeth as she found the opening in his boxers and pulled him out. He was semi-erect but not hard enough to be of use to her. “You’ve got your hand on everything you want from me.”
A smile blossomed on her lips. “Not everything,” she said as she stroked softly up his length. And then, for the hundredth time since he’d met her, Roxanne Medina shocked him: she leaned over and surrounded the tip of his cock with her hot mouth. He swallowed his gasp as he looked down at her bent over him, her round ass in green silk in the air and her thick black hair dripping over his legs and her mouth, oh God, those lush lips, smoothing down his cock. He could feel their pillow; trace the lick of her tongue. She engulfed him, took him whole, then pulled up, sucki
ng, sucking, sucking the entire long length of him.
“Gah,” Mateo choked as she reached the tip again, his fingers clawing into the velvet couch. He was as hard as a fucking rock.
He popped out of her mouth. “Excellent,” she purred as she straightened, and then she was climbing on top of him, straddling him as green silk pulled up her thighs, and then, holy fuck, hot satiny skin was surrounding him and then...wet. So much wet and warmth.
He slid into Roxanne Medina and it was like heaven in hell.
“Fuck,” he gasped as she spread her thighs to take him in deep, those amazing soft breasts pushing against his chest, the succulent offering of them in green silk all he could see with his ball cap still on. Through her expensive perfume, he could smell her. Roses. Hothouse roses covered in steam. She pulled away, a tight slick slide, and then began to pump. Fuck, he could see her hips working him, feel her sweetness gripping him. He turned his head to the side and squeezed his eyes closed, grabbed on to the couch cushions. Bit his lip. Hard, she was taking him. So fucking hard and demanding. It was worse and so, so much better with his eyes closed, the press of her breasts, the squeeze of her pussy, her fingernails biting into his biceps.
And then she moaned. Raspy and breathy against the day-old scruff on his jaw. Hot into the shell of his ear. A throaty, low sound of uncontrolled pleasure from this woman who ruled with an iron fist.
Mateo was lost.
He gritted his teeth against the excruciating orgasm that punched him in the lower back like a fist. But she was relentless. She was pitiless. She pumped and fucked and worked him, making him come and come and come. The pleasure was unbearable, like it came from the floor, from the walls, from every bed in the hotel, like every orgasm ever suffered at the Fairmont was flowing into his toes from where they were curled against the carpet.
“Enough,” Mateo panted when he could, grabbing her thighs, finally touching her, holding her down against him. “Stop.”
This time, finally, for the first time in the twenty-four hours that he’d been intertwined with her, she did stop. She leaned close against him, resting. Mateo could feel her soft, hot pants against his neck, her quick, exhausted breaths against his chest. He was wreathed in the smell of warm rose petals. She squeezed him once more, gently, and Mateo shuddered against her like a fourteen-year-old boy. But she soothed him, sliding her lips along his jaw, against the lobe of his ear. Mateo still held her slippery, silk-covered thighs. It was almost an embrace.
Lush Money (Filthy Rich) Page 2