Lush Money (Filthy Rich)

by Angelina M. Lopez

  You’re a good man and a bad prince.

  He resisted shattering the empty rocks glass against the endless view of the valley. It would only be another petulant, useless act among so many.

  He needed to make amends. He needed to talk to the grower’s council and let them air out their grievances. Then he needed to gather what support he could to confront his father. He needed to figure out how he could take a real sabbatical from the Davis lab, discuss it with his partners and graduate assistants—spend some real time in the Monte.

  The idea of doing any of it made him slide down the bar until his ass was on the hardwood floor.

  Mateo had convinced himself that the miles away from his father were to preserve himself and his sanity. He’d apparently convinced Roxanne and Carmen Louisa of the same. “You let your hatred for him keep you away.” But the problem, at the end of the day, wasn’t his father. Ultimately, the problem was Mateo.

  He’d spent very little time as prince under the eyes of his people. Boarding school in the States, undergrad at Cornell, and graduate work and a professional life at Davis had allowed him to fake the role of prince from afar quite adequately. He’d never been forced to confront what he’d always suspected: That in his home, he couldn’t fulfill the role.

  It was the dark secret he’d hidden in the dark cloud of his father. Mateo feared—and now, all but knew—that he wasn’t fit to play the role that his blood and legacy and family assigned him. Mateo wasn’t equipped for or worthy of being the Prince of the Monte del Vino Real—and soon his people, his friend, his sister, and his lover would all realize it.

  He stood and filled another glass when he sensed that two wouldn’t hold off the threatening wave of recrimination and self-loathing; opened Roxanne’s bedroom door and walked in when he realized three glasses wouldn’t do it either. He needed just a touch. Just a taste. When he heard the shower running, saw steam billowing from the just-cracked door, he shed his clothes and walked to the bathroom.

  When he opened the door of the large shower stall, she didn’t react. He stood and stared, shamelessly, as the overhead shower cascaded streams down the flexing muscles of her shoulders, the crease of her strong spine, the bend of her hips, and the heartbreaking curves of her gorgeous, soft ass. This first look at her completely naked was the touch of grace he knew it would be.

  He stepped in and pressed against her, let the water soothe him as well.

  “Mateo, I—”

  “I won’t make love to you,” he murmured, stroking her warm, sleek hips. “Just let me touch you.” He tongued the wet off her shoulder, gloried when her head fell back against him. “Please. I need to touch you.”

  He tipped her chin up to him and tasted her lips, showed her his desperation in gentle pleading touches, seeking absolution in her gorgeous, pleasure-giving mouth. He groaned into it when her hand reached up to stroke his jaw, to hold him to her. His fingers traced that tender tendon in her neck before sliding down and enfolding one perfect breast. He was a boob man, base and objectifying, but there’d been too much between them, too much rush, too many clothes, too much of her on top or of him from behind, to give her gorgeous, full breasts the attention they deserved. He held them lightly now, watched as he stroked from underneath over her beaded nipples up to her collarbones with featherlight fingertips as hot water pattered against her, making her shiver and her perfect skin pebble against his hands. Dragging his teeth over her neck, he returned to her nipples, rolled and pinched those rose-brown tips, soft then hard, relentless until she twisted her hips and moaned, rubbing the satiny skin of her ass against his cock. Fuck, he wanted to turn her around and shove her against the tile, suck the water off her breasts, tease her nipples with his teeth, prop her thigh on his shoulder and forget his name. Forget his duty.

  But he couldn’t. He couldn’t keep his promise if he let go.

  He gave her nipple another loving rub before letting his nails drag down her stunning torso.

  The dark hair around her pussy lips was wet and silky. He loved that she had hair here; didn’t understand why grown men wanted women to look like little girls. He stroked through her hair, humming against the lobe of her ear as he did it, then spread her lips with his thumb and middle finger and pushed inside with his index finger.

  She gasped, and he caught her lobe with his teeth to keep her still. She was as wet and warm inside as the shower had made her on the outside.

  Her body gave and gave and Mateo took, took the pleasure of her skin rubbing and thrumming against him, took the satisfaction of her pearly clit crying against his finger, took the magnificence of being able to make this superior creature moan with want. He began to pulse his finger inside of her, first one, then two, then faster, making his arm muscles burn, fucking her good and fast and deep as his thumb worked her because he was good at this. He could make her happy. He needed to make her happy.

  “Say my name,” he implored, soft. “Say my name, say my name, fuck, God, Roxanne, please say my name.”

  His name—“Mateo!”—cracked high and joyous and pleasure-soaked off the bathroom tile. He held her up as she sagged back and shuddered against him, glorying in the feel of her pussy hugging his hand.

  With slow movements, he pulled his hand from between her legs. Squeezed her hip. Curled so he could press his forehead between her shoulder blades and give her spine a long, loving kiss. “Thank you,” he breathed against it.

  Then he left. The pain of his erection helped him keep his sanity. Words, crazy fucking words played on the tip of his tongue, words he couldn’t even know were true in his current emotional storm, and he escaped her bathroom before he babbled them and destroyed one more thing that meant everything to him.

  April: Night Three

  Part One

  As Roxanne stood near the door of the Castillo’s long ballroom with her husband’s hand burning a brand into her back through her red Marchesa ball gown, she realized she might have found herself, for the first time in her adult life, driving down a road without firm control of the wheel.

  She tried to blink away the heat of his touch and focus on the frail lady in widow’s black standing in front of her. Tears caught in the woman’s wrinkles as she pulled Roxanne’s face toward her and kissed her on both cheeks.

  “Eres la respuesta a nuestra oraciones, Alteza,” the woman whispered against Roxanne’s skin. “Gracias por amar a nuestro Príncipe.” Being called the “answer to our prayers” actually happened on a semi-regular basis for Roxanne. But she’d never been thanked for loving someone.

  She’d never had someone rub his thumb against her back in reaction.

  The people of the Monte del Vino Real attending this ball to meet their new princesa greeted Roxanne like she was the penny they’d thrown into the well, a prayer and a promise for the Monte’s revival. She’d learned from Helen that the majority of the townspeople had viewed the initial unflattering stories after the marriage was announced as a wife taking the upper hand, a proudly Spanish move. The fact that she had her European headquarters in Madrid had actually raised the town’s hope that Mateo would be returning to them.

  Bathing in the gleam of the townspeople’s hopes as they came to her in the receiving line, supported by that hand that never fell away or left her, she felt claimed as part of this family, village, and kingdom. Roxanne had never felt more needed. She’d never felt more wanted.

  She’d never felt more desperately confused and out of control.

  Mateo leaned over and pressed a monogrammed handkerchief into the elderly woman’s hands, a kind smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye as he glanced at Roxanne. As the woman, still crying, moved forward to greet Sofia next in line, Mateo leaned to tease into Roxanne’s ear, “You know Spaniards. Apasionada.” When he met her eyes again, it was a private look, declaring that the “passionate” natures of Spaniards weren’t reserved just for tears.

 
Mateo straightened to greet another townsperson, and Roxanne surreptitiously admired the look of him, tall and lean and perfect in his three-piece tux, his hair shining beneath the twinkle of chandeliers, his clean jaw set off by his white collar and the thick Windsor knot of his black tie. She now knew what hid beneath his shirt—gleaming, golden-colored skin pulled taut over muscle and tendon, tawny chest hair that was soft, divots between the muscles of his stomach, the muscles of his hips. When she’d met him this morning in his kitchen, wearing her nightgown and robe, he’d been shirtless in soft, cotton pajama pants. He’d wordlessly opened his arms. She’d carelessly walked into them.

  The embrace had been comfort and relief, and as she’d rubbed her nose against his chest, he’d murmured about their itinerary for the day. He didn’t mention the day, or the night, before. And she didn’t mention their pact to behave as friends. She’d held his hand and rested in his arms as they saw more of the Monte, she’d stroked fingernails into his hair when he turned morose, and she’d kept her mind thoughtlessly, blissfully blank as she soaked in his constant touches.

  His need for her compelled her like nothing else.

  She knew he was hurt. She knew Carmen Louisa’s revelations had left him aching.

  Throughout the day, as they’d paid calls to the Monte’s most prominent growers, she’d watched him apologize and make promises, declaring he would be better, do better, be more present for the Monte, but she could see the strain on him. The doubt. Worse, she could understand that doubt. If she had to stand in the toxic presence of her mother to have what she wanted most—she wasn’t sure she could do it.

  While he stroked her palm or held her against his side or absently ran his fingertips up and down her arm, Mateo declared that he could.

  The melodious strings of the quartet playing in the corner seemed to bend sour when Roxanne realized that, without her permission, her emotions were slipping out of her control.

  She pressed a trembling hand to her silk-covered stomach.

  Mateo’s arm was instantly around her. “The crowd is slowing,” he murmured in English against her upswept hair. “Take a break. It’s hard to be the queen.”

  She closed her eyes against the sweetness of his concern. “No, I’m...”

  She felt Sofia’s slim hand on her arm as the woman stepped out of line to face her. “Yes. I’ll keep track of who comes and reassure them you’ll meet them later. Go take a descansito,” his sister said, gorgeous in an ivory-and-bronze sheath that hugged her from wrist to ankles. She gave Roxanne a grin. “You’re doing so good; the Monte is already in love with you.”

  Sofia had slipped into Roxanne’s room once again as she’d been getting ready, but this time, the woman launched into village gossip as if they’d always been the best of friends. Roxanne told her what Carmen Louisa had said, figuring that this was the one person in the Monte that needed to know about that horrible but necessary conversation, and Sofia had nodded, a troubled frown on her face.

  Right now, Roxanne could barely stand their touches. Here she had a sister and a husband; family when she’d spent most of her life alone.

  “Yes, okay,” she said, nodding, feeling more fragile than she’d felt since she was a tiny girl. Mateo held her jaw in his hand, tipped her head up for a kiss before letting her go, and Roxanne felt like weeping. She stepped back from them both. “Just for a few minutes.”

  She turned away from them and used every drop of her billionaire training to walk slowly, to smile kindly, to nod confidently when all she wanted to do was pick up her ballroom skirt and sprint away from the saints looking down at her knowingly from the stained-glass windows. In the retiring room reserved just for the family, Roxanne sat on a tufted stool and stared at her reflection in the gold-framed mirror, deep breathing and repeating to herself over and over again that she was not falling love with her perfect husband.

  * * *

  More minutes later than she would have liked, Roxanne stepped back into the medieval ballroom with its arched, mosaic-tiled ceiling and finely carved balcony circling the interior of the space. She felt no calmer, but Mateo needed her. She refused to think about how that need bolstered her.

  Restless to return to his side, she aimed her path along the wall. She came to an abrupt halt when a tall, square-jawed man stepped in her way, cutting her off from the rest of the room.

  “Roxanne Medina, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  Roxanne took two steps back in shock. His smile gleamed in reaction.

  With everything she’d learned about Easton Fuller, the CEO of CML Resorts Incorporated, the company trying to turn the Monte into an amusement park, she wasn’t surprised the man enjoyed drawing a negative reaction.

  “Does Mateo know you’re here?” she asked, dismissing any pleasantries. No way her husband approved this man for the guest list.

  His Ivy League blue eyes narrowed at her. “I’m a guest of his parents.”

  “Of course you are.” She didn’t hide her disgust.

  “Since only one of us seems to know their manners, let me introduce you to my acquaintance.” He stepped back and raised his manicured hand to a handsome, dark-haired man standing just behind him. The man nodded at Roxanne without comment, his hands remaining in the pockets of his suit. But his forest-green eyes seemed to take in and assess all of Roxanne in an instant. “This is Roman Sheppard.”

  Fuller watched her for a reaction. She refused to give him one.

  But she hadn’t been able to find any information about the dark-haired man named Roman that Mateo’s father had been introducing around the Monte. Mateo and his sister assumed the man and the surveyors were lying low until Mateo left again.

  Sheppard’s gaze—unflinching, analyzing—forced Roxanne to raise her hand and offer it to him. She wouldn’t be intimidated by him. “Mr. Sheppard,” she said.

  The man continued watching her for a moment before he slid his hand out of his pocket. His hand was calloused, his shake firm and brief. “Ms. Medina.”

  In those four syllables, she could tell he was American. “And are you a guest of the king as well?” she asked.

  Sheppard made to open his mouth, but Fuller put a hand up. “I think it’s best if we allow the king to explain his presence here.”

  Well, hell. That sounded ominous.

  She needed to get back to her husband. She smiled brittlely at the two men. “Well, this has been... Yeah.” She attempted to move around them when Fuller stepped in her path again.

  Only the packed ballroom of her husband’s people kept her from breaking the man’s knee.

  “I sought you out to give some advice. CEO to CEO.” He oozed the confidence of spoon-fed wealth. “Stay out of the way of what we’re trying to do here.”

  “We?” Roxanne asked. “As in you and the king? Mateo will never agree to sell his heritage.”

  Fuller’s smile was full of teeth. “Mateo might not have a choice.”

  “Mateo is married to a billionaire.” Roxanne smiled as well. “He’s got all the choices in the world.”

  “That’s one way to look at it.” Fuller leaned close. Roxanne jolted back then realized he’d maneuvered her right where he wanted her: She was almost against the wall, cut off from the rest of the room. She gritted her teeth as he spoke close to her ear. “Another way is that the great-and-principled Mateo de Esperanza sold his body, jizz, and kid to you. The king showed me your contract. You rented a royal whore for three days a month.”

  Roxanne’s blood turned to ice.

  “You’re paying a stranger to fuck and impregnate you.” The overwhelming odor of his cologne was choking her. “What a blow it would be to your empire if it got out that Roxanne Medina had to buy herself a good-looking pro.”

  Roxanne’s eyes flew up to see the dark-haired man just behind Fuller, his lurking presence and wide shoulders unintentionally shielding her from pa
rtygoers. Sheppard’s jaw was rigid, his eyes steady. He was a wonderfully blank canvas for Roxanne to hide behind while she schooled her expression.

  Her empire would suffer if the contract was revealed. The stockholders and board members of Medina Now Enterprises were accustomed to the unconventional antics that had made her a billionaire before she was thirty and made them very, very rich. But this... The press would have a fucking field day. The headlines would force traditional board members to question her morality, her decency, and—most damaging—it would cast a pall over the women and businesses she’d worked with. She could just see the hysterical jumps to conclusions: all powerful businesswomen must want to disavow traditional families in favor of buying babies. She’d go from being a well-respected pioneer to being seen as a man-hating control freak.

  And Mateo... Roxanne felt a roll of nausea at the thought of what it would do to Mateo. He was a leader and future king. He was a scientific genius respected worldwide. It would reduce him to exactly what he’d accused her of making him: a gigolo. The coldness of the contract made him out to be a mercenary so desperate for money that he would sell his heir to get it. Roxanne would be toxic, but Mateo...he would be a laughingstock.

  So would her daughter.

  Roxanne’s heart began to race with panic. This reveal would destroy the fairy-tale life Roxanne was building for her; she wouldn’t even have a chance of a normal life. Instead, she’d be mocked as the princess who was bought and sold, the daughter of a woman so wealthy and dysfunctional she couldn’t have a family like a regular person, the heir of a man so poor and weak he gave it up for money. None of it would be true. But the world was cruel, and Roxanne would unleash it on the girl before she was even born. Her daughter, the one person she’d thought would be a companion in her life, the little zygote she might already be pregnant with, would have cause to hate her before she’d even left the womb.

  Roxanne would have failed her before she drew her first breath.