He turned on her, astonished. “What are you saying?”
She stared up at him, eyes wide, as if she too was surprised at her words. “I’m...thinking through the options. One of them is conceding to your father. Agree to the deal with Fuller before the king usurps you.”
Pain raked through him, clawed him into ribbons. Even his precious billionaire, the woman who could move mountains, was losing hope. He wrapped his anger, his blessed, blessed temper, around him like bandages.
“You want me to be Fuller’s puppet?” he growled into her beautiful face, before he jerked back, resisting the urge to grab her, to shake her. “You want to watch my people become the paper dolls he dresses up and sends out on a stage? Watch our heritage and traditions become the backdrop for a royal farce? Oh wait, you won’t be around to watch anything, so why would you care about the outcome?” His sense of betrayal wouldn’t soften to the hurt marking her brow. “If you want me to become my father, there is no better way to it. The only way I could be king of Fuller’s amusement park is if you drowned me daily in liquor and nightly in pussy.” He spat the last word. “Are you willing to stick around and help with that?”
“I’m sorry,” she pleaded instantly. He stalked farther back, holding his arms away from her as she reached for him. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He was stunned by the tears filling her eyes, the impassioned pain in her voice. “I want you to get what you want. You want to be king so I...” She wrapped her arms over her robe tie, looking around as lost and floundering as he felt. “I’ve never felt this way before. It hurts; it scares me. At the banquet, I wanted to shoot them for what they were doing to you. I wanted to beat them.”
Mateo took two steps and grabbed Roxanne, pulled her against him, buried her head against his chest before she could say anything else, before those naked lips could speak one more terrifying, time-stopping word. Mateo’s heart thundered in disbelief. He knew the shock was plain on his face.
He didn’t want to hear anything else. He was terrified to hear anything more. Lies, a part of him beat out. The part that didn’t believe he deserved her. More lies and manipulation, she wants a princess, she needs a king.
He buried his fingers at her nape and tugged her head back. He cupped her jaw with his free hand and forced her to look up at him, stared into the stormy blue sky of her eyes.
“I am useless to you if I am not the king,” he accused, softly and seductively as his thumb ran across her jaw.
Her head shook, pulling against the hands trying to restrain her. “No, you are Mateo,” she demanded. Truth rang in her voice. “My Mateo.”
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Seeing. So he closed his eyes to it. Closed his eyes and buried his disbelief against her mouth, swallowed her moan to stop her words.
He shoved her robe to the wood floor. His tux shirt and tie were lost on the steps leading out of the sunken room. Her nightgown was abandoned, one of its ties snapped, in the hallway outside of Mateo’s room.
He pushed her down, naked, on his bed and she scrambled up to his pillows willingly, not breaking his kiss as he stalked over her on his knees. She spread her thighs for him and shoved her hands into the open waistband of his tux pants, scraped her nails against hard ass muscle as she pushed down his pants and silk boxers. Pulled him tight against the soft, welcoming wetness between her open legs.
He fell against her, groaning as he felt her body, her breasts and belly and hips and thighs, the first soft give of her like this, cushioning him, inviting him. She was so warm, so soft and silky, and he moved against her, luxuriated in the Roxanne scent and feel while he licked at her shoulder. She tasted cinnamon-sugar sprinkled. Still not quite able to believe it, he pushed up on his fists to look down at her. In the low light of his bedside lamp, she glowed. Full breasts and curving waist and trembling tummy, mind-blowingly naked in his bed. Her fine fingers skated down his arms, restless, and her gorgeous dark hair rioted over his pillows. And her eyes... Jesus, her eyes swallowed him whole, ocean deep and desperate, surrounded by thick, long lashes. Her tears gathered her lashes into black, delicate spikes, made her eyes deadly. Spikes to his heart as he looked into them.
“Like this?” he murmured, shifting his hips, brushing his hard cock against her.
Those lips, that fucking unbelievable mouth, fell open as her head tilted back and she nodded.
He rolled his hips again. “You’re not going to turn over?” he growled, pressing and teasing. “You’re not going to push me away?” She was quivering beneath him, unbearably open and vulnerable. He couldn’t stop himself from punishing her for it.
“No,” she begged, trailing her nails up his muscles to his shoulders as she gripped his hips with her thighs. “No, Mateo. Por favor...” She pulled herself up by her strong arms and kissed the cords of his neck, her hair trailing back down to the pillows like dark silk. Jesus... She blinded him. Gooseflesh and heat spread out from her kiss like he was a fourteen-year-old boy. He gathered her against him with one arm and settled them both down against the pillows.
“Bueno, mi hermosa,” he soothed, brushing his lips over her temple, her cheek, her ear. “Mi reina. Mi amor.” Pressing against her again was like coming home.
He pulled out of her arms and stood on the side of the bed. Her sob of regret and need thrilled the ancient kings in him, the men who’d conquered and kept. “Shhh, mi reina. Just let me get out of my pants.” He shucked them and then returned to her, gloried in the eager grab of her hands, the ready spread of her thighs. As he pulled her body into his arms and kissed her, her powerful leg hooked around his, her foot anchoring under his calf, as if locking him to her to prevent him from getting away again. Lust roared through him at her demand and made him snag her by the nape so he could dominate her mouth, grip her close so he could lick and taste at the mysterious power she had to make him lose his mind. She groaned, openmouthed, and went even wilder. Her hips wove a frantic rhythm, stroking her wet bush and swollen hot cunt against his shaft. Her free leg jerked up, anchored itself around the small of Mateo’s back like a hot, silken belt, angling her pelvis so that the tip of Mateo’s penis caught at her entrance. She wriggled her hips, as if she needed Mateo deep and desperately and now. She panted, making tiny pained female noises into his mouth.
Mateo slid his hand to her hip and held her down. “Shhhh, Roxanne, beauty, feel this. Let me feel this,” he urged, his lips still pressed to her. Breaking from her kiss, he looked down at her from his position on his elbow, looked down as he repositioned his hips, and looked at her—at the gleam of sweat on her forehead and her electric eyes and her erotic mouth slowly dropping open—as the tip of his cock found her entrance and pushed inside. He did it gently, almost casually, a slow rocking as his penis breached her then crept a centimeter deeper with every push. He did it as he bit his tongue inside his mouth and sparks shot down his legs and the need to fuck hard screamed in his lower back and wet hot plush tight pleasure crawled up his cock.
All the way in, tight against her, over her and inside her and caught in the silken cage of her gorgeous legs, Mateo looked down at Roxanne, his wife, and bit his tongue harder as his cock gave a desperate lurch and released a hot shot of liquid.
“Mateo...”
Oh fuck. That throaty voice, moaning his name. “Shhh...” Mateo said, squeezing his eyes tight. “Just...” He lowered his head, pressed his forehead to hers. “Un minuto, mi amor.”
And she tried to give him a minute, he could tell she was trying, but her soft breasts thrust against his chest with her gasps, and her powerful silken legs trembled around his body, and her velvet-glove pussy pulsed over his cock involuntarily, the muscles at the depth of her pulling at his head like a hungry little mouth.
Fuck it. This wasn’t going to last long. But it was going to be earth-shattering.
He said that all to her without words with the groan at her ear, his hand sliding down to trap he
r nipple between his fingers, and a sinuous pull out of her body so he could push back in.
Roxanne’s head arched back in relief. “Yes, Mateo,” she moaned, moving her hips with him. “Mi Mateo.”
God, he could give it to her good and that was all he wanted right now as he moved his hips in the trap of her legs, sliding his happy cock in and out of wet pulsing heat, he just wanted to give it to her good and watch the pleasure play all over her heart-stopping face. He bent to her big breasts, bit and sucked at her skin and hard nipples because he could, he could pleasure her gorgeous chest as he buried himself inside her, as her legs moved and flailed around him but never let him go. She was demanding, his demanding billionaire, as she clung to his biceps or sucked on his tongue or drove her nails into his ass, spurring him on to go faster and harder and deeper. And she could take it, take it when he sucked his brand into the side of her breast and buried his teeth into her collarbone. Take it when he lifted her into his arms, held her ass cheeks in his hands, and teased at her hole, fondling it until it was soft and wet and he could push in the tip of his finger from behind.
Holding her, surrounding, and filling her with tongue, finger and cock, Mateo pistoned in and out of his wife with the single-minded desire to enter her body and never leave. Deeper with tongue and finger and cock until she absorbed him in and surrounded him, kept him forever engulfed in the gift of her.
His cock spurted, hot and sharp and surprising, at the thought of never having to stop making love to her.
He kept pounding at her, coming so hard, as he let go of an ass cheek to bring his hand to her front, to find and—Jesus, Jesus—pinch her swollen clit, rolling it in his fingers and stroking it with his thumb.
Thank God, Roxanne went off like a shot.
“Mateo,” she screamed, her hips shooting up, lifting Mateo up with her arch so he had to abandon her clit to slap a hand down on the mattress, holding his weight as his finger still pulsed into her from behind, as his cock moved to stroke at her orgasm. “Mateo, Mateo, Mateo.”
Roxanne crying his name almost had Mateo going off again.
He pulled his finger from her when her hips began to sag back to the bed. Her hips still rolled there, still enjoyed the pulse of Mateo’s flagging cock. He stroked his hand over her moist, hot side as she settled back to the mattress and he scooped her up against him, settling his weight on his forearms. She was luxurious silk and warmth beneath him, and he didn’t want to move. He buried his face into her hair spread across the pillow.
When he woke up thirty minutes later, it was with a jerk.
“Joder,” he muttered, Roxanne still pressed beneath him. He was still barely inside her. “Am I crushing you?”
“No,” she murmured, as if she’d been dozing, too. “But your arms are going to ache if you sleep in that position much longer.”
He pushed up, slipping out of her with a warm tingly pull, and she was right; his arms already felt a little kinked. He moved to her side, fell on his back, and immediately missed the warmth and cushion of her body.
They both lay there in the lamplight, Roxanne’s breathing soft and measured.
“Are you going to sleep in your room?” he asked, staring up at the ceiling.
“I should.” He heard her hair slide across the pillow as she turned to look at him. “Shouldn’t I?”
The hesitation in her sex-racked voice was equal parts thrilling and terrifying. It was a bad idea for her to sleep in his room, spend the night in his bed. A horrible idea. Her boundaries had saved them both so many times. What had he truly wanted when he’d worked so hard to beat them down? What had he really been offering? Certainly not something as worthless as himself. And still, he found himself pulling her delicate hand off his comforter—they hadn’t even kicked down the bedding—and squeezing it flat between his larger hands.
“I would very much like you to stay,” he said gently, foolishly, as he tilted their hands toward his mouth and kissed her fingertips.
Roxanne pulled her hand from his, and Mateo steeled himself for the lifesaving rejection; readied himself for the breath-stealing blow.
She pushed his arm to the bed and then nestled her warm, womanly body against his side, resting her head against his chest, laying her arm loosely over his waist and sliding her thigh over his, nestling her toes between his calves. “I’d like to stay,” she said simply, her lips brushing his skin.
She couldn’t have surprised him more if she’d stabbed him in the heart. She must have stabbed him in the heart because warmth bloomed at his side where she was pressed, as thick and rich as blood. He brought his arm down to surround her and press her close as he looked down at her, her beautiful blue eyes shining up at him.
He leaned down to kiss her, slow, with terror and without desperation for the very first time. They had all night.
* * *
That night was shattered by a 3 a.m. phone call. Mateo ignored the cell phone ringing in his tux pants the first time the call came through, too mesmerized by the sight of Roxanne on top of him, riding him with her siren’s smile.
But when the house phone began ringing moments after the cell phone went quiet, Roxanne stopped, eyebrows quirked as she looked down at him. Mateo listened to the phone ring, wondered, before he finally squeezed her thighs. “Yeah, I better...”
She pulled off of him and sat on the bed and Mateo sat up and reached for the phone on his bedside table.
“Diga,” he said. Late-night phone calls were never good.
His brow furrowed deeper as he listened to the person speak in English. “Okay, one second,” he said finally. He pulled the phone from his ear and handed it to Roxanne, who stared at it, wide-eyed.
“It’s your attorney, William,” Mateo explained. “He couldn’t get a hold of you on our cells, so he called this number.”
“And he couldn’t wait ’til morning?” Roxanne was staring at the phone like it was a rat.
Mateo shrugged. “He said it was a personal matter.”
Roxanne nodded slowly, straightened her shoulders, and took the phone from Mateo. She pulled the sheet up, covering her body, as she said, “William? It’s me.” Slowly, she turned away from Mateo, showing him her smooth, pretty back.
It was a fair move; she deserved her privacy. It was also a punch in the gut after the intimacy of their last few hours. Wounded and not wanting her to see it, Mateo stood, planned on grabbing his robe and letting her have the room.
He was knotting the robe tie when he heard her gasp.
Thoughts of privacy and separate lives flew away as he rounded the bed to sit next to her.
Roxanne’s trembling hand was over her mouth and her eyes were welling with tears. He could hear William’s voice trying to offer calm over the phone.
“What are his chances?” Roxanne asked, her voice urgent. William answered and Roxanne covered her eyes. Mateo put a hand on her back.
“Yes... Okay... Yes, immediately. I want to see him before the surgery,” she said, her voice husky. William said a few more soothing words. “Yes, that would be great. Thank you, William. I’ll see you in a few hours.”
Roxanne clicked the phone off and held it in her lap. She stared down at it. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice monotone. “I’m going to have to leave for a few days.”
“Okay,” Mateo said, expecting more explanation. But then Roxanne stood and, naked, began to move toward the door.
He snagged her hand before she got out of reach. “Wait,” he said, tugging her back down beside him. “What’s going on?”
“Right. Sorry.” Roxanne pulled the sheet back over herself. “It’s...kind of a family emergency.”
“Your father?”
Roxanne scowled. “No!”
Mateo hoped the man never tried to turn up in Roxanne’s life. He was not in for a pleasant welcome. “Then who?” he asked.
Roxanne stared down at her lap like the world’s secrets could be found there. “Just...just a man. A priest. He...” She fidgeted with her fingers and looked twelve years old. “He helped me out whenever my mom...whenever our relationship wasn’t at its best.”
“And what’s happened to him?”
She took a deep breath. “He’s been in an acc—” She broke off and pressed her hand against her mouth, which had started to quiver.
Fuck this, Mateo thought, and he swung a leg behind her, pulled her back into the V of his thighs, surrounded her chest with his arms, and pressed her back against him. Rather than fighting him, Roxanne gripped his forearms tight and clung to him, turning her head to press her temple against his chin.
She started again, not fighting the tears in her voice. “He’s been in an accident. They’re waiting for the swelling in his brain to go down before they can operate. They’re not...they don’t think his chances are very good.”
“Then I’ll go with you,” Mateo said into the warm silk of her hair. The words flowed out of his mouth. He didn’t want her to leave. He didn’t want to be separated from her. He wanted to give her the comfort she’d given him.
It was now that Roxanne tried to pull out of his arms. “No. You can’t go.” When Mateo’s hold didn’t ease, she stopped struggling. “You can’t leave now,” she implored softly. “People will think you’re running away again.”
Her words hit him hard, like a fist. She was right. He’d spoken like a babbling child, without considering his duties here. Without thinking about the massive, crushing weight of his responsibilities. But he let his voice ooze the confidence he’d perfected in his decade of faking it. “I can’t do anything to fight my father until the lawyers have had time to look at the documents.” She was silk and atonement in his arms. He ran his big hands soothingly over her biceps and shoulders. “And I’ll inform everyone we’re leaving for a family matter and that we’ll...I’ll be back shortly. I’ll ask Sofia and Carmen Louisa to, quietly and privately, let the right people know the severity of why we left. A week away, for this reason, won’t make them lose their confidence. You’re their multimillionaria. They want me to take good care of you.”
Lush Money (Filthy Rich) Page 20