Lush Money (Filthy Rich)

by Angelina M. Lopez

  “Yes,” she moaned, swaying into his hard, naked chest. Pinprick sensation raced across every inch of her.

  “No, I mean...” He ran a calloused finger over her jaw like he couldn’t help it. “You need your rest.” He brushed against the bruises of sleeplessness under her eyes.

  The joking, his overloud voice belying his tender touches, they’d all been in avoidance of this—this intimacy, this intensity that had built up between them over this last week. He’d tried to build up a wall. Now he was tearing it down and Roxanne wanted to pulverize every last brick.

  “I need you,” she pleaded, pressing up against him, stroking her hands over his beautiful face and into his wet, curling hair. “Please, Mateo. Please take care of me.”

  “Yes,” he said, without pause, without hesitation as he bent to kiss her. “Yes, mi vida, mi mujer. Whatever you need.” The kiss she expected to be desperate was soft and thorough, an exploration of her lips and her tongue, her own mouth answering and kissing, kissing. Her towel dropped to the floor and he molded his hands to her breasts, took their heavy weight, slid over her skin like he was enjoying its silk and then feathering over her nipples. His mouth slid from her mouth, down her neck, over her chest for soft bites to her skin before licking to her nipple, bending low to take it into his mouth and bite, suck, and stroke at her like it was one of the chocolate truffles he liked to savor.

  His position made his towel slip off his body, and Roxanne ran her hands down the sleek muscles that stood out against his back. She pushed against his shoulder and as he stood, she burrowed against him, wanting to feel him against every inch of her.

  “Sweet silk,” he breathed into her ear as he surrounded her in his arms and turned her toward the bed. “My sweet silky mujer.”

  He pulled her down with him and, seeming to understand her need for his skin, kept her pressed against him as he arranged them on the bed. He buried his arms beneath her, holding her close, as she held him between her thighs and twined her legs around his. He felt so good, so big and warm and grounding as he held her against the cool slippery comforter, that she rocked them with the pleasure of it, joy bubbling up inside her like champagne, fighting a laugh that was as unexpected now as the crying in the shower.

  “Make love to me, Mateo,” she begged into his ear, running her hands down his back and over his ass, his skin still hot and damp from the shower. She rocked and rolled beneath him. “Please, please, mi esposo. Please, mi Mateo.”

  “Yes, yes,” he said, pulsing against her, kissing her neck and her ear. “Just...” He bit at her jaw and pulled back only slightly, just enough to meet her eyes. He was so beautiful and careful in the weak lamplight that he made her want to cry. “Just, Roxanne, you’re not ovulating now. You know that, right? It’s less likely I can make you pregnant now?”

  She met his eyes, the intensity in them, saw both the question and the demand. Saw his tenderness and the clear line he was drawing in the sand.

  She stroked her hands over his hard jaw, pushed back his wet hair against his skull, and tilted up her hips so that his penis swept against her entrance. “Yes, Mateo. I...” She wouldn’t say the word. She couldn’t. Not right now. Not yet. “I...want you. I need you.” His eyes were so brilliant as he looked into hers she wondered how she ever held herself away from him. “You. Not just the baby you can give me.”

  Wrapping herself around him, holding him close, Roxanne adjusted her hips and kept her eyes open as her husband slowly, achingly pulsed into her until he was as deep as he could go. She gripped him close as he moved against her, arched into his hands as she squeezed around him. She stroked wherever she could and let him kiss whatever he could reach. They muttered senselessness into each other’s skin and their cells recorded every word.

  For the first time in her life, Roxanne Medina made love.

  May: Day Seven

  “Faster,” Roxanne urged, gripping Mateo’s arm.

  Mateo bore down and went faster.

  “Harder,” she demanded.

  He whipped his head to look at her. “How much harder do you think I can push?”

  “Put some muscle behind it, Príncipe,” she ordered. She gave a thump to the ancient dashboard. “Why are you driving anyway?”

  Mateo jammed the pedal down on the dirty mat, making the Bronco squeal around a rusted Toyota Tercel that honked its horn at him. “Because you barely know your own name before coffee,” he said as he spotted the top of the Freedom Medical Center over the trees. “And you can afford to bail me out of jail when I get arrested for breaking the sound barrier.”

  Father Juan was awake and responsive.

  Roxanne’s phone had jarred them upright with the news this morning. They’d been dead to the world in their dark womb of a cheap motel room, as exhausted by the week’s tension as they were by yesterday’s revolutionary lovemaking, a lovemaking interrupted only when pizza was delivered at sunset and sleep dragged them down to its depths.

  As Mateo flew over the sun-soaked, small-town streets, the blue Kansas sky stretching out all around them and Roxanne shifting in her seat like a little girl eager for the bell on her last day of school, he felt fucked in all of the best and worst ways.

  She was astonishing. She needed him.

  She was vulnerable. She could pulverize him.

  He was her husband. He could give her comfort and support, a good time, and a hard shagging.

  He could give her little else. He was a temporary husband and a worthless prince on the verge of losing his kingdom, his legacy for their child, his pride, his life’s work, and any hope that he could control his destiny.

  He never should have fought the contract. He should have relaxed into its depths and let it create three perfect nights to kiss and stroke and adore Roxanne Medina, nights free of the emotional turmoil and what-ifs and chances for mind-heart-soul rending disappointment and disillusionment. What if some day in the near future, when Father Juan was on the mend and Roxanne had her bearings again, his wife looked up from his shoulder and decided that it wasn’t that strong of a shoulder to lean on?

  She’d not asked for anything outside of the terms of their contract. And why would she? What, honestly, could Mateo even offer her when she offered so much: wisdom, beauty, security for so many people (including his own), a soft place for Mateo to lay his pathetic head. What were the chances, if he was honest with himself, that he could hang on to a woman like Roxanne Medina? His own father hadn’t found much to recommend him; it was an old wound that wasn’t supposed to smart anymore. But the idea of seeing his father’s bored disdain in Roxanne’s eyes was enough to make Mateo wish that he’d simply met her in any number of luxury hotel beds and fucked her until neither of them could speak.

  I need you, she’d told him as she’d gripped him tight. You. Not just the baby you can give me. Christ, he’d forced the words out of her, made her say them after she’d faced the possible loss of her father figure, after Mateo had primed her with his hands and teased her with his body. He could have gotten her to admit to being a spotted mare at that moment. A beautiful, iridescent, rainbow-winged unicorn.

  He squeezed the steering wheel and gritted his teeth into what he hoped looked like a smile as they screeched into the hospital parking lot.

  William, Freedom Medical Center’s head doctor, and the intern from yesterday met them at the hospital entrance. He and Roxanne had given up using side doors or trying to remain anonymous, although Mateo had shoved on a baseball cap as a matter of habit. Everyone in Freedom seemed to know they were in town, and if they’d wanted to reveal their resident billionaire and prince to the press, they would have done it already. With her perfect face free of makeup and her hair pulled back into a braid that trailed down her pale blue t-shirt dress, Roxanne was as naked and exposed as he’d ever seen her.

  “How is he?” Roxanne asked without slowing her step as she walked throug
h the sunlit lobby. Mateo became part of the orbit that circled around her.

  “He’s groggy,” the doctor said. “He may fade in and out easily and not everything is going to be coherent. But that’s okay. We’re pleased with his responses considering what he’s been through.”

  “Are there any concerns?” Roxanne asked once they were in the elevator.

  “He’s had massive brain trauma, so he’s not out of the woods yet,” she said honestly, watching Roxanne. “We’re going to continue monitoring him. But all indications are that he’s going to continue improving.”

  The intern spoke up. “When you see him...” She stopped for a moment, choosing her words as the elevator doors opened. “He’s foggy, he’s on pain meds, he may fall asleep in the middle of a sentence. He won’t be the Father Juan we’re used to.”

  Roxanne stepped out of the elevator, giving the women a troubled frown. She absently wrapped her fingers around her small, rose-gold cross. “Will he be that man again one day?”

  The intern smiled, that full smile of a spiritual person who’d found peace in a world with their God at the helm. Mateo was always envious of those people. “I’m praying for it.”

  The doctor and intern left them outside Father Juan’s room with reassurances that they would keep Roxanne informed of the man’s progress. William quickly mentioned that parishioners from St. Paul’s were desperate to help out.

  “I’ve set up a schedule to allow people to come and sit with him,” he said. “You two need a break and more sleep.”

  It was a measure of how distracted and desperate to see Father Juan she was when Roxanne just nodded in agreement. As she grabbed the handle, William unfolded the newspaper he’d been holding under his arm and leaned back on the doorjamb.

  “What are you doing?” she asked him.

  “Giving you some privacy.”

  “Absolutely not,” she demanded. William smiled, lifting his bushy gray brows. “You’ve been at his bedside as much as we have and you’re a dear friend to all of us. C’mon!”

  Mateo bit back a smile at her annoyance at having to state what to her was obvious. For a woman who described herself as cold, Roxanne Medina was one of the most openhearted people he’d ever met.

  Roxanne opened the door gently, and Mateo and William followed her inside. The room was dim, all the blinds tilted just enough to add a dusky glow to the room. In his white bed, with a white cast encasing an arm and a leg and a white bandage wrapped around his head, Father Juan was easy to see. The three of them paused as one when Father Juan turned his head toward them, his brown eyes blinking open groggily. It was shocking to see the still, small form they’d kept watch over for a week move and react.

  “Mija,” he croaked, the voice that apparently boomed at Sunday mass now barely a whisper.

  Roxanne moved forward quickly and wrapped her hands over the bed railing. She said nothing as Mateo and William hung back.

  “Mija?” the man whispered again. “Why are you crying?” Only then did Mateo notice her tremors in the shoulder blades pressed against the thin t-shirt material. He stepped closer, put his hand against the small of her back.

  “I’m crying because...” Roxanne stopped, trying to clear the heartbroken huskiness from her voice. She put a hand against her chest. “I’m crying because I was afraid I’d never get to hear you call me ‘your daughter’ again. I’m so...” She turned her head away, and they were all quiet as they gave this strong woman a moment to compose herself. Mateo rubbed small soothing circles with the flat of his palm.

  The frail man in the bed looked so different than the vibrant priest Roxanne had described in small slips and bursts, little details of her past she hadn’t even realized she was surrendering. Father Juan who’d crocheted mangled and ugly Christmas stockings for all the shelter kids, who drove a Prius and bullied the whole town into energy-efficient streetlights, who taught Roxanne Spanish by speaking it to her exclusively for days on end—driving her insane—and who gave her a rosary and taught her its prayers as a form of meditation, as a way to center herself and think beyond herself when life was at its worst.

  Mateo had much to thank the man for even though he didn’t know him: Father Juan had been a stalwart wall in the storm of Roxanne’s life, the one resolute protector who’d sheltered her with kindness and intelligence. Now, it looked like the weight of Father Juan’s casts were the only thing keeping him from blowing away.

  “William, hermano, you’re here?” the man asked, as if unsure of his vision.

  William stepped closer to the bed. “Of course, Father Juan. I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”

  “If you’re here and Roxanne is here, who is running the company?”

  William smiled. “Roxanne has created a company that runs pretty well on its own for a time. How are you feeling?”

  “Tired,” the man croaked. “The doctors said I ran into a tree?”

  Roxanne gently touched the hand that was free of a cast, although two of Father Juan’s fingers were splinted. “You were forced into a tree. When I find that trucker...”

  “Mija, forgiveness is divine.”

  “And revenge is sweet,” she declared.

  Father Juan’s dazed smile and slow-blinking eyes were an indication of the meds he was on. “I’ve missed you,” he said. His voice was unaccented except when he spoke Spanish.

  Mateo watched his wife bite her lower lip as she looked down at the priest, her long braid trailing over her shoulder. “I’ve missed you, too.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were getting married?”

  Mateo felt her stiffen under his hand. Her teeth sank deeper into her lip. “I...”

  Mateo stepped up to the bed’s rails. “I rushed her into it,” he said, slipping an arm around her waist. “Perdóname, Padre. I had to have her.”

  But instantly, Roxanne was elbowing him away. “No,” she said. She met Mateo’s eyes. “No. I don’t lie to him.”

  She looked down at Father Juan. “I didn’t tell you and I haven’t called you back because...because I was ashamed. Not of him...” Her voice lowered when her lovely blue eyes touched on Mateo. “Not of you,” she promised. “But of what I did to get what I want. I was afraid...” Her voice lowered to a whisper as her fingers white-knuckled the railing. “I was afraid you’d be disappointed in me.”

  Father Juan’s bruised brow furrowed further. Mateo was unsure how many of Roxanne’s words were slipping through. “Never, mi hija,” the man murmured. “How many times do I have to tell you? I could never be disappointed in you. Stop trying to prove your worth. Your value is beyond measure.”

  Silent tears tracked down Roxanne’s cheeks. Mateo felt a little misty-eyed himself.

  Then the priest suddenly focused his gaze on Mateo. “Príncipe, I want to share one piece of advice with you.”

  “Yes, Padre?”

  “Don’t hurt her. My grandmother was a bruja in Mexico and taught me some curses.”

  “Father Juan!” Roxanne scolded.

  “Don’t forget.” The man, who up until this moment Mateo had thought of as frail, turned his bandaged head and snuggled into his pillow. “I already have the holy water and consecrated earth,” he murmured. “All I need are the chicken feet...”

  With a heavy, satisfied breath, Father Juan fell asleep while William chuckled, Roxanne adjusted his blankets, and Mateo tried to maintain his cynicism as a lapsed Catholic while the former altar boy in him sweated at the idea of a priest aiming curses in his direction.

  * * *

  Roxanne finally relented to leave two hours later when Father Juan still hadn’t woken up and the first of the parishioners scheduled to watch over the sleeping priest showed up. The parishioners, a mustached, tattooed and chaps-wearing man and his petite wife, lugging her motorcycle helmet and also wearing chaps, had thrown their arms around Mateo’s stiff billionaire,
thanking her for her donation to the Southeast Kansas chapter of Bikers Against Child Abuse.

  “We never coulda made it to the national rally in Austin without your help,” the wife told Roxanne, looking up through tears and a pile of eye makeup. “Half of the chapter woulda had to stay home.”

  The husband, who seemed to finally understand who he was gripping, stepped back from Roxanne, his sweaty palms leaving trails on his leather chaps. “Darnell, Honey, and Johnny Ray were real, real grateful.”

  The large, muscular man bumped into Mateo as Roxanne tried to extricate herself from his wife. “You work for ’er?” the man asked.

  Mateo, who’d been a lifelong favorite of the international paparazzi and who’d gotten into the habit of wearing baseball caps partly to shield his face, merely nodded. “Yep.”

  “Then take real good care of her. That’s one special lady.” He crossed mammoth arms over his “Live to Ride, Ride to Live” t-shirt. “Y’all need anything, you just call over t’the salvage yard and ask for Bulldog.”

  “Will do,” Mateo affirmed.

  Roxanne scolded him on their ride down in the elevator.

  “Don’t let people think you work for me,” she said. “Tell them who you are.”

  Mateo shrugged. “I’m glad to meet people who don’t know who I am. People have more to do with their time than worry about the comings and goings of the Golden Prince.”

  She trailed her hand down her long braid. “You can tell them you’re my husband.”

  Mateo nodded slowly. “I can. But...it’s an impermanent state. If they don’t know already, why should I tell them just so one more person can be titillated by our divorce in a few months.”

  Roxanne looked up at the descending numbers and Mateo would have assumed that everything was fine if she hadn’t pinched her full bottom lip, just for a moment, before she dropped her hands and clasped them in front of her baby-blue skirt. She kept her eyes on the elevator panel.