Ranging from nine to sixteen, these were the kids currently making their home at St. Paul’s Shelter for Children and Youth, Roxanne’s safe place as a girl.
He couldn’t figure out what left him the most dumbfounded and misty-eyed: that she had such a strong relationship with the shelter, that she wanted to take the kids on an outing, that she knew kids and had a close-enough relationship with some of them that they trusted and relied on her. He felt stupid, the way he was set so far back on his heels by this new insight into her as he watched her impressive aim with the squirt gun she made with her joined hands. He’d assumed her knowledge of children was as theoretical as his own. He’d never fathomed she could be like this: playing, rough-housing, laughing, and shrieking, shielding an eleven-year-old girl with her body and then conspiring with the girl to launch a counterattack.
He never imagined her as a mother. And Jesus fucking Christ, what a mother she would be.
He had to look away, up into the ring of trees that circled the quarry. He felt light-headed.
“You okay?”
He turned to see his wife toweling herself off as she climbed up the path toward him. She’d managed to extricate herself from the kids, who continued to splash and thrash in the water. He scooched back, made room for her on the wide ledge as he sat cross-legged on his towel. She snapped her towel out and placed it next to his, stretched out long on her side and propped her head on her hand, watching him.
She was wearing a demure, navy, one-piece suit, her full breasts restrained by the high-neck halter top. Her body was still heartbreaking in it.
“I’m fine,” he said, making a lame gesture at his stomach. “Just...all the fried food.”
She smirked, her beautiful, naked face resting on her palm. “I told you those fried Twinkies were a bad idea.”
“So...” he began. He steepled his fingers in his lap and nodded at the kids. “You do this often?”
She nodded and pulled her heavy rope of wet hair over her shoulder with her free hand. “I visit Father Juan two or three times a year. When I do, I hang out with the kids.” She played with the wet ends of her hair. “Is it weird?”
“Not weird, just unexpected.” He ran a hand back through his hair and then leaned back on his arm, studying her. He’d taken off his shirt and felt the Kansas sun all over his torso. He wished he had his sunglasses. “I thought your desire to have a child was based on daydreams.”
She smiled softly at him instead of sputtering. “I guess the daydream is to create a child whose life isn’t defined by nightmares; I’m excited to see what that looks like.” Her smile flattened along with her voice. “Josie was abused by her uncle for years.” She was referring to the teenaged girl who watched over the rest of the children like a mother hen. “When she told her mother, her mother kicked her out. And Nathan...” That was the boy. “Nathan is swimming in his shirt to hide the cigarette burns on his chest.” She met Mateo’s gaze. “I’d like to balance all this darkness with a little light.”
Without thought, with only heedless impulse, Mateo leaned forward, captured Roxanne’s head in his hand, and kissed her. The kiss created enough light to power the sun. Just as abruptly, he pulled back from her lips before the kiss became more dangerous. With his forehead pressed against hers, he said, “Tell me what happened.”
He sat up, leaned back on his hands, and tried to give the impression that his heart hadn’t just exploded in his chest. I’d like to balance all this darkness with a little light. If she had said that from her laptop on that fateful day in January, he would have flown to the Bahamas or wherever the hell she’d been to impregnate her.
“I just suffered from good ol’ fashioned neglect and humiliation,” Roxanne said, combing her fingers through the ends of her hair. “It probably occurred to my mom to hit me a few times, but in the end, she just couldn’t be bothered.” She looked up at Mateo and saw by the set of his face that she wasn’t going to be let off the hook that easy. She sighed heavily as she understood that it was time. She settled her cheek onto her hand, the kids’ laughter acting as background music.
“My mother wasn’t officially the town whore—I mean, she didn’t set up a shingle or anything—but husbands and truckers knew that if she was around and bored and if they tossed a few bucks her way, she was open for pretty much anything. For my mom, it’s always been about...ease of effort. That’s why she didn’t abort me when she got knocked up at a bonfire by a farm worker. Or, at least, she thinks that’s when it happened. She isn’t sure. She likes to say she got pregnant during her ‘bandito’ phase. She listed his name as Daniel Medina on my birth certificate but, honestly, she doesn’t know who my father is.”
“I thought they were married,” Mateo said quietly. “Her last name is Medina, too.”
“She changed it to match mine when I made my first million.”
“Of course she did.”
“And a tale of an absentee husband and father is a much easier story to tell than this one.”
Mateo nodded, understanding and accepting the need for Roxanne Medina lore.
“I was useful to my mother when I was pretty or adoring or the guys she was with admired me.” She quickly shook her head when Mateo stiffened. “No, they never got the chance to admire me that much. The one thing my mother could never stand was competition. And as a malnourished, unwashed, and disregarded kid, I wasn’t that pretty or adoring either. So I got left a lot. My mom would come back to our crappy apartment after a couple of days and just sigh at me like, ‘Oh yeah, you’re still here.’ The best thing she ever did for me was abandon me at the playground. I kid you not, it probably wasn’t even intentional; she probably had an itch for a beer or a man and just wandered off. Someone called Father Juan and my whole life changed. I’d be dead if it wasn’t for him.”
She said it with a surety that made Mateo want to lay her flat and cover her completely, protect her from anything that ever tried to hurt her again. But he stayed upright and tried to keep the discomfort of her story from showing in his shoulders.
“Why did she fight Father Juan so much?” he asked. “Wouldn’t it have been easier on her to surrender you to the foster system?”
“Her delusion is that she’s an okay mother. Father Juan’s involvement gave that fairy tale added spice. Now she was an avenging mother protecting her daughter from an overly interested priest. She always lost interest in that story the second I was home again. But it was drama, and I gave her leverage over him.” Roxanne smirked. “My mama always likes leverage.”
Mateo let his eyes wander over her delicately sculpted face, the straight nose and the naked lips and the tanned olive skin, showing its Latino influence under the constant barrage of Kansas sun. Her roots revealed a deep chestnut, still dark but lighter than the glossy black she colored her hair with. Even during a time of so much anxiety, she’d let so much of herself relax during their weeks here in Freedom. He wondered how Tonya Medina slept at night.
“So you pay her to keep quiet,” he asked.
Roxanne nodded, her eyes on the rock beneath her hand. “I was made of shame when I was younger. My classmates, the teachers, the other moms—everyone knew who she was. The kids were cruel. The parents were embarrassed. Probably ashamed that this thing was going on in their community. All that kept me going sometimes was the thought of getting away from here, getting away from her, and being shed of all of it. Of being free. My money walls her away from me, but I’ll never be fully free of her.”
God, he knew that feeling. He knew the weight of your family’s bad decisions. He knew how that weight made you make bad decisions all your own. By paying her mother for her silence, Roxanne exposed a tender spot that Tonya Medina could stab at for the rest of her life.
“You know,” he said gently, “the shame is hers, not yours.”
“So my therapist tells me.”
“You give her power wit
h the secrets you keep.”
She huffed a laugh. “Secrets... They’re our stock in trade, aren’t they? All these secrets we keep to pretend to be something we’re not.” She watched him from under her full dark lashes.
Suddenly she pushed up, swung her legs around so she could sit cross-legged and face him. “Do you want to know a really good secret?”
Unsure what to expect, Mateo nodded slowly.
Without hesitation, his gorgeous blue-eyed wife lifted her hand to her face, gently pulled down her eyelid with one finger, and touched her eyeball with another. Then she lifted her fingertip to Mateo.
Hovering on the end of her fingertip was a blue-colored contact.
Startled, Mateo looked up, leaned in to get a better look at her face. Roxanne opened her eyes wide. Her iris was the soft, glossy brown of chocolate mousse, of hot cocoa cooled with a splash of heavy cream. He leaned back and looked at her blue eye and then her brown one, her blue eye then her brown one. His eyes traveled to her hair, took in the way the sun was shining in those chestnut roots, and then back to her face, to that gorgeous sugar-cookie tan making her skin glow, freckles beginning to dust her cheeks and nose like sprinkles.
Mateo realized he was mentally describing his wife like a dessert because he wanted to eat her up. He had never been more viscerally attracted to her than he was right now, when she was as naked with him as she could possibly be, when he could see the elemental being that she was, this smart indomitable girl growing up Latina and parentless in a conservative small town. That girl roared in this beautiful billionaire sitting in front of him.
He just had one question before he threw her down and made love to her in front of six children. “Why?”
She pinched her lip as she looked down at the contact at the end of her finger, her hand resting in her lap. “At first, it felt like a smart business move. I was already facing a massive barrier to entry; looking more white would help me jump at least one hurdle.” The contact had grown shriveled and tacky on her finger, and Roxanne flicked it away. “Now, it serves as armor. The head of Medina Now Enterprises is a pale-skinned, black-haired, blue-eyed Amazon.”
“She’s Wonder Woman,” Mateo teased.
Roxanne grinned at him shyly. “Exactly. She has nothing to do with the scared Mexican-American girl who wakes up drenched in sweat that a decision she’d made will sink her company and destroy the livelihoods of thousands of people.”
Mateo reached out and wrapped his hands around both of her knees. It felt like the only safe place he could touch her while the kids were still around. What do you say when a woman like Roxanne Medina shows you her soft underbelly? What do you say when you’re doing everything in your power to keep yourself rolled up into a tight ball? He was glad his hands didn’t tremble on her knees.
“Now I know all of your secrets,” he intoned in the hokey voice of a movie announcer.
He was fucking this up, but he was still surprised when she ducked her head away.
“Not really,” she said, rubbing her palms together in her lap. “I’ve been wanting to mention that—AAAHHH!!”
Roxanne arched up as water shot her square in the back. Mateo glimpsed the massive Nerf squirt gun being aimed at them from the quarry below before he caught a faceful of water. He sputtered, waving his arms. Roxanne grabbed his hand and pulled him to standing as the kids shrieked with laughter.
“This cannot stand, Príncipe,” she grinned at him. “We attack!”
She turned and took off at top speed down the treacherous pathway. Mateo watched her run, prayed she wouldn’t crack her head open, and then took off after her, glad to have something—even drowning—to distract him from the growing understanding that he was a worthless little shit. He was everything his father accused him of being.
* * *
Roxanne was in a mood when they got back to their room that afternoon.
When a freshly showered Mateo stepped out of the bathroom, she ripped away his towel, manhandled him onto the bed, and instructed him to “Stay!” before she hurried into the bathroom. At the bang of the bathroom door, he glanced up and saw that she’d shoved him down on the edge of the bed where the long mirror on the opposite wall could catch him. He looked at himself: long bare feet on the red-orange carpet, leg hair turned that blond it got in the sun, good strong thighs and stomach and chest and shoulders, cock lying shy but interested against his thigh. He met his own gaze. “Golden” they called it. He saw the flush of anticipation high up on his cheekbones.
Was this wrapping enough to sustain the interest of Roxanne Medina if the stuff inside proved to be more cotton than steel? Minutes passed as Mateo examined his own self-worth like a jeweler with a magnifying glass, searching for the flaws. His erection seemed to only be aware that his naked wife was on the other side of the door.
But his wife wasn’t naked when she came out of the bathroom. Somehow she’d managed to sneak in his white dress shirt and tie, and when she walked toward him, hair flowing over his low-buttoned shirt, the tie loosely framing her cleavage as the hem fluttered at the top of her thighs, Mateo had to clench his jaw to keep his tongue from lolling out.
He moved to stand.
“Your billionaire told you to ‘stay,’ Príncipe,” she commanded. She raised her imperious nose at him and tugged her hand slowly, suggestively, down the red silk of his tie.
That “stay” was an erotic spike in Mateo’s blood. She hadn’t given him a sexual command since their first night together, when she’d ordered him onto the couch. Now he trusted her with the same intensity that he scorned her then. And he wanted her—this stunning, accomplished woman—with an ocean of desire that had only been a drop in January.
He relaxed back on his arms and gripped the sheets in his fists.
“Face the mirror.”
He smirked at her, covering up the panting he’d rather do, and slowly turned to face his reflection. In it, he watched her get on the bed and then slowly crawl up behind him, the muscles of her tanned, powerful legs flexing. She pressed against him, the tie slippery and cool against his back, her breasts soft and warm through the starched shirt. She reached around him and carefully scored her nails down his torso.
“Qué bien, Príncipe,” she said almost absently, like he was a particularly fine statue she was assessing. “So perfect,” she said as her fingers traced the muscles of his chest. “So beautiful,” she said as her nails dragged across his clenched stomach. And then her elegant hand with her giant glittering ring wrapped around his blood-filled cock.
“And all mine,” she crooned.
He grunted as she bit his earlobe, and then he squeezed his eyes shut as she began to pump his cock.
She ran her thumb over the tip, causing his hips to arch up, and she grabbed his hair in her free hand, tilting his head up and licking into his mouth. When he let go of the sheets to turn toward her, she bit into his bottom lip and raked those nails over his balls. “Príncipe,” she growled against his mouth, making his balls tighten up in her hand. “It’s a one-word instruction. Don’t make me tie you up. You won’t be able to bury your hands in my hair when I’m swallowing your cock.”
“Fuck, Roxanne,” he gasped, jerking up against the inside of her wrist, trying to get some friction.
“Soon, mi rey.” She grinned against his mouth, her lips wide and soft. “Soon. But first, relax and let your billionaire worship her king’s perfect, beautiful body.”
And he did. As her lush tongue slid into his mouth and her hair slid over his face and her hot hand surrounded his cock, Mateo just leaned back and relaxed into it, let her tongue pick out the pleasure in his mouth, let her free hand play along his torso, let her other hand jack him slow then fast, hard then whisper soft, strumming at that tender spot just under his head and then stroking flat palmed across his balls. He was chained to the bed by her touch, her hot rose scent, and the delicate links of
her desire. He craved to give her whatever she wanted.
“God, look at you, mi amor,” she purred as she licked into his ear. Mateo lowered his head because she allowed it to see himself, heat-flushed, sweat-sheened, muscles tight and jumping as he gripped the carpet with his toes to keep from pouncing on her. He looked at her with a lazy, half-mast look—caught her soft caramel eyes, free of artifice—and let his knees fall open just that little bit more, let his cock bob and his balls stretch in offering to her.
She made a pleased moan in her throat—he’d pleased her—before swiveling around his body, kissing his shoulders and chest, testing the muscles of his bicep with her teeth, swirling that thick silky hair over his stomach and letting it fall into his lap, across his weeping dick. She ended up on the floor, between his knees, wrestling out from under her hair and pushing her hands out of the oversized cuffs to wrap them around his penis.
“Watch me,” she panted, and he did, he watched her as his billionaire slowly swirled the wet tip of his dick around her luscious lips, poked out her pink tongue to lick at his slit, and then surrounded the angry-red head with her mouth, pushing him into heat and wet and spine-racking suction. She took him down deep as she stared up at him, ate him alive with honest, open, beautiful brown eyes. Eyes gone dark chocolate with desire for him. Eyes she’d hidden from everyone but him.
Lush Money (Filthy Rich) Page 26