He scrambled to grab the bottom of his cock, knocking her loose, squeezing hard to stave off his orgasm as he closed his own eyes tight.
“No,” she moaned, sulky and sultry, “that was mine.” She sounded as lost in desire as he felt. “Come for me. I’ll make you do it again and again. Put your hands in my hair; pull me down on your cock.” Her tongue licked at his tip. “Touch me. Show me what you want.”
And he did. He leaned forward to grab her by the waist and lifted her struggling body until he could lie back on the bed and pull her over his face. “This was not what I meant,” she gasped, laughing and wriggling above him as he clamped his arms around her thighs and arched his neck to flick up into the wet beautiful heat of her pussy, stilling her.
“Please, mi reina,” he said, muffled by her thighs, under his shirt, in this dark, humid, Roxanne place that was the only place he wanted to be. He turned his head and kissed her thigh. “Please. You still have control here. You own me completely. Let me worship you. Let me...” But his words were forgotten as he pushed his tongue up into her, past the muscle and into her taste.
Thank God for her, for her ability to forget her agenda and just start fucking her body onto his tongue.
Underneath his shirt, he was all but blind. But there was a universe to explore here. He tasted her sweet, swollen clit, sucked on it, while his hands slid over her stomach and then took on the weight of her full breasts. He squeezed her nipples as his tongue vibrated against her clit, mixing the delicate sting of nails or teeth with soothing rubs or licks. He counted her ribs and fitted his hands to her silky waist as he swept the whole of her cunt over his tongue, back and forth, and then petted at the small of her back while he fucked her deep, his thumb frigging at her clit as fast as he could get it. She was a vibration of uncontrollable sex sounds around his head, a soundtrack he’d remember and replay during the lonely years that stretched after her.
Suddenly there was light and coolness washing over his face as she wrenched herself off of him. He blinked, grabbed for her. She was on her hands and knees, looking back at him in supplication. “Take me,” she begged, her eyes dark and lust blown. “Now, Mateo, mi amor. Please. Now.”
He reared up, got on his knees behind her and clamped his hands on her hips as he recorded the sight: his hard cock, her beautiful ass, and sinking into her wriggling, desperate body. He fell forward onto her back as she groaned, and he felt his own fucking shirt. “Joder,” he cursed, getting his hands under her, into the plackets, and ripping it open, buttons flying. The tie caught at her neck and he jerked at that, too, slid the silk loose enough to get it over her head, her laughing and gasping as he tugged off all the offending clothing, everything that separated her precious skin from him. Finally—fuck, finally—she was naked beneath him, and he ran his hands over her gorgeous back, squeezed her perfect ass, planted his left fist on the bed so he could run his right hand over the front of her, from her soaking wet cunt up her belly and breasts to cup her delicate neck. He stroked that fragile skin with his fingers and thumb, felt her life-giving pulse in his hold. He wanted to squeeze, to claim, to own. She was his. His.
He shifted his left hand to cover hers, entwining their fingers, pressing wedding ring to wedding ring as he arched his hips and pushed deep into her. She moaned and tilted her hips to take him deeper. He gripped his eyes closed as he began to move, pressed his forehead against her rolling spine, feathered kisses against the trembling skin of her back. She was everywhere inside him, in his arms and against his chest and around his thighs, the essential heat and scent and silk of her surrounding him and sheltered by him. He opened his eyes and caught her face in the mirror, her lips pursed in a moan, her eyes gripped in painful pleasure as her forehead leaned against her fist, as if she could barely stand it.
When his hips began to pick up desperate speed, she tilted her head, resting her temple on her hand and opened her eyes slowly, dreamily. She stared at him in the mirror as if she knew he’d been watching. As her body jolted beneath him, she looked at him like he was the world.
“I love you.” He watched her mouth shape the words in the mirror. Heard the whisper from the body beneath him. Saw the tears filling her eyes. “I love you,” she gasped again.
He hooked his arms across her chest, grabbed her by the shoulders, and roared his orgasm into her skin. The pulse and drench of her own orgasm sent him deeper, higher. He kept going until he had nothing else to give. He collapsed them both to their sides, not letting a millimeter of space between them, and wrestled the blankets over them, cocooning them inside until there was nothing but darkness and their recovering breaths. He pressed his face into her hair, her skin, trying to inhale her.
Perhaps if he did, he thought as he began to drift off, holding her sleep-lazy body, he would inhale some of her courage. Perhaps he would wake up knowing how to respond.
Mid-May
God, god, god, god, god, god. God!
As Roxanne drove to her mother’s house the next day, she white-knuckled the steering and fought the urge to bang her head against its fake pleather wrap.
Only Mateo sitting next to her, blithely humming along to the pop song on the radio, kept her from doing it.
Why?!?!?!?!? Why had she said it at that moment? Facedown, ass up, seconds from an earthquaking orgasm with Mateo touching every inch of her. Who wouldn’t have said, “I love you,” in that position? How many thousands of times had Mateo heard it then, some woman over him or under him gasping “I love you,” as she gazed at his golden beauty and enjoyed his princely penis? He probably just assumed it was some quirk of his undeniable magic and had decided eons ago to let women off the hook and avoid questioning them about the undying devotion they declared when he was blowing their minds.
Billionaire Roxanne Medina, offering the same dime-a-dozen love every woman gave him.
Or, holy shit, what if he hadn’t heard her at all? What if, in all the gasping and moaning and mind-blowing, he simply hadn’t heard the once-in-a-lifetime phrase she’d never uttered to another man? What could she do now? Should she ask, “Hey, did you hear that thing I ripped out my chest to say to you? Did you catch that statement that was the biggest leap I’ve ever taken in my life?”
She looked out her side window and took a sip of air. She was effortlessly working herself into a panic attack.
She’d woken up fine, quite dandy, actually, wrapped up in Mateo. It was only over the course of the slow lovemaking in the shower and the long breakfast with coffee and waffles, when Mateo continued to be his sweet and solicitous self but said nothing about loving her back, that Roxanne began to get nervous. To worry. To sweat.
Because what if he had heard her? What if he knew she meant it?
What if he just didn’t feel the same way?
Roxanne cranked the window handle, letting the ninety-degree heat whoosh into the interior of the car and beat against her.
The possibility that she’d misread all of his happiness and lust and devotion was too big to comprehend. What if she’d begun to believe in a reciprocal emotion that just wasn’t there? If he didn’t return her feelings—well, she would be like the world’s most nightmarish sexual harasser, wouldn’t she? She had a contract with him to bear his child; she’d promised him a fortune to save his kingdom. Maybe he was searching for a polite way to say, “Thanks but no thanks,” to the woman who held his future in her hands.
He wouldn’t fake it, would he, until he got her pregnant and got his hands on her money?
Oh God.
The possibility that she read him all wrong throbbed inside her skull. Her instincts were her foundation and her temple. They were the one aspect of herself that she could depend on when she had nothing else. That her intuition could betray her now, when she was the most exposed, was unfathomable. It would call into question every certainty she’d ever had, every judgment call she made in the future.
Her long, lonely future without Mateo. That’s the what-if that truly terrified her. What if Mateo didn’t love her? What if Mateo didn’t want her? Intellectually, she knew why her mother didn’t love her: the woman was incapable of the emotion. Thousands of dollars in therapy had helped her understand the damage that had wreaked, the cracks in her foundation that let her believe she wasn’t worth loving, no matter how much she spackled over them. But if she could swing and miss like this, again, didn’t it call into question whether it was a “them” problem? Maybe it really was a “her” problem.
She looked out the driver-side window and let the coarse, hot wind beat at her sudden tears.
What a horribly perfect time to go see her mother. She couldn’t cancel their appointment; like a shark, her mother could always smell the blood in the water, and the woman would do something that would make Roxanne’s already shitty day that much worse. No, she would suck it up, wrap herself in the emotional Kevlar that was the only way she could interact with her mother, and pay whatever bill Tonya Medina believed she was owed.
Mateo had insisted on accompanying her. “Shut up. You going solo is not an option. Just let me grab my bullwhip.” She glanced over at him now and was distracted by the consternation on his face, his heavy brows in a frown as he read his phone.
“What is it?” she asked, clicking off the radio.
With a start, he dropped his phone into his lap and smiled at her. A smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Nada. How much longer until—”
“Mateo,” she insisted.
He’d left his ball cap off, and he ruffled his hand through his hair as he leaned back into the worn seat. “It’s nothing. Stupid. There’s a story in El País that my sister forwarded. They think they came up with a clever title.”
“What is it?”
“¿Dónde en el mundo está el príncipe del multimillonario?” he said dryly.
“Where in the world is the billionaire’s prince?” Roxanne parroted back. “What’s going on?”
“It’s more of Fuller’s mierda,” Mateo said, trying to appear at ease but failing. “The story is implying that, faced with a challenging growing season and the economic hardships of the Monte and the emergence of a more handsome and intelligent brother, I’ve decided to abandon ship.”
Roxanne shook her head in disbelief as she stared out the windshield. “Not a drop of that is true! Even the growing season is amazing.”
“It appears the reporter doesn’t care. Especially when he can pair it with some lurid conjecture about where I’m spending my time. It’s the one detail he got right.”
“Where?” she asked, glancing at him.
Mateo leaned close and slipped a big hand around her jeans-covered thigh. “In the heaven between my wife’s legs.” He meant the words to be teasing, but Roxanne heard his frustration and disgust. She felt it, too. She didn’t want anyone talking about their sex life.
“So he’s saying you’re hiding between my legs.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Mateo said, sliding his hand off of her.
“It does,” she said, already feeling the loss. “Fuller’s going to encourage doubts in the Monte with stories like this. And your sister and Carmen Louisa can only fill in so much. You have to go back.”
For the first time in the two weeks that Roxanne had been insisting he return to the Monte, he didn’t argue with her. The silence grew in the cab like a black hole. She felt its edges press against her heart, wondered if she’d just provided him the escape hatch he’d been looking for since her declaration of love.
“I’ll wait a couple of days,” Mateo said, finally. “I’m not going to let Fuller think he’s making me panic.”
“I’ll join you in the Monte as soon as I...I...” She stammered to a stop. “I mean, when it’s time for...” She stopped again. This is what she’d been avoiding when she’d insisted on sticking to the terms of their contract. What were their boundaries now?
“Yeah, of course. Come when you’re...ready. Or before. If you want to. I’d stay if I...”
“Of course,” Roxanne cut in. “No worries.”
No worries?
For the first time in five months, an awkward silence descended between them. In it, she could feel the weight of her panic. She could feel her fear that Mateo was pulling away. She could feel her desire for the normalcy of the contract...which wasn’t normal at all.
As she took the turn into the subdivision of high-end homes near the country club, she said, “I’m really sorry about all of this.”
“All of what?”
“All of...everything. I’m sorry I introduced so much chaos into your life.”
“My life was speeding toward chaotic before you got involved.”
“But this arrangement made it much worse.” Especially since Fuller and the king were threatening to reveal the contract if they didn’t get what they wanted out of Mateo. He could either agree to Fuller’s deal and lose half of his kingdom, or be outed as a penis-for-hire and potentially lose all of his kingdom, his reputation, and his self-respect. After this meeting with her mother, she planned on telling him everything. “I’m sorry I forced you into this. I wanted what I wanted and I didn’t care about the consequences. And that was wrong. Really wrong. It was wrong of me to coerce you and to arrange this with your father without your consent and to manipulate you...”
As she ticked through her sins against him, she felt any chance of keeping him slip through her fingers. Of course he didn’t love her. Why would he? But he needed to know that she was sorry, regardless of how little good it did. She respected him more than any other person in her life. All she wanted were bright and beautiful things for him. She fell silent as she turned into the long driveway leading to her mother’s mansion.
“Thank you,” he murmured. She glanced at him, at his beautiful golden eyes taking her in. “I didn’t believe your apologies in the beginning. And then your help and your friendship and all the stunning sex covered up how angry I was with you. But I needed to hear those words. Thank you for giving them to me.”
She parked the SUV behind the overblown marble fountain in front of her mother’s home. Four water-spouting dolphins cavorted around an Aphrodite that looked like Tonya Medina and blocked the view of them from the front door.
“You’ve always been upfront with me,” he said. Her guilty conscience fluttered. “So I’ll be upfront with you. I wouldn’t have chosen this course, Roxanne. But I don’t regret where we’ve ended up.”
Roxanne had to breathe through her nose as her heart rate sped up, as she met his eyes underneath the fall of his summer-kissed hair. What did he mean, she wanted to demand in her upfront way. Which part did he not regret? The friendship? The stunning sex? The undying love that he was going to profess any moment now? Roxanne felt like she was still on thin ground, but it was just enough for a tiny bloom of hope.
“And where have we ended up?” she asked quietly. Mateo dropped his eyes to his lap, which wasn’t the best sign. But this was hard. So hard. And Roxanne was the queen of confronting hard situations and coming out victorious, wasn’t she? She was a fucking billionaire, for God’s sake. She would tell him, the instant they were away from the cloud of her mother, about his father’s betrayal and Fuller’s threat and her own guilt-ridden quiet. She would tell him, while still clothed, that she loved him. And they would figure it all out together. Together.
Mateo opened his mouth, and Roxanne crossed her fingers.
A bang on the front of the SUV startled them both. They looked to see her mother standing in front of the truck, both hands on the hood and an annoyed squint wrinkling her manicured face.
“Y’all coming in or what?” The woman scowled. “I got more important things to do than watching y’all diddle each other in front of my house.”
Roxanne kept her eyes on her mother as she clutched the door handle, slow
ly pushed the door open, and stepped out onto the sparkling granite roundabout that she’d paid for, shoving deep her worry and love for Mateo and putting on the armor that buffeted her from Tonya Medina.
* * *
Putting people through an excruciating tour of her thirty-five-room home, a caricature of a Beverly Hills mansion, was Tonya’s favorite activity. For Roxanne, her mother made sure to point out every update and change, including the new, gold-flecked marble in the eighth bathroom, the updated naked gladiators in the breakfast room’s ceiling fresco, and the recently installed rock-faced waterfall that emptied into the pool Tonya never swam in. She listed the cost of every change with relish.
“So you like to have work done on the house?” Mateo asked blandly.
“I like the workmen that come with the work,” Tonya said, smiling as she licked her front teeth.
Roxanne pictured herself floating in the air, seeing all the clouds approaching—storm clouds and rain clouds and wispy clouds—and letting them slip past without touching her.
Finally, Tonya led them into her “living room.” A mammoth chandelier twinkled in the mirrors that lined the left and right walls, where twin fireplaces crackled with fire on this ninety-degree day. Air-conditioning and a cloying flower scent were pumped noiselessly into the room. Tonya perched herself in the middle of a gargantuan white couch piled with white fur pillows. She patted the cushion next to her with a sly, under-her-fake-lashes look at Mateo. He elected to take a seat on the leopard-print armchair on one side of the couch. Roxanne sat in its twin opposite from him.
They looked at each other across acres of antique Aubusson carpet before they looked at Tonya. She was wearing a low-plunging spangly gold top, ripped jean shorts, and gold heels. Objectively, Roxanne could see that the woman still had a fantastic figure.
Tonya clasped her hands in her lap and raised her shoulders to her ears, looking as pleased as punch. “Let’s talk terms,” she said with glee.
Lush Money (Filthy Rich) Page 27