Rivers end boxset volume.., p.52
River's End Boxset Volume 3, page 52
“Twenty.”
“He was a man and you were a boy? See that clearly for once. See it crystal clear for Christ’s sake, Mateo. He was a man. But he was never a real man and he still isn’t. Running to you again to fix his mistakes. Never mind the lethal consequences? Well, as far as I’m concerned, he already landed you in lethal consequences. Right? You’re a felon for life. According to everyone else, correct? I mean, the chances of having it legally changed are pretty small.”
He flinched. “Right. And can you live with that?”
“Well, I already planned to. I’m the one who proclaimed my love for you, remember? Not the other way around. And then you doubt I can live with that? Yes. I can. I will hate it more now since it’s not even true. But I should have realized that on my own. The longer I knew you, the less it made sense. I thought you had childhood influences I could not understand and that’s how it happened. But this? Your brother. Tell him to get the fuck lost. And never come back.”
“What? Just give him some money and send him on his way?”
She screeched and jerked off his lap before she started pacing. “No. No. You absolutely will not give him your honest, hard-earned money. Your hard-won place of respect here. People appreciate what you do and how you do it. No. You tell him to get the fuck away from you and never come back here. You cut him off. You tell your selfish mother to get her money from the son she didn’t sell down the river and forsake. You stop it here and now.”
“Rose… goddamn. They are still my family. She’s my mother…” He ran his hands with obvious distress through his hair. His voice rose as he stood.
Frustration almost made her screech again. “Yes. Don’t you see it? They know you’re intelligent and they know who can make more money. They don’t care what it costs you or how badly they treat you. Did they ever apologize? Huh? Even once?”
He scowled. “No.”
“There. You see? No. Be done with them. Cut the cord. They already cost you three years and a permanent record as a felon. They destroyed you and now they want to prevent you from building a new life? You live in a shack… why? For them? So you could send all your money home?” She paced as she flung her words until she saw the confusion in his eyes. She was agitating and hurting him when she simply wanted to protect, cherish and help him. She had to make him see he was so much better than them, and he deserved so much more too.
She rushed to him and flung her arms around him. “You are worth a thousand of them. They will never see it. They’ll simply use and abuse you. Don’t you realize that? They are the very definition of toxic and you don’t owe them anything. You never did. You gave them years… years of your hard work, Mateo. You gave them more than they ever gave back. You deserve a real life, Mateo. One you worked for and earned and dreamed about. And I want to stand beside you.”
His eyebrows rose and lowered. Puzzlement shone from his eyes. He never gave himself the permission to stop taking care of them. As hateful and detested as they were to him, he felt bound to them by invisible chains. “Just don’t send her any money? Kick him out of the shack?”
“Yes!” she nearly screamed.
“I’m not sure how to go about…”
“Let me do it.”
His head whipped up. “No. I told you…”
“If you can’t trust your brother to see me and know who I am, why would you let him near you? Listen to yourself. You warn me of the danger and the fear you have about him listen to your own words.”
He flopped down again and she knelt on the floor in front of him, on her knees. She clasped his hands in hers and kissed his knuckles. He stared at her movements, her face, her lips and then her gaze. “I love you. I know you love me. I do. I know you can’t say the words to me. But you told me from the start, remember? You make love to me to show me what you can’t say to me? What you feel? Right?”
His dark eyes held hers and nothing twitched on him. He was as serious as the moment he first looked at her. “Yes.”
She knew he loved her. It was as close to an admission as he could confirm for her. But she knew it was enough. She felt it. All the time. “I want a life with you. Always. I would move your mother in with us, with me, if she were loving and kind and even remotely maternal and needed your money and your help. But that isn’t the case, is it?”
He shook his head.
She sighed and kissed his hands again. “I see what they’ve done to you. They’ve literally marked you on the outside, and scarred you on the inside. I love you, Mateo. With all those marks and scars. Everything about you and inside you, I LOVE. Do you understand me? And how much I love you?”
His gaze grew bigger but it was weary and hopeful. So much hope shone in her eyes. Her heart shattered at seeing the youthful boy who clung to her gaze while glimpsing the distrust that loomed behind it.
“I want to marry you and build our life together. I want kids and the Love Shack to be our getaway, a place that no one but us knows about, where you can always show me what your words can’t say, so that my heart knows. I know how much you love me. It’s not a secret. I’m not needy or unsure of myself. I know what you feel about me. But letting your family leech off you and hurt you is potentially bringing danger to us. Our future. No. I won’t do it. You don’t want to do it and you don’t have to. I just don’t think anyone’s ever told you that.”
He stared at her. Then at their clasped fingers. Her head was bowed before him. He suddenly grabbed her shoulders and smashed his mouth on hers. His powerful feelings and sensations were almost violent as he all but inhaled her before he devoured her. When he allowed barely a sliver of space between them, she smiled and touched his cheek. “See? You show me what you feel. The words I say to you? This was your response, wasn’t it?”
He swallowed hard and the firefly on his throat bobbed. Then with caution and deliberation, he dropped his head in a half-nod. One time. One short, expressive nod that said everything. I love you. I adore you. I want to marry you. I want to have kids with you. I want to be with you. I want you with me always. But most of all, it said, I trust you. Please don’t hurt me.
She smiled softly and said, “Please send your brother away. And cut your mother off. And you know I would never advise that if it weren’t the best thing to do.” She held his face in both of her hands. “Understand this: they will never want what’s best for you. They only want what’s best for them. They are selfish and harmful in your life. The only way to get what you want and deserve, is by claiming it. You have to separate yourself from them for your own well-being… and now, for me.”
He didn’t answer her but simply leaned forward and his lips landed on hers. The kiss was slow and soft this time. So many different expressions were revealed by his kisses and touches. Rose learned to read them. Decipher them. Cherish them. She gained confidence and trusted that Mateo was hers, even if he could never say so.
She stood on her feet, took his hand and dragged him into her bedroom. So rarely did they stay at her apartment or go to her bedroom for fear of Iris seeing them. Now that she fully understood what her dad’s shop and his job meant to Mateo, Rose would be more careful to preserve it. She could never allow her presence in his life to snatch something so important from him. His confidence and self-image were tied up in them.
So their secret relationship status was something she guarded fiercely for him.
But that night he made love to her with such tenderness and later whispered into her hair, “Okay.”
Okay? So he’d forsake his brother and his mother? And start keeping his money? And continue to love her? And start building a life with her? All that was tied up in one word. And odder still, for her that was enough.
CHAPTER 14
“WELL?” ROSE ASKED AS she sashayed to the left and then to the right. She was showing off the burgundy dress that flared over her breasts and the white lace that offered peek-a-boo glimpses of the skin on her smooth back. It clung to her hips and reached the floor. It was by far the most expensive and exquisite dress she’d ever put on her body.
“I… Wow. Damn, Rosie. You look perfect.”
She was attending a charity event in Seattle with her sister and parents. Quinn Larkin was sponsoring it. Rose still wondered about her sister’s billionaire and his true intentions towards her sister. But he kept Iris so busy during the time Rose was holed up with Mateo at their Love Shack, that Iris didn’t notice how often she was absent from their apartment. Being so busy with her new relationship, she was totally oblivious to Rose’s.
Iris bought the dress and spent an obscene amount on it, in Rose’s opinion. But of course, her sugar-daddy-with-the-big-bucks, Quinn, purchased it. Iris freaked out and suddenly realized she could only go to the event in a man’s suit, since she adamantly refused to wear a dress. She gave the dress to Rose, who now modeled it for Mateo.
He ran his hand over her silk-clad waist and over her plump butt. “God, Rose…”
She tugged on his hand and pulled the dress up until it was bunched around her waist. Then she climbed on Mateo’s lap, straddling him. She pressed down and he gasped when he realized she was completely naked underneath. She moved and gyrated over him. He was instantly hard as only his nylon basketball shorts separated them. Rose’s dress spilled around them like huge petals of a red flower. She reached under, pulling him free of his shorts before slipping above him and finally taking him inside her. Her eyes fluttered and moans and sighs escaped her. “I belong with you. I like the pretty dress. But I’m only going there for Iris. So don’t start with the ‘I deserve better than you,’ shit. I deserve you.” She lifted her hips and slid down on his hardness with each sentence as if to emphasize her words. His mouth opened in ecstasy at each thrust from her. Now, Rose was on birth control so they no longer had to use condoms. She was sore and stung at first when they went wild with the raw, unprotected sex.
Sighing into his mouth, she clung to him and rode him. His hands circled her waist and the expensive material bunched together with his grasp. As he lifted her up and down on his shaft, she suddenly leaned over his shoulder, breathing hard, like a piston as she swallowed the length of him with her wet pussy.
She rode him harder, panting as he held her still when he finally pushed as hard and far inside her warm wetness as he could. She squealed and called his name, kissing the side of his face as he held onto her, just as eager as he.
The chaste feel of her lips on his cheek made him smile. It was so innocent. She always did it, but especially when she saw Mateo feeling insecure. “I’m yours. Just so you don’t forget it.”
She also knew the fancy dress and the event she was attending were foreign to him, so they brought out every insecurity he harbored, which were many.
Not being good enough for her was probably the biggest phobia. The most obvious. The thing that turned him the surliest.
But Rose fucked him in her pretty dress. She let his hands crumple the material as his body slid in and out of hers. Yeah, Rose knew how to banish Mateo’s doubts and fears and she could take him from raging to benign. He smiled as he kissed her sweaty brow. “Right back at you, baby girl.”
She lifted her face and giggled. He could feel her body wiggling as she laughed because he was still inside her. Now limp, he could easily get hard again if he stayed there much longer. He loved her damn giggle, which was innocent and sweet. Rose disapproved of crude or rude remarks, but she didn’t mind so much anymore with him.
“Yeah, I noticed. Hard to forget this…” She smiled greedily and the lust sparkled in her eyes as he easily flipped her over and buried himself inside her again.
“I’m always hard for you, baby girl.” He grinned and they were lost again. To each other. In their own world. In the quaint Love Shack she’d named, which they’d christened so many times… Mateo was even growing fond of the goddamned shithole. But he detested it from the moment Rose left it until she returned. Only with her inside could he tolerate it.
He loved having her inside it with him.
Rose attended her weekend with the rich and famous. Wearing that dress. At least, she remembered having it all curled and bunched around her waist when he showed her what her dress did to him, and not once but twice. Mateo got even grumpier and surlier the weekend she spent with her family. Chan and Jeff noticed his miserable mood and ignored him. He worked longer and harder on the weekend, and when he ran into a few clients, he had to restrain himself, lest he totally drive them away.
On Sunday night, Rose got home. Mateo sighed in relief when she came directly to him. She was gushing about Quinn. When her sister dressed in a tuxedo, Quinn not only called her up on stage with him, but they also danced to Iris’s favorite song and plenty of photographs and videos were taken. They were later shown on gossip sites and tabloids. Rose was more than impressed by Quinn Larkin’s public displays of acceptance in his love for her sister.
Mateo wished he could give Rose something besides a fucking shack.
Rose noticed he was quiet so she slipped onto his lap. She kissed his chin. Once, twice, until finally, he couldn’t resist her and dipped his mouth down to her lips. She stared up at him with big, blue, lake-tranquil eyes. “I liked seeing that someone loves my sister exactly as she is. She’s totally herself. The thing is: I’m the kind of woman that Quinn should be chasing. Wearing that gorgeously appropriate dress and my hair swept into an updo, I looked so good. I really did. You know I don’t brag about myself often. But I was the perfect date that Quinn should have been with. He looked hot, every inch the CEO and billionaire. And Quinn should have been the guy I wanted to be with. Looking at us, anyone would have thought we were the ‘it’ couple.”
Her explanation wasn’t helping. Mateo stiffened his back and dropped his hands from her waist. She kissed his neck. He found it hard to resist her lips softly brushing over his tattoo and she often followed that up by licking it. She did that quite often as if to establish he was hers and his tattoo was also hers. It was part of them now, just like her soft hair.
“But I couldn’t wait to get back to the Love Shack. With you. Quinn needed my tomboy sister as much as I needed my tough-assed you. You are the only man who fulfills me. And calls to me. And challenges me. It was fun to dress up, and see what too much money and wealth can afford, but I wouldn’t trade any of it for what we have. Not even this Love Shack for all his damn money. Why? Because I wouldn’t have you.”
How the hell did one reply to that? How could he maintain the wall around him after hearing her sweet words and heart-felt declarations after months of sharing the shack with him? After she declared her love for him and the space that they monopolized? How could he doubt her? After all she did, like the Shakespeare Club and the play and her unflagging support throughout their time together. And finding people who appreciated what he had to offer when it came from his brain and heart. How could he not trust her?
But still the words were lodged in his throat. He leaned his forehead onto hers and closed his eyes as he whispered, “Rose, I…”
She kissed his closed eyes, leaning her head on his. “I know, Mateo. I’ve known for a long time.”
He let her kiss him to know that she was his only truth. She had become his entire world. His whole life. It was too much responsibility to put on another, but he couldn’t help himself.
He didn’t know how to stop. He didn’t want to anymore.
He swiftly cut his mother off and never sent her another penny. Only a short note stating he no longer had a job or any money to send. That was it. He ignored her unending calls and texts that got nastier the longer he didn’t answer them. He threw his big brother out that night without a penny and told him to lose his address forever. He surprised himself and Rose by doing exactly what Rose said. He also thought of himself for once. It made him hurt and ache but he did it anyway. He tried to be as selfish as his mother and brother were.
And Rose? Rose managed to change his whole life. He rewrote his entire forecast for the future. She improved what he thought about his past, his actions, and his mistakes. She validated his passion for reading and the endless variety of subjects that constantly captured his ceaseless curiosity. Rose normalized what he considered being a freak. She spotted and nurtured all the unusual and interesting aspects of his personality and yeah, she was kind of special for seeing it like that.
Rose made Mateo feel special too, and no one else ever did. Not even the teacher that commented on his quick mind and uncanny retention of details and facts, but never encouraged him or pursued it beyond a few questions.
Nor the friend that he helped out with math problems that he did in his head. Nor the mother and father who used his natural talent to make him steal cars. And cook the books on their illegal enterprises until they finally betrayed him—“sold him out” as Rose put it—in favor of the criminal brother.
Mateo earned money now. His paycheck belonged only to him. Not just to afford more ebooks and fancy kicks, but to start a savings account and to have more dinners out and to buy gifts for his girlfriend.
Life was idyllic. Something he never imagined it could be. Never. He even started to trust the world. He still attended the Shakespeare Club, which was now full of his supporters. Who knew old retirees would listen or care about what he had to say? They were awed by him, not fearful.
He joined in with the theater troupe when they started planning what play would be performed next spring. It was huge and new to be part of a group like this. He never knew he’d fit in or want to with people who were so different than him. But he did. All of it.
But of course, that was a mistake. Believing he could actually forge a new life with Rose and somehow escape his past, his destiny, his crimes and the history that tainted his future was a mistake.
