As ready as I was for him, it was too much too fast and I screamed. My pain only spurred him on, causing him to pull back and plunge in even harder.
“Did Luis fuck you like this?” he growled, slamming his hips into me.
I couldn’t breathe. “No!”
“Did he make you come like this?” On the next thrust, he ground his pelvis against mine, setting me off.
My muscles convulsed, and I came all around him. “God, no.”
“Who does this pussy belong to?” Mateo demanded, punctuating every word with a sharp thrust.
He’s trying to kill me.
“You,” I gasped. “Only you.”
“Damn right, it does.” Shouting in Spanish again, he bottomed out before grabbing my face in his hand. “Did you let him come inside you?”
I shook my head. “Never.”
“Fuck!” My admission set him off. His cock jerked, and he let out a low groan as he came.
When the insanity cleared, he lowered my feet to the ground, but I didn’t dare move. I wasn’t sure how to react, or more so, how he’d react.
I didn’t have to wait long to find out. Full lips parted mine, devastating me with a kiss so powerful it weakened me. After sharing in an act so dirty, he kissed my lips with reverence.
Stroking a hand down my cheek, Mateo gazed at me with renewed fierceness. “No man will ever touch you again. You’re my wife, mi amor. I’ll protect you, and I’ll die for you.”
My smile faded.
He’d said the same words four years ago after taking my virginity. He’d promised that I was his, and no man would ever touch me again. But a man did in the vilest way possible, followed by a parade of others whose only goal was to destroy me.
Now, every last one of them would pay for their sins.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Leighton
Mateo opened the door to our room, and I walked in, overwhelmed by its extravagance. The room was beautiful. Val obviously spared no expense when booking the Presidential Suite at the Houstonian. Luxurious and extravagant, it was the perfect place to spend the perfect wedding night.
I never heard him move, but I felt his presence behind me even before his warm breath fanned across my neck. “What’s wrong?”
I considered saying nothing, but knowing me as well as he did, he’d take it as an insult. Hugging my arms across my chest, I stared at the fireplace, mesmerized by the orange flames already flickering in it.
“My grandparents are the reason I survived.” Just saying their names out loud drove a knife in my heart. “They were the only ones who believed me when I told them about Finn. They put me through school. They supported me and helped me raise Stella on my own. I owe them everything.”
At the mention of her name, he let out a tortured breath. “So do I.”
I recognized the pain in his voice, and I wanted to comfort him, but I couldn’t. “They don’t deserve this, Mateo. Before I left San Marcos, I could see disappointment in their faces. It almost killed me.”
“I’m sure they understood and were just worried, mi amor,” Mateo soothed, his hand finding its way to my shoulder.
But I didn’t deserve his comfort, so I stepped away.
“Stella didn’t understand. She wouldn’t let me go. She wrapped her little hands around me and cried, begging me not to leave her. ‘No, Mommy, no.’ That’s what she kept screaming as my grandmother pried her off me.” I shook, the warmth from the fire feeling like ice. “That’s all I heard the whole three-hour drive to Houston. I still hear it in my dreams.”
Undeterred, Mateo pressed his forehead against the top of my head. “I know. I’ve heard you cry in your sleep.”
His admission cut me deep. So deep that I turned around and faced him for my most shameful confession. “My grandfather followed me out to my car and gave me five hundred dollars,” I said, the words tasting sour. “They’d spent their whole retirement on me. I knew it was all they had, but he made me take it because he didn’t want me crawling back to my mother. They never liked her, you know—always thought she considered my dad to be beneath her. Maybe they were right.”
I waited for his shock. Even a hardened criminal had to have standards. However, it never came. The only thing I found in his eyes was pity. I wasn’t sure which was worse.
“Leighton, there’s something you should know—”
“No, I don’t want to know anything else, Matty!” I yelled, backing closer toward the fire. “No more surprises. I can’t handle it. Nobody’s who or what they seem, and now...now my whole life has been a lie.”
Mateo calmly watched me break down. “Do you remember the last promise I made to you?”
I nodded. “You said you’d never let anyone hurt me.”
“I meant it.” Mateo’s eyes were always intense, but something in the way they flickered with a complete lack of remorse drove me to voice the question that’d been spinning in the back of my mind for days.
“Did you kill my stepfather?”
He answered without hesitation. “Yes, and I won’t apologize, Leighton. I’d do it again if—”
“Good.” My simple response, spoken with such cold detachment, didn’t faze him. In fact, it seemed to lift a weight off his shoulders.
Neither of us spoke of it again. We didn’t need to. On some level, I knew from the moment I heard Finn was missing, Mateo had killed him. Maybe a part of me even prayed for it to be true. Mateo was a smart man, and maybe I’d indirectly planted the seed that set it all in motion. That should’ve frightened me, but it frightened me more that it didn’t.
An hour later, I stared into the fire when Mateo sat down beside me and handed me a glass of strong brown liquid.
I sniffed it. “I don’t like whiskey.”
“Good, you’re not supposed to. Drink it anyway.”
I took a small sip and coughed. It tasted like leather and turpentine and burned like fire.
“I got a call from Brody.” Watching the fire, Mateo tossed back half the glass like water. “After visiting with the current governor, Val got the charges dropped. It seems the evidence containing my fingerprints was conveniently lost.”
I took another sip. “Just like that, huh?”
“Just like that.”
“You’d think that could’ve happened before all that death do us part stuff.”
“Are you regretting it?”
Lifting the glass, I watched the fire dance through the liquid. “No, but you should. People are dropping like flies around me.”
I meant it to be a joke, but he didn’t laugh. Actually, I didn’t either. Maybe it wasn’t a joke. Maybe he should reconsider. After all, husbands in my family didn’t have the longest life span.
We sat in silence again and eventually, Mateo set his glass aside and stood, offering me his hand. “I don’t know about you, but I could use a shower.”
Just like that, the conversation was over.
Mateo insisted on washing my hair and kissing every bruise he’d inflicted on my body outside the Tahoe. He took me gently in the shower and then again wrapped in his arms on the biggest bed I’d ever seen.