When he breaks away to kiss my neck, I run my hand up his well-muscled back, holding him close. “I love you.”
He pulls back to gaze down at me and gives me an unguarded moment. They’re not so rare in this bedroom, but the tenderness reflected back at me in the eyes of this man is unmatched. No one has ever looked at me this way before—like I’m an honest-to-God treasure and he can’t believe I’m his.
It’s an even greater compliment coming from the man who has everything.
“I love you, too.” He brushes his lips against mine, giving me one more hit of tenderness before he gathers my hands at the wrists, rolls me over on my stomach, and fucks me like he hates me.
Afterward, the game is over and there’s only honesty. Only the love we have for one another, the tenderness, the gratefulness we both feel at having found one another.
“What do you think your life would be like if you’d never met me?” Mateo asks, suddenly.
I’m snuggled up against his side, absently running my fingers across his abdomen, but that question makes me look up at him curiously. “I have no idea. I don’t think about that. Why?”
“Just wondering.”
I snuggle closer, my hand stilling on his side so I can give him a squeeze. “It’s too terrible to imagine. There’s no reason to wonder about that.”
“I’m sure you’d have been all right,” he reasons.
“As all right as a person can be when they’re walking around without half their soul.”
He smirks, shaking his head at me. “Such a corn ball.”
“I’m lucky you love me,” I tell him, grinning.
“Only you,” he says, his warm brown eyes lingering on my face. “Only you think that’s luck.”
Raising my eyebrows with feigned haughtiness, I tell him, “Hey, it’s not easy being the only person in the world who isn’t wrong.”
Mateo catches my hand, twining our fingers together, and bring my hand to his lips for a kiss. “I can imagine.”
I nod. “And while we’re both in agreement that I’m right about everything, I think you should take the whole day off tomorrow and we can lock ourselves in the bedroom and only come out to go to the baby doctor appointment.”
“I wish I could,” he assures me. “I’m in the middle of a very involved business deal that I would have definitely scheduled for a later date, had I realized I would have a rat to deal with after our honeymoon ended.”
“Legit business, or family business?”
“Legit. Family business, too. Basically, it’s impossible to take a day off right now.”
“Will you be able to at least take a day off when Roman is born?” I inquire.
“I’ll try. He’ll mostly sleep a lot for the first few months,” he informs me.
Smiling faintly, I roll my eyes at him. “I know that. I know how babies work.” My smile droops and I add, “What happens to Meg then?”
With a firm shake of his head, he tells me, “Nope. I told you, we’re not talking about Meg.”
“I wasn’t appealing, I was just asking,” I defend. A couple seconds pass and he doesn’t volunteer anything, so I go ahead and add, “Rafe keeps yelling at me for caring about people.”
Faint amusement creeps across his face. “Rafe does? This isn’t even his problem.”
I shrug. “Neither was I. It doesn’t seem like he minds his own business.”
“He keeps an eye on all the business so he can decide what to make his and what not to,” Mateo supplies.
“Well, he has made it his business to tell me I shouldn’t be trying to keep Vince or Meg alive,” I state. “He’s a little mean about it.”
Mateo doesn’t appear to be surprised. “There aren’t many schools of thought on how to deal with these things. We were all raised old-school, to take the most traditional route. I’m more creative, so as I got older and more nuanced situations popped up, I realized sometimes there were better ways than the traditional approach. A bullet to the head solves one problem, two at best. A well-woven plot can solve a half dozen with just a little more effort.”
“So, you’re cool with them living?” I ask, hopefully.
“No, I’d much prefer to go old-school in these instances and shoot them in the head.” He shrugs, like he just had to settle for wearing his second favorite suit. “But it’s not the only conceivable solution to a problem. When it comes to someone he can no longer trust, Rafe prefers the simple route of elimination. Me? I never trust anyone. That’s my default. If I killed everyone I didn’t trust, there’d only be you left.”
“And Adrian,” I add.
He rolls his eyes indulgently. “And Adrian.”
I smile up at him teasingly. “Doesn’t sound like a bad way to live life, if I’m being honest. Since Rafe isn’t included on the list of people you trust, I think you should send him away.”