This woman owns me, and she doesn’t even know it.
Right now I drop to the floor, and push my cock inside her. Her arms move around me and she holds me tight, like she’ll die if I stop. Like her next breath depends upon how hard I fuck her.
Being the dutiful husband I am, I make sure to fuck my lovely wife good and hard so she can breathe again.
Once we’re both sated, still tangled together on the floor of my study, all feels right in my world again. There’s no anger left. Replaying Vince’s words brings me no discomfort. Now that Mia has centered me, reason is restored. Vince couldn’t have taken Mia from me in one more week. He couldn’t take Mia from me in one more lifetime.
Mia was made for me, not him.
There’s not a single thing I would change about her, even when she’s being a colossal pain in my ass.
Well, maybe one thing. I do wish she’d been the one to tell me that Vince plotted to have me killed all those years ago. It’s a little thing, it holds no weight now, but I still wish she had. I don’t entirely know her reasons for keeping that truth from me, even now. I never asked because it doesn’t matter. As suspicious as I am of most people, I trust Mia entirely. Her heart is pure and it belongs to me. I can’t foresee a scenario in which she would ever willfully betray me, and if I’m wrong, I never want to see it coming.
The truth is, if Mia ever hated me enough to turn on me the way Beth did, I’d offer up my own wrists and let them cuff me. I would let them lock me up and throw away the key. I’d have to. It’s the only way she’d stand even half a chance of getting away from me.
Even that probably wouldn’t suffice. I’ve torn apart the world to make her mine; I wouldn’t hesitate to do it again to get her back. I could never let Mia go, not even if she begged me. Not even if she hated me.
As if to reaffirm just how absurd a thought it is that she ever could, my sweet wife runs her hand across my chest tenderly, leaning in to kiss me like I’m the only man who has ever existed in her world. I’ve never been loved the way she loves me, and I know I never would again. Mia’s love is the last thing I ever expected to be mine, and it has become the one thing I have no interest in ever living without.
Chapter Thirty Five
Carly
The Vegas lights look so small from up here.
We’re at the top of a skyscraper, seated in a big-ass black leather booth at a restaurant Rafe apparently owns. A spotless wall of glass in front of us displays the city below from a safe distance. We’re spectators up here, in the city but not quite part of the madness. Stories below there are men and women betting mortgages on games of chance, lonely singles drinking away the sadness, disenchanted actresses wearing feathered headdresses as they dance across stage, mothers taking their clothes off in front of the lusty gazes of men whose names they’ll never know.
Humanity is below us, but we’re up here where the lights are small and the people are hidden. We each have our own secrets, our own struggles, our own demons, but in this booth, we’re somehow safe.
Because we made it to Sin City.
I wasn’t sure we would survive Chicago. When he was preparing me, Mateo told me Mia had serious siren powers, but I figured he was biased. Obviously she tickled his fancy; he married her. Apparently he was right, though. All she had to do was look at Vince and six months of hard-won ground swayed beneath my feet.
But we made it.
We’ve left that godforsaken house. We’re in Las Vegas so Vince can tie up the last of this chapter of his life, then we can go back to Connecticut and continue building our life together.
I just hate building it on a foundation of lies.
Mateo told me in no uncertain terms, if I tell Vince the truth, it’s our double funeral. He swears Vince will not forgive me, will never trust me again. He swears that even if he really wants to, Vince will not be able to let it go.
I didn’t want to believe him. I vehemently wanted for him to be wrong, for all the work I’ve put into helping Vince grow to hold up, for him to be stronger—to be my Superman.
The thing is, I believe Mateo now.
It doesn’t change my feelings for Vince. However flawed he may be, he’ll always be my Superman. He’s saved me in ways he doesn’t knows—ways he can never know.