Chapter 10
Lili
Iwas still upset when we got back to the compound, but watching Lyse smack Omar when he showed her the bruises from being shot in the vest was satisfying.
“It’s going to be fine,” Emma said and handed me a cup of coffee. Angel’s wife might not have been born into this lifestyle, but she made a hell of a matriarch. She took care of all of us.
“Matteo is a lot of things,” Lyse said, joining us. “But he’s good at plans. Trust him.”
I chuckled humorlessly. I was supposed to trust the man who had spent the last thirty-six hours jerking me around? “I’m trying,” I told her.
Lyse smiled and patted my arm. “I know.”
Sometime around two in the morning, the security alarm that was linked to all of our phones—Angel had added this to our security measures after Emma was taken from the compound—went off. A blacked-out SUV had pulled up to the gates.
I practically sprinted through the house to the front door, waving off the guards who had come running with me. I wrenched open the door, and Matteo and a boy were standing on the front step. He was here. Dios mío, he was actually here.
“Hi,” I breathed out and welcomed them inside.
Matteo pushed the boy in gently. “Camilo, this is Lili,” he said, squatting down next to him. “This is your mother.”
The boy looked at me for a second, and then a smile turned up the corner of his mouth. “Mama?”
I dropped to my knees. “Sí, mijo.” It was too much to hope for a hug, but I held out my hands anyway. “I’ve been waiting a long time to meet you.”
Camilo stood still for a moment, and then he launched himself at me, wrapping his thin arms around my neck. Tears blurred my vision and ran down my cheeks. I looked at Matteo, who was smiling at us, and I mouthed thank you to him.
I would never be able to repay him for this, but I think I could spend the rest of my life trying. That would make me happy.
We stayed in the foyer until my knees were aching from kneeling on the wide tiles, before moving into the living room. There was so much to talk about, so much I wanted to ask, but I could see the weight of the day on Camilo’s face. “Would you like to sleep, mijo?”
He shook his head. “No, please, I want to stay up.” He looked at Matteo. “I don’t want this day to end.”
I reached out and cupped his cheek with my hand. He was losing that layer of baby fat already, and it made me ache to think how much time we lost with him. But that was over. He was finally home. “It’s okay if it does,” I told him. “We’ll have tomorrow and every day after that. I promise.”
Camilo smiled and yawned. “You’re sure?”
I nodded. “I’m sure,” I said and stood up. “Come on. I’ve got a room waiting just for you.”
Matteo stood up too. “Can I help?”
“Of course.”
As it turned out, there wasn't much that a ten-year-old needed help with when it came to bedtime. Camilo literally rolled his eyes when I asked if he wanted me to tuck him in. It stung a bit, knowing that I hadn't gotten to sing him off-key lullabies before he grew out of it. But, after showing him where the bathroom was and where he would sleep, Camilo grabbed my arm. “You’ll be here in the morning, right? I don’t have to go back to Tampa?”
“Not unless we’re going on a family trip,” I vowed. “This is home now, okay? Tomorrow, we’ll get whatever you want for your room, and we’ll start looking at schools next week.”
Camilo smiled, soft and still a little scared, and then he whispered, “Good night.”
Once the door closed behind him, I looked at Matteo. It was the first time I’d gotten to actually look at him in hours…and the first time that I got to look at him properly, when I wasn’t clouded by desperation and anger. “I’m kind of amazed Angel let you in here,” I said.
He chuckled. “Me too,” he said and shrugged. “I guess giving Felix up to the Feds and making sure that they wouldn’t ever come after you all warmed him up a bit.”
That would do it. For all that Angel—and our padre before him—did to keep us safe from the local cops, he had never been able to get us Federal protection. Matteo had risked his ass turning Felix over to the Feds, and he’d extended that protection to all of us without question.
“What’s the plan now?” I asked. “I can’t imagine you’re going to be allowed back into any of the Rojas facilities.”
Matteo shook his head. “If anything’s left after the Feds get through with it, I’ll be a target for any of my family who happened to avoid being arrested.”
“What are you going to do?”
He shrugged. “I’m pretty good at taking care of myself. Felix taught me that. I’ll be fine.” He glanced at Camilo’s closed door. “I should probably go get situated at a hotel somewhere. I’ll call you in the morning, and we can start talking about all of that.” He gestured toward the door.
It was the sensible thing to do: get some space and regroup. But everything in my body was screaming at me not to let him walk away. I had kept distance between us for a decade, and I missed him every day of it. No matter who I was with, no matter what I did, I thought about Matteo.
He’d turned his whole life upside down to get our son back. He wasn’t asking me for anything outside of a chance to be a parent with me. If I let him go again, after all of this, I wasn’t sure I would survive it.
“You can’t go yet,” I said. “Not when you still owe me.”
Matteo quirked his eyebrow. “What do I owe you, Liliana? What more can I give to you?”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “An orgasm,” I said with far more confidence than I actually felt.
I had never been embarrassed by my own desire before, and I wasn’t now, but I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure that what happened in that office wasn’t a part of Matteo’s plan all along.
“Or do you always leave a lady hanging like that?”
Matteo’s eyes darkened and a smirk toyed at his lips. “Are you calling me bad in bed?”
“I wouldn’t know what you’re like in bed,” I said with an oh-so-casual shrug.
It was true, though. We had never been in a position to actually have sex in a bed.
As teens, we would meet wherever we could safely, and almost all of our sexual encounters happened in his car.
It was hot at the time, but I hated how much we missed out on.
He stepped closer and kissed me, and almost immediately, it turned filthy. Matteo’s tongue mapped the inside of my mouth, coaxed my tongue to dance with his. I whimpered, head swimming, and clung to him. “Where’s your room?” he asked.
We had to unwind from each other long enough for me to pull him down the hall, but the second we closed my door behind us, Matteo had me pinned against it.
His lips against mine was a heady thing, but I needed so much more than that.
I reached between us and grabbed the hem of my shirt, pulling it over my head.
Even after getting changed when I got home, I hadn’t put on a bra, and I was left standing in just my jeans.
Matteo groaned, and then his hands were smoothing over my bare skin.
“Fucking gorgeous, mi cielito.” He bent and sucked one of my nipples into his mouth.
I huffed out a whine and threaded my fingers into his hair, holding him as he worked at the bud in his mouth with his lips and tongue and teeth.
When it was red and puffy and throbbing, he switched sides, and each tug with his teeth made me ache in my core.
I pulled him back, gently, by the hair. “Stop teasing,” I pleaded.
Matteo swept me into his arms and carried me across the room to my bed.
It wasn’t going to be big enough for the both of us to sleep on later…
but I could fix that. If he decided to stay.
I shook the thought away as he reached for the button on my jeans.
“Am I going to find your pussy bare again?” I shrugged, trying for coy, but I was practically squirming beneath his gaze.
He pressed his palm against me, cupping me, without pulling down the zip. “Tell me, Liliana.”
I whimpered, bucking up into his touch. When did I get so goddamn needy? “I don’t like panties,” I murmured.
Matteo finally unzipped my jeans and tugged them down my hips. “Fuck, mi cielito,” he breathed and knelt beside the bed, pulling me to the edge of it. He slipped one of my legs over his shoulder and buried his face between my thighs, driving a cry from my throat.
He wrapped his hands around my thighs, holding me open for him. His tongue lapped at my folds, circled my clit, and I trembled under his ministrations. He drove me up and up and up until I had tangled my fingers into his hair, and was begging him to keep going, keep touching, keep—
My orgasm slammed into me, and I moaned as my muscles went tight before immediately relaxing. I melted back into my mattress; Matteo continued licking at me for a second before he pulled back. “So, am I debt-free now, Liliana?”
I looked up at him, still trying to relearn how to breathe, and I forced my shoulders to shrug. “I don’t know,” I panted. “Do you feel debt-free?”
It seemed to be the right answer because Matteo ripped his shirt over his head.
I sat up enough to help with the zipper of his jeans, and then he pushed them down his hips.
I hadn’t gotten a chance to look at him before.
As handsome as I thought he was in high school, it didn’t hold a candle to the man’s body that he’d grown into.
I ran my hands down his abs, ghosting over his belly button and giggling when he jerked. “You’re still ticklish,” I said with a smile. “I always liked that.”
Matteo frowned. “You just liked to torment me.”
I met his eyes. “Torment is such a strong word,” I said. “It’s a tiny tickle.” I ran my fingertips over his abs again, and he spasmed again before laying his hand over mine.
“I can think of better ways for you to touch me,” he said.
“If that’s what you want.” He dragged my hand down his body and wrapped both of our hands around his cock.
He groaned at the touch, and I was instantly addicted.
I wanted to spend hours mapping his body; I wanted to find all of the ways that I could bring him pleasure.
For now, I was in too much of a rush to feel him inside me again.
“Matteo,” I said, and my tone must have said it all because we were suddenly shifting so that we were in the middle of the mattress.
I had him between my thighs, in my arms, and I couldn’t look away from his face.
When he brushed against me, I whimpered softly.
“We have a kid,” I said, trying to control the shivers that were running through me.
“Why does this suddenly feel like the first time again?”
Matteo brushed the hair out of my eyes before he leaned down and kissed me.
“It’s real this time, mi cielito,” he said.
“If you think that you’re getting rid of me again, you have another thing coming.
” With a small adjustment, he was sinking inside of me, and the feeling of him pressing inside, forcing my muscles to accept him, brought me right up to the edge again.
“I love you, Lili,” he told me. “I’ve spent the last ten years loving you. ”
He began to move, a slow and steady push of his hips at first, but soon, we were moving together at a pace that left me breathless.
“Matteo,” I moaned, clinging to his shoulders.
“Hold me,” I begged. Pleasure lit me up on the inside, building and building until I could scarcely breathe because of it. “Don’t stop. Please, don’t ever stop.”
“I won’t.” We kissed again. “You’re mine now.”