Chapter Thirty Two
Meg
"I bet you and Mia have really hot sex."
Mateo raises his eyebrows, tugging his tie off over his head and going to work on his cuffs. God, I love watching him undress for bed. Or, really, undress for anything. He's just really good at undressing. There should be an award given, speeches made, a ceremony with servers circulating, passing out champagne.
"I'm not sure how to respond to that," he says, casually.
I shrug, looking back at the baby magazine I'm flipping through. I probably shouldn’t be thinking about it at all, but after watching him eye-fuck her all through family dinner tonight, I started to wonder how their sexy time differs from ours. I remember what it was like to get those looks. You haven’t lived until you’ve been eye-fucked by Mateo Morelli. I don’t get them anymore, though. Mia does. And he evidently likes their sexy time better, because he spends way more time in her bed than mine. "Just an observation. I can't decide if I want to see it or not. You and I don't usually have super crazy sex."
Smirking, he flicks a glance at me as he peels his shirt off. "Am I boring you?"
"No," I say, rolling my eyes. "Anyone who gets bored with you is a legit crazy person. Like, Harley Quinn levels of psychosis."
"You like a little more control than Mia does so I just don’t do that with you. I can. Want me to step it up a little? I can choke you. Spank you. Tie you up. Push you around. Want me to get mean?"
Grimacing as I recall the menace on his face when he told me he strangled Beth, I tell him, "No, I think you choking me is my hard limit. If your hands are ever around my throat again, I'm going to assume I'm dying."
Because he's him, amusement dances in his eyes as he finishes undressing and approaches the bed. "I'm not going to kill you. I'd miss you. I don't like missing people."
"Well, thank God for that."
He climbs up on the bed and immediately climbs on top of me. He leans in and starts kissing my neck, but when he does, I catch the faint scent of coconut.
"Does Mia mind when you spend two nights in a row with me? Is she going to pout prettily when you go back to her tomorrow?"
He pulls back, moving off me and into his spot, shaking his head at me. "Why are you so obsessed with Mia tonight?"
"Hey, I'm just trying to be like the cool kids. First Vince, now you; I'm jumping on board the Mia Obsession Express."
This causes him to roll his eyes. "I am not obsessed with Mia."
"Does she coat her nipples in crack before you fuck her? It's okay, you can tell me."
"Does it turn you on to think of me fucking Mia?" he asks, watching me.
"I mean, it's not the worst mental image a person could have. You're both sexy beasts. I'm just so fascinated by your dynamic. She looks at you like you're God and you're so cruel to her sometimes; you have to work actual magic on her with your dick."
"Mia likes it when I'm mean to her," he tells me. "I could do anything I wanted to her, however fucked up, and still have her worshipping my cock in three minutes flat."
"Except murdering her loved ones," I point out.
"Even that. It's just too hard on her emotionally. I only want to play with her; I don't want to actually break her."
“Does she like when you’re mean to her in bed?”
“She likes to be used.”
“Did you give her a safe word or something, that way she could stop you if she ever actually wanted to?”
“She doesn’t need one.”
Grimacing faintly, I say, “Isn’t it better safe than sorry, though? Don’t get me wrong, your dark spells are a blast to live through, but since we’ve all survived this one and we’re starting to sail on calm waters again, maybe we should take every precaution we can to make sure we don’t have to go through this shit again. No killing loved ones, a safe word so we can be sure all the sex is above board, sharing time between us so we don’t get bitchy. Stuff like that.”
“I’ve got everything under control,” he assures me. “Trust me. Mia wouldn’t like having a working safe word. She likes being stripped of her control. Then she has to trust me. She gets off on it.”
I shake my head, flipping the page to check out which strollers are trendy now. "You guys are all sorts of fucked up."
He shrugs, unconcerned. "That's why I do it with her and not you."
I glance over at him. "I mean, I would play like that if you wanted me to."
"I know you would," he assures me. "But you couldn't mean it like she does."
"Goddamn sincerity."
He smirks. "She has an abundance of it."
"She sure is lucky you found her and not some psycho." Playfully smacking myself in the forehead, I say, "Oh, wait."
Now he outright grins, grabbing the magazine I'm still leafing through and putting it on the nightstand. "She could've done a lot worse."
"Yeah? How?"
"I could be poor. Or ugly. Or have BO."
"You do smell really good," I say, as he straddles me again. "And Mia would be sad without all those shoes."
Nodding, his mouth grazing my earlobe, he says, "Someone else may have actually hurt her. I never will."
Closing my eyes, I tell him, "I'm very glad to hear that."
“Plus I come with a bonus best friend,” he says.
“I guess we are a pretty sweet deal,” I agree.
His hand creeps down over my protruding belly, dipping between my legs. "Are we done talking about Mia now?"
“I’m gonna start calling her Crack Nipples.”
His free hand comes up to cover my mouth. “Shh.”
I grin, planning to keep talking as soon he moves his hand. Anticipating that, he covers my mouth with his, and well, kissing him more fun than talking, so he wins.
---
“Oh, my God, it’s so cute I wanna die.”
I’m in the middle of texting Mateo to let him know Operation Buy Rosalie’s First Dress has been completed (even though he doesn’t really care), but I spare Mia a smile while I type. “Yes, I caught onto how much you liked it at the store when you literally bounced with joy.”
Mia holds up the cute, frilly baby dress we picked out for Baby Morelli’s homecoming. It’s still months off, and we definitely didn’t need to pick it out yet, but Mia loves to shop and apparently when you see the perfect dress, you just know. Sure, it’s not her baby, but since I’m not letting her have one, I figure I can let her pick out the outfit our baby will come home in.
“She’s going to be so tiny and adorable. I’m not jealous of the labor, but I’m totally jealous of everything else.”
“Mateo doesn’t strike me as the type to spend the night on a cot at the hospital with me, so you can come in his stead. When I’m exhausted from evicting a tiny human and the baby is like ‘holy shit, there’s a world out here, I’m not sleeping through this’ you can stay up all night walking her around the hospital and trying to get her to sleep.”
Mia’s eyes widen. “I am so on board.” She looks to the driver’s seat, turning the dress around so it’s facing the front of the car. “Adrian, did you see Rosalie’s dress?
“I did,” he answers, without enthusiasm. “It’s great.”
“When you and Elise find out what you’re having, we have to take her shopping, too.”
“Elise doesn’t like us,” I remind Mia.
“She will have to like us. We’re going to buy her so many cute little baby clothes, she won’t be able to resist.”
Wrapping an arm around her and giving her a sideways hug, I tell Adrian, “She’s starting to think like a Morelli. I’m so proud.”
He just shakes his head at us and doesn’t respond.
I release Mia and slide my phone back into my purse. She’s grinning goofily at the baby dress, and I worry—not for the first time—about her baby fever. As long as her womb stays empty until I have Rosalie, I think we’ll be fine. She can help with baby duty as much as she wants, so she might feel like she has a baby. And it’s still Mateo’s baby, so I’m sure she’ll be head over heels for her from birth.
I can manage it if my beloved can keep his goddamn word, but it’s difficult to trust that.
Now that I’m thinking about their sex life, I remember something else I wanted to cover with her while we were outside the house.
“Hey, so, Mateo and I were discussing your sex life the other night,” I begin.
She blinks a few times. “That’s weird.”
“Is it?”
Nodding, she says, “We never, ever discuss your sex life.”
I shrug. “You’re more territorial than I am. Anyway, we were discussing your sex life and I had a thought. Obviously things are good now and I’m really happy about that, but since he has put you through the wringer twice in the last year, it stands to reason it could happen again.”
“He promised he wouldn’t do anything this bad again,” she volunteers.
“Right. And I’m sure he totally means it—until he doesn’t anymore. He’s not the most stable man in the universe, but he’s also difficult to manage because, well, he’s him. So sometimes you have to get creative with your problem-solving in regards to Mateo. Me, I’m a creative problem solver. I can mostly deal with his various levels of heinousness, but there’s one that consistently sticks in my brain and causes me anxiety. Not right now, because things are good, but next time he makes you hate him… the mother hen in me wants to do what I can to protect you. Without, you know, actively getting in his way, because I don’t want to get murdered.”
Smiling slightly, she looks at her lap and shakes her head. “I’m fine. Honest. You don’t have to worry about me.”
“I tried to convince him to give you a safe word,” I tell her. “He wasn’t into it. I didn’t push the issue because, well, a safe word is useless if he wouldn’t listen to it anyway.”
Now she squirms, still not looking at me. “We really don’t have to talk about this.”
“Now, I’ve obviously never witnessed whatever you two do behind closed doors so maybe I’m overly worried, but after he fake-killed Vince and stayed in your bedroom anyway, I had pretty much non-stop anxiety about it for a week. I know, I know, you both insist he would never hurt you, he apparently thinks you trust him—whatever, it’s your business. But in the interest of extra caution, let’s just say he got caught up in a lusty fog and, I don’t know, didn’t realize you wanted him to stop.”
Mia’s head falls back against the back of the seat like I’m implementing cruel and unusual torture techniques. Or a mom trying to give her an awkward sex talk. Same deal, really.
“I have an idea for a makeshift safe word. It does the same thing—makes the sex stop—but doesn’t require his willingness to listen. You can say a certain thing and he’ll stop, even if he wants to keep going.”
“I don’t need this,” she informs me.
“So he says, but can you guys just—for me, okay? For my peace of mind, just take my makeshift safe word and promise me you’ll use it if you ever need to.”
“Even for you, this is so awkward,” Mia states.
“Shh,” I say, waving her off. “Okay, so, purely by accident, I figured out something that turns Mateo off.”
“Oh, my God, I don’t want to hear this. Maybe you don’t mind talking about my sex life, but I do not want to hear about yours.”
“No, no, we weren’t having sex. I was trying to keep him out of your bedroom and I said something off-handedly. Both clothed, nothing sexy about it, I swear. Would you just let me get this out?”
“I hate this conversation,” she tells me. “I hate it more than anything.”
“If Mateo ever gets out of hand in the bedroom and you need to pump the brakes, call him daddy.”
With a half-horrified grimace, Mia says, “What?”
“Really sell it. Affect a cutesy voice, something like, ‘I’ve been a bad girl, you wanna punish me, daddy?’”
Covering her ears, she says, “Stop! No. Stop, stop, stop.”
I shouldn’t enjoy her discomfort so much, but it brings me a small measure of joy. I love her, but this is fun. “He feels the same way, so if you say that to him during unwanted sexual relations, my hypothesis is that his sex drive will promptly plummet, thus eliminating the problem.”
“Oh, my God,” Mia says, covering her face with her hands.
I think I catch a snicker from the front seat so I look at Adrian, but he’s not snickering, he’s laughing his ass off.
“What?” I ask, a bit defensively. “You guys. It’s a good plan.”
Nodding, Adrian says, “It is a good plan. I’d say I wish I would’ve thought of it, but strangely I’m not familiar with Mateo’s turn-offs.” Then glancing at Mia in the rearview mirror, he lifts an eyebrow. “You should file this advice away for future reference.”
Mia shakes her head and refuses to look at either of us as she tucks Rosalie’s dress back into the bag. “I don’t want to turn him off. Yuck.”
“But now you have a strategy, just in case you ever do,” I offer. “I’d like to keep us all from going to dark places again. My Mateo sort of disappears when yours emerges, and your Mateo is a living nightmare. If anyone’s going to murder one of us, it’s going to be your Mateo.”
“He isn’t going to murder us,” she mutters, protective, as ever.
“Well, Beth probably thought that once, too. I’ve had too many close calls, and I don’t even drive him crazy the way you do, so, you know, let’s be vigilant.” I shoot another look at Adrian. “Beth drove him crazy, right?”
“Out of his fucking mind,” Adrian verifies.
I nod, raising my eyebrows knowingly at Mia. “So do you. So, let’s be smart. Let’s keep ourselves safe.”
Mia wrinkles her nose up at me, displeased with all the reality I’m raining down on her today. I’m not surprised. Mia needs to retreat into a version of reality only viewable with rose-colored glasses so she can stay soft and loving for him. I used to have rose-colored glasses, too. The main difference is, when he stomped on mine with the heel of his loafer this time, I did not go shopping for a new pair. Mia clearly has an entire cabinet full of rose-colored lenses placed in various fashionable frames, and every time he smashes a pair all to hell, she just slips on a replacement pair.
And that’s fine. For Mia, there is no choice about being with him. Her options are “be happy with Mateo” or “be miserable with Mateo” and she’s making the same choice I made under those circumstances. That works for her. But that doesn’t work for me—not now. My eyes are open, and I still love him, but I don’t trust him the way she does—not anymore. Maybe she’s fine hoping for the best and entrusting her survival to him, but I can see the danger in him more clearly than ever before; I can see what a gamble that would be.
And me? I’m no gambler.