Lush Money (Filthy Rich) Read online

  “We’re going to get along just fine,” she whispered into his ear. She slowly rose up on her knees and sighed as Mateo slipped out of her. His hands slid from the fabric to bare leg, silkier than the dress.

  She stood. Leaned down to pick up her shoes. Mateo picked her folded panties off the couch, intending to hand them to her, but she turned away. He watched her cross the room through half-closed eyes; she swayed like Cleopatra in that dress. She picked up her handbag and slid her shawl over her shoulder.

  And then she walked past Mateo without looking at him once.

  Mateo sat on the purple velvet couch, his spent body unable to protest, her silk panties crushed in his hand, his wet cock lying exposed outside of his button fly, as he heard the door click closed behind her.

  January: Night Three

  Mateo found himself the next night where he could be found most nights: knees in the dirt of his greenhouse lab on the edge of the University of California, Davis campus. With a cool, starless night pressing against the greenhouse glass and the soothing smell of moist soil and green growth in his nose, Mateo was doing what he normally did: giving love to his grapevine, the Tempranillo Vino Real. His days were busy providing one-of-a-kind vine clones and disease-free planting material to prestigious vineyards around the world, so night was usually his only time to work on the vine that would save the Monte del Vino Real.

  But the sudden bang on the outermost door of the Esperanza Certified Vineyard Material building highlighted how the location and activity were the only things “usual” about this night.

  Taking a deep breath of calm, Mateo continued his tiny cut into the 420A rootstock planted in the soil. He blew away the cut-off wood, revealing a perfect V, and reached into his box of precious budwood to grab a stick of Tempranillo Vino Real. With steady hands, he began to slice the base of the stick into a matching V.

  Quick, hard bangs against the door made him jump, made him slice the wicked-sharp grafting knife into his thumb.

  “Joder,” Mateo swore, sucking on the cut. He grabbed the grafting tape meant for his vine and wrapped it around his thumb. He shook it hard, trying to shake away the pain. He hadn’t cut himself in years.

  Roxanne Medina had him fumbling like a new hand in the field.

  When his phone had started buzzing like crazy that evening, he’d ignored it for an hour, the vibration a taunt in his pants before he finally snatched it out and turned it off. He’d retreated to his lab, searching for the comfort and validation he’d always found at this world-renowned mecca for viticulturists, a castle that he’d built with his own two hands.

  The frustrated rattle of the outside door against its lock was like the clawing of his worst tendencies against its walls.

  Mateo refocused on his work with gritted-teeth resolution. He carefully sliced off the end of the Tempranillo budwood until it was a protruding V. When he slid the budwood into the cut of the rootstock, the Vs matched perfectly, like sliding a piece into a puzzle. Mateo sucked in a breath of contentment as he wrapped a piece of grafting tape around the joined pieces of grapevine, ensuring the Tempranillo vine would merge with the pest-resistant rootstock. His field crew would have teased him mercilessly about how long it took him to graft one vine. His vineyard manager could do it in seven seconds, and he was one of the slow ones. But this was Mateo’s love, the one thing in his life he could control. He liked to bask in it.

  He slid forward on his knee to the next vine, dragging his budwood box with him as he ground dirt into his jeans.

  A tap sounded on the glass of the greenhouse, just at the end of the row he was kneeling in. “My assistant assured me you received my email about where we were meeting tonight.” While muffled, the sexy rasp of Roxanne Medina’s voice could still be heard through the glass.

  Mateo focused every muscle on keeping his head down, his eyes on the cut he was making.

  “¿Príncipe?”

  The knife bit satisfyingly into the plant like butter.

  “Mateo?”

  The V was a perfect slant, smooth, without snags.

  “¿Mi esposo?”

  Mateo’s head shot up and he glared through the glass. “Don’t,” he warned her.

  God, it was hilarious, that she would call him “my husband” while she stood out there dressed in white, his ghostly bride against the black night. She was wearing a long, filmy white skirt that covered her toes and a top that rose high on the neck but exposed her arms and midriff. Her black hair was piled on top of her head. All that silky, exposed skin was probably freezing. His jaw tensed at the unwanted considerations of how he could warm it.

  She pressed the pads of her fingers against the glass and cocked her head. “Look. Maybe I was a bit abrupt last night.”

  “Maybe?” Mateo threw his knife into the budwood box. The last thing he needed was to slice off a finger because of this woman. “Three days ago, I don’t know who you are. Two days ago, you shove your way into my life and declare yourself my wife, mother of my kid, and savior of my kingdom. And last night... ¡Joder!” he swore, shaking his hand.

  She’d treated him like he was a stud in her stable. And, Jesucristo, he had neighed.

  His parents’ dramatics and affairs had put him through some stomach-churning humiliations growing up. If he hadn’t loved his sister and the people of the Monte del Vino Real, he would have spent his summers and breaks on the grounds of the Massachusetts boarding school where he got his education. The day he turned eighteen and gained control of some of his trust, he commissioned his own mountain home in the Monte, determined to limit the number of his times his parents could shame him.

  He’d never offered himself up for humiliation. Not until last night.

  “I’m sorry for—”

  “No,” Mateo cut her off. He’d had enough of her worthless apologies. Roxanne Medina preferred to ask forgiveness instead of permission. He tilted his face up so she could see his eyes under the ball cap. “I want. A divorce.”

  She didn’t even blink. “But what about your kingdom?”

  “If you’re our only hope, then burn it down now. Regardless, I’m not fucking you again.”

  Wide awake last night, he’d tortured himself with how eagerly he’d consented to Roxanne Medina’s demands. He’d handed her a wedding vow, a promise of a kid, and his cock on a couch without a whimper of protest. While salivating. Had his mind really agreed so readily because of the money she offered, the time to develop his vines, the security for his people? With her contract came the promise of having his father off his back and a thicker financial security blanket than the threadbare one he’d woven together on his own.

  Or had his mind simply squeezed its eyes shut and allowed his body to have what it wanted? It had been so easy to lie back and let a gorgeous woman suck and fuck him, get the orgasm he craved and give her what she wanted in return for the millions she would shower down on him. He literally hadn’t lifted a finger.

  His stomach rolled at the thought that his father, at twenty-nine, would have thought the deal was a wish-come-true.

  “There isn’t some girlfriend the king doesn’t know about, is there?”

  Mateo shook his head in amazement and breathed through his disgust. She truly didn’t get it. Once again he reached for his knife and a stick of budwood.

  “A boyfriend?”

  He let out a grunt. “If I say yes, will you leave me alone?”

  “It’s difficult to talk to you through this glass.” The glass was the only thing protecting her from his hands. Whether he’d stroke her or strangle her, he wasn’t sure. But it was the tiniest salve to Mateo’s howling ego to hear the frustration in her voice.

  “Then stop talking,” he said, loud enough so she could hear him clearly while he took a perfect slice out of the stick. “Just send me divorce papers.”

  The first slice on the opposite side of the s
tick was wobbly—Mateo took a deep calming breath—but the next one created a nice insertion V. He matched it to the rootstock, grabbed his grafting tape, and wrapped a neat bandage around the joined vines.

  Roxanne Medina’s silence was disconcerting. He glanced up when he moved to the next vine.

  She was gone.

  He rolled his head on his shoulders, tilted his cap back to scrub at the front of his hair, and then rubbed at his crotch, repositioned the semi he’d had since she first rattled the door.

  He was a better man than his father. He wouldn’t stoop to creating a child within this chaos. He’d...figure something else out, increase his focus on the Vino Real’s development while juggling the other, profitable ventures of his lab, avoid the inevitable screaming phone calls from the king, visit the Monte soon to calm the growing concerns there, step up his cyber and personal security to head off whatever the American resort group tried to pull...

  Mateo looked down the row at all the rootstock that still needed grafting and felt his shoulders sag with exhaustion. He straightened his cap and sat back on his feet. It could wait until tomorrow. Two nights without sleep were catching up with him. Tomorrow was a new day.

  “Ah, this is better.”

  Mateo swung around on one knee, shock ripping through him as Roxanne Medina strolled into his highly secure lab.

  She glanced around the greenhouse as she rubbed her naked arms, the motion making her breasts surge against that top, calling attention to the Venus curve of her waist and the pristine skin of her revealed torso. “It was chilly out there,” she said, smiling angelically, as if a conversation about the weather would distract him from the fact that she’d broken into his lab.

  She was here. Inside the glass. Reachable. Touchable. Fuckable.

  Mateo snapped. “What the fuck?” He surged to his feet. “How did you get in here?!” He charged down the row toward her, his muck boots digging into the soil. “You don’t belong here.” He moved faster as he neared the end of the row and saw her grin finally wobble, saw her float back a step in that gauzy skirt. “I don’t want you here.”

  Want, want, want, want...

  This was his lab, his home, the sum of every valuable thing he’d ever done with his life. It was the cornerstone of his reputation and the padded cell for his sanity. And this woman, this stranger, picked its locks and rooted out its secrets whenever she had the urge. She invaded it like its bolts and codes were mist, easily blown away by those lush, red lips.

  “I just wanted to...” She gasped, her blue eyes widening when he wrapped his dirty hands around her satiny arms. The instant bolt of lust at the feel of her, the distinct wild rose scent of her, made him enraged. Mateo raised her up on her toes.

  “We’re done talking about what you want,” he seethed, stepping her back against one of his silver lab tables. That wide mouth fell open. Her skin was flushed and fine. “What I want (want, want, want) is a little fucking respect. Stop thinking you can shove me around with your money and your employees and your velvet-lined pussy.” Bad words. Just the memory of her squeeze on him... Her flesh in his hands made him hungrier. He felt a predator’s desire to eat her whole.

  “Mateo, I’m sorry I...” she said in that sexy goddamned voice. He ignored her meaningless words as she put her hands on his chest and stroked them up to his shoulders.

  Her skin was cool. But those hands? They were burning. They singed him through his thin t-shirt.

  Mateo groaned, “Fuck you,” the instant before he lifted her against him and slammed his mouth down on hers. Her juicy, temptress lips fell open at the thrust of his tongue and he was inside her, punishing and devouring her, searching for that thing that made Roxanne Medina his worst nightmare. His hottest wet dream. “Fuck your useless apologies.”

  She dug her fingers into his nape and dragged him closer. “Goddammit,” he cursed. “I’m going to fuck you.”

  Her moan against his mouth made him desperate to hurt and to please.

  He slid his hands down her arms to pull her closer to him, and when he did, he saw the trail of black dirt on her skin. He pushed her back, held her against the table as he looked down at her once-pristine white outfit. CEO Roxanne Medina was now smeared in the dirt of his vines.

  She’d bribed his father. Corralled him into a wedding vow. Fucked him into submission. But Mateo Esperanza, prince and future ruler of one of the world’s great wine-producing regions, had power here, too. He could leave his mark on her as well.

  “But we’re doing it my way,” he said. His words made her tense, made those lusty eyes widen. He swooped his arm around her naked waist and pulled her close against him.

  “What’s the matter, Princesa?” he said, smiling menacingly into her face. He could feel her warm bursts of breath against his cheek. “You came to your stud. Let me do my job.” He spun her around, the gold bangles on her wrists clanging against the steel top of the table. He pulled her back against him, iron arms wrapped around her chest and waist. “Here I’m not a prince,” he growled, hot into her tender ear, made oh-so-accessible by her pulled-up hair. “I work in the dirt. And I like to fuck dirty.”

  He marred her skirt as he raised it up, left contrails of dirt up her pale silken leg as he reached for the core of her. She was soft, yielding ass against his jeans-covered cock, and wet, wet heat in his palm. He bit down on her earlobe to stifle his groan.

  “Your little clit is so slippery,” he whispered into her ear. “Tell me you want this.”

  “Yes,” she gasped, nodding so tendrils of black shook against her neck as Mateo felt more moisture drip into his hands. He filed away the knowledge that she liked filthy talk as he made quick work of his button fly and continued to thrum at her. She was leaning forward, holding her weight against her hands and panting as he fluffed up her no-longer-white skirt to find her, to find the silken curve of her ass and then...wet and wet and wet.

  Want.

  The low throaty moan trembling through her body made him bite his lip. He pulled her back against him, took her defenseless bud of flesh between two focused fingers as he began to pump inside her. “Do you like this?” he said low into the exposed shell of her ear. “Or this?” He laughed cruelly at her guttural groan. “Oh, Princesa, your eager clit makes you so easy. What I could do to you if I liked you. All the ways I could make you come.”

  She was already fluttering around him and he crossed his arm over her to grab on to her shoulder, to leave his handprint on that delicate skin, to begin to pound into her hard as his finger relentlessly fondled her. Her skirt frothed between them and she cried out at every up stroke. “So wet,” he jeered at her between gritted teeth. “So easy.” A warm pulse of moisture rained down on him. “So...so...so fucking tight and soft and warm.”

  She broke beneath him, hands squeaking up the table as if looking for something to grab on to as she came, and Mateo gripped his eyes shut—he couldn’t watch her orgasm—and mentally listed every vine clone he ever learned as the velvet-lined pussy he’d sneered at squeezed and pulsed and stroked his bellowing cock.

  He didn’t come.

  He staggered back from her, out of her, away from the earthy perfume of her arousal, his vines, and sweet, hot roses. He wiped her moisture on his jeans leg and—with a silent hiss—carefully buttoned himself away.

  She didn’t move, was still bent over and stretched out on his cold silver lab table, her pale skin and filmy clothes marked by his dirt and fingers and teeth. She was still gasping from her pleasure, looking like a virgin sacrifice after the dragon revealed he had a few tricks up his sleeve. When her skirts shifted and Mateo realized she was widening her legs—an invitation—he glued his eyes to the exit door.

  “That’s quite a pussy you have there, mi reina,” he said, making sure none of the strain of his begging cock could be heard in his voice. “I might enjoy it if I could stand you.”

  He
made it to the exit without running. He made the ten-minute drive home before succumbing to the hardest—and quickest—self-induced orgasm of his life. But even with self-loathing seeping into his system, Mateo felt that he had done what was necessary to show Roxanne Medina that he was not the prince she wanted. He was not a docile and easily manipulated man. This monstrous mistake could still be undone. The confidence of that had Mateo yielding to much-needed sleep.

  Until, eyes popping open, he realized his misstep.

  “Mi reina,” he’d called her.

  My queen.

  February: Night One

  Roxanne Medina tapped the note card against her bottom lip as she tapped the red sole of her Louboutin against the marble elevator floor and watched the elevator numbers descend.

  The prince was being difficult. Again. Even after her heartfelt apology. She counted her small blessings. At least he was somewhere in the jewel box of a boutique hotel where they were supposed to meet.

  I’m at the bar, said the note stuck in their suite door, scrawled in a slashing, masculine print. Roxanne was strategically on time, so the prince had shown up early to make his stand.

  A smile grew on her face beneath the note card. Roxanne loved a challenge. But after a lifetime of them, the battles had grown...less fulfilling recently. Maybe life was just simpler after you’d earned a billion.

  Not that running Medina Now Enterprises and maintaining its stock as a “bull-with-a-bullet” was simple. Neither was choosing new women-run companies to invest in and help prosper. Or keeping her thousands of employees on three continents—she had headquarters in San Francisco, Madrid, and Hong Kong—happy. Or maintaining her carefully cultivated image. Or ensuring that her charitable interests were properly overseen. Or managing her mother.