I’m consumed again. I’m so lost in him, I need a rescue team to pull myself back out. I’m all feelings now, all yearning, all desire, all affection. My body is his playground and he’s flipped the switch in my brain off, apparently having no need of it tonight.
Chapter Twenty Three
Mia
I do not expect Mateo to come to my room tonight since he’s already fucked me, and because I get the feeling I’m being punished. I wish he’d tell me what I’m being punished for, but that’s not really his way, so I don’t expect that either.
But he does come to my room.
He doesn’t speak. There’s no small talk. He walks in, rips his belt off, and glowers at me to let me know I should still be wary. I appreciate the warning, I guess, but I still don’t know what I’ve done.
I try to swallow the nervous lump in my throat as he approaches the bed, dropping the last item of his clothing onto the floor. I was messing with my phone before he came in, so I hurry to put it down on the bedside table before he comes at me.
His eyes narrow on the phone.
“I’m getting you a new phone,” he states.
“I don’t need a new phone,” I tell him.
“Yes, you do. I’m taking that one with me when I leave this room tonight.”
Thinking of all the pictures that are not saved to the cloud, I shake my head. “No.”
Now his narrowed gaze swings back to me. “I’m not in the mood for ‘no’ tonight, Mia.”
I lower my gaze, cursing my own tactlessness. “I only meant… I have to back up my stuff first if you want me to switch phones. I have pictures and videos and stuff on this one that I—”
“You can take new pictures and make new videos,” he says, not even letting me finish.
My stomach sinks as I realize why he wants to take my phone. “You don’t want me to have pictures of Vince.”
“You’re still wallowing,” he says, unkindly. “It’s time to move on.”
“You can’t put a time limit on my grief,” I tell him, hugging my knees protectively to my chest.
“Yes, I can.”
“That’s not how this works, Mateo.”
He climbs up on the bed, his eyes never leaving mine. “That is how this works. That’s exactly how this works. And you’re done withholding from me. No more of that.”
“That’s definitely not how that works,” I say, shaking my head. I haven’t been able to withhold from him since he took me to his bedroom tonight. He activated the sexual part of me that’s essentially a slave to his pleasure, but now that my brain has a foot on the pedal, I don’t want to go back to that. Unless he keeps me in a constant sex haze, he can’t keep me in that place. He has to realize that.
“Here’s how it works,” he says. “Take your clothes off and shed your stubbornness, because I’m going to fuck you until you give me your love back. I won’t leave until you do. I don’t care if it takes a week. I don’t care if the world outside this bedroom disappears in a puff of smoke while I’m in here fucking you, Mia. I will not leave your body until you admit you love me again.”
“You can’t force people to love you, Mateo,” I say, frowning at him.
“I can force people to do whatever the fuck I want them to do, Mia. I can force grown men with actual fucking power to do my bidding. I will not be bested by a teenage girl.”
“You already had my love,” I tell him, shaking my head. “You already had everything you want from me. You shouldn’t have thrown it away.”
“I didn’t throw it away. I broke it. I break things. You fix things. You heal. That’s how we work. You’re not Vince, you’re Mia. We aren’t damned to the same fate you two were. You can forgive. You can let go.”
I shake my head, more with regret than stubbornness. “Not of this.”
He looks like he wants to strangle me as he grinds out, “Why not?”
“Because Vince doesn’t get to be happy!” I say that a little more forcefully than I intended, but now that it’s out, I’m rolling downhill from the momentum. “So why should we? You stole from him—not just me, you stole his whole life. He hated all of this. He was 19 fucking years old, Mateo. He never even got to have a life, and you took it, and for what? For me. I ruined his life. I cost him his life. I don’t know how you think I’m getting past that. You can fuck me raw, you can even trigger me with your conniving tricks and make me want to please you, but I’ll always wake back up. I’ll always come back around. I will remember Vince whether you take away his pictures or not. Unless you figure out a way to wipe my memory, this is what it is. This is what you bought. I’m sorry you didn’t get a fucking receipt, but this is it. This is what I can offer you. If that’s good enough, great. If it isn’t… then I don’t know what to tell you.”