Loving My SECRET (Corrigan & Co. Book 10) (28 page)

“I’d rather wait
until we get there.”

“That sounds a little
ominous.”

“It’s a good thing.
I promise.” At least I hope it’s good. I think she needs it, but
she may not.

“I trust you,” she
says, squeezing my hand.

When I pull into the
church, she lets go of my hand. “You said you trust me,” I remind
her.

“I do,” she
responds, but I see the fear on her face.

I get out and then walk
around to open her door. She takes my hand again, this time in a
death grip. I kiss her temple, and lead her to the office next to the
church itself. The secretary is expecting us and ushers us into the
conference room.

“Mother,” Reina
exclaims, running over to hug the woman I flew in from Mexico. “What
are you doing here?”

“Your Matteo called
me, and I came.”

“The convent?”

“The novices will be
fine for a day without me. You need me now. You need all of us.”

That’s when Reina
notices the other people in the room. The men I called, because I
believe she needs more than just one person’s perspective and
guidance. There’s my friend, Josh’s rabbi, and Aqeelah put me in
touch with the Allamah I flew in. He is one of the most respected
scholars of Islam.

“Matt?” she asks.

“You have questions
about your faith. These three people have agreed to talk to you about
it, to see if they can help you find what you think is lost.”

Her eyes are shining as
she looks at me. “Thank you.”

“I’ll be right
outside.”

I answer emails and
play games on my phone for over two hours. When the door opens again,
I jump to my feet. Reina has been crying, and her cheeks are still
stained with the tracks of those tears. She smiles at me, and I pull
her into my arms. She starts to cry again, sobbing into my shirt, and
I worry all over again. Did I do the right thing? If I didn’t, did
this make things even worse for her? I know she feels lost without
faith, and I’ll keep trying if this didn’t help her.

“Thank you,” Reina
says to the three when they file out behind her.

“You can call
anytime,” the rabbi tells her.

“You may contact me
as well, Reina,” the Muslim scholar tells her.

Mother Superior is the
last to leave. “Reina, I am so proud of you and everything you have
done. Well, not the violence, but the help you give is awe inspiring.
You may have once thought the convent was right for you, but you
belong right where you are. With this man at your side.”

“I’m starting to
believe that. Thank you so much for flying out here just to talk to
me.”

“You needed me.”

“I did. I do. I’ll
call you soon.”

We both walk her out
and hug her goodbye as she gets into the car that will take her to
one of my planes. She is flying right back, because as much as Reina
needed her, the women in her convent need her too.

“Do you want to talk
about it?”

“Yes. Can we eat
while we talk?”

“Of course. Are we
dining in, or taking it home?”

“Home. I want to
cuddle on the couch.”

“So I’m not in the
guest room tonight?”

“No. Definitely not.”

She calls in an order
to one of our favorite restaurants, and I go in to grab it before
driving us home. We actually sit on the floor and not the couch,
because it’s more comfortable to have our food on the coffee table
than our laps. We eat in silence at first, although she does kiss me
several times, so I know things aren’t too bad.

“What would you have
done if that didn’t work?”

“It worked?”

“Not completely. I’m
a work in progress. Answer me, please.”

“I would’ve flown
us to Rome.”

Her eyes go wide and
her mouth drops open. “Rome?”

“Between my
connections and yours, I’d have scored you an audience with the
Pope. I’ll still do that if you need me to.”

“I-I really want to
meet the Pope. I never thought about using my connections.”

“That’s what you
have me around for. I’m the cut-throat businessman who is always
looking for ways to get what he wants.”

“Bullshit. You’re
the loving husband and friend who would do anything for the people
you love.”

“That too. I’m
both.”

“And I love that
about you.”

“Thanks. Now, do I
need to work on making that meeting happen?”

“No. Yes. Maybe. I
really want to meet him, but I don’t
need
to.”

“So no rush? I’ll
be nice about the ask then.”

“You’re really
going to do this?”

“Yes. I can’t
believe you’re doubting me.”

“I’m not doubting
that you can do it. I just can’t believe you want to do it for me.
It’s still hard to have you willingly do anything for me without
thinking that you want something.”

“I do want something.
I want you to be happy, and feel cherished and loved.”

“Cherished?”

“I cherish you, and
your love. I need you to know that.”

“I told Jane that I
deserved to be cherished. Did she tell you?”

“No. She didn’t
tell me,” I tell her honestly. She searches my eyes, and I know she
sees the truth in them.

“Good. It wouldn’t
mean as much to me if she had.”

“This is all me.”

“I love all of you,
Matteo.”

“Reina, we need to
talk before I make you scream, so you’ll have to stop calling me
that,” I warn her.

“So let’s talk. I
want to scream soon.”

“Noted. How did
everything go tonight? You were crying.”

“It went really well.
I was crying because talking to them made me realize that my faith
isn’t gone. It’s there with me, even when I don’t acknowledge
it. God is with me always. They all told me in different ways that
pertained to their beliefs, and none of them pressured me to accept
what they were telling me. It came down to the same thing with all of
them. My faith may not be as strong as it was, and I can’t just
snap my fingers to make it come back, but it’s not gone.”

“I wanted you to see
that, because I didn’t believe that you’d lost it. You can’t
help the people you do, and not have faith. It was shaken, and I
shook it even more, but it was never truly gone.”

“We have an atheist
or two among us at the Society, you know.”

“Yes, I know. There’s
nothing wrong with that. They are compassionate and amazing, but
you’re not one of them. God was once the biggest part of your life,
and while you left your religion, you never left God.”

“And he never left
me. Have you ever seen the ‘Footprints in the Sand’ poem? I
believe that. I believe God has carried me. And because I believe
that, I now realize that my faith is there, ready for me to embrace
it once again when I’m ready.”

“I have no doubt
you’ll be ready before you know it.”

“I want to one day
get married in a church. Can we do that?”

“We can absolutely do
that.”

“You’ll marry me
again that easily.”

“I’ll marry you
every day of every year if you want me to.”

“Right now, I just
want you to make love to me.”

“I can do that, too.”

I stand up and hold my
hand out to her. She takes it and I pull her up into my arms. When I
lift her, she wraps her long legs around me like they belong there.
Because they do. I walk us down the hall and up the stairs to our
private outside oasis.

“The pool?” she
asks, her eyes sparkling.

“I told you once that
we’d have our own pool to go skinny dipping in. I was too chicken
to have you in here when I couldn’t be the man you needed. Now that
I’ve given in, I want you in the water.”

“If you keep making
all my dreams come true, I might just have to keep you.”

“That’s
my
dream.”

She kisses me, and then
the clothes start coming off. I lose a few shirt buttons, and her top
has a big tear in it. We won’t be able to wear these clothes again,
but neither of us care. Once we’re both naked, I walk us into the
shallow end of the pool. Ryan designed it to look like it’s in the
mountains, with boulders, a waterfall slide, and a little bit of
rapids we can turn on in a little side pool that feeds into the main
one. I pull us over and flip the switch. There’s not a lot of
things sexier than watching water flow all over a woman’s breasts
and pussy. Especially if that woman is Reina.

She lets me stretch her
out, and then grabs onto the hidden handles underneath the ledge as I
spread her legs and stand between them. I could honestly just stare
at her in the water like this for hours and never get bored. My mouth
is greedy for her, though, and I don’t blame it one damn bit. I
lean down and lick her, slowly at first. She arches, and I move her
feet up to my shoulders. She uses the leverage to fuck my face, and I
move faster. I bite and lick, lick and suck, as she moves erratically
under my mouth. I could do this all night, and I have to fight the
urge to stop her from going over. In the end, I can’t do it. She
needs her release, and I need to give it to her. I suck her clit into
my mouth, and graze my teeth over it.

“Matteo,” she
screams as she releases.

I lick her down,
absorbing all of her aftershocks into my mouth as she opens her eyes.
They’re glazed, and if anyone saw her right now, they’d know she
just orgasmed. I’m not done yet. I’ll never be done with her, and
for once in my life, that doesn’t scare me.

I drop her legs to my
waist and kiss my way up her stomach to her tits as I thrust into
her. I’m balls deep when I suck one nipple into my mouth as I pinch
the other one. I fuck her hard, holding onto her hip with one hand as
I alternate my mouth and hands over her breasts. Sucking those
beauties into my mouth along the water is more erotic than anything
my imagination could conjure up. We’ve had lots of shower sex over
the years, so I know that water does it for both of us, but this is
different. This is a promise I’m finally keeping. That knowledge
makes it better, and hotter.

She’s getting close
again, arching into my mouth, and my cock. I love it when she’s
like this, so lost in what I’m doing to her that she loses all
control. When she lets go of the handles to hold onto my shoulders, I
sit back onto the seat behind me. Despite the shower in London. I’m
not sure I’m strong enough yet for stand up sex on a regular basis,
and no way am I going to make this anything less than spectacular for
either of us.

Once she’s straddling
me, she goes even crazier. She bites me neck and fucks me like she
can’t get enough of my cock. “You want my cock all night, Reina?”

“Yes. Fuck me harder.
I need you deeper.”

Oh hell yeah. I hold
her hips in a punishing grip, and thrust into her hard. Over and over
again until she’s screaming my name and then biting my shoulder
hard enough to break my skin. I come right after her, still taking
her like a madman as I thrust over and over again. When I’ve
finally given her everything I’ve got, I drop my head back onto the
concrete and try to breathe again without shaking.

“That was perfect. So
fucking perfect.”

“Oh yeah, it was.
Damn, Rei. I didn’t think it would ever get any better with you.
But that, what we just did? I think I died for a minute.”

“We need to use this
pool more often.”

“Not too often,
though. I need to be able to function at least a few days a week.”

“You can’t function
right now? That’s not what I’m feeling,” she tells me, stroking
me back from semi hard to filled to bursting in less than a minute.

“My brain. My brain
can’t function. My cock will never have that problem when your
pussy’s nearby.”

“Thank God for that,
because my pussy’s open for business whenever your cock’s around.
We don’t need your brain tonight anyway. Unless you’re using it
to come up with new ways to make me come.”

“That, I can do,” I
tell her before pulling us out to the main pool for round two. I
can’t believe we had this for a year and never put it to use. At
least we’ve finally come to our senses just in time.

* * *

Reina

Today’s my birthday,
and I wake up feeling different. Not because I’m a year older, but
because my left hand feels heavier than it was last night, or earlier
this morning. Matt helped me usher in my birthday in a very decadent
way at midnight, but then we both fell asleep. As I lift my hand, I
see the ring on my ring finger. It is a thick band with good sized
diamonds and sapphires shaped like circles all around it, and a thin
band of diamonds above and below it. It’s exactly what I would’ve
picked for myself.

“Did I do good?”
Matt asks, walking into the room with a tray full of my favorite
breakfast foods, along with a small wrapped present, and flowers.

For the past two weeks,
I’ve gotten flowers every day. Not at the same time, or the same
place, but they always appear for me somewhere. Here in the bedroom,
on my desk, at “our table” in the cafeteria, on waiting on my car
seat, and even tucked into the book I was reading last week. I’d
set it down to grab a water, and when I came back, a single lily was
lying between the pages.

I’ve also had sweet
dates, including a chance to see and meet Shania Twain while she was
in town. Matt remembered that I loved her from when we first met, and
he made that happen for me. Our other dates have been no less
wonderful, even when we’re just eating together at work. When Matt
does something, he always goes big, and romancing me is no exception.

“It’s perfect.”

“You’re perfect.”

“Hardly. But we are
perfect for each other.”

“We are,” He says
kissing me as he sets my tray in front of me. “I love having a ring
back on that finger.”

“I’m sorry I
couldn’t put the old one back on.”

“Don’t be. It’s
very happy to be sitting in the vault along with its yellow friends.”