After a while though, it was time to part ways. We invited them over for a drink—they would have been our first guests—but Claudia looked a bit drunk and was complaining about a headache, so we made plans for another day and Ricardo took her home.
When we were walking back to the apartment, our gaits meandering along the stones of the sidewalk, Mateo gestured to another bar. I was drunk too but had the energy to keep going, especially as the sun was only beginning to set.
It was fairly busy, but I guess it was Saturday night after all. It wasn’t a large bar and had a rustic appeal to it. Little plates of patatas bravas—potatoes with a spicy orange sauce—and calamari and olives were lined up along the bar. Mateo put his hand on my shoulder and asked me to order him a beer while he went to use the restroom.
I went up to the bar and leaned against it, trying to get the bartender’s attention since he was wrapped up in conversation with an old dude. A young guy, mid-twenties, sauntered up to me. I could see him approaching out of the corner of my eye, and it wasn’t until I looked at him that I saw he was actually quite cute. He had sandy brown hair that fell in his eyes, bronze skin, green eyes, and a chin with a dimple in it.
He rattled off some Spanish to me but I could only smile and say, “Los sientos, je ne parle pas Spanish.” Then I laughed at myself from my drunken attempt at Spanish. Somehow I managed to get it mixed with both French and English.
The guy laughed. “You are American?”
“Canadian, actually,” I said.
He nodded, as if that was better, and stepped a bit closer. “Cool. So what are you doing in Madrid?”
I smiled at him, trying to be polite and charming but not give him the wrong idea at the same time. “I live here.”
“Oh, you do?” he asked. “Can I buy you a drink?”
I shook my head. “No, thank you.”
He didn’t seem offended, not like guys back at home would be. “So do you live alone?”
“She lives with me,” I heard Mateo’s gruff voice say from behind me, his arm going around my shoulder. I looked up at him and was surprised to see the look of cold steel in his eyes, the muscle in his jaw tensing. He was looking at the guy like he was about put his fist through his face.
The guy looked between the two of us a few times then threw up his hands and muttered something with a smile on his face. He turned around and moseyed into the depths of the bar.
“What did he say?” I asked.
Mateo didn’t say anything for a few moments. I could see his pulse beating along an artery in his neck. He was angry…or maybe it was something else.
Could Mateo have been jealous?
“Mateo,” I said.
He slowly tore his eyes away from the guy who had long since disappeared from sight and looked down at me. Instead of looking angry, he looked worried, nearly frantic. His grip around my shoulders tightened.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly, his voice breaking with something I didn’t understand. “Come with me.”
I blinked, puzzled, and jerked my thumb at the bartender. “You don’t want a beer.”
“I just want you,” he whispered. He grabbed my hand and led me back toward the restrooms. He kicked open the woman’s washroom and poked his head inside. Then he ushered me in, closing the door behind him.
“What is…what?” I asked, still a bit confused as he brought me over to the handicapped stall and locked us both in there. “Um, Mateo.”
He grabbed my face and started kissing me, hard and feverish. The breath was sucked out of me, replaced with fire. “I am the only man for you,” he growled. “I’m going to come inside of you and I’m going to make you come hard.”
Well, okay then.
The man was jealous. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like it.
He hiked up my dress until it was around my waist and groaned at the sight of me with no panties—I knew there was a good reason to go commando. Suddenly he picked me up and pressed me against the wall, taking out his cock while I gripped him with my thighs. He pushed into me, tight and quick, and I gasped at the friction.
He fucked me relentlessly, his passion and need filling the air like static electricity, present in every touch of his body. He’d gone mad with lust and I’d gone mad for him.
When he was done, both of us breathless and sore, we made each other look presentable again. I smoothed out his collar, patted down his hair where I had pulled on it; he tucked my breasts back into my dress, pushed the hair behind my ears. We grinned at each other, two silly fools in love, and opened the stall door.
There was a woman standing there as if waiting for us to finish.
She already had a look of disgust on her face, but when she laid her eyes on Mateo, they widened as if she’d just seen the biggest spider in the world.
“Mateo?” she cried out in ardent disbelief.
Oh fuck. I swallowed hard and started paying attention to her. She was probably in her late-thirties with dark brown hair cut into a severely stylish bob. Red lipstick, secretary glasses on her eyes—the cat-eyed kind, a yellow jeweled tunic over white capri pants. Sophisticated. Older. And she obviously knew Mateo.
And suddenly I couldn’t breathe. This could not be good.
Before Mateo could say anything—he was, in fact, too stunned to speak—she put one hand on her hip and cocked her head, eying us both with a manipulative gleam, the disbelief having worn off. She pointed at me and looked at Mateo. “Mateo, no creo que esta es tu esposa.”
I understood esposa. That meant wife.
“Sonia,” he said, finding his voice. He cleared his throat. He looked down at me and I saw absolute fear in his eyes. It rocked my foundation. “Vera, this is Sonia. I have known her for a long time. She moved to Paris. I did not know she was back in Madrid.” He stressed these words to let me know that this chick did not know about the divorce; at least that’s what I got out of it.
Oh, this so did not look good. Now I was blushing with shame, like a flaming tomato. I had to get out of there.
I nodded at her and gave her a quick smile which she did not return. “Nice to meet you,” I said. I brushed past her and shot Mateo an apologetic look over my shoulder. “I need to get some air.”
I made my way out of the bathroom and bar and into the night air. A certain chill had settled in it, despite the heat of the day.
Summer was ending sooner than I thought.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The next day was Sunday and a day that Mateo thought I should finally meet his little Chloe Ann. I was extremely nervous, especially with what had happened with Sonia at the bar. After I had gone outside, Mateo explained to his friend that he and Isabel were divorcing. He didn’t say anything about me, I guess that was pretty explanatory. And even though Sonia had been his friend—an ex-girlfriend of one of his buddies—and not Isabel’s, he said he could feel the hate coming off of her.
It definitely put a damper on the evening and made me realize with a kick to the gut that we couldn’t be a normal couple, not yet anyway. We were hanging around fun restaurants and bars not just because of me, but because he didn’t want to run into people like Sonia. Claudia and Ricardo were the first friends we’d met in a long time, I hadn’t seen his parents yet, and it seemed like there was an awful lot of hiding going on.
When I brought the subject up over our hung over breakfast, the feeling that our relationship was as sequestered as it had ever been, he told me that he’d go pick up Chloe Ann and we could take her to the zoo, one of her favorite places.