Page 42 of Meet Me in Montreal

Looking at her with that tilted grin, he shook his head. “I don’t have pull-out game. If we’re fuckin’, we’re fuckin’ till you’re full of my cum. Now quit playin’ and come here.” He reached for her, but she slipped further away from the edge of the bed, her body absolutely blazing with lust at his words and the dead serious expression in his eyes.

“Then we’re not fucking. I’m not taking home any party favors from you, not the kind that requires antibiotics or the kind that cries at 3 a.m.”

It was more than a little gratifying to see his jaw drop. “Tesoro. Seriously. I haven’t slept with anyone else but you, period. I’m good.”

He reached for his phone, pulled up something on the screen and handed it to her. It was an STI panel, dated as of a few days ago. All she saw were negatives, which was…positive. But she still flounced out of reach.

“Who gets tested if they know they haven’t done shit?” she taunted.

“I didn’t do this because I needed to be sure, but becauseyoumight need to be sure.” He took the phone back from her, put it in the drawer, and shut it firmly. “Now get back in the bed.”

The lust in her only heightened at his declarations, and yes, at the commanding tone. All she wanted in that moment was to get back in bed with him like he’d told her, open herself to him, her pussy, every part of her body. But her heart was yelling at her, loud and insistent, that this was dangerous. If she gave him what he wanted, she’d lose herself to him for good, and when the day came for him to break her heart all over again, next time she’d never get over it, never recover.

“No.”

“Get back in the bed,” he repeated, a note of steel embedded in the silk of his voice.

“No glove, no love.” Firm on the outside, a trembling mess of gelatin inside. “I didn’t come up with that slogan, by the way. It was part of a 1980s safe sex campaign. You weren’t even born then.” More useless facts, as if that would distract him from what was apparently his new mission.

“Oh,marone. Neither were you!” Santino exclaimed with exasperation. Exhaling long and slow, he rubbed his dirty blond hair and shook his head. “Okay, Professor Donahue. But I’m making myself clear. When we do it, we’re doing it raw or not at all. That’smyslogan. Let’s see how long you last,” Santino finally said with a low chuckle. “Anyway, let’s get the day started. I thought we’d have a picnic or something in Mont Royal Park. Want to shower together?”

“No.”

Santino grinned, and when he passed her, he shocked her by slapping her on the ass. He winked at her before disappearing through the double doors of the bath suite. He was getting a little too comfortable.

Comfortable? You just came in his mouth, she told herself with exasperation. A little slap on the ass was the least of it.

A grin forced its way to her lips. Still floating on those dangerous feel-good chemicals, she went to get her outfit ready for the day while she waited her turn for the shower. She was glad he’d put Mont Royal on the itinerary; she’d heard it was beautiful, the city’s version of Central Park.

There was a good chance they’d end up on their feet for most of the time. The picnic would be on the grass, so she chose a cute pink cotton blouse that knotted at the waist, a pair of dark green khaki capris that wouldn’t show dirt, and brown sandals with decent tread. Fingering the blouse as she put it in the vanity area for when it was her turn to dress, she realized she was still grinning. It had been a pretty fucking great way to wake up, she had to admit.

She regretted how the evening before had ended. Santino’s sketches of her as a superhero with a dark secret had been surprising, had shocked her by revealing two things. One, the sheer number of them revealed he’d been working on them for some time, obviously not just since last week when he’d waylaid her during the settlement negotiation. This was probably months of work or more. He’d been drawing her, thinking about her, trying to pierce through her mysteries and all the things she hadn’t told him when they were together.

And that was the second thing. The powerful super-shero who still somehow needed savingwith love. Seriously? She couldn’t decide if that was some reverse misogynistic BS or his bad interpretation of superhero flicks.

The problem had gone deeper than that. Every time she’d seen him over the past three years since the breakup, she’d known he was hurt. Santino had never made a pretense of hiding his feelings, unlike her. In fact, she’d always admired his ability to be his true self and not give a fuck what the response would be.

But when Dani had tried to tell her he’d been depressed, she’d stopped her because it had made her feel guilty. And for him to tell her it had hurt him that badly had been too much. She didn’t want to hear that her leaving had wounded him when none of it would have happened but for the decisions he made. She absolutely couldn’t let him blackmail her emotionally into staying in the marriage if there was just going to be more of the same. It was unfair. Almost cruel.

The impulse rose to take another look at those drawings. She glanced at the bathroom doors again, then went to the drawer where he kept the sketchpad. Vanessa sat on the area rug next to the bed and flipped through the book slowly, examining each picture. Here she was in her daytime attire, walking down the street, in front of a judge in court, stopping at the rose bushes near the front door and smiling as she inhaled their beauty. Something about those scenes tugged at her subconscious, but she couldn’t put her finger on just what that was.

Aside from what he’s said about what they meant to him, she really did love the drawings, really believed in his talent. She wasn’t kidding when she said he should publish it as a graphic novel. At least if he wanted to quit the day job and do this full time, thanks to Nonno, he’d never have to worry about becoming a starving artist.

Vanessa moved on to the drawings of the male figure. Santino wasn’t vain enough to make the hero’s face look like his, but otherwise it was him. Strong, brave, leaping mid-air into danger with his axe gripped in his hands.

Would he win? She blinked, as the answer “yes” rose unbidden from some place buried deep within her.

Oh, no. No, he wouldn’t win back her heart. But she had to admit, as scary as it was to hear him say he still loved her, it had touched the softest parts of her. It would be dangerous toimagine a new future with him, but did it feel good to believe it right now, in this moment?

Yes. It did. Really good.

With a soft fingertip, she touched him one last time, closed the book, and was ready to place it back in the drawer when she saw another book inside. Peering closer, she read the title aloud. It was a manual, a study guide for the lieutenant’s exam in the fire department. There was a receipt stuck halfway in, no doubt Santino’s version of a bookmark.

Well, that was a surprise, Santino thinking of the fire department as a true career and not just something to do solely for the sake of tradition, which he strongly believed in. Still smiling, she put the books back as she found them and got up to find her phone to check for emails. It was a startling coincidence that it started to ring while in her hand. Maybe it was Bobby checking in, but she was jarred when she saw the name on the screen: Scott Malone.

What the hell? She’d believed she’d seen and heard the last of him when he’d driven away that night with his green eyes full of hurt and anger. Was he calling to curse her out?

She didn’t know what to do, answer it or let it go to voicemail. Santino’s singing and rapping (badly) in the shower drifted through the doors. Guiltily, she glanced in that direction. Guilty for what, she didn’t know. But when a notification went off that there was a new voicemail in the inbox, she pressed the button to listen, her heart picking up tempo while she pressed the phone to her ear.

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