Old Flame: Dante’s Story by Sam Mariano

21

Dante

Sunlight fillsthe bedroom when my eyes open, letting me know I’ve slept too long. Colette’s warm body is curled up in my arms, so I don’t care.

Contentment spreads through me as I close my eyes again and just lay here holding her. We used to sleep this way all the time. Made it that much harder when she left and every night I had to sleep alone.

Now I have to get used to having her here again, but that will be a much more enjoyable adjustment.

Since I know I’ve overslept but I don’t yet know by how long, I ease my arm out from under Colette and climb out of bed. I grab my phone off the table and grimace, seeing it’s after 10. Shit, by a lot.

I hustle through the most important parts of my morning routine, so when I come back into the bedroom to get a suit, I’m bare-ass-naked, using a towel to dry my hair. I glance at the bed to check on Colette and see her staring at me, eyes wide with surprise.

“Good morning,” I say, as I head into the closet to grab clothes.

“Good morning,” she answers sleepily, stretching her arms up in the air when I come back out. “Why is it so bright out?”

I look at the suit I picked out, frowning at the navy blue tie, but I don’t have time to pick a different one. “It’s nearly noon.”

“Late start today?” she questions.

“Inadvertent. I forgot to set an alarm last night.”

Her voice light, she tells me, “Aww, Mateo’s gonna kick your ass.”

I know she’s teasing me, but I don’t even like hearing his name on her lips, so I ignore her and toss the towel so I can get dressed. “I sent a text to Xander already. He’s on his way. He’ll be out front if you need him for anything, but his job is to keep watch, so don’t distract him unless it’s important.”

“I won’t,” she murmurs.

“If you see anything that doesn’t feel right or get an uncomfortable feeling for any reason, don’t second guess yourself, just call me.” As I button up my dress shirt, I walk around to my side of the bed and open the nightstand drawer. I draw out a rectangular box and put it down on the bed beside her. “This is your new phone. I charged it yesterday and pre-loaded it with my phone number. You may call me and you may call the flower shop, but no one else unless you ask first.”

Her lips press together in a firm line of displeasure and her eyes narrow slightly, but she forces herself to nod her head in grudging acceptance of my rules.

“It’s just until I know I can trust you again,” I assure her. “You’ll get all your privileges back once you’ve earned them.”

Now she grits her teeth and tries to kill me with her eyes. I have to bite back a smile, looking down and straightening my tie so she doesn’t see how amused I am.

Since she’s annoyed at me again, I decide to give her a little push and see what she’ll let me get away with. I climb on the bed and crawl over until I’m on top of her, straddling her hips. I pull down the thin blanket she has covering herself so I can see her pretty tits. I know they’ll miss me as much as I miss them, so I bend my head to give them each a few kisses. Some part of me expects she’ll push my head away as soon as I do, but instead I hear her sharply inhale the way she does when she’s getting turned on.

I wasn’t planning on a fuck, but I certainly won’t turn one down. My goodbye kisses to her tits and the way she arches so prettily on the bed ends up running me even later, but when I’m pumping inside her and my bedroom is filled with the sounds of Colette’s pleasure, I can’t seem to find a fuck to give about the people I’ve kept waiting.

I only collapse on top of her for a couple minutes after we finish, just long enough to recover and steal a few kisses. When she catches her breath, Colette fingers the dress shirt I didn’t bother taking off to fuck her. “This is getting all wrinkled.”

“Good thing I have a maid,” I remark, completely unconcerned.

“You might want to change it before you leave. Unless you want it to be obvious you were rolling around in bed with me even though you were already late.”

I roll onto the bed beside her and tug her on top of me. Then I grab a handful of her ass and tell her, “Everyone knows this is mine. They can’t hold it against me if I run late so I can enjoy it from time to time.”

“That’s not how jobs work,” she informs me.

“It’s how mine works.”

“I would fire you,” she states.

“You could try,” I tell her, touching the tip of her nose before pushing her off me and back to her own side.

She huffs at me as I climb off the bed and I have to bite back another smile. Been a long damn time since I’ve had to suppress so many of these.

“I was going to come home for lunch, but since it’s nearly lunch now, I’ll just see you at dinner.” Looking back at her over my shoulder as I fix the button that popped loose, I tell her, “Wear something sexy.”

“And if I don’t?” she tosses back airily. “Do I lose my privileges?”

“If you don’t want to dress up, come to the table naked,” I suggest. “Those are the only acceptable options.”

“I’m gonna wear sweats,” she tells me, just to be defiant. “And a ratty T-shirt.”

“Good luck finding either of those things in my house.” I walk around to her side of the bed to grab my suit jacket that I left there.

“I don’t have any of my make-up. If you want me to doll up to sit across from you at the dinner table, you need to at least get me some essentials.”

I’m able to do a lot of things, but pick out make-up is not on the list. I have no female friends and my sister is kidnapped or a runaway. Wherever Francesca is, it’s not somewhere I can shoot her a text and ask her to buy Colette some make-up.

“Didn’t Mia give you girly shit in that bag she brought over?”

“Mia?” she asks sharply, shooting up in the bed to look at me.

“Vince,” I correct, forgetting I went with the simplest version of events and let her believe Vince brought her the bag of stuff.

Shit.

“Vince brought you—” I stop trying to recover, because now it’s too late. Now she’s glaring and giving me attitude. It’s my own fault. It was an insignificant thing to lie about; I just didn’t think it mattered or that it would come up again.

“Vince brought me tampons and moisturizing shave gel?” she asks, her tone ridiculing what she accepted to be true until I slipped up.

I sigh, raking a hand through my damp hair. “Vince got you the pills, he sent Mia to the pharmacy and she picked up the rest of the stuff for you.”

Even though I specifically said he sent her to the pharmacy, Colette continues as if I am the one who sent Mia on an errand.

“Then she brought it over to you while I was asleep? How sweet.”

I can tell by her tone she does not think it’s sweet, and she’s got a sheen of crazy in her eyes. I don’t know where it’s coming from, but I don’t have time for it right now.

Colette goes on, “You call her Mia, too. You call Meg ‘Mateo’s girlfriend,’ but Mia… requires something a little more familiar, I guess.”

Goddammit. Paying close attention to the language someone uses to get at the truth of how they feel about someone is a trick I taught her, and I damn sure don’t like it being used against me.

“I barely know the girl, Colette. You’re being crazy,” I inform her.

“You lied to me and covered up that she came over when I wasn’t around,” she tosses back with deceptive casualness. “Why would you do that if it’s innocent?”

“I didn’t lie. I asked Vince to run an errand for me, he sent his girlfriend instead. What do you want me to say? I didn’t tell him to.”

“Maybe she wanted to see you. She’s pretty. Has great taste in shoes, too.”

What the fuck does that have to do with anything? Before I can ask, she’s hurling another thinly veiled accusation at me.

“Were you two close while I was away?”

“For fuck’s sake,” I mutter, patting my pockets to make sure I have my phone and my wallet. “No.”

“You said you slept with other girls,” she reminds me, sounding none too pleased about it for someone who was engaged to some other motherfucker.

“Trust me, I did not sleep with that one,” I assure her. “No one you would have to keep seeing once you were back where you belonged. What do you think I am, an asshole?”

“Yes,” she answers, but smiles faintly anyway.

I shake my head. “Clearly you’re thinking of Mateo. I don’t fuck the girlfriends of my male relatives, that’s him.”

Her arms are still folded over her chest with leftover attitude, but now that I’ve assured her I didn’t bang the blonde, she’s settling down. “Did he sleep with her?”

“Yes.”

“Is that why you said I’m not his favorite back-up anymore? Is it her now?”

I don’t know how to explain that simply, and more to the point, I don’t want to. “Not exactly. Anyway, I gotta go.”

“Well, if your side bitch isn’t doing anything today, you could tell her to bring me some make-up.”

Even though she’s clearly joking about it now, I turn around and point at her. “Do not joke about that. That girl has some kind of hold on Mateo. If he thought I wanted to fuck her, he’d probably find a way to sneak cameras into my house to make sure I’m not. I don’t need that headache on top of all the ones you give me.”

Colette looks a little too proud of herself at the prospect of giving me headaches. “I’m very curious about this whole situation. Maybe she can be my lunch date since you’re busy; she can catch me up on all the Morelli stuff I missed.”

Something like regret stabs me when she says that. By asking to have lunch with Mia, she’s indicating a willingness to integrate herself back into my family’s social web. I like that she’s already offering to do that voluntarily, but I damn sure don’t enjoy having to tell her she can’t.

I wish I hadn’t brought Mia up, even if inadvertently. Now on top of everything else I told her she wasn’t allowed to do today, I have to add something else.

“Look, I know this isn’t how it was before, but I don’t want you getting close to Mia or Meg. I don’t know how long they’ll be around. Mia’s caught between Mateo and Vince so she’s bound to get herself killed, and Meg is… aside from being annoying as fuck, I don’t think Mateo really trusts her. I don’t know exactly what he’s doing with her, maybe just passing time? But he’s damn sure not in love with her, so whatever his agenda is, I wouldn’t recommend getting too attached to her either. We didn’t know what to expect with Beth, none of us ever imagined it would go down the way it did, but now we know what can happen. I don’t want to see you go through that a second time, so I think it’s best to keep your distance from these two.”

I can tell she doesn’t exactly love the idea of not being able to befriend the only other people who could really comprise a social circle for her, but she accepts that if I have enough doubts to tell her to stay away from them, there’s a good reason. “What about Francesca?”

“She’s missing. It’s a long story and I don’t know how that one ends either.”

“So… I’m just not allowed to have any friends now? I was close to the people in your life before. Now I can’t be?”

I don’t know what to tell her. She sounds so disappointed, I have to throw her a bone. “Hey, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe one of them will end up making it. If Mateo ever gets married, we can assume she’s a keeper and you can befriend his wife. How about that?”

Giving me a rather sour look, she says, “If Mateo getting married is what I have to wait for, you might as well just get me a cat.”

Yeah, that bastard’s never getting married. “I could get you a kitten,” I offer, liking that idea much more. “Or a puppy. Pick an animal, I’ll get it for you.”

Brightening, she says, “I was just being sarcastic, but I like that idea. We should go to the animal shelter next time you have a day off, see if they have any furry friends we could adopt.”

“It’s a date,” I tell her.