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“Let me show you around first. You have to be starving—” Her finger over my lips shuts me up, and I raise a brow.
“Room. Now.” Then the naughty little thing mimics my stance, brow, and all. This makes me want to bite her. “Comprende?”
“You’re lucky I like you.”
“And you’re just lucky I’m a saint.”
“Saint, my ass.” With that, I toss her over my shoulder and walk out of the room with her whisper-cursing me all the way to the master bedroom at the top of the stairs with the large double doors. No one stops me or asks who she is, but I catch the smile on Lourdes’s face and Emiliano smirking. Even their mother looks amused during a time when sadness is all we’ve felt.
“I’m going to whoop you, Javi. Put me down.”
“No.” I kick the door closed with my foot and march over to the bed.
“Javier Lucas, I swear to all that…shit!”
I’m looking down on her breathless form now atop my bed, her eyes bright. “You were saying, Muñeca?”
Tiny fingers wave. “Hi.”
“Hi.” Lowering my body to hers, I nuzzle my nose to hers and peck those sweet lips. “I’m happy you’re here.”
“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.” Voice low and breathy, Mariah slips her arms around my neck and tugs on the hair at my nape. “I’ve missed you.”
“Missed you too.” I skim my lips across hers, slowly, softly, while taking her upper lip between my own. A soft bite. A little lick. Mariah releases a tiny whimper then, exhaling against my mouth, and deepens the kiss.
She’s hungry. As desperate as I am, she pulls back a few seconds later and rests her forehead against mine. The soft look on her face makes my chest feel tight, and my heart beats wildly for her.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t come sooner, Javi.” Seafoam eyes turn watery, and I shake my head. Her tears are something I can’t handle at the moment and she sees that, fighting back her own emotions for me. I know how she feels without her uttering a single word. Can read her even when she hides behind a persona that’s cold and distant when Mariah is anything but.
“You’re here now, and that’s all that matters to me. To my family.”
A different kind of need settles in the room then and I let her wrap those small, yet strong arms around me and pull me close. There are no more words. No need to express.
For the first time since coming back to my country, I let myself sink into the bed and gratefully take comfort in my Muñeca. And as her fingers run through my hair, tugging a bit near the ends, I rest.
Fall asleep in her arms with her heart beating beneath my ear. I love you.
The next time my eyes open, the room is dark and yet, I know it’s early. There’s a rooster somewhere on the property greeting the sun while annoying everyone here. There’s a heaviness that settles in my chest knowing what the following hours will bring, but a soft sigh to my left calms me.
Soothes and comforts my soul.
Motherfuck, she’s beautiful. Mariah’s asleep while wearing an old soccer shirt from my teenage days she pilfered from one of my drawers with a bedsheet carelessly strewn across the back of her thighs. It seems I hogged the comforter. There’s also the matter of a leg bent at the knee and an arm wrestling the pillow beneath her head in a serious choke-hold from my viewpoint, and I’ve never been more jealous of a sack of cotton in my life.
I want my chest to be where she rests her head. I want to be who she seeks for comfort.
I love you. Three little words that slam back to the forefront of my mind as her arrival replays in my mind:
Seeing her standing at the entrance to my study here.
The feel of her lithe body against my harsher planes.
Hearing those words just before falling asleep, the way she lulled me with gentle touches and the soft scent of her favorite lotion.
My beautiful little Muñeca. “I love you, too.”
A soft knock on the door pulls my attention toward the bedroom door. “Javi?” Lourdes calls, her voice low. “You up?”
Mariah stirs on the bed, her eyebrows scrunching up, but they relax when I lean over and kiss her forehead. “Go back to sleep, sweetheart. There are still a few hours before we leave.” She doesn’t answer; instead, she snuggles deeper into the covers I place over her.
