Chapter 11 – Aricia
Chapter Eleven
Aricia
“No. I want to keep my clothes on.”
Peter laughs. “I’ll give you privacy and order up some dinner.”
I turn around to face him and ignore the fact that I am in dangerous territory with this man.
If he can afford to fling around $500,000 beating a court case, he’s definitely dangerous.
Definitely in the mob. Completely outside of the safe world I’ve worked so hard to build for myself.
I thought I would lose everything with Kennard’s affair and I escaped by the skin of my teeth.
“Thank you, Peter. I really admire that you continue to remain such a gentleman.”
Hopefully he gets the hint. I give him a deep, penetrating stare in hopes that he gets the hint and doesn’t do anything even more insane than kidnapping me and bringing me to an expensive hotel room.
“I just want to talk to you, Aricia.”
“This night in a hotel room could have been an email.”
Peter laughs. He has very sexy smile lines and the saltiness in his beard turns me on because I hit the age where that greying look just does it for me.
I hate the way he makes my pussy throb and draws this vulnerability out of me.
I don’t even know how this crazy man even convinced me to follow her upstairs.
“Get clean, sexy,” he says. “I’ll get you dinner.”
“Fine. But I’ll be reviewing my briefs and then heading to sleep with no funny business.”
“I understand completely.”
“If you touch me, I’ll run out of here screaming.”
“Understood.”
I set my bag down safely on the corporate desk and gently remove my heels.
The only feeling better than taking my heels off after a long day at work is removing my makeup and exfoliating my skin.
I can at least trust the beauty products at a hotel this nice won’t cause me to break out.
I walk past Peter and ignore his eyes blatantly glued to my ass as I shut myself in the hotel room bathroom and try not to lose my mind.
Is it bad that I want to text Rana about this?
I can’t bring myself to admit that I ended up in a hotel room with Peter.
I don’t trust myself to be near him, but I’m genuinely tired from an emotionally exhausting day at the office dodging all the memories of my past that will inevitably crop up at the law firm I built with my dead husband.
Is he my ex-husband? Am I just a widow? I get naked and step into the shower, trying not to think about how crazy my life has been ever since I decided to confront my ex-husband about his cheating.
I didn’t think any of this would happen, especially not that first crazy night with Peter.
I just want to put it all behind me and maybe I should have gone to the cops or done something about the fact that we were both clearly under the influence but… my life was falling apart.
We ended up sleeping together and I thought we could just run away from it.
I honestly didn’t realize how far this could potentially follow me, and maybe that was arrogance on my part.
The shower is luxurious, which makes me feel better about this crazy decision to let a mobster drag me off to his brother’s hotel.
At least I know he kept me away from the street cameras and that any potential conflict of interest will be his problem, not mine. I’ll make it his problem, is what I mean. There won’t be anymore men screwing around with my life.
I have to be careful not to get my hair wet and when I step out of the shower, I use whatever hair products I can find at the hotel – Peter seems like he can absorb the charges – and part my hair in two to cornrow my natural hair against the side of my head.
This will have to replace my bonnet and hair care routine.
The skin and haircare game at my age is no joke.
They don’t tell you how much work it takes to keep your melanated skin moisturized and supple into your forties.
Just when I finish braiding up my hair, I hear a knock at the hotel room’s door which must be the room service.
I feel strangely relieved and wonder why on earth I’ve been spending every night after work suffering in the kitchen on my best evenings or eating a yogurt and handful of nuts before bed at my worst. I feel weirdly…
taken care of… even if this man did just drag me off to a hotel room of all places.
I leave the bathroom wearing a fluffy white robe since I don’t have any other clothing aside from my work clothes.
Peter looks incredible, but I try not to fixate on how huge his biceps look bulging through that shirt.
I don’t want to get in trouble with this man again.
Peter sets the table like this is a real date.
I can’t remember the last time I experienced anything that romantic.
“I already opened the wine,” he says.
“We shouldn’t get anywhere near a bottle of wine,” I warn Peter, who should honestly know better considering what happened to us at the bar.
“Fair point,” he says. “You might be pregnant.”
“Excuse me?”
I am pretty sure that I’m not pregnant. Although when he makes the accusation, my stomach does an annoying little flip and I can’t pinpoint the exact date of my last period.
“Never mind,” Peter says. “I’m tracking down who slipped pills into our drinks. So if you’re worried about this criminal getting away with it, they won’t.”
“I haven’t thought about it.”
Peter pulls out my chair and I sit down.
Dinner. I’m having dinner in a hotel room with Peter and even if technically I feel fully in control over myself, I’m out of control in an entirely new way.
I shouldn’t be hopping into any type of interaction with a man after the shit I’ve been through with my ex-husband.
I should be enjoying my newly single life and continuing to build my career.
This strange magnetism with a white Italian man of all people really makes me feel strange all over.
I know the kids these days have an open mind and that racial tensions have eased in some ways over the years, but the idea of being up in a white man’s hotel room like this brings up all kinds of strange anxieties.
Like… is it just the sex he’s here for? And if he is…
shouldn’t I be down with that? Peter has an incredible body, a gorgeous face, we’re the same age and I’m not getting any younger at least. He just isn’t the man I would have pegged as my type and this feels like a mid-life crisis, I don’t want to suddenly start questioning my fundamental attractions.
Is this really what I want? A rich white guy to steal me off the streets and drag me back to his hotel room? After all the shit I’ve clawed through to get my own success, I feel like I should be stronger than this.
But dinner smells amazing.
“Bon appetite," he says. “The salmon here is some of the best.”
The delicious smell of herbs, spices, and butter on the salmon nearly makes me cum on the spot. Roasted asparagus would normally do nothing to entice me, but I’m starved and suddenly all my senses are heightened. Everything on the table smells delicious and Peter looks sexy too.
I start eating so I don’t have to look into his eyes again or acknowledge the fact that he’s staring at me with a gaze that I want to pretend isn’t lustful.
The way my ex-husband ignored me made me feel like the days of men experiencing any type of desire in my presence were over.
He made me feel like I was old and ugly, just because of the constant comparisons subtle and overt to the younger women I eventually found out he wasn’t just looking at.
I wasn’t just naive. I thought he would change. I believed so many things that just seem like they were all lies designed to keep black women trapped, even when we get that financial, outward success we were taught would save us from getting into messes like this.
“Your team works well.”
“We can’t talk about work.”
“Fine. Your mouth looks hot wrapped around that fork.”
I take the salmon off my fork while glaring at Peter, who seems mightily entertained by his crude comment.
What does he mean ‘my mouth looks hot’ and why does such a crazy statement like that cause a bizarre tingling between my legs?
It’s Peter. Something about Peter has me in an absolute chokehold.
“Did your cousin commit the crime they accuse him of?”
“Does it matter?” Peter asks. “I have committed no such crime.”
He smirks and there’s something deeply unnerving about that smirk.
I already feel like I’m breaking with common sense by allowing Peter to kidnap me and feed me salmon at a hotel.
It doesn’t sound outwardly wicked, but when he looks at me with evil mafia eyes and a smirk while talking about murder, I want to push and find the darkness I know can’t be buried that far beneath the surface.
If the man I knew since I was basically a kid and spent decades of my life with could betray me, why the hell should I trust this man who openly flirts with the wrong side of the law? Could life really be so contradictory? I’m not the type of person who ever thought that way before.
“What about you?”
“Do you want the truth?”
“Yes. Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because. You might want diplomacy.”
“I want the truth.”
“I killed before.”
He smirks and laughs. There’s something strange in his voice, like relief, as if he just got something off his chest. My eyes meet Peter’s again and I’m forced to question if I truly lost my mind.
I don’t feel turned off by his confession.
I feel strangely alive that he told me and worse than that, I want to know more. That part I can blame on my profession.
“Yet you walk freely,” I respond cautiously, continuing to part my salmon and asparagus, still haunted by both Peter’s current confession and his earlier suggestion that I might be pregnant.
For a woman who spent twenty years with the same man, whose relationship excitement was directly tied to the Buffalo Bills season performance, I almost can’t believe that I’m in a situation like this.
“Yes. I remain free. But I don’t want you to have any illusions about what I am.”
“Why not? It’s not like you’re serious about me.”
“Who says I’m not serious?”
“I thought this was business…” I slow myself down because I’m eating salmon in this man’s hotel room and I’m not a child.
“This is my business,” Peter says. “But you don’t have to know more than you want to.”
“Considering my job, I want to know as little as possible.”
Peter smirks. “Understood.”
Our eyes meet and the tension that always exists between us sends my heart into an uncontrollable pace. I don’t know how I can feel this way just from looking into Peter’s eyes.
“I also thought we would talk about something else.”
“The pregnancy?” Peter asks bluntly.
I nod, because I haven’t accepted this as much as I thought I would yet. It feels like something that hangs between us but isn’t quite real. Peter drags me back down to earth with his next statement. “Yes. The pregnancy business. If you are pregnant, I want to keep it.”
I chuckle. “I was married for years and didn’t have a baby. Why would I allow that to happen to me now?”
I’m doing a bad job of hiding my true feelings from him.
Peter’s penetrating gaze tells me everything I need to know.
I sound well-rehearsed, but not genuine.
The truth is, I could have never had a baby with a man like Kennard, so I didn’t.
But that was a sacrifice. And now that I’m alone…
I’m more ready to have a child than I ever was before.
This just isn’t how I wanted to bring a child into the world and Peter…
well… I can’t say I know enough about him to even think of tangling up my life with his.
How the hell can I trust another man after the betrayal I went through with the one who was supposed to stay faithful with me until our old age?
“Because I’m in my forties and this is my last chance,” Peter says, voicing something I would have never had the bravery to put into words. “I am willing to take a chance on you and a chance on life because… it’s the last chance I’m going to get.”
My face burns with heat. I feel self-conscious about my own age, even if Peter didn’t accuse me of being old. And the sudden rush of emotions triggers everything I suppressed throughout Kennard’s adventures in cheating and dying on the front lawn after getting caught.
Traumatizing me wasn’t enough, on the day of the ultimate betrayal and his death, I have permanently burned on my brain this vision of a very young, slender white woman with a purple dildo strapped to her crotch.
My body tightens with fierce defensiveness against men and their seeming ability to descend into depravity whenever they’re left unattended.
There’s only one man in my presence to turn my rage towards. My voice tightens, and I know he can detect my disgust even if it’s only the slightest change in tone.
“You could meet a nice twenty-one year old and have a baby with her.”
Peter balks immediately. “I have nothing in common with a child. I’m not an insecure dickhead who needs a younger woman fawning over him to feel like a man. I think you would make a good mother.”
My stomach flips again. Peter reaches across the table and touches my hand. Fire burns between us once our skin meets. I promise myself I’m only going to fall asleep next to him tonight.
“Take a pregnancy test in the morning,” he says. “I want to be here to see the results.”