Chapter 13 – Aricia #2
I’m a grown woman, not a girl. And I’m above getting turned on by situations like this except…
There's something about Peter that makes me instantly wet and makes me want to please him. He found out how to unlock the part of my lizard brain that makes me insanely aroused and he won’t stop his relentless pursuit of those desires.
There’s something strangely sexy about the way he’s willing to violate every social convention to get me into his bed and once he has me here, the ravaging continues. He runs his finger along the length of my wet slit and when he removes his hand, Peter ensures my ass is bare and he spanks it.
Hard.
The first slap sears through me almost like a slice and I scream loudly enough to wake the neighbors. Peter chuckles as if it’s funny, but I’m busy catching my breath and trying to select which cruel insult I should throw his way.
“Your ass took that perfectly,” he mutters.
I shiver as he touches my stinging flesh, completely consumed by his desire to claim me completely.
He says he won’t stop until he bruises my ass, but I never had my ass spanked before to the point of bruising…
Not like this. I shudder to think of what anyone in my social circle would think of me having a white man spank my ass like this.
Peter’s skin color has nothing to do with how good this feels, but it adds an extra layer of wrong to how good he makes me feel with his so-called claiming.
I can feel his cock growing with arousal again as he shifts his body, but I get too comfortable and don’t anticipate the crazy Italian man’s next hard slap.
My next yelp is even louder than the first, because his palm hitting my stinging flesh causes even worse pain to spread.
He’s crazy for this – and I’m crazier for letting him.
“It will take a long time to bruise your dark skin,” he says. “But then you’ll think of me whenever you’re away and remember that I want you… and not because of any fucking drugs…”
Peter lands another slap on my ass and he grunts with the force it takes him to hit my buttcheeks. I can’t believe I’m hoping for my ass to turn purple faster. Or whatever color it turns when a man claims me.
“You’re the hottest woman I’ve ever been with, Aricia,” Peter growls and he hits me again as if he’s angry with me for not materializing sooner. “I don’t know how the fuck I’m meant to let you out of my bed.”
Another smack on my ass causes my cheeks to vibrate with searing pain. I would never outwardly describe what I feel as pleasurable, but cum seeps out of my pussy lips and dribbles down my thighs.
Strangely, after two more hard slaps against my ass, a new sensation takes over. I can’t stop the rise of pleasure in my chest. Peter senses it. He runs a finger through the dribbling juices streaming down my thighs and then lands a final wet slap against my ass that makes me cum… hard.
My emotions surge as the unexpected climax takes over me and I can’t even hide it because I had no warning that Peter’s hand on my ass would make me cum.
I can’t imagine anything more embarrassing than a grown, respectable black woman like myself allowing a white man to spank my ass like this. What the hell is wrong with me…
Peter loves it, because of course he enjoys claiming me like this. He’s just as much of a brute as any other man. Except… there’s something tender that he displays in the little ways he takes care of me that I wouldn’t notice if I hadn’t been ignored for years.
“Now you will spend all day tomorrow thinking about my hand on your ass,” he says with an excited, low growl. “I like that.”
“You were supposed to let me sleep.”
I’m tired now, but I’m going to have one hell of a sex-hangover tomorrow. I might have to pull one of those “work from home” days and have Rana drop off any files that I might have forgotten in the office. I’m sure I could trade a few errands for some juicy gossip, knowing her.
“It’s not my fault you make me weak.”
I don’t think that argument would hold up in court. But for the first time in a long time, I don’t feel like I’m just a lawyer. It’s like… I can turn my brain off.
“Tomorrow morning,” he murmurs. “We can compromise and you take the test in the morning. I have one with me.”
Does he want a baby? Peter doesn’t give me time to indulge that thought. He draws my body against his and it’s clear that this isn’t up for discussion. I’m snuggling with an Italian mobster almost twice my size and he’s the one who clings to me like I’m specially made for his arms.
“Okay,” I whisper.
And I let him hold me until I slip into a deep sleep while cradled by Peter’s enormous biceps.
In the morning, Peter is gone. My heart feels shockingly startled by his absence.
My hand pads all over his side of the bed in silent denial of his absence.
I sit up and look around the hotel room. No signs of him.
I glance over at the night stand for the only items Peter left behind. He leaves the pregnancy test on the night stand and a note. I unfold it, strangely nervous, even if I should be completely comfortable with never seeing Peter like this again. He kidnapped me.
I don’t know how to explain letting myself go with him, but my ass is sore, leaving me with a painful reminder of the rough passion that exploded between us in the middle of the night.
I didn’t realize I had that pent up energy in me, and I’m not even sure I want to take that pregnancy test. I’ll need to take a rideshare back to my house and blow up Peter’s phone until he finds a way to get me my car.
My harshness towards him disappears when I catch a glimpse of his weirdly perfect cursive handwriting. His script immediately strikes me as polished and romantic, not the mobster chicken scratches I expected, honestly.
Good morning, Aricia –
Sorry to disappear on you. My brother called. Take the test, process, and we’ll talk later. I hope you have a wonderful day today, beautiful. Last night was perfect. Again, I’m sorry but I had to leave. Business. – PC
What business could have required Peter getting only a couple hours of sleep? I take the pregnancy test off his nightstand and scurry to the bathroom like an irresponsible college student after a one night stand and not a grown ass woman.
1 hour later
My House
I let Peter into my head and between my legs again.
I’m acting like a twenty-one year old and not a woman who spent most of her adult life in a committed relationship.
My ass throbs from what happened between us in that hotel room.
Peter’s palm felt so good and I could just turn my brain off after being a boss who handles literally everything all damn day.
I know that I can avoid him, but I can’t avoid the nagging thoughts he put in my head.
Should I take another test? How can I be sure until I take another test?
This time, I buckle and text Rana.
Me: I took a pregnancy test.
Rana: WHAT. HAPPENED.
Rana: I’M COMING OVER.
Me: I can just text you
Rana: DO NOT. I AM brINGING WINE.
I didn’t expect her to respond to my request that quickly, but I appreciate Rana’s commitment to supporting me through this midlife crisis that I never signed up for. I won’t be having the wine – pregnant nor not.
But…
I can’t be pregnant. As I sit there on my Pottery Barn couch with my knees pulled up to my chest, a strange thought roots at the back of my mind.
What if the reason we didn’t have a kid all those years wasn’t me?
We stopped discussing kids long ago and I never put kids before my career, so I allowed the years to pass by and never thought too deeply about whether I would have children or not.
Passively over the years, Kennard convinced me that I must have had a fertility issue.
We were never actively trying, so I never got it checked out but… What if he had a fertility issue? What if everything down there was working just fine for me all along and my body was just waiting for active swimmers capable of crossing that finish line.
I can’t blame my next wave of nausea on morning sickness this time. I wonder if I avoided thinking about it because it was just another thing from my past that I didn’t want to face. What about now? What if I’m pregnant? How the hell will I face that?
Rana texts me constant updates about her journey to the closest CVS pharmacy to pick up a pregnancy test. She gets me the most expensive one, which I don’t think is necessary, but I appreciate her commitment to the best results.
She turns her location on as she drives to my new place, so I can watch Rana’s little icon zoom through traffic until she’s in my driveway.
She lets herself in with her fingerprint and screams, “ARICIA! I AM LOSING MY MIND.”
I guess it’s asking too much to expect her not to make a big deal out of this.
“The worst part about it is I can’t even have a glass of wine to take the edge off until I know.”
“How long have you suspected? Is Kennard the father?” Rana’s wide brown eyes glimmer with curiosity and fear. I feel suddenly grim as I’m hit with the realization of just how real this situation with Peter has become.
Luckily, there isn’t a chance that Kennard is the father at this point.
I had my suspicions about his little mistress Inessa for a long time and made excuses on the rare occasions he tried to sleep with me.
The only man I’ve been with since my husband died is Peter Corsini.
The mobster who just hired my firm to defend his cousin’s manslaughter case.
This doesn’t just seem like a conflict of interest – it’s dangerous.
But anyone who has to deal with grief and a metric fuckton of bullshit at once knows that you can be forgetful and irresponsible, and so unlike yourself.
I feel like I just gaslit myself for years into thinking of Aricia Plant as a confident, independent woman who could handle shit.
And I might have let a random Italian one night stand knock me up.
“Kennard’s not the father. I don’t even know if I’m pregnant.”
Rana reaches into her large black Coach tote bag for the brand new pregnancy test still sealed in the plastic. She brought a back up. It’s like she knows what I saw earlier because she can see the results haunting me. I hate that her tone changes when she speaks.
“Are you going to tell him?”
“Only if there’s something to tell.”
I’ll have to tell him. Peter has proven his willingness to stalk me and he left bruises on my ass the last time we were in the same room together.
I ran away from him with the knowledge that he would find me again and this time…
he won’t let me escape that easily. Like I said, he has me curled up on the couch with a sore ache between my thighs like I’m a young adult who just discovered sex.
“Okay,” Rana says, nodding supportively. “Your body, your choice. Take the test and I’ll be here watching Rock The Block.”
If I hadn’t already seen those accusatory, annoying, absolutely ignorant two pink lines on the pregnancy test earlier, I would have screamed at the juxtaposition of discovering such serious news with a fun and light-hearted HGTV show.
Rana turns up the volume to give me privacy, knowing enough of my personality that I’m not the sappy handholding sort…
but I’m still human and appreciate her support out there.
I dip into my powder room with the backup pregnancy test. Five painful minutes pass before I’m sure, but I must have known deep in my heart that the test this morning was telling the truth.
I walk out of the bathroom, trying not to look defeated.
This should be good news. I walk back into the living room and Rana mutes the show, right as the judges pan to a flashy, modern looking kitchen on the TV show.
“Are you ready to tell me?” she asks. “I can’t read your mind at all and it’s scaring me.”
You get a pretty good handle of your poker face working with judges, lawyers and the types of people you encounter in a courtroom. If you allow your feathers to become easily ruffled, you won’t last long in this career. It’s no surprise Rana can’t read my reactions…
“I’m pregnant.” I have to say it out loud to believe it, but when I say it, I almost want to throw up straight away. This wasn’t supposed to happen with an Italian mobster.
“Holy fucking airball,” Rana says in response, like I have a damn clue what that Gen Z slang means outside of having heard it a hundred times.
“It’s Peter’s?!” she follows up with, ready to plunge into this new reality where I’m somehow pregnant with a white mobster’s baby.
I still don’t want this to be real.
If I wasn’t ready with Kennard, my husband of twenty years, how the hell can I be ready to go through this with a dangerous white man who doesn’t share my culture, or anything with me aside from explosive physical desire?
And a desire to care for you, Aricia. He seems to have that.
But I quiet the thought, because women like me were taught that men won’t ever take care of you and if any man suggests that he might, it’s only because he wants to hurt and control you.
I can’t give away any ounce of my independence to Peter just because I’m pregnant.
This news might become very real, but I can’t let it break me.