Chapter 20 – Aricia
Chapter Twenty
Aricia
Confessing this to Peter feels like throwing up all over him.
Would you want to throw up on a tall, attractive Italian man who not only got you pregnant, but views you as this gorgeous, successful woman – not a damn mess who let Kennard Plant make a fool out of her.
I’m scared when I finally confess a part of the truth to Peter, but he doesn’t budge.
His feet don’t even move an inch. He just holds me close and I can’t read his mind at all.
I just have to trust him. Peter kisses the top of my forehead again.
The shiver of excitement as he does this runs straight down my back.
But the fear is still there along with the arousal.
Peter’s hand travels down my back and he touches my ass, unfortunately distracting me with the sudden flash of memory from what happened the last time we were this close to each other.
Did I miss this man? And why is it so hard for me to trust him?
“I’ll make it go away, Aricia. Tell me everything.”
Fuck, when did his voice get this sexy? Every once in a while when I was younger, I would fall in love with a judge who had a James Earl Jones’ deep, sonorous voice. You don’t hear a man with a sexy, deep voice like that often. My thighs clench together unwillingly.
Peter’s voice sounds similarly deep and compelling when he offers to make all my problems go away. I put my head on his chest, even if there’s a tug of worry from sharing this dirty, unprofessional, totally improper secret with Peter.
“She surprised me in my office. Rana tried to warn me but I don’t even know what I expected, honestly.”
His hand cups my head. My gut tells me to fight his touch.
He’s a white man touching my hair after all.
But his touch is so gentle that I don’t want to deny myself what it feels like to have his hand cupping my head protectively.
I’ve never been held like this. I’ve never had someone promise to take care of me like this and…
I’ve never felt like more than a business partner to the man I was with for decades.
It’s almost enough to make me break apart. When you’ve held yourself together for years without cracking, the slightest bit of intimacy can threaten the walls around your heart. I can feel my heart pounding, but Peter just silently encourages me to continue.
“She had this whole binder with all her information, blackmail that she intends to use against my company and then she drops the bomb.”
“The pregnancy?” Peter asks. He grunts and shakes his head. I can’t tell how he feels or if how he feels matters. Men don’t think as much about their feelings and sometimes that leads them to not think very much about yours.
“That bomb.”
“I understand why you’re so tense,” Peter says.
Understanding. My heart flips again, and I try to tell myself that this should be the bare minimum.
It’s easy for someone on the outside to see that – not easy when you’ve spent decades loving a man who could never return the same feelings for you or even understand what you were going through without you having to explain it to him like a kindergartener.
He kisses my cheek. I shudder and move closer to him. Feeling heard turns me on almost as much as Peter’s voice and his light touch. If this closeness gets too far, I already plan to blame it on the pregnancy hormones. Not a good sign that I’ll resist Peter successfully.
This snaps me back into reality. No. Resist. Keep fighting.
“I’ll kill her for you,” Peter whispers.
I pull away from him. Sharply. He smiles.
Does he really mean that? I examine his face for signs that he’s joking, but I can’t read him.
I should be moving away from Peter’s body since he calmly just suggested that he would take another person’s life for threatening me.
Didn’t I start off this conversation by reminding him that I’m a lawyer?
And not his defense attorney either. Most of my work these days isn’t even directly involving casework. I can’t imagine Peter having to face a jury of his peers or worse – actual prison. “I’m joking,” he says. “Come here. Let me kiss you and make this go away…”
The first kiss is almost enough that I forget the bullshit.
How the hell could I have forgotten how good he was at this?
His lips part mine roughly. The heat between us rises instantly.
The gushing between my thighs plasters them with my arousal and makes me profoundly aware of how Peter makes me feel just from touching and kissing me.
His lips are full and he slowly parts mine to taste more of me after enjoying my lips with a sweet, slow kiss that makes me feel alive in a way that I didn’t realize had been buried within me for years.
I’ve been missing out and now that I have Peter’s lips against mine and the rush that accompanies his kiss, control slips away.
I’m an alpha in the boardroom. An alpha everywhere else in my life. I want this alpha right now to take the reins and he’s more than willing. Peter’s hands roam all over my body as he kisses me. The heat between us rises enough that I feel his cock stiff in his pants.
“I didn’t mean to leave you to go through this alone,” Peter murmurs again.
I feel seen. I almost hate it, because feeling seen like this makes me realize how much bullshit I accepted over the years.
My heart stops for a moment, because I suddenly feel the weight of my decades and that I can’t make up for the time I’ve lost. Then Peter’s tongue slides into my mouth and I become alive again. And present.
And just a woman in her forties who is so fucking lucky that she has a chance to feel like this again. I lean into it and kiss him back. Harder. Our bodies stumble together against the wall in my hallway and that quiet voice in the back of my head telling me to resist Peter quiets a little.
Peter breaks from our kiss. I stifle the urge to panic. I didn’t realize how attached I was to just keeping his lips against mine. “I found out what happened the night we got together,” he says. His hands reach for my curls again and he explores the texture with his fingers.
I don’t feel nervous as he touches my hair, which is weird. I feel like I should be fighting him more as he touches me – not enjoying it.
“My family has enemies, Aricia,” he says. “But I will never put you in the line of fire. I promise.”
Enemies?
“Did one of those enemies do this to us?”
Peter nods. “It’s something like that. Whoever wanted this to happen used a proxy – some pipsqueak that I’ve taken care of.”
“Murdered?”
Peter sighs and shakes his head. “No. Although, I was tempted.”
I want to believe that he’s joking.
“What happened? Are we safe?”
“First, you never need to worry about your safety. Second, we are safe,” Peter says. But he hasn’t told me what happened yet. Neither of us can remember, which is at least an experience we both share.
“Third,” Peter continues. “This was a play by a member of the Pittsburgh Corsini family, but it’s unclear what they really want.”
Corsini. That’s Peter’s last name, although the man working with our law office has the last name Taviani. I wonder if that last name identifies a mafia family, or if it’s something else. I didn’t even know Peter had a connection to Pittsburgh aside from this.
Understanding a criminal’s motive gives you more information about both the crime and human nature.
Everyone has motives for what they do, even if those motives might seem crazy on the outside.
Peter’s revelation that the night of our passed-out entanglement might be connected to his family narrows down possible motives.
He’s never outright admitted to being a mobster, but this sounds as close to a confession as I can expect from him. And he’s still so close to me that I can feel his dick pressing against my thigh, hard and impatient for me.
Crimes tend to follow the same trends. People want money, power, or sex… which is often about power. I can’t let this mystery go the same way Peter can.
“Do you stand to lose anything with a baby?” I ask, hoping to dive deeper into the mystery even if it brings me away from Peter’s rigid body, already awakened with desire. I just need answers. Peter’s expression changes and I’ve never seen him get quite so immediately uncomfortable.
“I don’t know,” he says. “But it doesn’t matter what they want.”
“What if they want to kill me?”
His face flashes with immediate worry and fear.
“I would never allow anyone to harm the woman I love,” he says, almost bringing me to my knees with how complicated it is for me to hear those words. He just got me pregnant. How can this be happening to me?
I thought the only way for love to burn at my age was slow.
But I can’t stop myself from getting on Peter’s roller coaster. I remove the shirt tucked into his pants and slowly undo the buttons. The woman he loves. I don’t know the right words to fill the silence between us.
“Whatever they want, they won’t get,” he says. “Because you and my baby will be safe. Now come… take the rest of my clothes off.”