Aricia gives me a suspicious defense attorney glare that does nothing to rattle me. I’ve had to testify in front of scarier beastsbefore. The hardest part about being near Aricia is ignoring her ample chest and all her other gorgeous features that get me ridiculously hard.
“Okay. Great.”
“You trust me to sleep next to you?” I ask her with a soft smirk, still teasing at what I really want from her if she comes upstairs with me. I sense something in Aricia that drew us towards each other at Belladonna’s. I put as much effort as I could without losing my fucking mind into finding her. I don’t want to screw up now. Aricia holds her head high and I can’t help but imagine wrapping that long hair around my wrists.
She gets me so hot, especially with how tense and resistant she is to my pursuit when my body vividly remembers the “dream” night we had together, even if all my actions felt totally disembodied and unconscious. I have this dark need to take her to bed and reclaim the choice that monster took from us. Aricia purses her lips.
“No. You can sleep on the couch.”
“Yes, ma’am. That sounds like a plan to me.”
Chapter Eleven
Aricia
Iknow the hotel, and rooms are a minimum of $1,200 a night. If this weren’t one of the nicest spots in downtown Buffalo, I would have gone further to get away from Peter. He must be lonely like a lot of single men in their forties, which must explain his desperation for company right now. An extra $500,000 for the law firm was entirely unnecessary to impress me and so is this hotel room.
“You want to shower?” Peter asks as he puts his hand on the small of my back and guides me into the hotel room. I just want to set my purse down. When I landed my first $200,000 client, I bought a simple but luxurious black Prada tote bag from Italy, and she never sits on the ground.
“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 wouldlose 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 withno 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 tolose 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 thememories 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 myworst. I feel weirdly… taken care of… even if this man did just drag me off to a hotel room of all places.
