“I can’t process being with you when I’m still cleaning up after my last relationship. I’m pregnant. It’s a reality we can’t fight.”
She adjusts her position on the couch to look at me with her wide, serious eyes. I can see Aricia clearly for who she is – the woman who always had to fix things. I can see the plan she madefor both of us already, and how she doesn’t even realize how burdened she has always been by having to steer the direction of the lives of everyone around her.
“But we’re both adults. We can come up with an agreement and stick to it.”
An agreement? A cold, dispassionate agreement. My eyes blaze with the emotions I’m desperate to restrain. I can tell that I’m utterly transparent to Aricia, which makes it worse.
“It’s nothing you did, Peter. My life is a mess. I have fun with you, but my past is not going to go away.”
“So what? You’re going to handle it all alone?”
“Yes.”
“Is that what your marriage was like?” Her face flickers with anger, and I feel deep satisfaction from having any effect on her emotions. I want to know that she feels something for me, especially since she just suggested with the calmest look on her face that we could sort out our feelings for each other with a fucking contract.
Would that work for her? Because it wouldn’t work for me in the slightest. There’s too much fire in me for Aricia.
“I don’t need to disclose that information to you, Peter.”
She frustrates me and I don’t want to stay stuck in this frustration. I lean forward and kiss her on the forehead, hoping to snap her out of the moment. Aricia stops pushing me away just long enough for me to kiss the top of her forehead.
“What was that for?” She seems genuinely surprised, as if I’ve kept my feelings from her a secret. Maybe she thought I left because I wanted to be away from her – which of course had nothing to do with it. What I feel for this woman is already so…fierce.
“You’re going to tell me what loose ends from your past need tying up.”
Aricia pulls away from me again, tightening the possessive urge in my chest when it comes to protecting her. She says with a somber, defeated tone, “That’s not going to change anything.”
Is she so used to having nobody protect her? Of having a man who would only cheat on her and hurt her? I can’t bear the thought of Aricia putting me in the same category as a fool who would fumble a successful woman like her.
“Why not?”
“Because trusting you or any man ever again feels… foolish.”
“Have I given you any reason to doubt?”
“We barely know each other, Peter.”
“We have the rest of our lives to know each other. If we can be adults like you said, why can’t we be adults who–”
“Who what?”
“Adults who love each other.”
Aricia’s face falls. “Peter!”
This is not the answer I expected and there’s no chance that I hide my scowl from Aricia either. I didn’t exactly say ‘I love you’, but her reaction is not at all what I expected. That possessive urge inside me surges again. I put my hands on her hips and hold her so she can’t walk away.
Or run away, judging by how she acts.
“Is that too much?”
“Peter, I’m pregnant. And…”
“And?”
She looks up at me as if questioning everything about me and my heart. I want to know the hidden parts of Aricia’s soul. Isn’t that real intimacy? I run my thumbs over her hip bones, my cock getting semi-hard instantly as I touch her hips. “You can trust me, Aricia.”
“Can I?”
