Message from a Mistress (19 page)

The tears that filled his eyes scared her more than anything, and when the words finally left his lips it seemed as if those words and his actions were in slow motion. “I had a one-night stand…”

Boom.

“And she’s pregnant.”

Boom.

Renee looked at this man, her husband, like she didn’t know him, like she couldn’t believe what he’d said, like she had been hurt far more than anything she’d ever imagined today.

She felt cold and numb as she stared at him with eyes wide with shock. Another woman was pregnant with her husband’s baby.

“Renee, I am so sorry. I never meant for this to happen,” he said, taking her quivering hands in his to lower his head and place kisses on them.

Renee looked down at his hands and hers, but she really didn’t feel his touch or his kiss. She felt absolutely nothing—and maybe it was good that she didn’t.

“Jessa is having your baby?” she asked, her face incredulous as some of the pain fought through her simulated fugue state.

He looked up in shock, his face in a frown. “Jessa? Hell no. What makes you think that?” he asked.

As Renee saw—and believed—the complete confusion in his eyes, that’s when she knew she had to get away from him. All day long her mind had been fixated on Jessa, when her husband wanted to ’fess up to fucking another bitch and getting her pregnant. And she’d begged him like a junkie needing a hit not to leave her.

Her eyes shifted from his face to the bottle of tequila sitting on the bar. Her mouth literally watered for it.

“Renee, say something,” he said, massaging her hands.

She pulled her hands from his as she rose to her feet. Another woman was having her husband’s baby. What kind of cruel fate was this?
What have I done to deserve this?

She had been willing to fall back into the monotony of being a suburban housewife.

She had been willing to give up her high-powered and completely fulfilling career.

She had been willing to fight for her family for the sake of her children.

She had been willing to not even ask about the affair with Jessa and move forward with her marriage and her life.

Things had changed.

Renee brushed past him and raced into the office, using the key hidden under the flowerpot to unlock the top drawer.

Jackson’s presence soon filled the doorway and Renee lifted her hand with his 9mm gun in it—pointed dead at him.

“Renee—”

She shook her head and steadied her hand. Although her heart ached, Renee took a deep breath, gathered herself, and found her strength and her voice as she stiffened her spine. “I really need you to pack a bag and leave. Give me space and time and…”

Renee dropped her chin to her chest as she struggled to find the words.

The hairs on her body stood on end and she jerked her head up to find him coming closer to her.

Click
.

Renee cocked the gun. “I would advise you to get the fuck out of my sight, Jackson. I mean it. I swear to God. I. Mean. It.”

“Renee, I don’t want to lose you—”

“Get the fuck out, Jackson!”
she screamed at the top of her lungs until her eyes were bugged and the veins in her throat strained to what seemed the breaking point.

He held up his hands and backed out of the room. Renee stood there with the gun still pointed at the spot where he’d stood. She stayed that way until the front door shut behind him and the sound of his truck starting echoed from outside.

In time, Renee calmly sat the gun on the desk and covered her face with her hands as she bent over and released hysterical cries that left her nearly out of breath.

Maybe tomorrow she could face the who, what, when, where, and why of Jackson’s affair, his mistress and his child…but for now she knew that her husband had just saved his own life by leaving just like she told him.

A
ria felt physically and emotionally exhausted from the day’s events and it wasn’t over yet. Not by a long shot. The sun had fled and the skies were ebony. Richmond Hills was more quiet than usual. Gone—if not forgotten—was the incident on Renee’s lawn earlier. For most of the residents normalcy had returned.

But Aria wondered if she would ever be the same again.

Any attempts to finish her column failed.

Any calls from friends and family were ignored.

Her plate was filled and she couldn’t take on any more.

She had always been the one to doubt fidelity, to question the existence of morality and to side-eye any woman who came within one foot of her husband. And now? Her husband might have been cheating on her. He might be leaving her.

Aria always felt like Jackson was the bad guy in Renee’s marriage. That he made Renee suffer because of his outdated thoughts on women working. That he wasn’t supportive or understanding. That he could be a pompous ass. In her eyes, Renee was the sufferer and Jackson was completely wrong. But then Renee admitted that
she
almost cheated on him. That
she
stepped outside the marriage with someone she worked with. That she had fucked up. That completely blew Aria’s mind, and now everything looked different. Was different. Truth? Aria lost respect for Renee in the moments after her confession. As wild as her past was, Aria didn’t understand or abide by cheating. To her, infidelity was easy and cowardly; putting in the time and effort to remain committed was the real challenge, and she was up to it. She thought Renee was too. She’d thought her friend was made up of more substance than that.

Sighing, she rolled over onto her side in the middle of the bed as she picked up her cordless and dialed Kingston’s cell phone. Her heart stopped when it began to ring. The men were finally out of the water. She sat up straight in the bed, pressing the phone closer to her ear.

But her heart and stomach plummeted when he didn’t answer and the call went to voice mail. “Shit,” she swore, hanging up the phone just to call him again.

And again.

And again.

“Damn it, Kingston. Answer, motherfucker. You better answer.”

But he didn’t.

Aria let out a frustrated roar and flung the phone against the wall to shatter. She dropped her head into her hands, feeling like she could literally pull out every last strand of her hair from her own head.

Why wasn’t he answering?

Her gut clenched and she felt ill at an image of him walking into Jessa’s open arms. This madness, this crazy merry-go-round of emotions had to come to an end. She couldn’t take any more.

Aria flopped back down on the bed, curling her body into a fetal position as tears flooded the pillow she clutched tightly. But she swallowed back the tears. She wouldn’t shed another tear. Either it wasn’t him and she had no reason to cry, or it was and that meant the cheating bastard wasn’t worth the damn tears.

Aria began to punch the pillow with each ache of her heart until soon she was up on her knees and punching it harder and harder as she visualized his face on it. And she worked up a sweat giving that poor pillow all the frustration built up inside her.

“Damn you, Kingston,” she muttered as she gave the pillow a vicious one-two.
Boom. Pow!

“What the hell did I do?”

Aria froze at the sound of his voice before she looked wildly over her shoulder. Kingston stood in the doorway, tall and handsome and rugged in his jeans and T-shirt…looking at her like she had lost her damn mind. Aria released the pillow, weak with relief.
Fuck it, maybe I have
, she thought as she rushed from the bed to approach him.

He’s home. He’s here. It’s not me. It’s not us
. She felt so pathetic to be so damn happy about that.

Aria wrapped her arms around his strong chocolate neck as she pressed her mouth to his with a moan filled with happiness, pleasure, and the sweetness of relief. As she sucked his bottom lip into her mouth, Aria pressed her soft and curvy body against the entire hard length of his six-foot-three muscular frame.

“Damn, I should go fishing more often,” he mused into her open mouth as his hands came up to grab her buttocks and hoist her up.

Aria gladly wrapped her legs around his waist as she snuggled her face into the warm curve of his neck and her pussy thumped with a life all its own. In that moment the mix of his sweat, the remnants of his cologne, and the faint odor of fish smelt like heaven to her.

“Damn, your heart beating fast, Aria,” Kingston said with a laugh.

Aria placed moist kisses along his sweaty collarbone. “Strip,” she ordered him, just knowing that she needed to be with her husband.

“Aria, I need to wash—”

She deeply kissed away the rest of his protests before she lowered her feet to the carpet and began to strip him herself. And she heard nothing but the wild pounding of her heart and the rustle of his clothes as she removed them.

She felt desperate to fuck her husband. She wanted to take it back to the basics—fuck the hell out of him and make him cum so hard his mouth twisted.

“Damn, Aria,” Kingston said as she dropped to her knees and took his hard dick into her hands to stroke fast and furiously.

She wanted to remind him that he would never have a need or desire for another woman.

Closing her eyes, she guided the thick tip into her open mouth, ignoring the faint scent of sweat as she swiped her tongue against the smoothness of it.

“Ooh,” Kingston moaned as his hips bucked.

Aria drew him into her mouth, wetting him with her spit as she drew on the skills she learned from her tricking days. She felt a delicious thrill when his hands twisted in her hair and his strong muscled thighs quivered as she sucked him like she was trying to get paid.

Kingston fell back against the door and Aria moved forward on her knees, his dick still implanted in her mouth. She was relentless in her pursuit of his sexual happiness. She was on a mission.

Fuck it.

“Damn, you gone make me cum,” he said, sounding as weak as his knees felt.

A small shot of his cum drizzled from the tip and she licked every drop with a moan before she released his dick from her mouth. “Get on the floor,” she ordered as she stripped off her shirt and worked her pants down her hips and beyond her knees to fling over her shoulder.

Kingston looked surprised but he obliged. “Doctor’s orders?” he teased with a double-dimpled smile.

Aria smiled, feeling love for him fill every bit of her. “Doctor’s wife’s order.”

As soon as he dropped to his ass on the floor, with his back against the side of their mahogany dresser, she climbed across him and onto his dick with one swift slide of her hips downward.

They gasped in unison at the hot feel of one another.

“Right here in the door, huh?” Kingston asked, tilting his chin up to hotly lick her mouth.

“That’s right, Doc.” Aria arched her back as she began twirling her hips to ride his dick like a jockey with the finish line in sight.

“This has to be a quickie, baby, don’t forget we’re meeting everybody at Jackson’s,” he told her as his fingers dug into her hips.

Aria froze. So Jackson was home. Kingston leaned in to suck her nipples through her lacy bra but Aria brushed him away like a fly. “Where’s Eric?” she asked, thinking of Jaime.

Kingston lifted his head to stare at her in confusion. “Home. Why?” he asked in irritation, using his hands to pump her hips.

Although Aria knew Kingston hated his groove disturbed once it was started, she had other shit on her mind. “And Jackson is home too?”

“Yes,” he snapped, working his buttocks as he tried to shift his dick up inside her. “Man, fuck them. No, matter of fact…fuck
me
.”

All of the men came home?

That meant Jessa’s lover was not revealed…yet. Aria’s heart plummeted to her stomach.

Kingston looked up at her. Something in her eyes made him stiffen his stance.

He looked wary.

Smart. Real smart.

“Are you fucking Jessa?” she snapped, punching him in the chest before she grabbed his chin in her hand roughly.

“Ow. What the hell?”

“Answer me, Kingston,” she ordered coldly, giving him a bona fide Aunt Esther from
Sanford and Son
stare.

“What?” Kingston looked confused.

Aria felt Kingston’s dick softening inside her. “Are you fucking Jessa?” she asked again, punching his chest as her anger built. Be it unreasonable. Be it premature. Be it unnecessary. It was building by the second until her entire body felt hot.

Kingston grabbed her wrists, locking them securely in his grasp. That only made her want to fight him more. “Calm your ass down, Aria,” he ordered in a cold voice, tightening his grasp on her wrists as she continued to thrash about in his lap.

But she didn’t calm down. Visions egged her on.

Kingston and Jessa fucking.

Kingston’s head buried between Jessa’s open thighs.

His dick in her hands. Her pussy. Her mouth.

But beyond the sex, visions of her husband and her best friend sharing intimate moments, laughing together, talking with each other, dating each other, planning a life together. That hurt more than anything.

Aria fought him harder.

“Aria. Aria!
Aria!
” Kingston rose to his feet, his dick slipping out of her in the process. Still holding her wrists, he twisted her arms behind her back and pulled her body tightly against his.

Aria’s chest heaved as she looked up into the eyes of her husband.
Her
husband.
Her
man.
Her
life.

Her past—the men, the conniving, the tricking—had shown and taught her more than most teenagers would ever see. She had lost count of the married men or men with significant others she’d run through. She grew up mistrusting men and even when she stepped away from that life, the doubts remained. For so long she’d lived suspecting Kingston, watching him, monitoring him, feeling like she lived with only one foot on solid ground, waiting for their world to fall out from beneath her. She thought she’d prepared herself for it. She thought she knew what she would do when—not if—it happened.

She was wrong.

Kingston stared at her intensely, his eyes never wavering from hers. “Aria, I am not sleeping with Jessa or any other woman. Where is this coming from? What’s going on?”

Aria’s eyes searched his and she wished she could believe him. She truly wished she could turn back the hands of time to just before they all got that stupid-ass message from Jessa. It was imprinted on her brain:

Aria felt weak and she let her head drop to Kingston’s shoulder. “Jessa sent this stupid-ass text to Renee, Jaime, and me saying that she’s been having an affair with one of our husbands and that he was leaving one of us for her…today.”

“What?”

Aria nodded, wishing that the smell of him didn’t breathe life into her. “She’s moved and everything.”

“Okay, listen, Aria.” Kingston released her hands and reached up to lightly grasp her face to tilt her head up. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on between Jessa and nobody else, but I’ve never fucked her and I damn sure am not leaving you for her or anybody else.”

Aria kept her hands at her sides. “I wish I could believe that, but with all three of you home and Jessa having no reason to lie, one of you changed your mind or plans to leave later—but one of you has betrayed one of us. And motherfucker, I need to know if it was you.”

Kingston stiffened. “And I’ve already told you it wasn’t me, Aria. I’ve never done anything to make you suspect me of cheating. It really should take more than a goddamn text message to having you acting this way,” he told her coldly.

Aria stiffened as well. She brought her head up to look at him. “So I should have blind trust?” she asked, stepping out of his embrace to pace across the room in nothing but her red lace bra, which contrasted sharply against her dark, smooth skin.

“In the beginning, no, but after all these years I’ve earned blind trust, Aria,” he shot back. “You’ve never trusted me.”

She whirled to look at him, her face incredulous. “That’s not true,” she lied.

Kingston laughed bitterly as he reached down and snatched up his jeans. “You track me better than a damn LoJack. I get the third degree anytime I leave this house. The whole ‘who, what, when, where, and why,’ and I put up with it because I understand women’s insecurities—”

“Insecurities?” Aria’s eyes cut to him sharply. “What the fuck I got to be insecure about?”

Kingston sighed, holding up his hands. “Men cheat and they’ve made it hard for women to trust their man. All I’m saying is I understand that, Aria, and I put up with all the cloak-and-dagger crap because I had nothing to hide.”

“What are you supposed to say, Kingston?” she asked sarcastically. “ Yes, I was fucking with Jessa and promised that bitch I would leave you for her.’ Nigga, puh-leeze.”

Kingston cocked his head to the side and walked over to her with angry strides. “Don’t address me as a nigga, Aria. And as a matter of fact, is it necessary for every other word out your mouth to be profanity?”

Aria made an overly animated face of surprise before she began to clap her hands. “Or what,
nig-ga?
You gone whup my
motherfucking
ass, nig-ga? You gone wash my
fucking
mouth out with
motherfucking
soap,
nig-ga?
”

Kingston’s eyes flashed with anger as his muscled chest heaved. “Get yourself together to talk to me like a grown woman and then come talk to me. I’m not dealing with you like this,” he said, waving his hand as he turned to stalk out of the room.

And that pissed Aria off, but shit was spiraling out of control fast. As much as she wanted to run across the room and jump on his back, she took a deep breath instead. “Kingston,” she called out behind him.

He paused just outside the door but he didn’t turn around.