Aria pov
"Watching you command that boardroom. Seeing you handle those reporters without flinching. Standing beside you as an equal partner." He pulled close, his hands settling on my waist with a kind of restrained deliberateness — like a man exercising the very last of his considerable willpower. "You’re magnificent. Powerful and brilliant and so goddamn sexy when you’re in CEO mode that I could barely think straight."
"Damien"
"I need you to know sothing." His voice dropped, low and rough at the edges in a way that did things to my ability to think coherently. "I have been good, Aria. Remarkably, historically, painfully good these past months. I courted you. Properly. Flowers and dinners and taking cold showers like a man who has completely lost his mind."
I pressed my lips together. "You have been very... disciplined."
His jaw tightened. "Don’t."
"Don’t what?"
"That." His eyes darkened. "That tone. The one you use when you’re wearing that particular expression and you know exactly what you’re doing to ." His hands flexed slightly at my waist. "Do you have any idea, any idea at all, what these past months have been like? Watching you walk around in those suits. The way you laugh at Noah’s terrible jokes. The way you look at sotis when you think I’m not watching" He exhaled sharply through his nose. "And then you lean over my desk to review a contract and your hair falls forward and I am standing there like a man possessed, holding myself together through sheer force of will."
"Sheer force of will," I repeated, biting the inside of my cheek.
"Aria." His voice ca out pained. "I am thirty-one years old. I run a multi-billion dollar empire. I have faced hostile takeovers and board coups and my father without blinking." A pause. "Nothing in my life has been as difficult as watching you reach up to adjust your earring and doing absolutely nothing about it."
A laugh escaped before I could stop it — warm and genuine and surprised out of completely. "Damien Blackwood. Are you telling the Ice King of Corporate Arica has been suffering?"
"I am telling you," he said, with great dignity, "that I am a man at the very end of his considerable patience, and that I arranged a sleepover for our son with the housekeeper’s nephew days in advance specifically because I am done being disciplined."
I looked up at him. The laughter was fading into sothing warr, softer, more serious. This man who had spent months learning how to court , learning how to slow down, how to earn rather than demand standing here confessing his carefully maintained restraint with sothing almost like vulnerability behind his eyes.
"You planned ahead," I said softly.
"I always plan ahead because I wanted to be thorough."
I reached up and straightened his lapel, smoothing it slowly, watching his throat move as he swallowed. "And all those months of flowers and dinners and cold showers..."
"Were entirely worth it," he said firmly. "And I would do them again. But Aria" His hands tightened at my waist. "I have been thinking about this all day. About getting you alone. About celebrating properly. About showing you exactly how much I love and want and respect you. And if you look at like that for one more second"
"Like what?"
"Like that." His voice had gone rough. "Like you’re not immune to either."
I was quiet for a mont. Then: "I never said I was immune to you."
Sothing shifted in his expression of relief and heat and sothing achingly tender all at once. "Our building," he said, his lips brushing my ear, his voice dropping to sothing that skipped my brain entirely and went straight to my nerve endings. "Our company. Our life. And tonight, Aria, I want to take my co-CEO, my partner, my fiancée ho and worship her the way I’ve been thinking about for months. Can we please do that?"
"Yes." The word ca out in a breath. "God, yes."
He pulled back, his eyes dark and certain and so full of everything he’d learned to say out loud over these past months. "Then let’s go ho. Because I have been waiting, and I am done waiting, and if Lucas makes one more comnt I may actually fire him."
"You can’t fire Lucas, he doesn’t work for you."
"I’ll find a way." He steered toward the lobby doors. "I’m very motivated."
I laughed that free, unguarded laugh that still sotis surprised by how easily it ca now and let him lead . "Then stop talking." I pulled him down for a brief kiss that was all heat and promise and months of accumulated patience finally, finally releasing. "And take ho."
His laugh was low and rough against my mouth. "Yes, ma’am. Anything for my partner."
*******
The drive across the city was its own kind of torture. Damien drove instead of calling the car service, which should have told everything. He wanted us alone, no partition, no polite pretense. The city lights blurred past the windows and he kept one hand on the wheel and one resting on my knee warm, deliberate, barely moving as though the restraint was costing him sothing.
"You’re doing that on purpose," I said.
"Doing what?" He didn’t look at .
"The hand."
A ghost of a smile. "I’m driving. My hand has to be sowhere."
"Damien."
"Aria." His thumb traced a slow circle against my knee, and I felt it everywhere. "We’re almost ho, let have this."
I turned to look at him in profile — the sharp jaw, the composed expression that didn’t match the slight tension in his shoulders, the way his grip on the wheel tightened almost imperceptibly at a red light, years ago I would not have been able to read him at all. Now I could see exactly what that stillness was costing him.
"I love you," I said quietly, because I felt like saying it.
He exhaled slowly as the light turned green. "Say that again when we’re not in traffic," he said, his voice rough at the edges, "or I will absolutely pull over."
I smiled and faced forward and let the city carry us ho.
The penthouse door had barely clicked shut behind us before his hands found my waist, turning gently, his forehead coming down to rest against mine in the dark of the entryway.
"Hi," he said softly.
I laughed, surprised by it. "Hi."
"I just wanted a second." His hands slid up my back. "Before everything else. Just this."
I understood. After the noise of the evening, the speeches and the flashbulbs and the polished performance of two executives who had built sothing extraordinary, this quiet was the truest version of us. I pressed my palm flat against his chest and felt his heartbeat, faster than his face would ever betray.
"Okay," I murmured. "You have your second."
He tilted his head and kissed slow and deep and unhurried, the kind of kiss that had no agenda except to say I an it, all of it, every word. My fingers curled into his lapels. He made a low sound against my mouth.
Then his hands tightened, and the unhurried part was over.
His lips moved to my jaw, my throat, and I felt him exhale against my skin like he was finally setting sothing down.
"I ant what I said earlier," he murmured against my neck. "I’ve been thinking about you all day." A pause, his mouth grazing just below my ear. "All of you. Even after the last ti" his voice dropped lower, rougher, almost like he was confessing sothing that embarrassed him slightly and didn’t care, "I have not stopped thinking about your mouth. What you do with it. I missed it the mont it was over."
The frankness of it sent heat straight through .
"Damien"
"I’m not saying it to rush you." He pulled back just enough to look at , his eyes dark and entirely sincere. "I’m saying it because you should know what you do to . What you’ve always done to , even when I was too much of a fool to say it out loud."
I held his gaze for a mont, this man who had once been made of ice and closed doors and carefully constructed silence, who had learned, slowly and at great cost, to just say it.
I reached up and loosened his tie. "Then," I said quietly, "let’s not waste the night talking about it."
Sothing flared in his expression of relief and heat and want, all at once.
"Bed," I said.
"Finally." He was already walking backward through the dark. "I’ve been remarkably patient."
"You had your hand on my knee the entire drive."
"That was patience." His mouth found my throat. "Trust ."
I helped him, shrugging out of the jacket. "We have all night for slow, right now I need"
too." Damien’s words ca out rough. In one quick motion he scooped up. My legs hooked around his waist like they rembered the shape of him. "God, Aria... I need you so badly I can barely think straight."
He carried through the penthouse, mouth never leaving mine. Deep, hungry kisses. Tongues sliding. Teeth grazing. Every few steps he pressed against a wall just to grind himself harder against the damp heat between my legs, making moan into his mouth.
Reviews
All reviews (0)