Chapter 177: Chapter 177 – Still Water
Aria’s POV
In the Maldives, and I had almost stopped listening for threats.
We’d settled into something I didn’t have a word for yet — not routine, because routine implied ordinary, and nothing about lying in an overwater villa with your husband while the Indian Ocean moved beneath you was ordinary — but a rhythm, easy and unhurried, the kind that only existed when you’d agreed, collectively, to let the rest of the world wait.
Mornings were mine. I woke early by habit and sat on the deck with herbal tea I’d requested from the villa’s kitchen, watching the water change color as the sun came up, and I wrote in the small notebook I’d brought — not business notes, not strategy, just thoughts, the kind I never made time for in Ravenwood because there was always something more urgent than thinking.
But the nights—and the afternoons, and sometimes the late mornings—were different. I couldn’t get enough of him.
It started innocently enough. A brush of fingers turning into a kiss that didn’t stop. A lazy swim in the private pool ended with me backed against the edge, legs wrapped around his waist while he held me up and moved slow and deep until we both forgot how to breathe. Then later, back in the bedroom, I’d climb on top again, riding him until his hands gripped my hips hard enough to bruise, until he was groaning my name like a plea. And when we finished, I’d barely caught my breath before I was reaching for him again, fingers trailing down his stomach, stroking him back to hardness while he laughed, half-exhausted, half-amazed.
By the third night it happened again. We’d just finished—sweaty, tangled, his chest heaving under my cheek—and I shifted, sliding my hand down between us, wrapping around him where he was still sensitive and slick. He twitched in my grip, half-hard already despite everything.
He caught my wrist gently, lifting my hand to his lips to kiss my knuckles.
"Aria," he said, voice rough and tired. "What have you done to my real Aria?"
I looked up at him, smirking. "Your real Aria is right here. She’s just... hungrier than you remember."
He let out a low, breathless laugh, shaking his head against the pillow. "Hungrier? That’s one word for it. I think you’ve replaced her with someone who wants to fuck me into an early grave."
I laughed softly, pressing closer so my breasts brushed his chest. "Are you complaining?"
"Never." His free hand slid down my back, cupping my ass and giving it a light squeeze. "But if I pass out before sunrise, it’s on you. My dick is begging for a five-minute break, and my balls are officially empty."
I raised an eyebrow, trailing one finger lightly along his length again just to watch him shiver. "Five minutes?"
"Ten," he amended, groaning when I squeezed gently. "Fifteen. Mercy, woman."
I relented, sliding my hand up to rest on his stomach instead. "Fine. Fifteen-minute truce."
He exhaled hard, pulling me flush against him, tucking my head under his chin. His hand settled protectively over my stomach like always, thumb brushing slow circles.
"You’re going to kill me," he murmured into my hair. "And I’m going to die happy."
I smiled against his skin. "Good. Because I’m nowhere near done with you."
He chuckled, already sounding half-asleep. "Noted."
The waves kept rolling under the villa, steady and soft. His breathing evened out first—deep, slow, the kind of sleep that only came when he finally let go. I stayed awake a little longer, listening to the ocean, feeling the warmth of his body, the quiet weight of his hand on our baby.
Damien slept later than he ever did at home. I’d noticed this on day one and found it quietly extraordinary — this man who operated at the pace of controlled emergency, sleeping until seven, until seven-thirty, once until nearly eight, coming out to the deck unhurried with his hair unset and his feet bare and blinking at the water like someone remembering it existed.
"You look different when you sleep late," I told him on the third morning.
He sat beside me and took the tea from my hands to steal a sip, which I allowed. "Different how?"
"Like yourself." I took it back. "Like who you’d be if no one had ever needed anything from you."
He thought about this, looking at the water.
"I like who I am when you’re next to me," he said finally, like it was a simple fact and not the thing that would have been impossible for him to say years ago.
I leaned my head on his shoulder and watched a boat move across the far edge of the horizon, slow and purposeful, heading somewhere we couldn’t see.
We took a sunset dive on day four, guided by a quiet man named Remy who’d been doing this for fifteen years and moved underwater like he’d been born to it. Damien had dived before; I hadn’t, not properly, and the first twenty minutes were the particular concentrated chaos of a person trying to remember six different instructions simultaneously while also not drowning.
But then.
Then Remy gestured downward and we followed and the reef opened below us like something that had been waiting — coral in colors that had no business existing, fish that moved in formations like they’d choreographed it, a sea turtle that passed within arm’s reach and looked at me with ancient, indifferent wisdom and continued on its way.
I forgot to be anxious about the breathing.
I just looked.
Damien was beside me, close enough to touch, and I felt him reach over and take my hand in the slow weightless way that underwater allowed, and we hung there together above the reef with the last of the day’s light filtering down around us, and I thought — this is what it was supposed to feel like.
We surfaced into golden hour, pulling our masks up, and he was looking at me the way he’d looked at me during the vows.
"Well?" he said.
"I want to do that every day," I said, breathless. "For the rest of my life."
"I’ll buy a boat."
"Don’t be ridiculous."
"I’ll buy a modest boat," he amended, and I laughed and pushed water at him and Remy politely pretended to be looking at the horizon.
That evening I called Olivia while Damien arranged dinner, the villa’s deck lit with lanterns, the sound of him speaking quietly with the kitchen staff drifting through the open doors.
"How pregnant do you look?" Olivia demanded before I’d finished saying hello.
"It’s been a a few weeks, I don’t look anything yet."
"How are you feeling?"
"Good." I sat on the railing, legs dangling over the water. "Tired in the afternoons. Fine otherwise." I paused. "Happy. Is that strange to say?"
"Aria." Her voice was warm and slightly exasperated. "It is not strange to say you’re happy on your honeymoon."
"It feels strange. Like I keep expecting to have to justify it to someone."
"You don’t," she said simply. "Not anymore. How’s Damien?"
I looked through the open door at him — jacket off, sleeves rolled, gesturing something to the kitchen staff with the focused energy he brought to everything, then turning and catching me watching and raising an eyebrow, and I raised mine back.
"He’s good," I said. "He’s really good, Liv."
"I know." I could hear her smiling. "It took him long enough."
"That’s what I said at the wedding."
"Great minds." A pause. "Lucas is insufferable, by the way. He keeps driving past the building he bought me and asking if I’ve chosen a name for the practice yet."
"Have you?"
"I’m considering Grant-Hayes Medical just to watch him vibrate with happiness about his name being on it."
I laughed. "Do it. That’s exactly what he deserves."
She laughed too, and for a moment we were just two people on opposite sides of the world, connected by the specific warmth of long friendship, and I let myself feel it without immediately reaching for the next task.
"Barnes called," she said, when the laughter settled. "He wanted me to pass something to you rather than interrupt the honeymoon."
My stomach tightened. "Charles."
"He’s moved. Left his last known address three days ago. Barnes thinks he may be trying to create distance before he makes a move, make himself harder to locate. They’re tracking it."
I was quiet for a moment, processing.
"Aria." Olivia’s voice was careful. "You don’t have to do anything with that tonight."
"I know."
"Barnes has it. Damien has security running. Noah is with Mrs. Dora in a location Charles doesn’t know about. Everything that can be done is being done."
"I know," I said again, and this time I meant it more.
then her tone shifted—teasing, curious. "Okay, real talk. Have you fulfilled any of those sex fantasies you used to whisper about when we were drunk on cheap wine back in Silver Springs? Because I can only imagine how drained that poor man must be right now."
I snorted, glancing back toward the villa again. Damien was leaning against the counter now, arms crossed, watching the staff set up plates like he was supervising a board meeting. "Drained is one way to put it."
"Spill," she said immediately. "I need details, for science."
