Chapter 302: Chapter 304: Just Us
ARIA’S POV
She found him in the study.
He was standing at the window when she came in....jacket off, shirt sleeves rolled up, the particular stillness of a man who had been waiting and was trying not to look like he’d been waiting. He turned when he heard the door.
He looked at her face.
She looked at his.
Neither of them spoke for a moment.
"How was it," he said.
"Done," she said. "It’s done."
Something released in him visibly....she watched it move through his shoulders, his jaw, the set of his whole body shifting into something that wasn’t carrying weight anymore. He crossed the room and she met him halfway and he pulled her in and she went....completely, without resistance, her face against his neck and his arms around her and the specific warmth of being held by someone who had been worrying about you and was now holding the proof that the worrying was over.
She exhaled.
He pressed his lips to the top of her head.
They stood there for a moment.
"She went back," Aria said against his neck. "Victoria. She’s going back to Sydney."
"Good."
"She said the foundation was a good thing." A pause. "At the door. She said it to the door, she couldn’t look at me when she said it."
His arms tightened slightly.
"It is a good thing," he said.
"I know."
She pulled back just enough to look at his face.
He looked tired. The accumulated tiredness of weeks of being the person holding everything together....the security, the lawyers, the journalists, Marcus and his forty seven pages, all of it....while also being the person she came home to every night and told the truth to and leaned on when the public composure had been too heavy to wear for a minute longer.
She reached up and touched his jaw.
He turned his face into her hand slightly. Automatic. The reflex of someone who had been running on professional mode for too long and was only now, in this room with the door closed, allowing himself to register the absence of the emergency.
"Hey," she said softly.
He looked at her.
"It’s over," she said. "It’s actually over."
He held her gaze.
Something in his face did what it did sometimes....that specific unguarding that happened so rarely and only here, only with her, the expression of a man who had spent his whole life keeping everything contained discovering that one person had gotten past every lock he’d built.
He kissed her.
Not the gentle reassuring kiss she’d half expected. The other kind. The kind that said I’ve been in this room for two hours waiting for you to walk through that door and I am done being patient.
She kissed him back.
Her hands went to his shirt.
He walked her backward toward the door and locked it without breaking the kiss and then his hands were in her hair and she was pulling his shirt from his trousers and the quiet tender thing that had started this turned into something else entirely.
"Damien...."
"I know," he said against her mouth.
"I need...."
"I know what you need." His hands found her waist, her hips, moving with the certainty of a man who had learned every part of her and forgot nothing. "I’ve known what you needed for the last four hours."
She pulled back to look at him.
His eyes were dark. That specific darkness she knew...not anger, not coldness. The other thing. The thing that made her nervous system completely override her brain.
"The bedroom," she said.
"Yes," he said.
****
DAMIEN’S POV
She was still in her coat when they got upstairs.
He took it off her himself...unhurried, deliberate, the way he did everything when he’d decided how this was going to go. She let him. That was the thing he felt the moment he’d looked at her face downstairs....the particular quality of her surrender. She’d been strong for weeks. Composed and strategic and holding herself together through everything and she was done with that now.
She wanted to hand it over.
He took it.
He took her coat. Her jacket underneath. He turned her around and unzipped her dress with one hand and pressed his lips to the back of her neck as it fell off her shoulders.
She shivered.
"Cold?" he said against her skin.
"You know that’s not why," she said.
"I know." He turned her back to face him. Looked at her....the white lace of her bra, the curve of her waist, the look on her face that was already undone and they’d barely started. "God, I know."
He walked her to the bed and sat her on the edge of it and stood in front of her and finished undressing himself while she watched....his shirt, his belt, unhurried. He’d learned that watching him was its own thing for her. He used it deliberately.
"You’re doing that on purpose," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"Damien...."
"What did I tell you about saying my name like that," he said.
"You told me it was a problem."
"It’s still a problem." He came to her. Tipped her chin up. "Lie back."
She lay back.
He took his time.
That was the thing she always tried to rush and that he never allowed....the time it took to take her apart properly before anything else, his hands and his mouth moving over her with the focused attention of a man who understood that her pleasure was not a preliminary. It was the point.
She was already breathing in short sharp increments by the time he was done with her neck, her collarbone, the inside of her wrists which she’d never known was something until him.
"You’re thinking," he said against her skin.
"I’m not...."
"You are." He lifted his head. Looked at her. "Stop."
"I can’t just...."
"You can." He held her gaze. "You don’t have to hold anything right now. Not in this room." His hand moved and she gasped. "There’s nothing to hold. You understand me?"
"Yes," she managed.
"Good." He kept going. "Then let go."
