Chapter 303: Chapter 305: I know What You Need
ARIA’S POV
She let go.
That was the only way to describe what happened....the specific release of everything she’d been carrying for weeks, all of it, just gone. Because he was everywhere and his hands knew her and his mouth knew her and there was nothing left to be strong for.
"Damien....." His name came out broken.
"There it is," he said. Low. Dark. Against her skin. "There she is."
"Please..."
"Please what." He lifted his head. His eyes were completely dark. "Tell me what you want."
"You know what I want."
"I want to hear you say it."
She looked up at him. "Damien."
"Say it, Aria."
"I want you." Her voice came out rougher than she intended. "Now. Please. I’ve been....it’s been weeks and I need you...."
He kissed her once, hard.
Then he moved.
The first position was him above her....her back against the sheets and his forearms either side of her head and his eyes on her face as he pushed inside her slowly, inch by careful inch, watching every expression that moved across her face with the focused attention of a man memorizing something he intended to remember.
She made a sound she couldn’t have described.
"Okay?" he said.
"More than...." She couldn’t finish the sentence.
He pulled back and pushed forward again and she felt him everywhere....deep and overwhelming and completely filling in a way that made her understand all over again why she’d never been able to be casual about this, about him, about what happened in this bed. There was no casual. There had never been casual.
"You’re mine," he said. Not aggressively. Just....stating it. The fact of it.
"Yes," she said.
He moved.
She felt every thrust in her spine, in her chest, in the part of her that had been tight with stress for weeks finally, finally unknotting. He set a pace that was deliberate....not gentle, not punishing. Thorough. The pace of a man who had decided she was going to feel this completely.
"Damien...." His name kept breaking out of her. She couldn’t stop it.
"I know," he said against her throat. "I’ve got you."
He reached between them and she arched off the bed.
"Don’t stop...." she managed. "Don’t...."
"I’m not stopping," he said. "I’m not stopping anything."
He picked up the pace and she felt it everywhere....the rawness of it, the depth of it, the specific sensation of him hitting somewhere inside her that made her vision white at the edges and her hands grip his shoulders hard enough to leave marks.
"There," she breathed. "There, right...."
"I know where," he said.
He hit it again. Deliberately. Then again.
She came apart completely.
He gave her approximately ninety seconds.
"Damien I need a...."
"No you don’t," he said.
He flipped her.
Her stomach on the sheets, his hands on her hips pulling her up and back, and she felt the change in angle immediately....deeper, different, the position that made everything more.
"Oh god...."
"Hands on the headboard," he said.
She found the headboard.
He pushed inside her from behind and she felt him in her stomach, in her womb, the depth of it at this angle something she felt in her entire body. She pressed her face into the pillow and tried to breathe and couldn’t quite manage it.
"Don’t hide," he said.
"I’m not hiding...."
"You’re hiding in that pillow." His hand came to her hair, gathered it, pulled her head back gently but completely. "I want to hear you."
She heard herself.
She stopped being embarrassed about it approximately two thrusts later because there was nothing left for embarrassment to operate in....he’d taken everything else and embarrassment was just another thing that went.
His free hand came around to the front of her and she screamed into the room without the pillow to muffle it and he kept going, relentless and precise and completely focused on her, and she felt the second one building before the first had finished.
"Damien..." His name was barely a word anymore. "I can’t....I can’t again...."
"You can," he said against the back of her neck. "You will."
"I...."
"Aria." Low. Dark. Completely certain. "You will."
She did.
He turned her over again after.
She was liquid. Completely liquid. Every muscle she’d been holding tight for weeks dissolved into the sheets and she lay there with her chest heaving and her whole body warm and oversensitised and completely outside the reach of anything that wasn’t this room.
He lay beside her and looked at her face.
She looked back at him.
"Hi," she said.
Something moved in his face. "Hi."
"I think I’m dead."
"You’re not dead."
"I might be." She looked at the ceiling. "What are the symptoms of being dead?"
"Not breathing," he said.
"I’m barely breathing."
"But you are breathing." He reached over and tucked a piece of hair off her face. "Therefore not dead."
She turned her head to look at him.
His face in the afternoon light. The tiredness still there underneath but something else too....the specific quality he had sometimes after this, after them, the unbuttoned version of him that only existed here.
She loved it. She’d never told him how much she loved it.
"You should know something," she said.
"What."
"I love you." She held his gaze. "Not because of any of the things you did. Not the lawyers or the foundation or what Marcus built or any of it." She paused. "Just you. The version of you that exists in this room." She paused. "That’s the one I love most."
He looked at her for a long moment.
He reached over and pulled her against him, her back to his chest, his arms around her, his lips against her hair.
"I know," he said quietly. Against the top of her head. "That’s the only version that’s ever been real."
She closed her eyes.
Outside the estate continued doing what it did.
Inside the room everything was finally, completely still.
She was asleep in ten minutes.
He stayed awake a little longer.
He looked at the ceiling and held her and thought about forty seven pages and a meeting in a hotel room and a woman who had said it’s done when she walked through the study door and meant it with her whole face.
He thought about a plant in a greenhouse and a false name and a desperate plan and everything that had grown from it.
He pulled her closer.
He closed his eyes.
