Chapter 40
Aria POV
I lay awake long after Noah fell asleep, staring at the ceiling of Damien’s guest room and trying to process everything that had happened in the span of a few hours.
Marcus throwing a brick through my window. Damien reading bedtime stories to our son. The two of us here, in his home, playing at being a family while a psychopath planned ways to destroy us.
My phone buzzed with a text from Lucas: Saw the news about the break-in at your apartment. Are you okay? Where are you?
I typed and deleted three different responses before settling on: I’m safe. Can’t talk right now. I’ll call you tomorrow.
His response came immediately: If you need anything, I’m here. Day or night. You know that, right?
I stared at the message, at the simple sincerity of it, and felt my chest tighten. Lucas was everything Damien wasn’t—uncomplicated, emotionally available, safe. He would never throw bricks through windows or play mind games or come with a psychotic brother and a family legacy of trauma.
But he also wasn’t Noah’s father. He wasn’t the man who’d read “Goodnight Moon” three times with infinite patience. He wasn’t the one who’d looked at our son with such devastating love that it had made my heart ache.
He wasn’t Damien.
And that was the problem, wasn’t it? Despite everything Damien had done, despite all the reasons I should hate him, some part of me still wanted him. Still remembered the way he’d made me feel during those brief moments when his walls had come down, when he’d let me see the man beneath the cold exterior p>
I heard footsteps in the hallway and tensed, but they passed by the guest room door without stopping. Damien, pacing his own home like a caged animal.
Tomorrow we would figure out how to trap Marcus. Tomorrow we would start planning our strategy, mobilizing resources, doing all the things that needed to be done to keep Noah safe.
But tonight, I just lay here in the dark with my son sleeping peacefully beside me, wondering how everything had gotten so complicated so fast.
And wondering why, despite everything, some small part of me was glad to be here.
Around 2 AM, thirst woke me from the light sleep I’d finally managed to fall into. Noah was sprawled across most of the bed, one small arm flung over my chest, breathing deeply. I carefully extracted myself without waking him and slipped out of the guest room.
The penthouse was dark except for dim accent lighting along the baseboards. I padded down the hallway toward the kitchen, my bare feet silent on the cool hardwood floors. I was wearing one of my old oversized t-shirts and sleep shorts, completely inappropriate for walking around my ex-husband’s home, but I hadn’t exactly packed with the expectation of running into anyone.
The kitchen was massive and modern, all stainless steel and marble countertops. I found a glass and filled it from the filtered water dispenser, drinking half of it in one long gulp. The cool water felt good against my parched throat.
I was refilling the glass when I heard it—the sound of running water coming from somewhere down the opposite hallway. A shower, I realized. Damien was awake too.
I told myself to go back to the guest room. To drink my water and crawl back into bed with Noah and not think about Damien naked and wet just a few doors away. But my feet seemed to have other ideas, carrying me slowly down the hallway toward the master suite.
I told myself I was just checking to make sure everything was okay. That the sound of running water at 2 AM was concerning and I was being cautious, not curious.
I was lying to myself.
The master suite door was open—not all the way, but enough. Enough to see through to the bathroom beyond, where steam was beginning to drift out into the bedroom. Enough to see that the bathroom door was also open, like Damien hadn’t been expecting anyone to be awake, to be wandering his halls.
The water shut off.
I should have left. Should have turned around and walked away before he emerged, before this moment could become something I couldn’t take back.
But I didn’t move.
Damien walked out of the bathroom, and my breath caught in my throat.
He was completely naked, water droplets sliding down the planes of his chest, his abs, lower. His dark hair was wet and pushed back from his face, making his bone structure even more striking in the dim light. He had a towel in one hand but hadn’t used it yet, seemingly lost in thought as he moved toward his dresser.
I knew I should look away. I knew I should announce my presence or leave or do literally anything except stand there staring like a starving woman presented with a feast.
But I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t do anything except catalogue every inch of him with eyes that had been starved for this kind of contact for three years. Three years of celibacy, of putting all my energy into survival and Noah and building my empire. Three years of ignoring the fact that I was a woman with needs, with desires, with a body that remembered what it felt like to be touched.
And God, Damien was beautiful. He’d always been beautiful, but there was something different about him now. He’d filled out slightly, his shoulders broader, his muscles more defined. The body of a man who’d spent three years punishing himself in the gym, probably trying to outrun his guilt.
My eyes traveled lower, and heat flooded through me—a physical ache that I’d been ignoring for so long it almost hurt. I pressed my thighs together, trying to stop the sensation, trying to will away the desire that was pooling in my belly.
That’s when he looked up.
Our eyes locked across the distance, and the world seemed to stop.
Damien froze, the towel still in his hand, his body on full display. His ice-blue eyes widened slightly in surprise, then darkened with something else entirely as he registered what I was wearing, the way I was looking at him, the flush I could feel spreading across my cheeks.
Neither of us moved. Neither of us spoke.
The air between us felt electric, charged with three years of separation and all the history we’d never properly dealt with. I could see his chest rising and falling more rapidly, could see the way his jaw clenched as his eyes traveled down my body with the same hungry intensity I’d just directed at him.
My oversized t-shirt suddenly felt too thin, too revealing. I wasn’t wearing a bra—hadn’t needed one for sleeping—and I was painfully aware of the way my nipples had hardened, visible through the thin fabric. The sleep shorts left most of my legs bare, and I watched Damien’s gaze trace the length of them before returning to my face.
“Aria.” His voice was rough, gravelly from sleep and something darker. “What are you doing here p>
The question broke the spell. Embarrassment crashed over me in waves, hot and mortifying.
“I was—water—I needed—” I couldn’t form a coherent sentence, couldn’t explain why I was standing outside his bedroom at 2 AM staring at him like I wanted to devour him whole.
Because I did want that. God help me, I wanted it so badly I could taste it.
“I’m sorry,” I managed finally, taking a step backward. “I didn’t mean to—your door was open and I just”
“Don’t.” The single word stopped me mid-retreat. Damien still hadn’t moved to cover himself, still hadn’t looked away from my face. “Don’t apologize for looking. Not when I’ve spent three years fantasizing about you looking at me like that again p>
“Damien, I can’t” I took another step back. “This isn’t—we can’t”
“I know.” He finally wrapped the towel around his waist, but the gesture did nothing to ease the tension between us. “We can’t. You hate me. You should hate me. I destroyed everything we could have had p>
“I don’t—” I stopped, unable to finish the sentence. Unable to lie and say I hated him when my body was screaming at me to cross the distance between us, to feel his skin against mine, to remember what it felt like to be wanted like this.
Three years. Three years of celibacy, of loneliness, of nights spent alone in my bed aching for touch, for connection, for the feeling of being desired. Three years of telling myself I didn’t need it, that I was fine alone, that sex and intimacy were distractions from the empire I was building.
But standing here, looking at Damien, I realized I’d been lying to myself. I wasn’t fine. I was desperate. Sexually frustrated and touch-starved and so goddamn lonely I could scream.
And the man standing in front of me, the man who’d broken my heart and thrown me away, was the only person I wanted to fix it.
“You should go,” Damien said quietly, but his eyes told a different story. His eyes said stay, said touch me, said let me make you forget every reason you hate me.
“I should,” I agreed, but my feet weren’t moving.