Chapter 40: Preoccupied
The suitcases appeared in her bedroom like a declaration. Damien didn’t ask; he simply brought them in, placing the heavy leather at the foot of the carved four-poster bed.Beth watched from her vanity, brushing her hair with slow, deliberate strokes. She said nothing. Complaining would be an admission that his presence here was a concession, not a mutual necessity.And it was a necessity.That was the quiet, terrifying truth of it.
The first night he was back, after the weekend and the kiss that still burned on her lips, she had lain rigid in the vast bed, staring at the ceiling. An hour later, she’d felt the mattress dip, the heat of his body approaching.He hadn’t touched her. He’d just settled on his back, an arm’s length away. And despite her every instinct screaming to maintain the distance, she had rolled over, pressing her spine against the solid warmth of his side. His arm had come around her then, pulling her close, her head finding its old resting place on his chest. The steady drum of his heartbeat under her ear was a lullaby she’d pretended to forget.She slept deeper than she had in years.Now, three days later, the rhythm was established. He slept on his side of the bed, but she always ended up curled into him by dawn. It was a silent, shameful secret she kept from the daylight version of herself.
The days were for control.For work. The ranch ledgers were spread across her office desk, but her laptop screen showed the live feed from her New York design studio.The spring collection was behind schedule. The fabrics were wrong.Everything felt trivial, infuriatingly small.
Her mind kept circling back to the woman at the bar—the pale, flinching wife with the bruised spirit. He said they left town.Damien’s words should have been a victory.They weren’t. Leaving town just meant the man would find another bar, another woman to diminish in some other nowhere place. Her act of dominance had cleared her territory, but it hadn’t fixed the problem. It hadn’t saved anyone.The thought was a splinter in her mind, nagging and deep.
She was staring blankly at a spreadsheet, the numbers blurring, when Damien’s shadow filled the doorway.He’d been out on the grounds, dealing with some supplier issue. He still moved with the ease of ownership here, a fact that should have chafed but somehow didn’t.
“You’re thinking too loud,” he said, leaning against the doorframe. He’d shed his jacket, his white shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, revealing the dark ink twining around his forearms.
“I’m working,” she replied, her voice tighter than she intended.“Bullshit.You’re brooding. About that piece of shit’s wife.” He saw right through her.He always did.It was his most potent and unsettling weapon.
Beth looked away, out the window to the relentless sun.“I wanted him to stop. Not just go away.”
Damien was silent for a long moment. Then he pushed off the doorframe and walked into the room.He didn’t go to the window or pour a drink. He came around the side of her heavy oak desk, his movements deliberate.He knelt.
The sight of Damien Rossi on his knees was so disarming, so utterly incongruous, that Beth simply froze. He held her gaze, those piercing green eyes locking onto hers with an intensity that stole her breath. Then, without breaking eye contact, he hooked his fingers under the hem of her silk skirt and pushed it up her thighs, bunching it around her waist.
“What are you—” she started, but the words died as his hands settled on her bare thighs, spreading them.
“I’m stopping the noise in your head,” he said, his voice a low, rough promise.
He didn’t wait for permission. He leaned forward, his breath hot through the lace of her underwear, and pressed his mouth against her.A sharp, shocked gasp ripped from her throat. Her hands flew to the arms of her chair, gripping the polished wood until her knuckles whitened.
He nudged the lace aside with his nose, his tongue finding her in one long, slow, devastating stroke.It was not gentle. It was claiming.An absolute assertion of a different kind of power. Her hips jerked off the chair, a helpless, instinctive reaction.
“Damien,” she breathed, his name a plea and a curse.
He answered by deepening the contact, his tongue circling her clit with a ruthless precision that betrayed an intimate, unforgotten knowledge of her body. He knew the rhythm she liked, the pressure she craved when she was wound this tight. He’d always been frighteningly good at this, at reducing her formidable control to a trembling, wanting thing.
Heat, sharp and urgent, pooled low in her belly. The spreadsheet, the wife, the guilt, the fear—all of it began to blur, smeared away by the raw, physical sensation. A moan tore loose from her chest, ragged and honest. She let her head fall back, the world narrowing to the feeling of his mouth on her, his stubble rough against her inner thighs, his hands holding her open for him.
She looked down.The sight was obscenely beautiful. His dark head between her pale legs, his shoulders powerful under the fine cotton of his shirt, utterly focused on her pleasure. The old engagement ring, hanging from its thin chain, swung between her breasts with each ragged breath she took. A symbol of a broken promise, now a pendant witness to this primal intimacy.
“Fuck,” she whispered, her voice cracking.“Right there. Don’t stop.”
He growled against her, the vibration shooting straight to her core. He slid a hand around to grip her ass, pulling her harder against his face, his tongue fucking into her with a relentless pace. She was dissolving, coming apart under his ministrations.The pressure built, a coiling, frantic tension.
“I’m gonna come,” she warned, her fingers tangling in his hair, not to guide him, but to hold on.He redoubled his efforts, his mouth sealed over her, sucking hard. The orgasm hit her like a seizure, a white-hot wave of pure, mindless release that arched her back and ripped a loud, choked cry from her throat. She shuddered through it, each pulse drawn out by his relentless tongue until she was weak, boneless, gasping.
Slowly, he pulled back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He looked up at her, his lips glistening, his eyes dark with a satisfied hunger. He rested his forehead against her thigh, his breathing uneven.The silence in the room was profound, broken only by the ragged sound of their breath. The spreadsheet on her screen was a meaningless grid of numbers. The world outside the window held no urgent claims.He rose to his feet, his movements fluid. He looked down at her, disheveled and exposed, her skirt still rucked around her waist. He leaned down, bracing his hands on the arms of her chair, caging her in.
“The world is full of problems you can’t solve, Beth,” he said, his voice husky. “You took your shot.It was a good one.Now let it go. Or I’ll have to find another way to distract you.”
He kissed her then, deep and possessive, letting her taste herself on his tongue.It was a raw, filthy, intimate thing that should have repulsed her. It only pulled her deeper under his spell.
As he straightened and walked out of the study, leaving her trembling in the aftermath, Beth understood the real danger.It wasn’t his violence, or his world. It was this. The terrifying, godlike ability he had to silence her demons, not by denying them, but by making her feel so profoundly alive that nothing else mattered. He was the only man who could meet the darkness in her and answer it with a darker, more consuming light. And that made him more addictive, and more essential, than any drug.