Chapter 6: My Only Place
The first hints of dawn were just leaching the neon from the sky when Damien opened his eyes. The city below was a silent, gray blueprint, waiting for the day’s chaos to be imposed upon it. For a long moment, he didn’t move, didn’t breathe. He simply absorbed the reality.
Her weight.
Bethany was sprawled half across his chest, one arm thrown over his ribs, her hand a loose fist near his shoulder. Her face was turned into the hollow of his throat, her breath a warm, steady rhythm against his skin. Waves of black hair fanned out, dark against the white sheets, tickling his chin. One smooth, bare leg was hooked over his.
This. This right here. The absolute, trusting weight of her in sleep. It was a physical memory so acute it was an ache. He’d woken a thousand mornings in the decade without her, and every one had felt like stepping onto a floor that was supposed to be there but wasn’t. A phantom-limb sensation for his soul.
He shifted his head just enough to press his lips to the crown of her head. She smelled of his shampoo, his soap, and something indefinably, fundamentally her. The scent unspooled a reel of memories: Sunday mornings with the papers, her feet in his lap; her asleep on a couch after pulling an all-nighter on her first business plan; the sleepy, laughing murmurs before the world fully intruded.
He’d traded that for what? For a kingdom built on shadows and threats. For the hollow respect of men who feared him. He’d thought he was protecting her by pushing her away, by letting her believe the worst of him. A noble, stupid sacrifice. He saw that now, with the clarity of her body warming his. All he’d done was sentence them both to a different kind of prison.
Her fingers twitched against his skin. A soft sigh escaped her, and she nuzzled closer in her sleep. His arm, which had been resting on his own stomach, slowly lifted to curve around her back, his hand splaying wide between her shoulder blades. He felt the delicate ridge of her spine, the shift of her scapula as she breathed. He committed the topography of it to memory, a map he never wanted to forget again.
She stirred more fully then, a slow, cat-like stretch that pressed more of her against him. He felt the exact moment consciousness returned. The gentle breathing hitched. The muscles under his palm went from pliant to taut. The leg over his tensed, then slowly, deliberately, retracted.
She didn’t pull away entirely. She just lifted her head.
Her eyes, sleep-soft and slightly confused, met his. There was no makeup to armor her, just the faint smudge of last night’s mascara under her lashes. She looked younger, and utterly exposed. For a second, he saw the woman she was before the empire, before the betrayal, before the divorce papers. The woman who used to greet him with a smile that reached her eyes.
Then the shutters came down. Her gaze sharpened, turned assessing. She was cataloging the situation: the tangled sheets, their nakedness, the intimate way he was holding her. Her own arm was still draped across him. She carefully lifted it, as if it were a foreign object, and placed her hand on the mattress between them, creating a scant inch of separation.
“You’re awake,” she said, her voice morning-rough.
“I’ve been awake,” he replied, his own voice a low rumble. “Didn’t want to move. You were snoring.”
“I do not snore.”
“Like a tiny, very elegant chainsaw.”
A ghost of a smile touched her lips before she could stop it. She looked away, toward the balcony where the sky was turning a pale, watery blue. “What time is it?”
“Early. The city’s still sleeping off its hangover.”
She nodded, then pushed herself up, dragging the silk sheet with her to cover her breasts. The movement broke their contact completely, leaving a cold strip down his side where she’d been. She sat on the edge of the bed, her back to him, a silhouette against the dawn.
He propped himself up on an elbow, watching her. The line of her spine was rigid. “Regrets already, Montgomery?”
She was silent for a beat. “It’s a bit late for regrets, don’t you think?” She glanced over her shoulder, and the green of her eyes was like cut glass. “It happened. It was… it was what it was.”
“‘It was what it was,’” he echoed, a dry edge to his tone. “You always did have a way with words before coffee.”
“Damien.”
“Bethany.”
He saw her shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath. “Last night doesn’t change anything.”
“It changes everything.” He sat up fully now, not bothering with the sheet. He reached out, his fingers brushing a single, deliberate path down the knobs of her spine. She flinched, but didn’t move away. “You can lie to your board, you can lie to the press, you can even lie to yourself. But don’t lie to me about this. I felt it. You were home.”
She stood up abruptly, the sheet falling away as she wrapped it around her body like a toga. She walked to the balcony doors, staring out. “Home,” she repeated, the word tasting foreign. “The apartment on Central Park, you mean? The one you never came back to?”
“The one you never sold.”
“Sentimentality is a poor investment strategy. I just hadn’t found the right buyer.”
He let out a short, humorless laugh and swung his legs out of bed. He found his discarded trousers and stepped into them, not bothering with the buttons. He walked to the bar, poured two glasses of water from a crystal pitcher, and carried them to where she stood. He held one out, his arm crossing her field of vision.
She took it after a moment’s hesitation, her fingers brushing his. She drank half in one go.
“Conti’s party is at eight,” he said, leaning a shoulder against the glass doorframe, watching her profile. “I’ll send a car for you at seven-thirty.”
“I have my own car, thank you.”
“You’ll take mine. Conti is… old-fashioned. He likes to see a united front. It’ll make the conversation about his shipping contracts easier if he doesn’t think he can play us against each other.”
She turned her head, a shrewd look in her eyes. “Is that what this is? A business maneuver?”
“It’s all a business maneuver, Beth. Even this.” He gestured between them with his water glass. “Especially this. My business is getting you back. Everything else is just logistics.”
She shook her head, a faint, disbelieving smile on her lips. “You haven’t changed. You still think you can just declare how things are going to be.”
“I’m stating a preference. You’re welcome to fight me on it. You usually do.” He took a sip. “Wear the green dress. The one with the back that goes down to here.” He tapped a spot low on his own spine.
“I don’t own a green dress like that.”
“You will by six o’clock. It’ll be delivered to your office.”
Her jaw tightened. The mix of fury and attraction was a visible storm in her eyes. She hated his high-handedness. She’d also always secretly loved it when he paid that kind of attention. “I pick my own clothes.”
“Of course you do. And today, you’ll pick that one.” He set his glass down on a side table. “I have to make some calls. The shower is through there. There are new toothbrushes in the cabinet.”
He started to walk away, back toward the sitting area where his phone lay on the piano.
“Damien.”
He stopped, didn’t turn.
“Last night…,” she began, then stopped, searching for the right words, the controlled ones. “It was a moment. A very intense, very… persuasive moment. Don’t read a symphony into a single note.”
He glanced back over his shoulder, his expression unreadable. “Funny. I was just thinking the same thing.” He picked up his phone, his thumb already scrolling. “But a symphony is just a lot of notes played in the right order. We’ve got time.”
He walked into the study and closed the door, leaving her alone in the brightening room, standing in a wrap of his sheets, surrounded by the evidence of their collision. On the nightstand, the black rose from the piano stood in a slender vase, its petals perfect, dark, and unfurling.