Chapter 97: Falling into your Arms
The silence between them wasn’t empty; it was thick with ten years of unsaid words, with the ghost of Sophia’s wisdom, with Dove’s voice still echoing like a lifeline to a simpler world. Beth watched the ice melt in her glass, a slow dilution. Damien simply sat, his head resting against the high back of the chair, eyes closed, the perpetual motion of him finally stilled.
It was that stillness that undid her.
She uncurled herself from the sofa, the plush carpet muffling her steps. She stood before his chair, looking down at him—the strong line of his jaw, the shadow of fatigue beneath his eyes, the vulnerable column of his throat. Her control, the fortress she’d spent a decade reinforcing, felt like sand.He opened his eyes. Green meeting green, a mirrored collision of history and hunger.She didn’t speak. She let the robe fall open slightly as she bent, one hand braced on the arm of his chair, the other coming up to cradle the nape of his neck. Her fingers slid into his hair, gripping, not gently. She saw the question, the shock, flare in his gaze an instant before she pulled his mouth to hers.It wasn’t a sweet reunion.It was a claiming.A release. Her lips crashed against his with a pent-up fury that was also a surrender. She kissed him with the bitterness of betrayal and the aching sweetness of a memory that had never faded. She kissed him like she was trying to fuse their broken pieces back together through sheer, violent will.
Damien groaned into her mouth, a sound of pure, shuddering need. His hands came up, not to push her away, but to grip her hips, dragging her fully into the space between his knees, onto his lap. The bathrobe fell open completely.He broke the kiss, his breath ragged, forehead pressed to her sternum. “Beth—”
“Shut up,” she whispered, her voice raw. “Just… don’t talk. Not yet.”
She shifted, straddling him properly, feeling the hard ridge of his erection straining against his trousers, pressing against her core through the thin silk of her panties. The friction made her gasp. She rocked against him, a slow, deliberate grind, watching his eyes darken with primal lust. All the clever words, the negotiations, the dangerous games—they dissolved into this.Into heat, and pressure, and a need so fundamental it felt like dying.
“What are we doing?” he managed to gasp, his hands sliding up her bare back beneath the robe.
She leaned close, her lips brushing his ear.“I don’t know what you are. Ex-husband.Problem.Obsession. I just know I’m tired of fighting it when I’m this close to you.”
She punctuated the statement by nipping his earlobe, then sucking it into her mouth.He shuddered, his fingers digging into her skin. “Fuck, Bethany.”
His use of her full name, spoken in that ruined tone, sent a fresh spike of liquid heat through her. She reached between them, her fingers fumbling with the buckle of his belt, then the button and zip of his pants.She shoved the fabric down just enough to free him. He was thick and hard in her hand, already leaking. She stroked him once, twice, her thumb smearing the moisture over the head, and he threw his head back with a choked curse.She wasn’t gentle. She positioned him at her entrance, her own wetness a slick welcome, and sank down onto him in one slow, excruciatingly deep slide. They both cried out—a shattered, mutual sound of homecoming and devastation. She was so fucking tight around him, it was almost painful, a perfect, agonizing fit. She clenched internally, and he groaned, his hips bucking upward, driving himself even deeper.
“Jesus Christ,” he breathed, his hands gripping her ass, holding her down as he filled her completely.
For a moment, she just stayed there, impaled, feeling the stretch, the overwhelming rightness of it. Tears, hot and unbidden, pricked her eyes again.Not from sadness.From the sheer, terrifying force of it. This was the vortex.This was the burn.She began to move. A slow, rolling rhythm of her hips, rising and falling, taking him so deep each time she felt him nudge her cervix.The wet, filthy sound of their joining filled the quiet room. She braced her hands on his shoulders, her head falling forward, her hair creating a dark curtain around their faces. His mouth found her breast, sucking the peak deep, his tongue lashing, his teeth grazing. Pleasure, sharp and bright, lanced from her nipple to her core.
“I didn’t leave just because you lied,” she gasped, the words tumbling out amidst the rhythm of their bodies. She was coming apart, and the truth was the only thing left. “I was so fucking scared, Damien.”
He lifted his mouth from her breast, his eyes blazing up at her. “Of what?”
“Of this!” she cried, riding him harder now, her control splintering. “Of wanting you so much it would consume me.Of becoming my mother. Of loving you so goddamn hard that I’d burn the whole world down just to crawl into a grave beside you if they took you from me.”
Her movements became frantic, desperate. He met her thrust for thrust, his own hips driving up into her with a punishing, glorious force. “You think I don’t know that fear?” he growled, his voice guttural. “You think I didn’t see it in you?That fucking glorious, terrifying fire? It’s why I let you go.Because I was scared of it, too. Scared I’d be the one to snuff it out.”
It was too much. The confession, the physical intensity, the feel of him hitting that spot inside her with every brutal, perfect stroke. Her orgasm ripped through her without warning, a convulsive, screaming wave that locked her muscles and stole her breath. She clenched around him, milking him, and with a raw shout, he followed her over the edge, his release pumping hot and deep inside her as he held her hips flush against his, grinding through the last pulses.
The aftershocks left them trembling, a sweaty, panting tangle in the oversized chair. He was still inside her, softening. She collapsed against his chest, her face buried in his neck, breathing in the scent of him—cigar smoke, expensive cologne, and pure, sweat-slicked man.A long time later, he stirred, his hands moving softly over her back. “Beth.”
“Hmm?”
“You never stopped loving me.”
It wasn’t a question. She didn’t have the strength to lie.“No. I never did.”
He shifted, lifting her gently until he slipped out of her, then gathered her—robe and all—into his arms and stood.He carried her to the massive bed, laying her down amidst the cool linen. He stripped off his own remaining clothes, then slid in beside her, pulling her back against his chest, his arm a heavy band across her ribs.His lips pressed to her damp temple.
“That’s why you stayed away for ten years,” he murmured into her skin.“Not from a lack of love. Because you knew if you got this close, you’d walk right back into my arms.”
A single tear tracked from the corner of her eye into her hairline.“Yes.”
He held her tighter. “Marry me again.”
She went utterly still. The compound’s ambient hum seemed to grow louder.“I’m not asking you to be Elena,” he whispered urgently. “I’m asking you to be Bethany Montgomery-Rossi.My partner.In everything. The boardrooms, the bedrooms, the shadows.No more lies.No more treating you like a civilian wife. You stand beside me.You rule with me. You burn it down with me.”
The proposal hung in the dark, not a pretty promise, but a brutal, honest pact. It was everything she’d feared and everything she’d secretly wanted.Not protection, but partnership. Not a gilded cage, but a shared throne in a dangerous kingdom.She didn’t answer. She turned in his arms to face him, her eyes searching his in the dim light filtering through the windows. She saw the man who’d broken her, and the man who’d just laid his own shattered heart at her feet.She saw the boy from the creek, and the king of a criminal empire. She saw her future, bright and blazing and terrifying.She kissed him, softly this time. A seal.A promise.“Ask me again in the morning,” she whispered against his lips.
And as she drifted into an exhausted sleep wrapped around him, she knew, with a certainty that was more frightening than any threat, what her answer would be.