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Two
Damian loweredhis nose to Aria’s hair and inhaled the musky scent of her shampoo. She was nestled between his legs on the sofa in the study, a fire roaring in the massive stone fireplace. They hadn’t spoken in awhile, the crackling flames the only sound in the room where they’d settled afterdinner.
It was times like these when Damian was most afraid, when he realized how much he had to lose. He’d been so alone before Aria and he hadn’t even known it. She’d blown into his heart like a fresh breeze through the windows of a long-abandonedhome.
It wasn’t always accompanied by sunshine. Sometimes she was as angry as a summer storm, as powerful as the wind that blew through the forest surrounding thehouse.
It didn’t matter. He hadn’t realized how dead he was before her. Sometimes he had to brace himself against the onslaught of emotion she inspired in him — the frustration when she was stubborn, the tenderness when he watched her sleep at night, the gratitude when he looked down to find her in hisarms.
He’d almost lost her twice, and while instinct told him to lock her down in the Westchester house, she would never submit to a cage — even a gildedone.
She’d made it clear that she would stand by his side or not at all. He’d been tempted to test her resolve more times than he could count, but he always came back to the fact that doing so might cost him her love forgood.
And that he could notrisk.
He spent every day thinking about her safety. Hired more guards for the house, made sure when she was driven to the city it was in an SUV armored to the teeth, practiced with her in the shooting range until she was as good a shot as him, until she could reload a weapon just asfast.
There might still come a day when he would have to insist she step back. He would build up his goodwill for that day, show her he was willing to be her partner in all but the most dangerous of circumstances in the hopes that when those circumstances arose, she wouldrelent.
She sighed and sunk further into his body. “I’m gettingsleepy.”
He chuckled. “Did I overfeedyou?”
“Maybe,” shesaid.
They’d spent an hour in the kitchen making dinner while Damian had filled her in on his meeting with the Syndicate leaders. It had become one of his favorite times of day, the companionable hour in the kitchen standing in stark contrast to the weeks Aria was missing when he would eat standing at the counter, the time before her when he’d done nothing but work at the Westchesterhouse.
They still had a lot to do, but it already felt likehome.
They’d eaten by candlelight at the small table in the kitchen, the winter wind whipping the trees beyond the windows. They’d had dinners at fancy restaurants all over the world, but he wouldn’t have traded a single one for their nights in the old kitchen outside of thecity.
“Let’s go to bed,” hesaid.
“Not yet,” she said. “I’m socomfortable.”
“Five minutes then,” hesaid.
She’d physically recovered from the gunshot she’d taken at Velvet the night of Primo’s death, but the emotional trauma would take longer to heal. He knew it was true even though she looked healthier than ever, even though she’d regained the weight she’d lost when she’d been held prisoner in Greece, even though the wound near her shoulder was healing to a smoothscar.
She didn’t speak often about what had happened and Damian didn’t push. The words usually came after a long stretch of silence on one of their walks through the woods surrounding the property or during quiet moments when she lay in his arms in the dark. Then she would talk haltingly about her memories of Primo as a child, about the good and bad memories she had of him as aman.
She always returned to the thing that hurt the most — the fact that Primo had died alone. That he’d been betrayed and abandoned by Malcolm Gatti in his hour ofneed.
Damian let her talk, asked questions about the details, laughed when the story was funny, held her closer when her sadness drifted through the air likeether.
He never mentioned it afterwards. She was processing her grief her way — turning over everything that had happened in her mind, trying to find reason in it, practicing at the firing range as a way to feel safer, nurturing her optimism for the future in thegreenhouse.
His job was to be there. To be there when she needed him and when she wasn’t willing to say she needed him. To hold her and cook her dinner, to make her laugh and keep hersafe.
He was going to do it for the rest of hislife.
But there was still business to take care of. He had to finish bringing New York under control, a task made exponentially harder by the unpredictable strategy currently being executed by Malcolm and StefanoAnastos.
And he needed to eliminate both men, if only to make sure Aria could resteasy.
He reached for his phone as it buzzed from the coffee table and tried not to disturbAria.
It wasCole.
