Chapter 189 What do you want, Aria?
Aria’s POV
I paused, blinking at the screen.
"What is it?"
Damian’s expression was careful. Steady. The kind of careful he only got when he was trying not to set something off.
"Vanessa is here," he said. "At the summit. I didn’t know until I was leaving the airport that night—she’s here as a ’recording officer,’ something the European side arranged."
For a second, that old ugly instinct flared hot under my ribs.
Then I looked at his face—open, unflinching, braced for the worst—and the heat drained back out.
"Okay," I said.
His brows drew together slightly. "Okay?"
"I believe you." I set the phone against the base of the lamp and stood, rolling the stiffness from my shoulders. "You told me first. That matters more than her being there."
Something in him eased. Visibly.
"Thank you."
"Don’t thank me for trust. Just don’t make me regret it."
"Never."
I left him there and pulled the mat out onto the bedroom floor. After a day like today, if I didn’t move I’d carry every knot into tomorrow.
Pilates was automatic—slow, controlled, familiar enough that I could still hear him working on the other end of the line. The soft tap of a stylus. The occasional rustle of paper.
I went through the sequences without thinking. Hip bridges. Single-leg lifts. Side-lying work, one knee drawn high.
I didn’t notice the quiet at first.
Then I caught his face on the screen in the mirror—and my movement stalled.
He wasn’t looking at his documents.
He was looking at me. Direct. Dark. Hungrier than any man mid-work-call had any right to look.
I lowered my leg and turned toward the phone, still half on my side, breath short.
"What are you looking at?"
Damian’s throat rolled once before he answered.
"Next time you’re on a video call with me," he said, voice roughened at the edges, "don’t wear an oversized T-shirt."
I frowned. "Why?"
"Because they ride up." His gaze flicked down my body and back, jaw flexing. "They shift when you move. Cling where they shouldn’t. From this angle—watching you go through those movements like that, completely unaware—is goddamn torture."
My heart skipped.
I looked down.
The shirt had rucked high over my hips during the bridges, the fabric bunched around my waist. The thin yoga pants I’d thrown on clung to every curve of my ass in a way that left very little to the imagination.
I hadn’t thought about the camera. Hadn’t thought about angles.
Heat slammed into my face so hard my ears rang.
"Damian, you fucking pervert—"
He laughed. Low. Completely unrepentant.
"If I were a real pervert," he said, eyes still molten, "I wouldn’t be sitting here suffering politely. I’d already have booked the next flight, knocked that mat out from under you, and fucked you through the floor until you forgot how to finish a sentence."
The words hit straight between my legs.
I felt myself go wet—immediate, warm, mortifying—a slow slick pulse that made my thighs press together without permission.
I shot him a sideways glare, cheeks burning, and reached for the phone like I meant business.
"I’m hanging up."
"Don’t."
Too fast. Too raw. He caught himself, exhaled hard, tried again softer.
"Don’t. Please." His voice dropped. "I missed you today. You didn’t pick up this afternoon. I know you were buried in that Holt boardroom, I know—I just..." He dragged a hand over his mouth. "I’m not ready to lose your face yet. Stay."
Goddamn him.
The fight bled out of me in one traitorous rush. I sat back on my heels on the mat, phone still in hand, too aware of the wet heat between my thighs.
"...I’m going to shower," I muttered.
"Okay." A beat. Then, quieter: "Take me with you."
I stared at him.
There was nothing subtle in his eyes.
He wasn’t asking to keep chatting through a closed door. He was asking to watch me strip down under running water with the camera still on—steam, glass, everything.
My stomach flipped hard.
"No."
"Aria—"
"Absolutely not. I’m not taking you into the bathroom." I stood, towel already half-grabbed from the chair, clinging to the last shred of sense I had. "That’s too much."
Silence stretched for a second. Then his voice came back lower. Rougher. Stripped of the easy teasing.
"Then don’t take me in," he said. "Just—stay a little longer. Like this. Before you go."
"Damian."
"I’m serious." He exhaled, and for the first time tonight he sounded almost stripped bare around it.
"I’ve been hard since you lifted into that third bridge with nothing but those little shorts barely covering you. It fucking hurts, Aria.
Been sitting here trying to focus on corridor rights with my cock aching against my zipper because my wife doesn’t realize what she looks like when she moves."
His throat worked. "You don’t have to let me watch you shower. Just help me. Please."
The word *please* did something unfair to me.
I turned back toward the bed slowly, pulse loud in my ears. He looked wrecked already—eyes dark, jaw locked, veneer of composure completely abandoned for raw want.
Want for me. Across a continent. Because of a cheap T-shirt and stupid angles.
"You want me to..." I couldn’t finish it. My face was on fire.
"Phone sex," he said, plain and quiet and hungry. "Nothing fancy. I just need your voice. Your hands. The look on your face when you touch yourself for me.
Help me take the edge off so I can actually float through tomorrow without losing my mind." A beat. Softer. "Only if you want to. But fuck, baby—I want you to."
I should have said no.
But he was looking at me like he’d die if I walked into that bathroom alone right now.
I sat back down on the edge of the bed. Set the phone against the pillows. Hands trembling faintly in my lap.
"...I’ve never done this," I admitted, barely above a whisper. "Over the phone. I won’t be good at it."
"You don’t have to be good." His voice almost broke on it. "You just have to be you. That’s what’s got me this hard in the first place."
God. God.
"Okay," I breathed. "Okay. Tell me what you need."