Chapter 153
Aria’s POV
Dominic frowned, “What do you mean?”
I shifted against the pillows, trying not to wince. My body still ached, but not as much as the silence that hung between us now. The silence that always showed up when we got too close to naming this thing between us.
I looked at him, really looked. His jaw was tight, eyes searching mine like I was speaking a language he didn’t quite understand.
“I mean I’m tired,” I said. “Tired of pretending like we don’t both feel it. Tired of the back and forth. One minute you want me close, the next you’re pushing me away like I‘ m some weakness you can’t afford.”
He opened his mouth, but I cut him off.
“I nearly died, Dominic. I bled for you. And I wasn’t thinking about revenge or territory or loyalty. I was thinking about you. About how I didn’t want my last thought to be that
I loved a man who was too afraid to love me back.”
He went still.
I let the words hang there because they were true. All of it.
“You keep saying you don’t deserve me,” I continued. “That you’re a monster. But monsters don’t hold your hand through the night. They don’t burn down cities to bring you home. They don’t stay up at your bedside like the world might stop spinning if you don’t wake up.”
Dominic’s eyes darkened–not with anger, but something heavier. Something real.
“I’m not asking you to be perfect,” I said, voice quieter now. “I’m asking you to be honest. With yourself. With me.”
He didn’t say anything for a long time. Just reached up, hand brushing my cheek, thumb slow against the skin under my eye.
“I’ve never loved anyone like I love you,” he said. “And that scares the hell out of me.”
I didn’t breathe.
He leaned in, eyes locked with mine.
“You want to know what we are?” he whispered. “We’re unfinished business. We’re fire. We’re the only thing that’s ever felt real in my entire life.”
His forehead rested against mine. Successfully unlocked!
“And if you’ll have me,” he said, “we’re going to finish what we started.”
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My breath caught. Everything in me stilled–not from hesitation, but from the weight of it. The gravity in his voice. It wasn’t a demand. Not control. Not power.
It was a plea.
A quiet, honest confession from a man who didn’t beg.
I let my eyes drift shut, soaking in the warmth of his breath brushing my lips, the solid presence of him next to me, the familiar scent of him that somehow still made me feel like I belonged somewhere.
“I will,” I whispered.
He pulled back just enough to look at me, to search my face for any trace of doubt. I gave him none. Only the truth.
“I’ll have you,” I said. “All of you.”
The corners of his mouth twitched, like he almost didn’t believe me. Like some part of him still feared I’d vanish if he got too close.
But I didn’t move.
I didn’t flinch.
Because I wasn’t afraid of him anymore.
His hand slid to the side of my face, fingers tangling gently into my hair, and then-
He kissed me.
Slow.
Like he had all the time in the world to make it right.
His lips brushed mine with the kind of tenderness I never expected from him. There was no urgency. No heat born of chaos or adrenaline. It was soft and deep and unbearably real.
I melted into it.
Into him.
My hand curled into the front of his shirt, clinging to the fabric like it was the only thing keeping me tethered.
He tasted like mint and salt and something I could only describe as him.
And for a moment, the world slipped away.
The hospital.
The blood.
The betrayal.
It all quieted beneath the way he kissed me, like he was sorry for everything but didn’t
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know how to say it with words.
When he finally pulled back, he didn’t go far. His forehead rested against mine again, breathing uneven.
“I thought I lost you,” he murmured.
“You didn’t,” I said. “I came back.”
And I wasn’t going anywhere.
Not this time.
The car ride back to Dominic’s estate was quiet. Not awkward. Not heavy. Just… peaceful.
He sat beside me the whole time, his hand never leaving mine, as if letting go might somehow undo everything we’d survived. I caught him glancing at me every few seconds like he still didn’t trust the fact that I was real, breathing, alive.
When we pulled through the gates of the estate–those massive, intimidating black iron gates–I expected to feel overwhelmed. Or suffocated. After all, this was the same place where I’d once felt like a pretty prisoner in a palace.
But now, with him beside me, I felt something else.
Safe.
Dominic didn’t even let me walk through the front doors.
The second the car stopped, he was out and at my side, unbuckling my seatbelt before I could even reach for it.
“I can walk, you know,” I muttered.
“You limped across the hospital room three times and nearly passed out the fourth.”
I raised an eyebrow. “So you were counting?”
“I counted every second you were gone. You really think I’m not going to count your steps now?”
He scooped me up before I could fire back a comeback, carrying me straight up the marble steps like some overdramatic mafia husband in a soap opera.
“You’re ridiculous,” I mumbled against his shoulder.
“Probably,” he said. “But you’re not lifting a finger until you’re healed. That’s not negotiable.”
I sighed, but secretly, it made something flutter in my chest.
The inside of the house was just as I remembered–cold stone floors, sleek modern furniture, too many chandeliers–but there was something warmer now.
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Maybe it was me.
Or maybe it was the man whose grip hadn’t loosened since he carried me through the door.
He brought me straight to the bedroom–his bedroom.
And when he set me down gently on the bed, he knelt in front of me like he was tucking away something precious.
“You need anything, anything at all, you call me,” he said.
I smirked. “So I get to be a princess now?”
He didn’t smile. He looked dead serious.
“You almost died, Aria.”
The room stilled.
His voice cracked a little when he said it, and that hit me harder than anything else.
“I know,” I whispered.
He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to my forehead. Then my temple. Then lingered
near my ear.
“Not again,” he murmured. “I’m not letting anything happen to you again.”
—
The next few days were… strange.
Dominic hovered.
Constantly.
If I so much as shifted in bed, he appeared in the doorway like a shadow with a coffee in one hand and my pain meds in the other.
“You didn’t text.”
“I was asleep, Dom.”
He adjusted my pillows. Refilled my tea. Threatened one of the maids for bringing a blanket that was “too thin.”
It was borderline excessive.
But I couldn’t lie–having him there, doting, fussing, being soft with me in ways I never thought possible… it made it easier to breathe.
Every time he brought me something, I noticed the bruises hadn’t fully faded from his knuckles.
The reminder of what he’d done for me.
The man he’d taken down.
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The men he was still hunting.
But here, with me, he was just… Dominic.
My Dominic.
And every time I caught him watching me sleep, or adjusting the throw blanket
without waking me, I smiled a little more.
He never said it out loud–but I knew.
This was his way of saying I’m not letting go again.
But somewhere between the quiet mornings and the way he shadowed me from room to room, it started to feel less like comfort and more like… a cage.
A velvet–lined, beautifully decorated, guilt–laced cage.
The first two days I barely moved. I was too tired, too sore, too grateful to even think about anything beyond pain meds and sleep. But by the third, I needed air. I needed to move. I needed to just be without someone watching me breathe like I might vanish.
And Dominic–he didn’t back off.
He wasn’t cruel. He wasn’t snapping or cold. He was just there–all the time. Watching me. Anticipating what I needed before I even realized I needed it.
I couldn’t take a walk in the garden without a guard trailing a few paces behind. I couldn’t sit on the balcony without him checking on me every fifteen minutes. I couldn‘ t open a damn window without someone asking if I was cold.
It was sweet. At first.
But now I felt like I was suffocating under the weight of his fear.
So I folded him some tea. Jasmine, his favorite. The one I knew calmed him more than whiskey ever could.
I set the tray on the small table near the window and waited until I heard his footsteps outside the room.
He entered a moment later, brows immediately drawing together like he was already looking for signs of discomfort.
“Why aren’t you in bed?” he asked.
I gave him a small smile. “Because I’m healing, not helpless.”
His jaw twitched.
“I made tea,” I added. “Come sit.”
He hesitated. That was new.
But he joined me. Sat across from me and looked at the cup like it might explode.
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I wrapped my fingers around mine, letting the warmth seep in.
“Dom,” I said quietly, “we need to talk.”
His eyes flicked up, guarded. “About what?”
“You,” I said. “Me. This.”
He tensed.
I expected that.
“I love that you’re here,” I said softly. “I do. But I can’t breathe, Dominic.”
His eyes darkened, but he stayed quiet.
“I know you’re scared,” I continued. “And I know what happened, what almost happened, wrecked you. But you can’t lock me away to feel better.”
He set his cup down. Hard.
“I’m protecting you, Aria.”
“I know,” I whispered. “But it doesn’t feel like protection when I’m scared to even be alone.”
He looked at me then, really looked. And for the first time in days, I saw the storm behind his silence.
A man who was scared of losing again.
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