Aria pov
"Watching you command that boardroom. Seeing you handle those reporters without flinching. Standing beside you as an equal partner." He pulled me close, his hands settling on my waist with a kind of restrained deliberateness — like a man exercising the very last of his considerable willpower. "You're magnificent. Powerful and brilliant and so goddamn sexy when you're in CEO mode that I could barely think straight."
"Damien"
"I need you to know something." His voice dropped, low and rough at the edges in a way that did things to my ability to think coherently. "I have been good, Aria. Remarkably, historically, painfully good these past months. I courted you. Properly. Flowers and dinners and taking cold showers like a man who has completely lost his mind."
I pressed my lips together. "You have been very... disciplined."
His jaw tightened. "Don't."
"Don't what?"
