His True Saviour: The Billionaire's Regret

Aria

"I'm giving you the papers tomorrow."

Dominic said it like the decision had been made long before he opened his mouth. We stood on opposite sides of the penthouse kitchen island, the city glowing cold and gold beyond the windows behind him. He had a glass of water in his hand. He hadn't taken a sip of it since he walked in.

"Tomorrow?" I repeated, and hated how small the word sounded.

"Lila's back. The doctors say her recovery's complete." He said it like it was the most important thing in the world. "I'm not leaving her alone again."

He didn't even care about my feelings. Lila was back. Then what about me? Our years together, reduced to nothing because his ex was back.

"And you agreed," I said.

"I did." No apology. No hesitation. Just that same calm voice I'd lived inside for four years, the one that never once cracked, not even on our wedding night when he'd shaken my hand at the altar like we'd closed a business deal.

I looked down at the marble, at my own reflection staring back up at me, tired and small. Four years of separate rooms. Four years of him looking through me like furniture that had somehow learned to speak. Lila was the saviour. I was the mistake that came wearing her face. That story had never changed, no matter how many years I gave to it.

"I'll ask my lawyer to settle you," he went on, already practical, already moving past me in his head. "Money. A place. Whatever you need. You won't be left with nothing."

He still thought I stayed because of his money. That was how easily he could dismiss what we had, like it was never really about us at all, just about what he could give me. It hurt more than anything else he'd said tonight.

Then he stopped and stared at me. His gaze dropped to my cheek, to the tears I hadn't noticed falling.

He still loved me. Or maybe that's what I thought. I'd caught it in small unguarded moments over the years, his gaze lingering half a second too long.

Maybe he loved the past more than whatever we could have been. Maybe with Lila back, whole and smiling, he could finally step into the life he'd always meant to have. So he was choosing peace. His peace.

I could have let him have it. I could have signed tomorrow and disappeared quietly, the way I'd disappeared for four years already.

Instead, a different thought moved into my head. I refused to let Lila have him to herself.

I set my glass down and raised my gaze to meet his.

"Dominic."

"What is it?" Not quite a question. His eyes tracked me the whole way, sharp now in a way they hadn't been a moment ago.

I stopped close enough to catch the faint cologne on his shirt, close enough to see the muscle working in his jaw.

"One night."

His eyes narrowed. "What?"

"Before the papers." My heart was going too fast, but I held my voice flat. "You kept me in this marriage four years and never once touched me." I made myself say the rest before I lost the nerve. "Give me one night. You owe me that much."

Silence dropped over the kitchen like a held breath. He looked at me the way a man looks at a bill he thought he'd already paid.

"Aria," he muttered.

I didn't step back. "I mean it."

"This is a bad idea." Rougher now. The calm had a crack in it I'd never once heard before, in four years of listening for it.

"Probably," I said.

Neither of us moved. Something old shifted in the air between us, something that had been sitting very still for a very long time and had just noticed the door was open.

I reached out first and laid my fingers flat against his shirt, over the place I could feel his heart working too hard for a man who claimed to feel nothing. "One night," I said again, quieter. "Then tomorrow I'll sign whatever you put in front of me."

His hand came up and closed around my wrist, not pulling me away, not pulling me closer either. Just holding. Deciding.

"You don't know what you're asking for," he said, low.

I didn't look away from him. "Yes. I do."

He kissed me like a man who'd spent years holding a door shut with his whole body and had just felt his grip give out.

There was nothing careful in it, and nothing polite. His control, the armor he put on every morning like a second suit, cracked the second my back met the wall of the hallway. His hands found my face first, then my hair, then my sides, like he couldn't decide which part of me he'd been starving for longest. I made a sound against his mouth I didn't recognize as mine.

"Aria." My name again, almost angry now. "We shouldn't."

I caught my breath. "Then stop."

He didn't stop. His shirt was gone before we made it past the hallway. My dress followed somewhere near the bedroom door, and four years of careful distance burned off us piece by piece.

When he lowered me onto the bed, his eyes were darker than I'd ever seen them.

For the first time since the silent room where we'd signed our names to a marriage neither of us wanted, Dominic Voss looked at me like I was the only person left standing in the world.

What happened after wasn't gentle. It was four years of silence breaking all at once, and neither of us tried to stop it. Every time I thought he might pull back, he came closer instead. Every time I said his name, something in him came further undone. His hands, his mouth, the weight of him over me, none of it belonged to the man who'd spent four years sleeping behind a closed door down the hall.

At some point tears gathered at the corners of my eyes. I turned my face into the pillow so he wouldn't see. He noticed anyway. His hand came up and turned my face back to his, his thumb brushing under my eye, rough and careful at once. "Don't," he said. "Not tonight."

So I didn't. I let myself feel all of it instead, the heat of his skin, the way his breath changed every time I touched him, the low sound he made when I said his name like it meant something.

We didn't talk much afterward. There was nothing safe left to say. Only skin, and breath, and a hunger that had been buried a long time and had finally been let out.

Later, when everything had gone still, I lay on my side facing the windows. City light lay in thin pale lines across the sheets. Dominic's arm was heavy over my waist, his chest warm against my back, his breathing gone slow and even. I stared at the glass and tried to memorize what it felt like to be held by him, because I already knew this was the first time. And the last.

Tomorrow he would hand me the papers in that same calm voice. Tomorrow Lila would stand beside him with her soft, recovered smile. Tomorrow I would sign my name and walk out of this penthouse for good.