After Rebirth, I Became My Ex's Aunt-in-Law-Chapter 170: Edging the Billionaire is My New Favorite Hobby
Aria tangled her fingers in his silver hair, pulling him closer as his tongue swept past her lips.
Damien groaned. He didn’t break the kiss as his hands dropped from her waist to her thighs. With a single, effortless surge of strength, he lifted her entirely off the floor.
Aria gasped into his mouth, instinctively wrapping her bare legs around his waist.
He carried her across the room and laid her down on the bed.
Aria lay back against the pillows, her lips swollen, her breath hitching as she looked up at him. She shuffled over to one side to make room for his massive frame, fully expecting him to climb right in and finish what they had started.
But Damien didn’t climb in.
He stood at the edge of the bed, his chest heaving, his golden eyes dark and dilated. He reached down, grabbed the thick thermal blanket from the foot of the bed, and pulled it up over her body, tucking it securely under her chin like she was a fragile porcelain doll. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎
Aria blinked, staring up at him.
"What are you doing?" she asked, her voice thick with confusion.
"You need to sleep," Damien said, his tone dropping into an authoritative rasp. He reached out, brushing a damp curl from her forehead. "It’s late. And your body needs to rest."
Aria shoved the blanket down to her waist, a pout pulling at her lips.
"Damien, I have been unconscious for over a week," she argued, crossing her arms. "I don’t need a nap. I need to be...tired out." She punctuated the demand by letting her gaze drop pointedly to his bulging crotch.
"Aria, no," Damien gritted out, stepping back from the bed. "I am trying to be a responsible husband."
"You’re being a boring husband," she whined, patting the narrow mattress beside her with pleading, wide emerald eyes. "At least cuddle with me? I’m cold. The AC in here is set to morgue temperatures."
Damien stared at her. He looked at the tiny hospital bed. He looked at the cute, manipulative pout on her face.
He had absolutely no spine when it came to her.
"Fine," Damien sighed.
He shrugged off his jacket, tossing it over the back of the plastic visitor’s chair. He undid the top three buttons of his dress shirt, exposing the hard, shadowed valley of his chest.
"You can take it all off, you know," Aria suggested innocently. "I wouldn’t complain."
Damien paused, shooting her an amused glare. "Since when did my wife become such a pervert?"
"Since my husband turned out to be a walking thirst trap," she fired back smoothly. "So...since always."
Damien shook his head, reaching over to flick off the overhead fluorescents. The room plunged into darkness, illuminated only by the faint, rhythmic glow of the medical monitors.
He climbed into the bed.
The ICU mattress was definitely not designed to accommodate a 6’3" billionaire built like a heavyweight fighter.
Damien lay on his side, basically balancing on the edge of the mattress. Aria immediately rolled over, plastering her back completely flush against his chest. He wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her against him, his face buried in the crook of her neck.
"See?" Aria whispered into the dark. "This is nice."
"Go to sleep," he murmured, his breath hot against her skin.
For three minutes, it was peaceful.
But Aria really wasn’t tired. And the bed was very, very small.
She shifted her hips, trying to find a more comfortable position. As she wiggled backward, her rear end rubbed directly, firmly against the front of his pants.
Damien sucked in a sharp breath.
"Stop moving," he commanded, his voice suddenly an octave lower.
"I can’t help it," Aria whispered softly, completely aware of what she was doing. She shifted again, grinding her hips back just a fraction of an inch, maximizing the friction. "I’m restless. I’m not sleepy at all."
Damien groaned. His hand on her waist flexed, his long fingers digging into the soft curve of her hip to keep her in place. Beneath the fabric of his trousers, she could feel the unmistakable, rock-hard ridge of his erection pressing heavily against her lower spine.
"If you’re restless," Damien said, his voice strained with the effort of holding back, "I can call the night nurse. I can have her bring you a sedative. Or some warm milk."
Aria paused. A slow, wicked smile bloomed on her face in the dark.
She reached her hand back behind her, slipping it blindly under the duvet.
Her fingers found the zipper of his trousers. She palmed the thick length of him right through the fabric, feeling him jump instantly at her touch.
"I don’t want the nurse’s milk," Aria whispered, her voice dropping into a breathless, bratty purr. "I want yours."
The silence in the room was deafening.
Damien’s brain simply stopped functioning. He stared at the dark ceiling, his chest heaving, genuinely wondering what Elias had put in her IV to make her like this. She had never been this unapologetically filthy.
Damien ripped the blanket off them. He sat up, grabbing her by the waist and flipping her onto her back in one fluid motion. He hovered over her in the dark, his eyes adjusting to the low light.
"Aria," Damien growled, his face inches from hers, "if you do not close your eyes and go to sleep right this second, I am getting out of this bed, and I am sleeping in that chair."
Aria looked up at him. She saw the absolute, desperate limit of his restraint written all over his handsome face.
She batted her eyelashes, pitching her voice into a perfect, innocent squeak.
"Okay, Daddy."
Damien let out a choked, exasperated sound that was half-groan, half-curse. He pushed off the mattress, fully intending to march over to the chair to save his own sanity.
Aria burst into a fit of giggles. She lunged upward, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck, and used her body weight to tackle him right back down onto the mattress.
"I’m sorry! I’m sorry!" she laughed, burying her face in his chest as he collapsed back beside her. "I’ll be good! I promise! Please stay!"
Damien wrapped his arms around her, letting out a long, defeated sigh. He pressed a hard, lingering kiss to the top of her head.
"You are an absolute menace to my health," he murmured.
"But you love me," she smiled against his shirt.
"Unfortunately," he agreed.
It took another thirty minutes, but the exhaustion finally caught up to Damien. Aria listened as his breathing deepened, the heavy, frantic thrum of his heart slowing into a steady, peaceful rhythm beneath her ear.
He was asleep.
Aria, however, was wide awake.
She stared into the dim shadows of the ICU room, her thoughts all over the place until she decided to start thinking about her epic comeback.
The worldwide premiere of The Empress’s Shadow was in exactly eleven days.
If she let Zoe release a statement tomorrow saying she was fine, the news cycle would burn out in forty-eight hours. And Bella would find a way to twist it.
But if she ghosted the world? If she let the conspiracy theories peak, let Bella absolutely bathe in the spotlight of the pitiful sister on the press tour?
The internet would be frothing at the mouth by the night of the premiere.
And when the cameras were flashing, and the entire globe was watching the red carpet expecting a sombre, tragic memorial for the missing actress... she would drop right out of the sky like a nuclear bomb.
She would walk that carpet looking like a goddess, completely destroying Bella’s narrative in real-time. It would be the greatest PR stunt of the decade!
Aria’s mind drifted yet again.
’Granny Shen.’
In her past life, Granny Shen had been admitted to the facility in mid-December.
She must get her out.
But breaking an elderly woman out of a highly secure, private psychiatric facility wasn’t exactly a solo side-quest. She needed Julian to cut through the red tape, and she needed Damien’s money and influence.
The problem was the excuse.
Aria couldn’t exactly look her hyper-intelligent, billionaire husband in the eye and say, ’Hey honey, I need you to orchestrate a jailbreak for this random senior citizen.’
She would figure it out though. It was only September now after all.
