Trapped In The Billionaire’s Name

Chapter 46

Reina’s POV

Damian was already awake when I came out of the shower. He stood at the window of my apartment with a mug in his hand and the steam rising in a thin line. He had put on yesterday’s shirt but left it unbuttoned at the collar. The light caught the edge of his jaw.

I walked over and took the mug from him. He let it go without protest. The tea was too strong, the way he always made it when he was thinking.

“You’re early,” I said.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Bad dreams?”

“No.” He looked at me. “Just thinking about you.”

I drank. The tea burned a little. I set the mug on the sill and rested my forehead against his chest. His hand came up and settled at the back of my neck, thumb moving once across the damp hairline.

We stayed like that until the tea cooled.

Later we walked to the market two blocks over. He carried the bags. I chose the fruit. He watched me test the firmness of peaches with the same focus he gave contracts. When I caught him looking he didn’t pretend otherwise.

At the register the cashier smiled at us the way people smile at couples who have stopped performing. Damian paid. I didn’t argue. Outside he handed me a peach already washed under the store’s faucet. I bit into it and juice ran down my wrist. He caught it with his thumb before it reached my sleeve.

The walk back was slow. Our shoulders touched every few steps. Neither of us adjusted the distance.

Inside the apartment I put the groceries away while he leaned against the counter and watched. When I finished he crossed the small kitchen and boxed me in with his arms on either side of the sink. He didn’t kiss me right away. He just looked. The way he looked made the air thinner.

“You’re staring,” I said.

“I know.”

“It’s intense.”

“I know that too.”

I reached up and buttoned the open collar of his shirt, then unbuttoned it again. His breath changed. He lowered his head and kissed the place just below my ear. Slow. No rush. The kind of kiss that asked nothing and took everything.

We ended up on the couch. Not the bedroom. The couch felt less like a decision and more like gravity. I sat astride him. His hands stayed at my waist, steady, waiting. I kissed him first. He answered with the same restraint he used in every room he entered, controlled until it wasn’t.

Clothes came off in pieces. Nothing torn. Just the quiet sound of fabric and the warmer sound of breathing. When there was nothing left between us he held still and looked at my face like he needed permission even now.

I gave it by moving closer.

Afterwards we stayed tangled on the narrow cushions. My cheek against his chest. His fingers tracing idle patterns along my spine. The city noise filtered through the open window in soft waves—someone laughing on the sidewalk, a distant bus, the ordinary soundtrack of a Sunday that belonged to no one else.

“I used to think wanting someone this much would feel like losing ground,” he said eventually.

I lifted my head. “And now?”

“It feels like the only ground that matters.”

I rested my chin on his sternum and studied him. The usual sharp edges were still there, but softened at the corners. He looked younger like this. Or maybe just less defended.

“You’re different when it’s just us,” I said.

“You’re the only person I’ve ever wanted to be different for.”

The words settled between us without needing answer. I kissed the center of his chest and closed my eyes. His arm tightened once, then loosened into the easy hold of someone who no longer expected the moment to end.

We dozed. When I woke the light had shifted to afternoon gold. Damian was still under me, one hand in my hair, the other resting low on my back. His phone sat on the coffee table face down. It had been silent the entire time.

I shifted. He woke immediately, the way people wake when they are used to danger or decisions. His eyes found mine and the tension left him in one long breath.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.”

He brushed a strand of hair from my mouth. “Stay like this a little longer.”

I did.

Later we ordered food because neither of us wanted to cook or leave. We ate on the floor with our backs against the couch, plates balanced on our knees. He told me about the first apartment he ever lived in alone, too large, too quiet, the kind of place that echoed.

I told him about the studio I shared with Marco after our mother got sick, how the radiator sang every night in February and how I learned to sleep through it.

He listened the way he always listened to me: completely, without planning his reply in advance. When I finished he set his plate aside and pulled me sideways into his lap again. I went without resistance. His mouth found the curve of my shoulder and stayed there, breathing me in.

“Reina.”

“Yes.”

“I’m not good at soft things. I never learned.”

“You’re learning.”

“Only because you make it impossible not to.”

I turned in his arms until we were face to face. The light from the window caught the darker flecks in his eyes. I traced the line of his lower lip with my thumb. He let me. Then he kissed the pad of my thumb and held it there against his mouth for a second longer than necessary.

The rest of the afternoon disappeared that way, slow touches, shorter sentences, the kind of silence that felt full instead of empty. At some point he carried me to the bed because the couch had become too small for what we wanted. We didn’t speak much after that. We didn’t need to.

Evening came in gradually. The room dimmed. Neither of us reached for a lamp. I lay half across him with my ear over his heart and counted the steady beats. His fingers moved through my hair in the same rhythm.

“I could stay here,” he said quietly.

“You are here.”

“I mean longer than tonight. Longer than this week.”

I pressed a kiss to the skin above his heart. “I know what you mean.”

His hand stilled. “And?”

“And I’m not asking you to leave.”

The answer seemed to unlock something in him. He rolled us carefully until I was beneath him, braced on his forearms so his weight was a choice rather than a demand. He looked at me for a long time. Then he kissed me like he was trying to memorize the exact shape of the moment.

We stayed that way until the sky outside turned fully dark.

I was almost asleep when his phone lit up on the nightstand. The glow reached the ceiling in a pale rectangle. He ignored it the first time. The second time the screen stayed bright longer. I felt the change in his body before he moved, muscles tightening under my palm, breath shortening by a fraction.

He reached for the phone with the arm that wasn’t under me. Read whatever was there. The light stayed on his face long enough for me to see the shift, not anger. Something colder. Something that belonged to the version of him who ran boardrooms and never lost.

He locked the screen and set the phone face down again. When he turned back to me the cold was gone, or carefully hidden. He pulled me closer and pressed his mouth to my temple.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

“Yes.”

The single word was steady.

I waited. He didn’t offer more. His hand resumed its slow path along my back, but the rhythm had changed. Slightly off. Like a song played from memory after someone had altered the notes.

I closed my eyes and matched my breathing to his.