After Rebirth, I Became My Ex's Aunt-in-Law-Chapter 142: Tequila is a Truth Serum**

"You’re an idiot, Damien Sinclair."

The words echoed in the damp, quiet space of the shower enclosure.

Damien’s hand froze on the heavy glass door. He turned back slowly, his jaw clenched, his golden eyes guarded. "Excuse me?"

Aria didn’t retreat. She closed the agonizing fraction of space between them. She reached out, her small, bare hands coming up to cup his face. Her thumbs brushed over his sharp cheekbones, slick with residual water.

"You’re a brilliant, terrifying, billionaire mastermind," Aria said, her voice soft but unyielding. "But when it comes to human emotions, you are a complete idiot."

Damien swallowed hard. He didn’t move away from her touch, leaning into her palms despite himself. "Aria—"

"Shut up and listen," she commanded gently. She locked her emerald eyes with his, refusing to let him look away. "Tequila doesn’t magically invent feelings, Damien. It doesn’t put words in your mouth that aren’t already sitting heavily on your tongue. It just strips away the filters."

Damien’s breath hitched. The air in his lungs vanished.

"I didn’t say it because I was drunk," Aria whispered, stepping so close her bare breasts brushed against him. "I said it because I didn’t have the walls up to hide it anymore."

She stroked his jawline.

"The contract is void, Damien," she told him. "It’s been void since the moment you looked at me like I actually mattered. I love you. I loved you last night when I was a complete disaster in your elevator, and I love you right now. Completely, terrifyingly sober."

Damien stared at her.

For a terrifying second, he didn’t move. He looked like a man who had been wandering through a frozen wasteland for twenty-nine years and had just been handed the sun.

The knot keeping the thick white towel secure around his waist suddenly loosened. The heavy cotton dropped to the wet tile floor with a soft slap, forgotten entirely.

Damien’s hands came up, framing her face with a reverence that made her heart ache. His thumbs traced her cheekbones, wiping away the condensation.

"Say it again," he rasped, his voice breaking.

"I love you," Aria breathed.

He closed his eyes, a shudder wracking his massive frame. When he opened them again, the fear was gone, replaced by a devotion so profound it felt like a physical weight.

He leaned down and kissed her.

It was a testing of the waters, a soft, tentative press of his lips against hers, as if he were afraid she might shatter. He tasted her with a slow, worshipful awe, his mouth mapping the shape of hers in the quiet, dripping shower.

Aria melted against him. She slid her arms up, wrapping them around his neck, parting her lips to invite him in.

That was all it took.

Damien groaned. He crushed his mouth to hers, his tongue sweeping past her teeth, tasting, claiming, devouring. He kissed her like he was starving, his hands dropping from her face to grip her waist, lifting her entirely off her feet.

Aria whimpered into the kiss, her toes pointing as he backed her up, pressing her spine flat against the cold black tile of the shower wall.

Without breaking the kiss, Damien reached blindly above them and slammed the chrome lever upward.

The rainfall showerhead roared back to life.

Scalding hot water crashed down over them, instantly filling the enclosure with thick, suffocating steam. The sudden heat was a shock against the cold tile, but Aria didn’t care. She was drowning in him.

The water slicked their skin, turning the friction of their bodies sliding against each other into something impossibly erotic. Damien tore his mouth from hers, his chest heaving as he trailed hot, open-mouthed kisses down her throat, his teeth grazing the sensitive skin over her collarbone.

"You’re mine," he panted against her wet skin, the water sluicing down his silver hair. "You’re my wife."

"Yes," Aria gasped, her head falling back against the tile.

His hand slid down her wet stomach, the water making his path frictionless. He bypassed her hips entirely and dove straight between her thighs.

Aria’s hips bucked instinctively. She was already so wet.

Damien found her heat instantly. He slipped two long fingers inside her, the invasion smooth and impossibly deep.

"Damien," Aria cried out, her nails biting into his wet, heavily muscled shoulders.

"Look at me," he commanded.

Aria forced her heavy eyelids open. Through the dense curtain of steam and cascading water, his golden eyes were burning with a feral, possessive fire.

He curled his fingers inside her, hitting the exact cluster of nerves that made her brain short-circuit. His thumb came up to press firmly against her clit, establishing a rapid, relentless rhythm.

The water crashed around them, but all Aria could hear was the wet, slick sound of his hand working her and her own ragged, echoing moans. He was relentless, using the slippery environment to his absolute advantage. He watched her face unravel, matching the speed of his fingers to the frantic hitching of her breath.

"You feel so damn good," he growled, his heavy erection pressing against her thigh, hot and demanding. "So tight."

The tension coiled in Aria’s belly, winding tighter and tighter. She wrapped one leg around his hip to anchor herself, her inner muscles clenching around his fingers.

"I need you," Aria sobbed, her vision whiting out at the edges. "Damien, please. Now."

He didn’t make her wait. He withdrew his fingers, the loss making her whimper, but he immediately replaced his hand with himself.

He gripped her hips, hoisting her up slightly against the slick tile.

He drove into her in one long, powerful thrust.

Aria screamed his name, the sound completely swallowed by the roar of the water. He filled her completely, stretching her with a thick, heavy heat.

He began to move.

It was a man claiming the woman he loved.

The heavy glass door of the enclosure rattled in its frame with every powerful snap of his hips. Aria clung to him, her arms wrapped around his neck, meeting his thrusts with wild abandon. The water poured over them, washing away the sweat, plastering their bodies together.

"Aria," Damien panted, his forehead resting against hers, his jaw clenched as he pounded into her. "Fuck, I love you. I love you so much."

Hearing him say it—hearing the Demon King confess it in a raw, breathless grind—shattered her control.

The orgasm ripped through her like a tidal wave. She clamped down around him, her body convulsing in violent, electric spasms that milked him with every pulse. She cried out, burying her face in his wet neck, biting down lightly on his skin.

Her release pushed him right to the absolute edge.

Damien’s body went rigid. His muscles bunched, straining under the slick sheen of the water.

"Aria," he roared.

With a supreme act of willpower, Damien pulled out of her wet heat just a fraction of a second before he broke.

He spilled his release hot and heavy across the flat plain of her stomach and the curve of her thigh. The hot spray of the rainfall shower caught the thick fluid almost instantly, washing it down their legs and swirling it toward the dark drain in the floor.

Damien collapsed against her, his massive frame pinning her softly to the wall. He buried his face in her wet hair, his chest heaving like a bellows against her own.

Aria let her arms fall loosely around his back, stroking the slick, corded muscles there as she fought to catch her breath.

The water continued to beat down on them, warm and absolute, but neither of them moved to turn it off.

"Consider the contract burned," Damien murmured against her ear, his voice still rough, his arms tightening around her waist. "You’re never getting rid of me."

Aria smiled.

"Wouldn’t dream of it, Husband."