One Night Stand, Eight Surprises: Pampered by My CEO Husband --- - Chapter 30: Chapter 30

The house had grown too quiet.
Even with the guards outside, the hum of the estate’s power systems, the occasional click of a child’s door opening in the night—it was the silence between Arielle and Damien that settled the heaviest.
They hadn’t fought.
But they hadn’t held each other either.
Arielle stood by the window of their bedroom, her hand pressed to the glass as rain tapped like distant whispers. Damien sat at the edge of their bed, staring at a tablet, its screen reflecting numbers and reports she didn’t understand.
“You haven’t touched me in days,” she said finally.
He didn’t flinch. “I’ve been trying to protect you.”
“I’m not asking for protection,” she said softly. “I’m asking for you.”
Damien set the tablet aside, rose slowly.
His steps were hesitant—like a man approaching sacred ground. When he reached her, he didn’t speak. He simply brushed her hair back from her cheek and kissed her.
Not urgently.
Not with fire.
With the ache of a man who thought he might lose her.
They made love slowly that night.
No fireworks.
No breathless gasps.
Just skin, breath, warmth.
He touched every inch of her like memorizing scripture.
And she let him.
Let him cry quietly when he buried his face in her neck.
Let him whisper things he never dared say aloud—how scared he was, how he hated his father for raising him to be cold, how he didn’t know how to be soft without her.
And when she came undone beneath him, trembling and tearful, she knew he was still hers.
But only mostly.
In the quiet aftermath, their bodies tangled in sheets and moonlight, she asked the question anyway.
“Do you think it’s Thomas?”
Damien hesitated too long.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It could be him. Could be someone else. But I’m not sure I care anymore.”
She propped herself on one elbow. “What do you mean?”
“I mean… I used to care more about the empire than the man. Now, it’s flipped. If I lose the company but keep this—” He gestured to the space between them. “—then maybe I haven’t lost at all.”
Her heart cracked open.
But even in this moment, even wrapped in his warmth, she couldn’t ignore the truth...
There were still secrets.
Still spaces between them neither had dared cross.
Arielle rose before him the next morning, nausea already twisting in her stomach. The baby.
She padded down the hallway toward the children’s room, pausing outside the playroom.
There, she saw Hazel drawing. A picture of their family.
All of them… and one figure standing far away, with a red X through his face.
“Hazel,” she asked gently. “Who’s that?”
The little girl looked up, somber. “The man in Daddy’s office. He told me not to tell.”
Arielle’s breath stilled.
Someone had been near her child.
Someone who didn’t belong.
She walked back to their bedroom, heart thudding like war drums.
“Damien,” she said quietly, waking him. “We need to talk.”
He sat up instantly.
She didn’t need to say more.
Because the intimacy they’d shared had been real.
But trust? Trust still had cracks.
And the enemy was getting bolder.