Page 116 of 10 Days to Ruin

All of my pent-up brattiness is turning into dirty fuel, getting channeled into something altogether different than what I thought I’d be doing today. I’mhot,seething from head to exposed toe. Barefoot and in lingerie and almost two feet shorter than this mute, brooding titan, but fuck it—I’ll go to war with him if that’s what he makes me do.

“You can’t just save my life and then shut me out because it makes you a teensy bit uncomfortable!” I cry out. “I saw your face in that garage, Sasha. Ifeltyou. And now, you’re what—ashamed? Scared I’ll figure out you’re human under all that ice and steel?”

He faces me again and steps inside. The curtain swings closed.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Every vowel is saw-toothed.

“Bullshit,” I spit. “You kissed me like you needed it more than you’ve ever needed anything. And guess what? I kissed you back in the exact same way! But you recoiled right after that in pure fucking terror. And today, you can’t even look at me. Why? Because caring makes you weak? Because wanting me is inconvenient to your big empire-building plans?”

He strides forward and pins me back against the mirror. Our breaths fog the glass. “Wanting you is far more than ‘inconvenient,’ Ariel. It’s fucking ruining me. Do you know that? How can you notsee that?”His laugh, when it comes out, is utterly heart-wrenching. “I want you so much it’s rotting my bones. Every second I’m with you, I want to bury myself in you until we both forget our own names. But wanting—” He presses his forehead to mine and exhales wearily. “Wanting is how men like me get people like you killed.”

The confession hangs between us, every bit as fragile as the lace stretched across my ribs. I slide my hands up his chest. Feel his heartbeat cannoning against my palms.

“Then let me be the judge of what kills me.”

“No.” He shakes his head. “I won’t risk that.”

I swallow hard. The fire in me is still simmering, though. It knows there’s something here to burn through, some thorny underbrush we can clear out of the way to let new things grow. “Why’d you come for me last night, Sasha?”

“You know why.”

“Because my father would’ve slaughtered you if I died?”

“BecauseIwould’ve slaughtered the world!” He surges up tall. His palms slam against the glass on either side of my head. “Is that what you want to hear? That seeing that Serbmudak’shands on you made me want to peel my own skin off? That I spent six hours parked outside your building last night because I couldn’t fucking breathe until I was sure I saw your shadow move behind the blinds?”

His pupils swallow the last bits of blue left in him. “You asked me why I stopped kissing you in the car,” he rasps. “It’s because Iknew.One taste, and I’d need another. Then another. Until you weren’t just a means to an alliance—you were the fuckingair.”

“So need me then, Sasha.” My knuckles graze his split, scabbing knuckles. The site of the new scars he’ll soon bear as the price for keeping me safe. “Need me like I need you.”

He sucks in a breath. His face is close to mine again, so huge, so touchable. I reach up to touch it, and as I do, I nod. Just once, but all my heart goes into the gesture.

It’s permission. It’s salvation.

He takes it.

37

SASHA

Calling it a “kiss” feels inadequate. “Kissing” is what little boys and girls do on playground dares. This has nothing in common with a chaste peck of the lips, or a high school couple fumbling around in the backseat of their parents’ car.

This is more like an asteroid hitting the fucking earth.

The red lace spiderwebbing across her collarbone tears in my fist. The sound shreds through the tiny room along with her gasp. My teeth find her bottom lip, bite hard enough to sting. She moans, loud and sloppy, and I smother it with my palm.

“Quiet,” I growl against her spit-slick mouth. “Or they’ll hear what a greedy little thing you are.”

Ariel’s hips jerk against mine. Through two layers of fabric, I feel how wet she is, smell the musk of her need. My cock throbs, trapped against my zipper like a caged beast.

“You’re the one showing your hand,” she pants, all defiance and trembling limbs. Her nails score down my chest. “They already know what I am.”

I spin her hard toward the mirror. Her palms slap against cool glass as I yank the harness straps down her thighs. “And what’s that? What am I?”

She watches me through the reflection. “A man who breaks everything he touches.”

The accusation tears through me, raw and true. I fist a hand in her hair, forcing her head back as my other hand clenches the flimsy lace between her legs. “Then why do you keep handing me the hammer?”

Her answer comes as a ragged cry when I rip the last of the lingerie off her completely. The leather straps pool at her ankles like bondage ropes. I kick them aside as my palm finds her bare pussy.

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