Page 127 of 10 Days to Ruin

We walk backward until my back hits cold glass as he pins me against the window. Manhattan winks below, a thousand judgmental eyes. I don’t care. I bite his lower lip, swallow his growl.

“Watch,” he rasps, wrenching my face toward the glittering abyss. “Watch what you do to me.”

His reflection floats in the glass—eyes black with want, hands possessive on my hips. But it’smyface that shocks me. Wild-haired, swollen-mouthed,hungry.I’ve never seen myself like this. So… uncontained.

His teeth find my earlobe. “You see it now? What you wake up in me?”

“I’m getting the idea.” I rock into him, shameless, and feel his answering hardness. “Show me more.”

Chaos unfolds in sharp, bright fragments. His buttons scatter. My blouse tears at the shoulder seam. He licks the exposed skin and murmurs, “That blush is my favorite color on you” when I shiver. All the while, the city stretches below us. We’re in a snow globe of steel and sin, and Sasha’s shaking it apart.

My palms flatten against the window. “You want answers?” His voice scrapes raw as he rips my pants down around my thighs. “I’ll give you one.”

The first thrust steals my breath. He sinks into me with a groan that unravels into Russian. I watch our reflection blur as he sets a punishing rhythm and the glass fogs with our panting.

“You’re the only one, Ariel.” His hand fists in my hair, tugging my head back to expose my throat. “The only one whosees.”

“Sasha—”

“No. Look.” He smears the condensation with his palm, clearing a portal to the world below. “Look how high we are. How far you’d fall.”

The duality guts me. Terror and tenderness. The way he pounds into me like vengeance, but cradles my hips like something precious. He’s splitting me open in every way that matters.

“I’m not afraid of that,” I lie.

He stills. Drags his thumb over the smudged lipstick at my mouth. “Then you’re a fool.” The next thrust is slow. Torturous. “You should run from this. From me.”

“Then why don’t you make me?”

He chuckles dark against my skin. A finger slides between my legs. Circles. Presses. My knees buckle, but he holds me up easily. “Because I’m a selfish bastard, and I can’t let you go, even if that’s the only thing left that could save you.”

His teeth sink into my shoulder as I climax. The world blurs out, fireworks bursting behind my eyes. He follows me over the edge with a broken grunt.

When we’re both spent, we slide down the glass into a puddle of tangled limbs and twisted clothes on the floor. Sasha’s heartbeat thrums against my spine, out of rhythm with the city’s pulse below.

I count the sweat droplets tracking down the window. Five. Ten. Twenty. Fifty. A lifetime passes in the rise and fall of his chest.

“You asked me about the woman I helped. From the shelter.”

I twist to face him. His gaze stays fixed on the ceiling.

“She was running from a bad man. Two of them, really.” His thumb rubs absent circles on my hip. “She begged me to help her get out. Said she’d rather die than be another man’s pawn.” A muscle tics in his jaw. “So I gave her a new name. New life. Far from here. But she had to leave behind everything and everyone she knew.”

Snow begins to fall past the window—silent flakes that dissolve the second they kiss the glass. I see the years etched in Sasha’s face—the boy who learned his mother’s recipes, the man who thought mercy made him weak. All the lives caught in his fists.

“Sometimes,” I whisper, “isn’t starting over a good thing?”

“Sometimes,” he agrees. “But it’s a hell of a price to pay.”

I press my palm over his galloping heart. “Sasha… I’m starting to think I?—”

He touches my lips. “Not yet. Don’t say it yet.”

We both know whatitis. The word neither of us can survive. But when he kisses me again, soft as snowfall, I taste that word on his tongue.

For now, that’s good enough.

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