Page 8 of 10 Days to Ruin

The thump and rattle of the sink touching the mirror glass times every thrust. I moan, broken, helpless. His hands carve divots in my bare waist.

“Spread for me,” he orders. “Spread those fucking thighs and give me all of you.”

But even as he orders it, he does it for me, molding me like putty. My hips are screaming with the strain and my throat is raw from the effort of holding back the kinds of moans that would draw attention from the partygoers on the other side of the wall. But I want so fucking badly to give him what he’s asking.

Every twitch of his muscles drives him deeper into me than anyone’s ever gone before. I’m a bouncing, sweaty disaster and I don’t have the brain cells left to give a damn. Even as our mouths clash and our breath mingles and he keeps murmuring filthy nothings that are half-exhale and half-fuck-you’re-dripping-for-me,all I can do is hold on and pray that the climax doesn’t kill me.

He’s not wrong—I am dripping for him. More broken syllables fall out of my mouth. “P-pl-pl… M-m-more…”

And just when I think he couldn’t possibly give me more, he does. He drags me down onto his cock, crushing my waist between his palms, fucking harder and faster and more relentless.

Almost…

Almost…

Boom.

He growls, I whimper, and then we both explode, one on the heels of the next. Light fractures in my vision as the orgasm cleaves me in two. A few starlit, timeless seconds suck us in. For as long as those last, I’m soaring.

Then gravity reclaims us. Time reclaims us. Common sense reclaims us.

And all I can think as I float back down is,That really was a bad idea.

Returning to reality is an ugly affair. I’m suddenly aware of how unkempt my dress looks scrunched around my waist like that. How cold and sticky the sink countertop is. How what I just did—fucking a stranger whileliterally on the job—was so unbelievably rash that I should probably tender my resignation at the Gazette and go become a nun, because a lifetime of prayer and solitude is the bare minimum of what I’ll need to redeem my soul after this idiotic stunt.

It would help if the stranger would say something. But as he straightens his clothes, shoots his cuffs, and steps back from me, it’s as if he’s pulling up the drawbridge and locking down the castle gates behind his eyes. Those glimpses of soul I saw swimming in the blue of his irises are long gone now. The shreds of humanity are hidden. He looks the way he did when he first opened the stall door.

Cold.

Cruel.

Merciless.

I open my mouth to tell him—I mean, shoot,something,if only because it feels like the silence is gonna swallow me whole if I don’t. Should I ask his name? Should I give him my number? Should I see if he regrets this or if he maybe wants to do it again?

But he beats me to the punch.

He gives me one crisp, formal incline of the head, jaw clenched brutally tight. “Enjoy the gala,” he says in that tar-on-rubble voice of his. “Try not to cut yourself again.”

Then he’s gone, leaving me leaking and lonely on a sink counter, wondering what in the fuck just happened.

4

SASHA

It’s a fucking pity I’ll never have that again.

I mourn the loss even as I stride away down the hall and leave the bathroom behind me—not looking back, not ever looking back, because looking back is the act of a fuckingssyklo.A pussy. A coward.

That doesn’t mean I don’t listen, though.

I hear the door close behind me. I hear my footsteps echo off the ceiling like a pulsing, thudding heartbeat. I hear the murmurs of the people I pass.

I hear it all.

But I never, ever look back.

The voice snarling in my head sounds like my father’s—though, to be fair, everything sounds like my father’s voice these days. Yakov Ozerov’s ghost has been especially loud lately, ever since this arrangement with the Greeks started taking shape. I can almost smell the reek of cognac on his breath as he reminds me what matters:Power. Control. Empire.

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