Page 147 of 10 Days to Ruin

Eventually, dinner ends and it’s time to leave. We’re almost to the foyer when Leander calls out, “Ariana.”

I grit my teeth at the dead name, but I turn anyway.

He hesitates—just a flicker—before tossing me a velvet box. I stop short when I open it.

Inside glistens Mom’s engagement ring, the emerald-cut diamond she hurled at his head the night she left. “She’d want you to have it,” Baba mutters, suddenly fascinated by his cufflinks.

I snap the lid shut. “Thank you, Baba.”

Then the door slams behind us. I make it halfway down the stoop before collapsing against Sasha, laughter and tears clotting my throat, woozy from the feeling of this momentous thing finally getting put behind me.

He crowds me against the limo, forehead pressed to mine. “Ptichka.” His mouth skims over my knuckles. “Why?”

I grab his lapels, dragging him closer. “Because you’re the only man who’ll never ask me to kneel.”

His growl vibrates through my bones. The limo door opens and closes, sucking us in. Then there’s only teeth and tongues and the delicious agony of finally,finallysurrendering—not to my father, not to fate, but to the terrifying thrill of choosing my own gilded cage.

He chuckles, eyes flashing with mischief. “Careful what you wish for, Mrs. Ozerova. I’ll have you on your knees by the end of the night.”

The name should terrify me. Ten days ago, it would have.

Now, I can only smile up at him. “Do you promise?”

50

ARIEL

The limo’s partition stays up.

Sasha’s hands don’t.

His teeth scrape my collarbone as he tears the slit in my dress wider, calloused palms mapping every shiver. “You looked like a queen in there,” he rasps against my throat. “Cutting yourself open just to watch him bleed.”

I claw at his belt. I’ve never hated anything more and I want it gone, gone,gone.The limo hits a pothole that throws me into his lap, which is fine, because that’s where I was headed anyway. As I grind on him shamelessly, my head cocked back to cast moans up toward the ceiling, I whimper, “One of these days, you’re going to stop talking so much and justfuck me.”

Sasha’s growl sets me on fire. “You’re going to regret saying that.”

Then he shoves me onto all fours on the floor of the limousine and hikes my dress up over my hips. He starts to eat me out from behind. I see instant stars.

Two fingers find their way inside me, pulsing and writhing as I do the exact same thing. “I’m gonna— I’m gonna?—”

“Not yet, you’re not.” Sasha’s hand clamps down on the back of my neck as he drags me upright and pushes me to my knees in front of him.

He frees his cock from his suit pants and pushes me down on it. I let him—no, Ibeghim to let me, because if I don’t taste him right now then I might just fucking die.

My lips part around the slick head of him as I take him as deep as I can go. The moan when Sasha hits the back of my throat vibrates through me and into him, coaxing out a moan of his in response.

It’s a drug. Hearing him moan like that, for me? Nothing and no one has ever made me feel better.Myking.Myman. He is my rabid wolf and I’m his little bird, and the rest of the world, as far as I’m concerned, can go fuck itself.

I suck on him, two hands gripping his shaft, until he pries me off with a wetpop.I know spit is dangling from my swollen lips and my makeup is probably running because “waterproof mascara” is the world’s greatest lie, and if I had to guess, I’d say my carefully braided hair is now a shitshow, too.

But Sasha looks at me like I’m fucking holy.

“You, Ariel Ward, are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

Then he pushes me back down on his dick.

By the time Klaus parks outside Sasha’s building, we’ve both brought each other right to the edge half a dozen times each. I’m an utter mess and yet every nerve ending is singing songs I’ve never heard before. Sasha’s growls keep getting deeper and darker.

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