Page 68 of 10 Days to Surrender

When the outside world is barred away from us, I pivot to face her.

She’s all soft edges wrapped in cream silk, the dress clinging to every cursed curve I’ve tried to evict from my mind. Lamplight gilds the mane of her hair, loose curls spilling over her shoulders. That swollen belly mocks me. Her lips part on a frantic breath, glossy and bitten-red, and Christ, I want to ruin them all over again.

Every line of her screamsmine—the way her hips tilt toward me, the flush creeping below her neckline. She’s a loaded gun in a lace-trimmed holster, safety off, and I’m done pretending I wasn’t born to pull the trigger.

I cross to her in three huge strides.

Her back hits the bar hard enough to rattle glasses. I cage her in, forearms braced on polished oak. The wood presses rigid lines into her thighs where my hips slot against hers.

Through thin cotton, her heart hammers like drums against my chest. Mine answers in kind. Her throat bobs when I drag my nose along her jaw.

It’s permission.

Collapse.

Surrender.

The first button pops easy. Two, three, and four reveal inches of skin at a time as I remember just how much I fucking missed this.

She gasps. Rolls her hips. “Sasha?—”

“Say it.” My thumb rasps over her nipple. “Why we’re here.”

Her head thunks against a liquor shelf. “Sex. Just… sex.”

“Just sex,” I echo, biting the lie into her mouth.

Through the streaked window, Tuscan night falls. My hand skims her belly—our shared little sin—as I hike her leg around my waist.

No feelings. Just friction. Just the chokehold of her thighs. Just the sob she swallows when I finally—finally—sheathe myself in her heat.

26

ARIEL

The grappa burns my tongue when he kisses me. It’s not gentle—nothing about Sasha Ozerov ever has been—but I don’t want gentle. I want the bite of his teeth, the sting of his stubble.

If it doesn’t leave me sore tomorrow, I don’t want it.

He lifts me onto the bar with a growl. A bottle of limoncello shatters on the floor, sharp citrus flooding the air. I don’t care. All I care about is the heat of him between my thighs, the way his cock parts to the deepest point in me.

He rips my dress down by the neckline and up by the hem, so that it puddles around my waist. There’s no preamble, no patience—just Sasha burying himself to the hilt in one brutal stroke.

“Bozhe moi,” he rasps, hips stuttering. “Still so fucking tight.”

“Still so fucking big,” I shoot back, nails raking his scalp.

My back arches off the bar. He doesn’t let me adjust, doesn’t let me think. Just sets a punishing rhythm that rattles my teeth.

“Look at me,” he demands, fingers tangling in my hair. “Look at me when I’m inside you.”

I force my eyes open. His gaze burns through every lie I’ve told myself. That this is just physical. That I don’t still love him. That I won’t break when he walks away again.

He reads it all. Of course he does.

But I see it in him, too. As his teeth nip at my neck, giving birth to the hickey he just swore not to leave, I see how flimsy his hold on himself really is.

He’s as wrecked as you are. He’s every bit as fucked.

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