Page 82 of 10 Days to Surrender

“Good girl,” he murmurs when I finally give up the fight against the last tie keeping the dress fastened to me. It begins to slide down my body. “Now, touch yourself where you want my hands to be. Look at me like you did in the library,” he rasps, backing me against a sun-warmed boulder. “Like you want me to ruin you.”

His knee nudges mine apart. “Sasha?—”

Click.

“Beautiful,” he breathes. But unlike Giovanni’s constant stream of praise, this single word feels like it’s been ripped from somewhere deep inside him. “You’re so fucking beautiful, Ariel.”

His fingers trace where the camera lens just traveled, and all my clever words evaporate. The silk puddles around my feet as Sasha pulls me down with him onto the soft earth.

This is different from our usual midnight collisions. No angry biting, no bruising grips. His touch is reverent, almost careful, like I’m something precious instead of just convenient.

I should stop it. I have to. I will.

But as I open my mouth to tell him no, he presses two fingers inside of me, and all the protest dies with a single choked breath.

The Nikon slips from his fingers, landing in moss with a soft thud. Sasha’s hands replace the camera lens—calloused palms framing my face, thumbs tracing the swell of my bottom lip. Sunlight paints gold streaks across his scar as he leans in, achingly slow, until our breaths tangle.

He doesn’t kiss me.

Not yet.

His mouth ghosts along my jaw, my throat, the flutter of my pulse. The forest holds its breath. When his teeth graze my nipple, I arch into him with a gasp.

“Easy,ptichka,” he murmurs against my skin. Moss cushions my spine as he strips bare, each movement deliberate. My belly rises between us like a full moon. He pauses, hand splayed beneath it.

Something cracks in his gaze.

Then he’s everywhere—lips mapping constellations across my collarbones, fingers threading through mine, pinning them above my head. The forest spins as he enters me, our rhythm easy and deep. No teeth, no fury. Just sunlight and sweat and his groan vibrating through my ribs when I clench around him.

Coming feels like flying.

I expect him to bury the moment in sarcasm afterward. A crude joke. A reminder that this is nothing. But when it’s done, neither of us speaks. Speaking would mean acknowledging whatever just happened here—how different it felt, how much closer to making love than fucking.

So we stay silent, listening to the forest’s music, pretending we’re still just two people scratching an itch instead of whatever we’re becoming.

That night, I’m in my bathroom on my hands and knees, desperately trying to scrub dirt stains and grass stains and, well,otherstains from the dress Jasmine lent me.

But a whisper of paper from behind draws my attention.

I turn, frowning, until I see it.

A photograph, slipped under my door like a love letter.

My hands shake as I pick it up. The shot is perfect—me, caught in a shaft of sunlight, head thrown back in genuine laughter as my hands cradle my swollen belly. I look… powerful. Soft.Real.

Not the artificial poses Giovanni wanted. Not the sultry shots that followed. Just me, unguarded and alive, captured through Sasha’s lens in a moment of pure joy.

I should throw it away. That’s what our arrangement demands—no mementos, no feelings, no evidence that could be used against our hearts later.

Instead, I open my journal and carefully tuck the photo between its pages.Just this once, I tell myself. Just this one small piece of proof that for a moment in a sunlit forest, I was more than just a convenient body. I washis.

Even if we’ll both pretend to forget it tomorrow.

31

SASHA

It’s storming again.

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