Page 97 of 10 Days to Surrender

The vat creaks as I lower her into the muck. Sun-baked pulp seeps through my knees. She gasps when I yank her dress up, when I bury my cock inside of her.

I don’t let her breathe as I’m fucking her deep into the mash. She claws my back, chanting broken syllables between bitten-off moans. We’re animals, rutting in the ruins of harvest, staining each other beyond recognition.

Afterward, we pant in the wreckage. Ariel traces a purple handprint on my chest. I idly wonder what it would look like to ink that there permanently.

“I’d say that’s a thorough mess,” she concludes, looking around us. “Does it ruin the wine? I hope not.”

I laugh and kiss her again, with her taste and the wine’s still mingling on my tongue. “Baby, I’d pay every dollar I have for a single bottle of this.”

We haul ourselves out under cover of darkness. Cleaning up is a laughable concept—we’ll have to do the two-mile walk of grape-stained shame, though the prospect of showering together at the end of it makes it seem not so bad.

But as we’re fumbling for the path in the twilight, we hear laughter. Both Ariel and I look up to see Belle and Marco sharing a bottle of wine on the porch of the winery. He whispers something into her ear and she tosses her head back to laugh.

“Look at them,” Ariel murmurs, settling back against my chest. “I haven’t seen her smile like that since— since ever, really.”

Belle’s laugh drifts down to us on the evening breeze. Marco has produced a block of parmesan from somewhere, and he’s cutting it with exaggerated ceremony that has Belle covering her mouth to stifle her giggles.

“Think he knows she hates parmesan?” Ariel asks.

“Better question: think she’ll tell him?”

“Not a chance.” She tilts her head back against my shoulder. “She’s too busy pretending to be charmed by his terrible jokes.”

“Those aren’t pretend laughs.”

“I know.” Her voice goes soft. “That’s what makes it perfect.”

We should probably hurry home. The sun is setting and we’re both sticky from sugar and sex. Our shadows stretch long and tangled across the trampled earth. Two more happy wrecks in a vineyard full of them.

But for now, I’m content to hold her like this, watching the sun paint the sky in shades of purple that match our skin, while across the vineyard, her mother remembers how to fall in love.

37

ARIEL

Just when I thought the generator was on our side, it goes and betrays us again. I’ve taken to calling it Judas.

It’s the third time this week that Judas has stabbed us in the back, and it’s barely Wednesday. I wiggle my toes against the footstool, watching candlelight flicker across the kitchen’s exposed beams. My “throne,” as Sasha calls it—this absurdly plushy wingback that he hauled down from the library—creaks as I shift my weight.

A tooth-rattling peal of thunder cracks just as Kosti lights the last candle. “Well,” he says, “that’s about as good as that’s going to get.”

“Nu vot,” Zoya sighs, her hands deep in a bowl ofpelmenidough. “At least the storm waited until after I taught Jasmine the proper pleating technique.”

The gas stove’s blue flame casts weird shadows as Mama and Jas work side by side, their fingers quick and sure as they fold perfect little dumplings under Zoya’s stern eye.

Lightning strobes through the windows. I start to count under my breath: “One Mississippi, two Mississippi?—”

CRACK.

The thunder is getting closer.

Mama looks up from her batch of dumplings. She’s gotten awfully proud of her handiwork these days. Zoya even gave her a “Not bad” last week, which is about as effusive as the old woman’s praise ever gets. “Did I ever tell you girls about the blackout during the ‘03 heatwave? Leander tried?—”

Rap-rap-rap.

I frown. Thunder with no lightning? That’s strange. But then?—

Rap-rap-rap.

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