10 Days to Surrender (Ozerov Bratva #2)

17. Ariel

17

ARIEL

I don’t have to wait for the rooster to irritate me this morning. My back beats him to it.

I’m sprawled across the mattress like a beached whale, clutching a pillow to my chest. I swear I’ve doubled in size since yesterday, and I’m feeling it. Every position is a new betrayal—left side pinches a nerve, right side makes the twins sandwich my spleen. On my back? Might as well staple my ribs to the floor.

The pregnancy books I’ve read call this “normal discomfort,” which is downright laughable. There is nothing “normal” about any of the discomfort I’m feeling, whether we’re talking about the physical or the emotional varieties.

What’s “normal” about carrying the twins of a man who ruined your life?

What’s “normal” about fleeing your home to shack up in a crumbling Tuscan villa?

What’s “normal” about seeing Sasha pass by my window in the pouring rain, on his endless rounds yet again?

I check the clock on the wall. 4:47 A.M. The villa groans like an old man stretching as the last of the storm hurls itself against the creaky shutters. In the bathroom, a faucet drips in rhythm with the throbbing above my tailbone.

Breathe. Just breathe through it.

I’ve done this before. Those first months in France, when the morning sickness faded but the backaches bloomed, I used to curl around a heating pad in our apartment and whimper. Jas was working a lot, so I had no one to complain to. No one to see me crack.

A cramp claws up my right side. I bite my lip hard enough to taste copper.

“Nope,” I mutter to the peeling ceiling. “Not crying today. Absolutely not.”

I lie there in quiet, spasming discomfort until the clock reaches a more humane hour. Getting up sounds awful, but lying here in a puddle of my own sweat for much longer sounds even worse. So I force myself up to my feet and into a tepid shower. Then I dress in a bundle of the clothes Uncle Kosti brought back for us yesterday and waddle my way downstairs in search of coffee.

The kitchen is gloomy with the storm blotting out much of the sunrise. I’m fumbling through the cabinets, praying for coffee grounds somewhere, when a voice nearly makes me scream.

“You’re awake.”

I whirl around to see Sasha seated at the kitchen table. His face is drawn and weary.

I frown. He looks awful. “Did you sleep?”

He shrugs. “Not important.”

“If you say so.” I’m aiming for nonchalant sass, but I can’t hide my worry. He’s looking worse and worse with every passing day. Like he’s wasting away right in front of me. There’s burning the candle at both ends and then there’s chucking the candle into the heart of a volcano, and throwing a can of gasoline in after it for good measure. Sasha is veering awfully close to the latter.

“Bad night?” he asks.

I scowl irritably. “I spent half of it begging my own spine to either have mercy on me or just put me out of my misery. So no, I did not sleep all that well.”

His chair scrapes as he stands. “There’s a hospital?—”

“No!” I wince and lower my voice while looking up at the kitchen rafters, wondering if I might’ve woken Jasmine and Uncle Kosti by accident. “No, Sasha, it’s okay. I don’t need a hospital. This is all normal. Well, I mean, none of this is normal, but this part of it is. You know what I mean.”

He’s still squinting at me with steely eyes, though, like he’ll be able to see through my lies if he looks hard enough. “Hm.”

“Seriously,” I insist. “I just need coffee and I’ll be feeling like a million bucks.”

“I thought pregnant women weren’t supposed to drink caffeine.”

“Take it from my cold, dead hands. I dare you.” I turn back and resume rummaging through the cabinets. There are endless cans of beans and root vegetables, but I’m not seeing any coffee, until?—

Sasha’s hand closes around my wrist.

I wobble backward in surprise, but that motion makes my back seize up, so my palm goes shooting out for the nearest firm surface to balance myself. That surface ends up being Sasha’s shoulder. Not my first choice, but it certainly meets the “firm” requirement.

The feel of his heat and brawn underneath my fingertips is like getting sucked backward into a time travel machine. Suddenly, I’m in a spa. I’m in a library. I’m in a bathroom. I’m in a penthouse, gasping and riding as the windows fog up.

Then I’m just here again. In a kitchen, scared, hurting, angry.

Sasha’s blue eyes watch me take that whole mental journey without once saying a word. Then he sighs. “You’re in pain.”

“Lest you forget, I’m pregnant. It’s a package deal.”

Dawn seeps through the shutters, painting his scar silver. “How bad?”

“What difference does it make to you?” I ask. “Everyone’s got scars now. It’s just how things are going.”

He rubs at his beard with one hand. “There are thermal springs not far from here. Twenty minutes north, give or take. It’ll help if you soak for a while.”

“Oh, perfect. Another fun little morning errand. Do I get?—”

“Ariel.” His voice drops, roughened by something that isn’t anger. “Let me help you.”

Those words float between us, every bit as fragile as the cobwebs in the corner. I want to snap them. Stomp them. Wrap them around his throat and see if he chokes.

But then another spasm sears through me. I hiss.

Sasha’s hand twitches toward mine, though he stops just short. “Please.”

“Fine,” I grumble. “But if this is some ploy to get me naked?—”

“ Ptichka …” His lips quirk. “When have I ever needed an excuse for that?”

Sasha drives one-handed, the other resting on the gearshift—close, too close, to my thigh. Tuscan hills unravel outside the window, olive groves ghostly in the fog. I count crumbling farmhouses to avoid counting the number of times his gaze flicks to my reflection.

He parks where the gravel dies and kills the engine. “Here we are.”

“Here” is a slash in the mountainside veiled by cypress trees. No signs. No changing rooms. Certainly no black-marble-and-champagne-tray pitfalls to avoid. Just a crescent of steaming water cupped by mossy stones, the air thick with sulfur and earth.

Sasha circles the Peugeot to open my door. I wave him off, but my body betrays me as I try to do it all myself, a whimper escaping as I lever myself out. His jaw ticks.

“I’m fine,” I snap before he can speak.

“You’re stubborn.”

“Pot, kettle, asshole.”

He huffs something that might’ve been a laugh in another lifetime. Then he turns and leads the way. But I can practically feel his attention radiating back down toward me, cataloging every step, every breath.

The path up is treacherous, slick with dew. Sasha walks ahead, testing each stone. I mimic his footsteps, absurdly aware of how his shoulders tense whenever my breath hitches. Halfway down, my sandal slips?—

—and his hand shoots back to catch my elbow.

We freeze. His thumb taps the inside of my arm, once. “Careful,” he rumbles. Then he lets go.

It’s not much farther until we reach the top. We round a giant boulder and there it is.

The pool glistens below us, steam rising off its surface, calm water the color of oversteeped tea. We both stand awkwardly for a minute. I’m looking at Sasha; Sasha is looking pointedly everywhere but at me. The springs hiss like a third presence. In the corner of my eye, I see Sasha’s fingers hovering at the hem of his shirt. My pulse thrums in my throat.

Then he peels the fabric off, and I’m gutted.

Old scars I’ve traced with my tongue. The jagged necklace of raised flesh around his neck. The newer wounds, still raw above his hip and across his shoulders. My body remembers the heat of him, the salt, the way he’d groan when I kissed that spot beneath his collarbone.

He hesitates, hand on his belt. Gray eyes lock onto mine. “You need help?”

“N-no. I’m good.”

I don’t feel good, though. I’m steaming up from within. Who needs hot springs when you’ve got repressed sex fantasies to keep you warm?

My fingers fumble with the buttons of my dress. Every brush of fabric against oversensitive skin is a betrayal.

He turns away, giving me privacy that feels a hell of a lot more like punishment. I’d do the same, but he’s too quick—he shucks his pants down, revealing lean muscles clad only in a pair of black boxer briefs.

Water ripples outward as he sinks into the pool. I watch the muscles in his back flex, the droplets clinging to his shoulders. My mouth goes arid.

You’ve done this before, I remind myself. You’ve had him roaring your name against a library wall. Compared to that, this is nothing.

But that was before the lies. Before the blood.

Things are different now.

When the last button finally comes undone, my dress slithers down to a puddle on the grass. I step out of it in my bra and panties, ashamed by the swell of my stomach, and hurry to lower myself down into the spring so I can hide beneath the surface of the water.

But it’s slow-going. Too slow. I can’t see where I’m stepping, so I have to move gingerly. I can feel Sasha’s eyes on me the whole time, cataloging every inch of my near-nakedness.

I fumble down, sliding from one wet rock to the next, until at last I sink up to my waist. The heat is instant relief on my lower back. I can’t help letting out a whimper of gratitude.

Sasha exhales through his nose. Looks up at the mist-shrouded sky.

I sink deeper, until the water licks my chin. I’m praying it’ll drown the inconvenient lust—and if not, it can just drown me.

“What?” I challenge when he stays quiet.

“Nothing.”

But I catch the way his neck flushes when another involuntary moan slips out past my lips. The water’s working dark magic—I can breathe again, the twins’ weight buoyed by the water.

I can’t fully unclench, though. Not with him here, barely clothed, no one else around for miles and miles. Even as the minutes bleed past and I try to tell myself that it’s okay, everything’s okay, my muscles stay coiled up tight.

“You should—” Sasha starts.

“If you say ‘relax,’ I’m drowning you in here.”

He snorts. “I was going to say you should stretch your hips. The magnesium helps, and prenatal stretching improves labor outcomes.”

I squint at his outline through the steam and fog. “Since when do you know about prenatal care?”

I could almost swear he blushes. “I had Feliks send me some articles.”

The image is unintentionally hilarious. I want to laugh as I picture him cooped up in the villa cellar, scowling broodily at diagrams of cervical dilation.

Silence swells again. Water laps at the stretch marks branching across my stomach. I trace one with my thumb, wondering if he’s looking. Wondering why I care. Lord knows there’s plenty else I could be concerned about. It’s been a hectic few days, to say the least. I haven’t had coffee and my stomach is gurgling with hunger.

I’ve never felt farther from New York than I do right now. Even for the six months in France, I felt away, but not that far away. This, though, is like I’ve jumped to a different planet. Steamy fog wreathing me as I share a hot spring with this alien of a man, this enigma, this what-the-hell-makes-you-tick mystery who got me pregnant and ruined my life. I miss my mom. I miss my apartment. I miss Gina.

“I miss bagels,” I blurt.

Sasha blinks. “What?”

“Bagels. A good, real, authentic New York bagel. I haven’t had one in six months. I’d made my peace with never having one again. Or at least, I thought I did. But now… Fuck me, I’d kill for a bagel.”

Sasha, to my surprise, lets out a laugh. “I’ve done worse for less.”

But I feel like I’ve opened Pandora’s box now, and I can’t possibly keep it all contained within me. “You know what else I miss? Target. And bodega coffee. And Gina’s shitty apartment with the radiator that sounds like a dying accordion.” My throat tightens. “I miss talking to her. To Lora. To my mom. I miss so many things that I always used to take for granted, and if I don’t think about them, it’s fine, but if I give them even the tiniest fraction of a thought, my heart starts to hurt so bad that I feel like I’m gonna die.”

Sasha’s quiet for three heartbeats. Four. Five. Then he reaches for his discarded pants on the rocks.

I tense as he pulls out his phone—black, encrypted, almost certainly bulletproof. He powers it on, taps through menus, then extends it toward me.

“Call them.”

The device glints in the mist. I eye it like it might bite me. “You’re joking.”

“You think I’d joke about this?”

“They could trace?—”

“Not this line.” His jaw flexes. “Five minutes. That’s all I can risk.”

My fingers tremble as I take it. I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop, but Sasha climbs out before I can retort. Water sluices off him in sheets, those black briefs clinging obscenely to curves I swore off six months ago. I look away just in time to miss the worst of it—but not before my body stirs.

He wanders over to a boulder a few yards away. Just out of earshot, but close enough to be here in a second if I need him. He just sits silently, gazing over the fog-crowned hills in the distance.

So I dial.

One ring. Two. I’m just about to give up hope when?—

“Hello?” Gina’s voice crackles through, sleep-rough and absolutely glorious.

A sob tears up my throat. “Hi, Gee. It’s me.”