30. Ariel
30
ARIEL
“I have a surprise!” Jasmine sing-songs as she flounces into the kitchen, brandishing her phone like it’s made of gold.
I look up from my daily cup of ginger tea, immediately suspicious. She scowls at me. “Oh, don’t give me that sourpuss face.”
“Your last ‘surprise’ ended up with me kneeling in the dirt for a week straight.”
“And now, look at the beauty we get to feast our eyes on every single day!” she crows, throwing a hand to the window. Through it, I see a wide field of tilled dirt, with little green leaves sticking up like pubes.
“Truly a sight to see,” I mumble. “As tempted as I am by today’s offer, though, I’ll pass.”
She comes over and tweaks my nose. “No, little missy, you shall not pass,” she says in her best Gandalf impression. “This surprise is unpassable. Impassable? No, unpassable. Final answer.”
“You’re scaring me, Jazzy.”
“Don’t be scared! Be excited! ” She rubs my shoulders, probably to butter me up. Unfortunately, it’s a highly effective negotiation tactic, because they’ve been aching.
“What kind of surprise are we talking about, specifically?” I ask.
She dances around me, eyes lighting up. “The kind that involves you doing your best Tyra Banks smizing while looking absolutely gorgeous with that pwecious widdle baby bump of yours!”
The piece of toast I’m holding freezes halfway to my mouth. “ What? ”
“A maternity shoot!” She’s practically vibrating with excitement. “I hired a guy named Giovanni that I met in the village last week. He’s the best photographer in the region. He’s done work for Vogue Italia !”
I’m not sure which word summoned Sasha from the cellar, where he’s been working on the generator again. I’m guessing it was “guy,” not “ Vogue Italia ,” but then again, the man is full of surprises.
Whichever the case, he looks unpleased.
“Absolutely not,” he thunders. “Cancel it.”
“No can do,” trills Jasmine. “The deposit has already been paid.”
“Then unpay it. I’m not having an outsider here. Much less an outsider taking pictures of us.”
“Oh, relax.” Jasmine waves him off. “Kosti recommended him. Right, Uncle?”
Kosti looks up from his newspaper, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. “Giovanni’s good people. Done work for me before. Very discreet.”
“See? It’s all coming together.” Jasmine turns those pleading eyes on me. “Plus, he’s kinda, sorta on his way here. ETA one hour, tops.”
“An hour? ” I splutter. “Jas, I’m wearing Kosti’s old overalls and haven’t washed my hair in two days!”
“That’s why I’m telling you now.” She grins. “Plenty of time to make yourself presentable.”
“I said no.” Sasha’s jaw is clenched. “It’s not happening.”
“Oh, let them have this.” Mama materializes behind him with fresh coffee. “When was the last time I saw my daughter photographed, hm? And now, with the babies coming…” She trails off meaningfully.
I watch Sasha’s resolve crumble under the combined weight of Jasmine’s puppy eyes and Mama’s guilt trip. It’s kind of impressive, actually. They’ve got him completely unraveled.
“Fine,” he growls finally. “But I’m running a background check first.”
“Already did,” Kosti pipes up helpfully. “Clean as a whistle.”
Sasha glowers at him. “Whose side are you on?”
“The side of preserving precious memories.” Kosti folds his paper with a flourish. “Now, shall we discuss wardrobe options for our lovely mother-to-be?”
I groan and drop my head into my hands. “I hate all of you.”
But Jasmine is already dragging me toward the stairs, chattering about lighting and angles and the importance of capturing this magical time in my life. Behind us, I hear Sasha muttering darkly in Russian.
He can grumble all he wants. We both know he’s powerless here. As am I. We’re just collateral damage in a well-meaning conspiracy.
Though I have to admit, as Jasmine pulls various flowing dresses from her suitcase… It might be nice to have some photos that don’t involve me looking like a sweaty gardener in borrowed overalls.
What’s the harm, right?
“Beautiful, bellissima ! Now, Signore Ozerov—hands lower on her belly. Yes, cradle the life you created together. Perfect.”
Sasha’s palms burn through the thin cotton of my dress. I count his breaths against my neck—five, six, seven—each one tighter and hotter than the last.
I’m starting to think that this was maybe unwise. Yes, I’m sure that one day, I’ll treasure these photos more than life itself, as proof that motherhood has its beautiful moments. Right now, though, I’m mostly concerned by the fact that Sasha’s palms on my waist are getting more and more possessive and he’s starting to breathe like an angry bull.
My best guess is that it has something to do with how Giovanni is… shall we say, touchy-feely . He has combed my hair countless times, smushed my boobs together twice to emphasize my cleavage, and in one particularly shocking move, reached up my dress to adjust my panty line.
It’s not that he’s a sexual threat to Sasha—after all, Giovanni’s husband is the one who dropped him off at the villa. Nice guy. Very thick mustache.
But Sasha’s eyes are narrowing into the thin slits that I know precede violence.
“Relax your jaw, signore ,” Giovanni calls from behind his lens. “You look like you’re posing for a mugshot, not your first family portrait. Yes, yes, there! Beautiful! Now, look at each other like you cannot wait to make more babies!”
“Jesus Christ,” Sasha growls under his breath, and I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing. But when I turn my head to meet his gaze, the humor dies in my throat. His eyes are storm-dark, pupils blown wide, and I’m suddenly, vividly reminded of how those hands felt pinning my wrists to the mattress at 3 A.M. last night.
Lately, it’s started to get out of hand. We’re fucking like absolute rabbits, multiple rounds, with Sasha spending hours going down on me in between. I didn’t know it was possible to come a dozen times in a row. You learn something new every day, I suppose. Even now, I’m still wet and wobbly, though it’s been hours since Sasha pulled out of me and slunk mournfully back to his side of the villa.
The fact that he has his hands plastered to my hips and that I can feel his dick hardening against the curve of my ass is not helping matters whatsoever.
This is just pretend, I tell myself. Like playing dress-up .
Except the heat pooling low in my belly feels pretty fucking real.
Giovanni lowers his camera and grins at us. “Perfect! But the light, she changes too fast.” Giovanni squints at the treeline. “We must move to the forest. The rays through the leaves will make Mama here glow like an angel.”
Sasha goes still. “The forest.”
“ Si, si! Most romantic!” Giovanni’s already shoving equipment into his bag, because apparently, he’s incapable of doing anything at less than a hundred miles per hour. “The trees, they frame the love story!”
I glance up at Sasha. His jaw is clenched so tight I’m worried he’ll crack a tooth. “We can just?—”
“It’s fine. The sooner we get this over, the better.”
We follow Giovanni into the forest, leaving Mama, Kosti, and Jasmine behind, the three of them tittering like schoolgirls from the front steps of the villa.
The air under the trees hums with golden hour magic—or maybe that’s just the adrenaline buzzing in my ears as Giovanni flutters around me, adjusting the diaphanous silk draped over my shoulders until he reveals a bit more skin than I’m entirely comfortable with.
“No, no—ah, yesss ,” he croons, fingers lingering on my hip. “Now, let the fabric fall just so… yes, yes, the curve of the belly, the shadow of the breast—perfection!”
Sasha’s boot crunches a twig behind the photographer. I don’t have to look to know he’s coiled tighter than a spring, that muscle in his jaw doing its angry little dance.
“Sway for me, Ariel. Like water, like air.”
I’m not sure how to move like either of those things while seven months pregnant with twins, but I give it my best shot. The resulting shimmy makes the fabric slip dangerously low across my breasts.
From his position against an oak tree, Sasha’s entire body goes rigid. He’s been getting progressively more murderous-looking with each of Giovanni’s “adjustments” to my poses. The last time Giovanni’s fingers grazed my hip to angle me toward the light, I swear I heard Sasha growl like a bear.
“Now, perhaps we lose a layer, yes?” Giovanni’s hand drifts toward the knot securing the silk cups of the gown behind my neck. “ Naturale. Just a hint of the maternal form. Very tasteful. We must capture the rawness, the vulnerability of motherhood?—”
“Touch that,” Sasha growls, “and I remove your hand.”
I roll my eyes. “Relax, Rambo. It’s called art.”
“ Art .” The word drips venom.
The photographer chuckles nervously. “Signore, perhaps if you stand just over there, by the birch?—”
“No.”
“Sasha—”
He steps into the dappled light, all pent-up menace in a black shirt that clings to every lethal line. My traitorous pulse kicks. Giovanni pales, clutching his camera like a shield.
“We’re done here,” rumbles Sasha.
“But the golden hour approaches! The light will be?—”
Sasha plucks the camera from Giovanni’s hands and replaces it with a thick envelope. “This is more than adequate compensation for your time. And your camera.”
“I… but…” Then Giovanni opens the envelope, and his eyes go wide. “Ah. Si, si , of course.” He starts gathering his equipment even faster than the first time around and disappears without a word.
I wait until Giovanni practically jogs away down the drive before turning to Sasha. “That was a bit dramatic, don’t you think?”
“He was going to undress you.” His jaw works. “In the middle of the fucking forest.”
“It’s called artistic nudity, darling.” I adjust the slipping fabric. “Very tasteful. Very naturale .”
“There’s nothing tasteful about another man’s hands on what’s mine.”
The words churn between us, heavy as thunder. We both know this crosses about a dozen different lines in our “just sex” agreement, but I’m finding it hard to care when he’s looking at me like that.
“Yours, huh?” I arch an eyebrow. “Funny, I don’t recall signing any property deeds.”
His hands find my hips, yanking me closer. “No? Then why are you still wearing my marks from last night?”
Well, shit. He’s got me there.
“The twins are yours,” I concede. “The rest is still up for debate.”
His fingers slide up to the knot Giovanni was reaching for. “Want to debate it right now?”
“I think you don’t know what ‘debate’ means.”
“I know what ‘mine,’ means,” Sasha replies, hedging closer to me until our hips are flush. “And I know that no one photographs my wife but me.”
‘Wife’ stops me cold. It’s not a term we use. Ever. It belongs to that nebulous future we both pretend doesn’t exist, along with ‘marriage’ and ‘forever’ and all those other dangerous words that cannot, should not, will not happen.
“I’m not your?—”
The camera shutter cuts me off. Click.
Sasha lowers the Nikon, gaze dark over the lens. “Smile, ptichka. ”
“You’re insane.” I hitch the slipping silk higher. “And I’m not posing for some mafia maternity pinup.”
Click.
“There.” His mouth curves. “That scowl is perfect.”
I lunge for the camera strap. He spins me against a tree, bark rough through the flimsy gown. His breath scorches my ear. “You want art? I’ll give you art. Real art.”
The next hour bleeds gold.
He doesn’t tell me to arch or pout. Just circles with the camera, murmuring Russian filth that makes my nipples peak. Click. The silk slithers off one shoulder. Click. My laugh as wind tangles my hair. Click. The raw hunger in my eyes when his thumb scorches over my hip.
“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, other stains 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 was his .
Even if we’ll both pretend to forget it tomorrow.