36. Sasha
36
SASHA
The temperature gauge in Marco’s vineyard reads forty-two degrees Celsius, which explains why my linen shirt is already plastered to my back. But the locals don’t seem to mind the heat. They’re all chuckling as they join the throngs meeting up in front of the cantina, awaiting today’s marching orders.
How we even ended up here remains a bit of a mystery. A neighbor came calling, though “neighbor” is stretching it to its maximum, seeing as how the villa is situated two miles from the next closest inhabitable structure.
But I was out repairing a fence on the southern border of the property and Marco came bearing gifts of Italian coffee beans and bottles of wine, and the women were easily swayed.
So before I knew it, they’d volunteered Kosti and me—mostly me—to help with the grape harvest at Marco’s vineyard.
I tried to fight. But Ariel is… highly persuasive. Particularly with her clothes off.
In the end, I conceded. Several times.
Now, I’m sweating my ass off and the day has barely begun. I keep one eye on Ariel as she waddles toward the wooden vats where all of Marco’s many victims are gathering for his instructions. She’s wearing a loose cotton dress that makes her look deceptively delicate, though I know better. Just this morning, she threw a shoe at my head for suggesting she might want to skip today’s festivities.
“ Benvenuti, amici! ” Marco’s voice booms across the yard. He stands in one of the massive oak vats, fingers already stained purple from picking grapes. The man has the enthusiasm of a circus ringmaster and hands that never stop moving when he talks.
He starts waxing poetic about the history of the vineyard and the value of neighborly love. Silver hair, sun-leathered skin, eyes crinkled from decades of squinting into Tuscan light. A widower, according to village gossip. Even I can admit that the man has charisma in abundance.
Belle, apparently, couldn’t agree more.
She gravitates to the front of our little crowd, transfixed. When Marco mimes face-planting into a vat during his first harvest, she doesn’t just laugh—she giggles . I’ve never heard that sound from her before. It transforms her entire face, erasing fifteen years of careful composure.
“Looks like someone’s got a crush,” Ariel whispers, elbowing me in the ribs.
“Your mother? Never.” But I’m smirking as I say it, watching Belle tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. Marco notices the gesture and winks at her, which sets off another round of giggles.
“Come, come!” Marco waves Belle forward to illustrate how, once all the grapes are gathered, we’ll stomp them into juice. “It is simple! Like dancing, sì ?”
He extends his hand to help her up onto the platform. Innocent touch, lingering just a half-second too long. Belle’s cheeks flush pink.
“Five bucks says he asks her to dinner by sunset,” Ariel murmurs.
I snort. “Ten says she beats him to it.”
“So weird,” she mumbles, cheeks heated.
“Does it bother you? If it does, I’ll?—”
“Don’t you dare do anything, Mr. Intrusive,” she snaps, yanking me by the wrist before I can go waterboard Marco with grape juice. “I’m just wondering what the proper etiquette is when you witness your mom’s midlife sexual awakening.”
All around us, the crowd is laughing as they get ready for the day’s work. Marco is draped over Belle now, demonstrating how to swirl stems into a crown. I hear him teasingly call her vedova nera, a black widow, and she laughs and smacks him playfully in the chest.
Ariel watches, equal parts amused and horrified.
I’ve seen this look before. The reporter cataloguing details: sunlight caught in wine-dark splashes, kids chasing each other with stolen clusters, Belle’s fingers grazing Marco’s stubble. I know what she’ll write tonight: There’s life here, real and unfiltered, pulsing through the veins of the vines.
“Don’t,” she says suddenly, back stiffening.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t start with the—” She waves a hand. “The smoldering eyes. The ‘careful, Ariel, you almost look happy’ routine.”
I duck to steal a kiss on her cheek. “I can smolder. This isn’t quite that. But if you’d like…” My fingers slip beneath her sundress.
“Hands to self,” she says, shoving me away. But she’s laughing, I’m laughing, and the sun no longer seems quite so brutal.
Soon, we’re assigned to a crew and we get to work. The muscles in my back still protest as I hoist another basket, but the burn feels good. Like waking up and stretching after a long sleep. Two months ago, this would have torn my stitches and left me twitching in pain. Now, there’s just a dull ache where Dragan’s bullet carved its path.
“I can manage that one,” Ariel insists, reaching for a basket.
“Not a chance.” I shoulder past her, adding it to my stack. “Your job is to look pretty and supervise.”
She rolls her eyes but doesn’t argue. Instead, she falls into step beside me as we work our way down the row. The sun beats against my neck while my boots sink into earth softened by last night’s rain. It should feel like labor, but there’s something meditative about it—the repetitive motion, the whisper of leaves, Ariel’s quiet humming.
Her hands never stay idle long. She plucks grapes with surprising dexterity, adding them to my baskets whenever I set them down. When she stretches up to reach a higher cluster, I steady her with a palm against her lower back.
“Missed a spot,” I murmur, reaching around to swipe a bead of sweat from her temple. My fingers trail down her neck, lingering at her pulse point.
“You’re supposed to be working, not feeling me up,” she scolds.
“I’m excellent at multitasking.”
The better part of the morning passes with an easy rhythm. I’m surprised every time I reach just an inch beyond where I’ve allowed myself to go these last six months, and I find that there’s no pain waiting for me there.
I can bend.
I can stretch.
I can move.
Kosti, wherever he’s wandered off to with Zoya, would tell me I’m pushing my body too hard, too fast. But for the first time since that bullet tore through me, I feel whole. Strong. Ready.
It’s not perfect, of course. But I’m not biting my teeth and sweating bullets from agony. No, it’s just the Tuscan summer that has me sweating the normal kind of bullets. I’m inwardly relieved when Marco hops up onto the wooden platform and claps his hands.
“ Attenzione!” he cries out. All of the crews gather close.
With a flourish, he gestures to the half a dozen vats filled to the brim with grapes. “Any volunteers to begin?”
I have to bite the inside of my cheek to hide a smirk when Belle steps up.
She’s grinning shyly and batting her eyelashes. Ariel and Jasmine exchange glances that make me glad I never had a sister to conspire with.
“Verdict’s in,” Jasmine murmurs. “Mama’s smitten.”
For his part, Marco looks like he just won the fucking lottery.
He helps her up, her sundress hiked above her knees, and they immediately forget that the rest of the world exists. Laughing, I turn to Ariel. “I guess we’ll have to find our own way.”
“I don’t know…” She eyes the wooden rim of the nearest vat dubiously. “These ankles aren’t exactly Olympic-ready. More like bratwurst-ready.”
But I’m already moving behind her. “Would I let you fall?”
My hands find her waist and I lift her like she weighs nothing—a trick that gets harder each week as the twins grow. She squeaks in surprise, then giggles as I set her carefully into the vat. The sound echoes off the wooden walls.
“This is disgusting,” she announces, grimacing as purple mush oozes between her toes. Then her expression shifts. “Actually… wait. This feels amazing.”
I hop in beside her, and immediately understand. The crushed grapes are cool and slick. Strange at first, but once I get used to it, it’s a welcome relief from the heat.
“Marco says we need to keep moving,” I tell her, taking her hands. “Otherwise, the juice won’t flow properly.”
“Well, if Marco says so…” She waggles her brows. “Are you as smitten with him as Mama is?”
Growling, I bend down and flick a jet of purple juice at her. She squeals, a sound that hits my dick and my heart in unison, as she kicks back at me.
We have to rein in the fight when the clapping of the crowd rises into a beat, though. Stomp, clap, stomp, clap. I steady Ariel with my hands spanning her hips, just in case she falters.
I think she’s playing me like a fool, though. She leans back, pressing her ass against me, and speeds up. We’re a mess of tangled limbs, crushing fruit, laughing, laughing, laughing. Each movement brings us closer until we’re sharing the same breath, purple-stained and sun-drunk.
Eventually, all the grapes have been groped, the juice is flowing, and the sun begins to fade. Workers start to trickle home in twos and threes, calling “ Ciao, ciao” back over the shoulders, chatter trailing them long after they’ve disappeared over the hills.
Kosti takes Zoya home in the car, promising to come back and fetch us, though we all know he’s full of shit. Jasmine winks and says she’ll walk with a new group of friends who live on the way. With Belle distracted by Marco giving her a private tour of the wine cellar, that just leaves me and Ariel with the last remaining batch of grapes.
Ariel eyes me innocently. “We should probably finish this last set off, right?”
“Of course,” I say, as solemn as I can.
I help her back into the final vat. It’s quieter now. More shadows clustered in the corners. I can’t decide if the air is fermenting or if I’m just high on the way she keeps darting teasing little looks in my direction, her skirts raised high to reveal glimpses of thigh and ass.
She picks up a foot and plops it down. An errant drop flies up and hits me square in the middle of the forehead.
“Careful,” I scold. “You’re making a mess.”
“I thought you liked it when I got messy?” She bites at her lip, then grabs my hands, pulling me into an impromptu dance. The crushed grapes underfoot make everything slippery, forcing us to hold each other closer for balance.
I watch a droplet slide down her cheek and get hung up on the Cupid’s bow of her lips, so I bend down and lick it off.
Ariel’s eyebrow raises. “There’s a droplet on my hip, too,” she informs me. “Wanna give it the same treatment?”
I grin wickedly. “Thought you’d never ask.”
Then I grab her, pick her up, and pin her to the wall of the vat so her pussy is at face-level, her legs draped over my shoulders. She shrieks and clings to my hair as I lick exactly where she told me I should.
“S-Sasha! Sa— Fuck .”
She tastes like grapes and lust. If I wasn’t drunk on her before, I am now. I’m merciless and she comes fast, hard, quivering on my face.
Ariel can barely stand upright by the time I put her back down on her own two feet. “ Now,” I brag, “you are properly messy.”
She looks the way I want her to always look: hair wild, sex-mussed, lips swollen from chewing on them. Her eyes are gleaming and the pink spots on her cheeks stand bright. Purple streaks mark her from head to toe, as the dress clings to every curve that I’ve worshipped again and again, though it’s never enough to satisfy me for long. Even now, I’m dying to taste her again, though it’s only been a few seconds since I last had her taste on my tongue.
“You’re insatiable,” she accuses.
I bow. “Thank you.”
“Who said that was a compliment?”
I point between her legs. “ She did, for one.”
Laughing, Ariel headbutts me in the chest like a puppy. Then she slides one arm around my waist and one hand down the front of my pants. “She’s got some more things she’d like to tell you,” she whispers to me.
Fucking hell, no one has ever been hotter.
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.