Page 118 of Cruel Demands

“Obey you?” I stammer.

“Yes,” he says. “You stayed home because you were afraid of me.”

“Yes.”

“But you let me in. Why?” The air between us tightens. It is razor thin. My breath is on a tightwire, my chest heaving. “You can be afraid of me and still be attracted to me, Taylor. Those things can both be true.”

“They aren’t,” I whisper, but even I can hear how thin it sounds, how false.

“You will be a good girl, and you will follow the rules,” Mikhail says, still walking toward me. The spot between my legs pulses wildly. “And you are finished pretending you do not want me.”

29

TAYLOR

The certainty in Mikhail’s voice breaks whatever spell has formed. I feel anger return, clean and immediate. “I’m not pretending.” It’s difficult to maintain righteous anger when he’s looking at my mouth. “I’m not pretending,” I repeat.

“No?”

“No.”

His gaze lifts slowly to mine. He takes another step toward me. The apartment is not large enough for the amount of space he occupies. His coat is still on. Snow melts darkly across the shoulders, and the cold follows him into the kitchen, trapped in the wool and leather.

I move around the table. Not away from him. Just somewhere else.

“You should go,” I say.

“In a moment.”

“You brought snacks. You gave me rules. You reminded me that half the city could make me disappear. I think we covered everything.”

“Not everything. I have not finished with the conversation.”

“I’m finished.”

“No, you are frightened.” Mikhail reaches into his coat and removes his phone. He unlocks the screen.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Showing you something.” I peer over his shoulder as he navigates to his voicemails. He pauses, his thumb over the screen. “I will give you another chance.”

Heat flushes through my body, and I roll my eyes. “Another chance for what, Mikhail?”

“To tell me the truth. That you want me.” He looks so earnest, his brown eyes staring into mine.

When I look away, he dips his head slightly to maintain eye contact, and I lift my eyebrows. “There is no truth, Mikhail. If you think you have some smoking gun”—I grimace at my word choice—“that one of your creepy henchmen collected about me, you’re wrong, and I wish you’d keep your stalker intel to yourself. It’s fucking creepy, and it’s wrong.”

“No one collected this for me,” he says, his voice too satisfied, a smirk across his face. My stomach tightens, and I feel a blush creep up my neck. I look down as he scrolls through his voicemails and see what looks like—my phone number?

That doesn’t make sense. Maybe it’s a number off. I look closer. His eyes are still on me, his pupils dilated so wide I can hardly see his irises, and he presses play.

At first, there is only rustling. What sounds like fabric shifting. A muffled thump.

I look at him with my own smirk. “This is it, Mikhail? Did you mix up your American idioms? A butt dial isn’t a booty call?”

He says nothing, just touches his index finger to his lips and points to the phone. Then I hear it. Breathing. My breathing. No, it’s more than that. It’s moaning. No. The room starts to swirl and tilt.

The sound is uneven, gasping, desperate, too close to the microphone. And then, the ultimate betrayal, my own voice, sultry, silky, breathless, “You, Mikhail. It’s yours, Mikhail. Take me.” There’s another rustle, followed by a quiet exhale that I recognize with immediate, absolute horror. My entire body turns to ice.