Page 121 of Cruel Demands

“I need your permission,” I say.

Her expression softens. Not trust. Not yet. But perhaps the beginning of it.

“I want you,” she says.

I lift her onto the table. She gasps against my lips, arms locking around my neck. I step between her knees, and the position brings her body flush against mine. She feels how much I want her. Her breath catches.

I press my mouth to her jaw, then the soft place beneath her ear. She tilts her head before she can stop herself. I kiss the exposed line of her throat slowly. She shivers. Every reaction feels like a gift I have no right to receive.

“Mikhail.”

The sound of my name in person is worse than the recording. Better. Real.

I pull back enough to look at her. “Do you know what that message did to me?”

Her eyes close. “Please don’t.”

“Not what you think,” I say. She looks at me again. “I wanted to come here that night. I wanted to put you over my shoulder, carry you out of this apartment, and make you repeat every word while looking at me.”

Her thighs tighten around my hips. I feel it. So does she.

“But I didn’t,” I continue.

“Why?”

“Because you were drunk.” The answer surprises her. I see it. Something sharp moves through my chest. She expected less of me. Perhaps she was right to.

I slide one hand beneath the hem of her sweater, resting my palm against the warm skin of her waist. She inhales.

“Tell me to stop,” I say. She shakes her head. “Slovami.” Words.

“Don’t stop.”

She has never done this before. That knowledge sits beneath every question I ask her, every pause I give her. Fear is one thing. Inexperience is another. I will not allow her to give me either one by accident and spend tomorrow wondering whether I took something she did not actually choose to give.

I kiss her again. My hand moves slowly upward, giving her time to object. She arches into the touch instead, impatient now, dragging my coat from my shoulders. It falls to the floor.

Her hands move over my chest, clumsy with urgency, searching for buttons. I catch her wrists gently. Fear flickers through her face. It vanishes when I bring one wrist to my mouth and kiss the faint mark left around it. Her breathing stops. I kiss the other.

“I am sorry,” I say.

Taylor stares at me. I do not apologize often. Perhaps she understands this. Perhaps she does not. I release her wrists and remove her sweater, then pause. She is beautiful.

She knows what I am and has chosen, for this moment, not to run. She is beautiful because she discovered me. She is beautiful because she is not me. She is beautiful because she is vulnerable and brave and smart.

I lower my mouth to her shoulder, her collarbone, the center of her chest. She threads her fingers through my hair.

I kneel before her. I place my hands on her knees and part them slowly. Her cheeks flush as she watches me. I kiss the inside of one thigh. Then the other. Her fingers tighten in my hair. I take my time.

I have imagined devouring her so many times before and after hearing the recording. I imagined her once when I watched her across the room at the bar. I imagined it while I was touching her. I imagined it in the shower the next day. I imagined it when I first listened to the voicemail, and I have imagined it over and over, pressing play and stroking myself, consuming every sound for my pleasure. Every time I have imagined it, I’ve gone straight for her center and I’ve taken what I wanted until I was milked dry and she was a sweaty heap beneath me.

But with her trembling above me, I want patience. I want to learn which touch makes her breath catch, which makes her whisper, which makes her forget she is supposed to resist me.

When my mouth finds her through the thin fabric, she jerks forward with a broken sound.

I hold her steady, my palm on her lower stomach. “This is what is mine?” I ask her.

She whimpers, “Yes.”