Page 122 of Cruel Demands

“Pull your panties to the side for me.”

She does, her eyes on me, watching me as I paint the inside of her lips with my flattened tongue, memorizing the grooves. I worship her breaths and tremors and the helpless movements of her hips. I pull back and slide her soaking underwear down her legs. She lifts her hips to help me, and I feel tenderly toward her, the shared moment, the intimacy that goes into stripping each other.

I toss her underwear aside and spread her lips apart, letting my finger slide up and down the part where she is continually leaking. “This pussy is all mine?” I ask her gently, tilting my head at her.

“Yes,” she says again.

“Yes what?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Look at me,” I say. She does. “Tell me.”

“My pussy is yours, Mikhail.”

“And what do you want me to do?”

“I want you to take me.”

Her eyes remain on mine as I plunge my tongue and fingers inside her. Her breasts heave, and she moans out, “Oh, I feel so full.” Her breathing becomes ragged and she breaks apart with my name and God’s juxtaposed on her lips.

I rise and hold her while the shaking passes.

She presses her face against my neck, breathing hard. I kiss her and stand, but she pulls me closer and whispers, “Take me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Please, I’m sure.”

My fingers slide down between her legs, and I push two inside her. She is still sopping. “You are sure,” I repeat, thinking of when she said she felt full with my tongue and my two fingers three knuckles deep inside her. If that was full, she is unprepared for what’s coming. But I’m already standing and unbuckling my belt, my agonizing erection pressed against the zipper of my pants.

“I am sure,” she repeats in a Russian accent, mocking me.

I walk over and grab her chin, yanking her face up to look at me. “If you use jokes to deflect, I will think you are afraid.”

She looks at me with fire in her eyes. “I’m not afraid. I want you to take my virginity, Mikhail.”

I meet her fire with my own. There is no path back from this. No clean office. No careful separation. No version of my life in which Taylor returns to being merely an employee, a foreign student, a woman I once met in a bar.

I lift her into my arms. She wraps her legs around me. I carry her toward the bedroom.

For the first time since I met her, I stop pretending I intend to ever let her go.

31

TAYLOR

Mikhail looks at me like he could eat me alive.

I know the danger of having a man like Mikhail inside my apartment, standing between my knees with his shirt half-open and his belt undone, and somehow, I have stopped caring completely. He’s right. I want him. I’m his.

He can stalk me and gather intel on me. He can kill a man and stand there with his blood on him like it means nothing. He can even tie me up and hold me prisoner in his home. I still want to be his.

Mikhail reaches the bed and lowers me onto it carefully. That’s what I want. I want the tenderness of the way his hand slips behind my head and waist to brace me. I want to be precious to him even if nothing else is.

The mattress dips as he leans over me. His hand settles beside my head. For one long moment, he does nothing. His eyes move over my face.

“What?” I whisper.