Page 21 of Cruel Demands

Petyr notices. His expression falls slightly. “Taylor⁠—”

“I’m fine.”

“I did not mean⁠—”

“I know,” I cut him off.

Anya smacks his shoulder and switches into faster Russian, her words spilling out too quickly for me to follow. Petyr answers just as rapidly. I catch perhaps every third word. American. Stubborn. Beautiful. Possibly nettle.

“What did he say?” I ask.

Anya’s smile turns wicked. “He said you are a cultural challenge.”

“I did not say challenge,” Petyr protests.

“What did you say?”

He hesitates.

I narrow my eyes. “Petyr.”

He mutters the word again.

Anya begins laughing harder.

“What?”

“He called you a conquest.”

I point a pickle at him. “Absolutely not.”

“It does not translate exactly.”

“It translates enough.”

“I meant a linguistic conquest.”

“That is worse.”

He grins, entirely unrepentant. “You see? Already you are learning.”

I should stay irritated. Instead, the vodka softens the edges of everything, and Petyr is smiling at me like I am the most entertaining problem he has ever encountered. Anya is laughing into one hand. Someone at the bar begins singing along badly to the music.

For once, my phone is not buzzing with another problem from home. For once, I am not sitting in my tiny bedroom wondering whether coming here was selfish. For once, I feel twenty. Not a daughter measuring every experience against what it will cost her parents.

Just twenty. Twenty and warm and tipsy and alive.

A server approaches, her blond hair falling over one shoulder as she leans down to place a drink in front of me. “From the gentleman,” she says in English, then nods toward the back of the bar.

Anya and Petyr fall silent.

I look up. A man sits alone in a booth near the rear wall. He looks completely wrong for this place.

Everyone else is wearing sweaters, cheap coats, university sweatshirts, or shirts chosen because they can survive having vodka spilled on them. He is dressed in a black suit that looks tailored rather than purchased, with a black shirt underneath it and a watch that catches the low light when he raises his glass. He is too formal. Too still. Too fully constructed for a room filled with students still deciding who they are.

Silver threads through the dark hair at his temples. He is not old, exactly, but he is older than the men around him. Older than Petyr. Older than anyone I have ever seriously considered wanting.

Every other man in the room looks as though he is still being sketched. This one has already been carved. Carved from something dark and expensive. No. Forged. He nods toward me. His mouth twitches, drawing my attention to the scar cutting diagonally through the dark hair along his jaw.