Page 25 of Cruel Demands

“It’s never just a drink.”

“Good,” I say, glad she thinks so.

The server arrives with another two glasses. I hand one to Taylor and raise mine. “To your secret job,” I say.

“To my secret job,” she echoes.

Our glasses meet with a soft click. We drink. I look at her mouth when she drinks, which is a mistake.

Her lipstick is mostly gone now, worn away by vodka and laughter and whatever poor judgment made her slide into my booth. What remains is a faint stain at the center of her lower lip. I imagine pressing my thumb there. I imagine ruining the rest of it with more than my thumb.

Across the room, the boy she came with now watches us like he has swallowed glass. Petyr, I think someone called him. He is young. Broad-shouldered. Pale in the way men get when jealousy takes the blood from their faces. His hands open and close at his sides, and I can see every thought moving through him. He wants to come over. He wants to drag her back.

One of my men stands near the bar and another is seated close to the entrance, dressed casually enough that no one here has noticed either of them. The man stationed near the bar glances at me, waiting for a signal I do not give. Petyr wants to prove something. Men who want to prove something are the easiest to break.

Taylor follows my gaze and sighs. Something softens around her mouth, and I dislike that more than I should. Sympathy is not affection, but it can become affection if fed often enough. “He’s harmless,” she says.

“No man who wants a woman is harmless.”

Her eyes snap back to mine. For a moment, the music and voices around us seem to dull. Her fingers tighten around the glass I sent her. “Does that include you?” she asks.

“Yes.”

The answer sits between us. I wait for her to retreat behind a joke. She does not. Instead, she leans back against the booth, one bare knee shifting under the table as if she has only just realized she is in a dress short enough to test my restraint. The movement is small. Accidental, maybe.

Maybe not.

“I appreciate the honesty,” she says. “Let’s keep the honesty going. Is this a regular thing for you? Sitting in dark booths and sending mysterious drinks to women half your age?”

“Are you half my age?”

“I don’t know. Are you secretly eighty?”

“Careful.”

“That wasn’t a no.”

“I am forty-three.”

She blinks once, and I watch the adjustment her mind makes cross her face. If I had to guess, she really is half my age. Twenty and excited to drink legally in this country. Young enough that I should stand up, pay the bill, and walk away before I become the sort of man my mother pretends I am not.

Taylor looks at me over the rim of her glass. “I’m twenty,” she says.

I should tell her that she is too young. I should tell her to go back to Petyr and his open face and his clumsy desire. I should tell her to be a good student, to focus on her studies, to drink water before she sleeps. “Okay,” I say because I don’t want to say anything else.

Her breath catches. Quietly. Almost nothing. But I hear it. My body reacts before my conscience can make one final, useless argument.

The boy across the room starts toward us. I do not look at him. Taylor does. A flash of frustration crosses her face. “I should go handle that,” she says, but she does not move.

“Do you want to?”

“No.”

“Then just wait. It will handle itself.”

“No, it won’t,” she says, panic rising in her throat as he gets closer.

“It will,” I say. One way or another. When he makes a fool of himself.