Page 32 of Cruel Demands

I am only the skin under his hand as it slides higher beneath the hem of my dress, coming alive under his touch. I am my back arching as his fingers reach the waistband of my tights and underwear, and then I am my breath catching so sharply that his hand stills against my slick heat.

His face lifts from my neck. His brown eyes find mine, narrowed and suddenly alert in the low light, and his mouth asks, “What?” roughly against my neck. I can feel his lips and tongue work together to form the word against my jugular.

“Nothing,” I say quickly, shaking my head, sinking my fingers into his black hair and opening my legs for him. But when I look at him again, his eyes narrow. His grip around my wrists loosens, but he doesn’t let me go.

I try to kiss him, but he moves his head back enough that my mouth brushes his jaw instead, and his hand frees itself from beneath the elastic. I feel the shame lump forming in my throat as his fingers drag away from me.

“Mikhail,” I complain. Whimper, really. Because apparently I am an unthinking person who complains and whimpers when a Russian man who is twice my age removes his hands from my underwear.

His expression shifts at his name. A flash of something hot and pleased and almost angry. “Tell me,” he says. His fingers release my wrists.

I lower my hands slowly, embarrassed by the sudden freedom. “There’s nothing to tell.”

He studies me for another second. I hold his gaze like that proves something. It must, because he starts moving again. His fingers slide beneath my dress, but instead of touching me, he hooks them into the waistbands of my tights and panties. He peels both down slowly, eyes burning a hole into mine, dragging them over my hips and thighs until he has to stand at the end of the bed to pull them free from my legs. The tights land in a dark knot beside the bed. He tosses my panties after them.

My center jumps, thinking he’ll grab me, pull me apart, and enter me before I can even decide if I like it. But he touches my ankle first. Just my ankle. His thumb strokes the thin bone there, and my entire body goes still.

He notices. Of course he notices. The corner of his mouth lifts. “Sensitive?”

“No,” I whisper back petulantly.

“No?” he asks, his voice lowering to meet mine. His hand slides up, over the outside of my calf, dragging my dress higher by accident or design. I watch his hand move and realize, with a delayed pulse of panic, that I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with mine. In movies, women know. They arch. They pull men down. They say things without sounding like they’re reading from a script. I sit there on my elbows, my chest rising and falling too fast, watching his hand climb my leg like it has every right in the world.

Mikhail’s gaze cuts to my face. “Taylor.”

I blink. “What?”

“You are thinking again.”

“I’m sentient. It happens.”

His hand stops at my knee. The absence of movement is somehow louder than the movement was. “You’re nervous,” he says.

“Most people are nervous in Bond villain bedrooms.”

“This again.”

“I’m just saying, the decor is doing you no favors.”

He looks around the room as if seeing it for the first time, then back at me. “The decor?”

“It’s very…” I search for the word in Russian and fail, saying in English, “Intimidating.”

“Intimidating,” he repeats, his accent thickening the word. I can’t tell if he knows what it means. His face sobers. “Do you want me to stop?”

“No.” The answer is immediate. Too immediate. His gaze drops to my mouth. “No,” I say again, quieter. “I don’t want you to stop.”

“Then why do you look terrified?”

“I don’t.” I look away, toward the dark windows. “I’m not terrified,” I say.

“No?”

“No. I’m just…” I swallow. “I’m aware.”

“Aware.”

“Yes.”