Page 34 of Cruel Demands

“Taylor.”

“No, it’s fine.” I sit all the way up, yanking my dress down over my bare thighs. My hands shake, and I hate that too. “I get it. You thought I was some sophisticated woman who walks into bars and goes home with older men all the time, and now I’ve ruined the fantasy.”

“The fantasy?” His voice goes very low.

“Yes.”

He laughs once, without humor. “You think that is what this is?”

“I don’t know what this is.”

“Clearly,” he cuts back, and it’s worse than true. It’s mean.

I stand. Too fast. The room sways. “I’m not a child. I know what I want.”

His eyes hold mine. “Do you?”

“Yes.”

“What do you want?”

I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.

Because I know what I want in pieces. I want his mouth on mine again. I want him to stop looking so far away. I want to be the girl I was ten minutes ago, bold and funny and drunk on being wanted. I want him to touch me like he did before he knew. I want him to understand without making me explain. I want to tell him everything and spend the whole night just talking about it.

I want too many things, and some of them contradict each other. Mikhail sees that too. His face shifts, and for the first time tonight, he looks almost gentle. I hate that most of all.

“You are angry because you are embarrassed,” he says.

“Thank you, Freud.”

“You are embarrassed because you think this changes how I see you.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” he says. My face burns when he says it, and my lips tighten. He lifts his hand slowly and touches my chin, tilting my face higher. “I thought you understood more than you did,” he says. “That is my mistake.”

“I’m not pure. Before you start getting weird about it.”

His mouth twitches. “I wouldn’t dare.”

“I mean it. I hate the virgin thing. I hate all of it. I hate that it sounds like a condition. I hate that people act like it means something about who you are. I hate that now you know and can’t unknow it.”

The words come too fast. I want to stop, but I can’t. “And I hate that I told you because now there’s this whole thing in the room, and you’re going to be noble about it, and I’m going to feel rejected even though I know that’s insane because I’m the one who ruined it.”

Mikhail’s thumb moves once along my chin. “You have not ruined anything,” he says. I laugh, but it’s too close to a sob. His brow furrows, and something passes over his face. “And I’m not noble.”

“Then stop acting like you are.”

“You want me to prove I am not?”

The question is quiet. Dangerous. I should say no. Every reasonable part of me says no. But there is an unreasonable part of me now, and it has been getting louder all night. It’s the part that crossed the bar. The part that got into his car. The part that looked into the dark interior and decided the scariest option was also the one I wanted most.

I lift my chin. “Maybe.”

For a few seconds, neither of us says anything. Then he steps away from me and drags both hands through his hair. The movement is sharp, frustrated, almost violent. Not at me. At himself. “I should send you home,” he says.

My stomach drops.