Page 76 of Cruel Demands

She gives me a look. “Drink water, mostly American.”

When she closes her bedroom door, the apartment goes quiet, and I’m left with only my thoughts and the ringing in my ears. I clean the table badly. Put the shot glasses in the sink. Take water to my room like a responsible person and then don’t drink it.

Instead, I sit on my bed and take out my phone. I don’t have Mikhail’s personal number, but I’m resourceful, which is exactly how I ended up with an internship in Moscow in the first place. Resourcefulness got me in this predicament.

But I still have the message from his driver. I still have the office directory. I still have too many ways to reach him for someone who absolutely shouldn’t reach him.

I open a blank message. I type nothing. What would I even say? Hi, thanks for humiliating me professionally and maybe threatening me politically, also I can’t stop thinking about your hands?

I shove the phone under the pillow with a groan.

I hate him. I hate the way he says my name like it belongs in his mouth. I hate the way he looks at me like he knows the answer before I’ve decided the question. I hate that when he threatens me, it makes me wet, and I don’t know what it means about myself. I hate that when he grabs me, I don’t want him to let go, and I hate that he listens. I hate that he’s not quite all bad. I hate that I can’t make my mind up about him.

I lie back on the bed and stare at the ceiling. The vodka makes everything warm and restless. My skin feels too aware of itself. My blouse is still on but unbuttoned at the throat. My skirt rides high on my thighs. My mind drifts, traitorous and vivid, back to his office. His hand on my elbow. “This isn’t a movie,” I told him. “Let go.”

And he did.

My fingers find my own elbow first, pressing where his hand had been. The skin is normal. Of course it is. He didn’t hold hard enough to leave a mark. I wish he had. The thought is so embarrassing that I close my eyes.

Then my hand slides lower. Not quickly. Not dramatically. Almost like I can pretend it isn’t happening if I move slowly enough.

I think of his voice in the dark. “Stay with me.” I think of his hand over mine, guiding and not guiding. Making me say what I wanted. Making me hear myself ask. I think of his mouth at my temple. “Good girl.”

My breath catches. I turn my face into the pillow, furious with myself, and my hand slips beneath the waistband of my tights.

The first touch makes my whole body tense, not from surprise this time but memory. It isn’t the same. Of course it isn’t the same. My own hand is smaller, softer, too familiar. It doesn’t carry the threat of him, the restraint of him, the terrible focus of him watching my face like every sound mattered.

I close my eyes and let myself imagine him beside me again. Fully dressed. Controlled to the point of cruelty. Watching me like he’s angry at himself for wanting to watch.

In my head, he says my name. Not Miss Hayes. Taylor.

I move my finger in a circle over my clit, and shame burns through me so fast it becomes part of the heat. I bite my lip to stay quiet. The wall between my room and Anya’s suddenly feels thin as paper.

I think of his silence when I asked if not being close to a politician could hurt me. The way he dodged the question about whether he was the reason Nikolai hadn’t called me. He did dodge it, didn’t he? He smiled when I pointed that out.

I imagine him telling me that yes, he’s the reason Nikolai hasn’t called me. Telling me to close the door. I hesitate, but I walk over to it, and I do as he asks. When I turn around to face him, he grabs me by the elbow, and this time, I don’t tell him to let go.

“Good girl,” he murmurs, pulling me toward him. I think he’s going to kiss me, but he bends me over his desk instead, face down so that my cheek is pressed against the cold wood. “You listen so well.”

He pulls my tights down and pushes my skirt up, and the air hits my exposed pussy. His fingers slide up and down my hot skin, and I jolt at the touch. His weight is on top of me, and his mouth is at my ear. “You’re already soaked, kotik.” Kitten. “Is it because I called you a good girl?”

“Yes,” I admit, shame making my cheeks hot.

He pushes two fingers into me and whispers, “Yes, what?”

I know what he wants. The humiliation is thick in my throat, but I want to say it too. And he knows I do. He can feel it in the way I tighten around his fingers, the way he can barely move them inside me. “Yes, sir,” I whisper.

He chuckles. “You’re sweet. Spread your legs.”

I open my legs for him, my face still against the cold wood, and breathe out, knowing what’s going to happen, knowing he’s going to be my first. It won’t be romantic. I want it so badly.

“You were trying to make me jealous, weren’t you? Letting him touch you?”

I nod.

“Slovami.” In words.

“Yes.”