Page 91 of Cruel Demands

Something in his voice makes my stomach flip. I do it slowly, still furious enough to want to argue and curious enough not to. My knees scrape against the carpet. The humiliation of it burns almost as hot as the frustration. He pushes my shirt up, his rough hands stroking my back tenderly.

I hear his breathing change behind me first. That’s almost worse than seeing him. Mikhail is usually so controlled that every rough breath feels stolen from him, dragged out despite himself. The sound catches low in his throat, followed by one sharp exhale that makes every muscle in my body tighten in response.

Then warmth hits the bare skin of my back. I flinch at the suddenness of it, a startled breath leaving me as the heat spreads against skin already prickling from the cool office air. The sensation is strange and intimate and humiliating all at once, made sharper by the fact that I can’t see him.

My face burns, and I don’t know if I should stand or wait. The warmth on my back begins to cool almost immediately, leaving me acutely aware of exactly where it is and exactly what he has done. Then his breathing steadies. Of course it does. By the time his hands lower my shirt, Governor Korolev has apparently returned. “Good girl. Get up.”

Slowly, shaking, I rise to my knees. Mikhail offers me a hand and lifts me to my feet. He stands me between his knees and begins putting me back together with maddening care, straightening my clothes and smoothing my skirt as though he has not spent the last several minutes doing everything possible to ruin my composure.

My face burns hotter. “You can’t send me back out there like this.”

“Why not?”

“My ass is on fire.”

“No one can see that.”

“I look⁠—”

He grips my chin and turns my face toward the reflective glass of a framed photograph on his wall. My lips are swollen. My cheeks are flushed. My long hair is tangled from his hands, my bangs crooked across my forehead, and there’s something dazed and furious in my green eyes.

Mikhail reaches up and smooths one strand into place. It doesn’t help. “You look beautiful,” he says.

“I look like I just gave my boss a blowjob.”

“You did.”

“Mikhail, I have your—” He straightens his tie as though nothing happened. I hate him. I want to climb back into his lap. He unlocks the door. I remain where I am. “You know. On me. You expect me to walk out?”

“Yes.”

“Everyone is going to know.”

“They will suspect.”

“That is not better.”

He opens the door and steps aside. His brown eyes move over me one final time, lingering on my mouth, my rumpled clothes, the tension in my thighs. Then he bends close enough that his breath warms my ear. “You will certainly have Dima’s attention looking the way you do now.” His gaze travels over me again. “Everyone’s attention, perhaps.” My face burns. “Do you think he’ll still want to take you out after work?”

I glare at him. His mouth curves. “Get back to work, Miss Hayes.”

I step into the hallway on shaking legs. Viktoriya looks up first. Then Dima. His eyes widen. Heat floods my face. Behind me, Mikhail’s door closes with a quiet click.

I make it three steps before I hear his voice through the wall, calm and authoritative as though he has not just left me aching beneath my clothes. “Send in the next appointment.”

I sit at my desk without looking at anyone. My skin burns against the chair, every movement reminding me of his hands, and I can still hear his voice through the wall discussing government business as though nothing has happened.

Dima leans toward me. “Are you all right?”

I stare straight ahead. “Yes,” I say through clenched teeth. “I’m fine.”

I’m not. I’m furious. At Mikhail for yelling at me in front of them. At him for dragging me into his office because Dima touched my waist. At him for going through my finances and having the nerve to call it protection. At him for saying things to me that should have made me slap him and somehow make me feel hot instead.

Mostly, I’m furious because I know exactly what happened in that office. And I wanted it.

I wanted his jealousy once I realized it was there. I wanted to provoke it. I wanted to see if I could make that terrifyingly controlled man lose enough of himself to prove that I mattered to him. And when he punished me for it, I wanted that too.

The realization sends another wave of heat through me, followed immediately by something colder.