Page 31 of Cruel Demands

“Distracting you.”

“From blood?”

“Yes.” I lower my mouth to hers before she can ask again.

7

TAYLOR

My problem is how much I liked the way Mikhail carried me like I weighed nothing. The way his hands pressed into my back, broad and firm and horribly sure of themselves. I liked the way he didn’t stumble, didn’t hesitate, didn’t ask if I was comfortable every three seconds like boys do when they want credit for being decent.

I should be thinking. I’m always thinking. I think through assignments and train routes and the exact amount of money in my checking account. I think through what I say before I say it because I hate sounding foolish. I think through everything so carefully that sometimes I feel like I’ve lived my whole life from three inches behind my own eyes, watching myself try to be good.

Now he’s looking at me like he wants to eat me alive, and I forget every word I have ever learned.

I should be thinking in this stranger’s house, beneath this man twenty-three years my senior whose home more closely resembles a lair, but when Mikhail stands over me, one knee pressing into the bed, his tie loose and his salt-and-pepper hair disturbed from my fingers, I find myself strangely devoid of thought. I’m breathless and mindless, sensation only.

His shirt is wrinkled where I’ve pulled at it. His mouth is darker than before, lips wet from kissing me. He looks ruined. Ruins that I made. The knowledge goes through me like lightning.

“You’re staring,” he says.

“So are you.”

“I’m allowed.”

I prop myself up on my elbows. “Why?”

“Because you are in my bed.”

My stomach flips. I should have an answer for that. Something clever. Something that keeps us balanced. I’m allowed because I’m in your bed.

Instead, my eyes go to his hands. They’re large and scarred faintly across the knuckles. Not polished hands. Not soft hands. I noticed them in the bar and tried not to. I notice them again now as he reaches for me. I swallow hard, and I watch from where I’m propped on my elbows as those rough fingers reach for my legs and open them. He kisses the inside of my knee, his brown eyes never leaving mine, and I feel something deep inside me clench.

I am only the heat in my stomach, rising to my chest, and the burning where his hand touches behind my thigh and grips my skin. I am only my wet underwear clinging between my legs and the sweat under my arms growing cooler in his dark room.

I am only my throat jumping when he leans down and kisses me, one hand braced near my hip. This kiss is not like the first one. That one was a collision. This one is worse because he is choosing every part of it. His mouth opens mine slowly. His tongue brushes against mine, and the sound I make is so humiliatingly soft that I feel heat rush up my neck.

He hears it. I know he hears it because his hand tightens around my knee, and he kisses me deeper. His knee slips between mine, his weight above me but not on me. I want it on me. I want the heaviness of him. I want to know what it feels like to have all that control pressed out of him. Or pressed out of me, maybe. I hook my fingers in his loosened tie and pull. He comes down another inch.

Not enough. I pull again. This time his mouth leaves mine, and he looks at me with a warning in his eyes. “Careful.”

“I thought you liked direct.”

“I do.”

“Then come here.”

His nostrils flare.

For one second, I’m proud of myself. Then he catches both my wrists in one hand and pins them above my head, and pride turns into something bright and helpless that sparks down my spine. “Oh,” I say.

His mouth finds my throat. “Yes,” he murmurs against my skin. “Oh.”

My eyes close. The room tilts.

His teeth graze the place below my jaw, and I jerk before I can stop myself. Not away. Toward. My body is very clear on that distinction even if my mind is scrambling behind it with a flashlight and a map.

Mikhail’s free hand moves to my waist, then lower, over my hip, dragging the fabric of my dress with it.