Page 46 of Cruel Demands

She unlocks her phone with shaking fingers. Her hair falls in her face. She is panic and bare legs and youth and consequences. I should not find any of this charming. I do.

The feeling is so unwelcome I almost leave the room. Instead, I take my phone from the dresser and call downstairs. “Have Pavel bring the car around.” I end the call. “My driver will take you home.”

Taylor looks up sharply. “What?”

“My driver will take you.”

“No. No, that’s okay. I can get a cab.”

“You are late. You need to change. You do not know the city well enough. And—” I let my eyes flick up and down the state of her. “You do not know where you are. Pavel will take you home, wait while you change, and take you wherever you need to go.”

Her mouth closes. Then her expression shifts into something uncertain. “That’s…nice.”

I dislike the word. Nice. A useless little word for harmless men. “It is practical.”

“Right.” She nods too quickly. “Practical. Of course.”

“Yes. Get dressed,” I tell her, lifting my chin toward the bathroom door.

She gathers her clothes in a bundle against her chest and hurries toward the bathroom. At the door, she pauses. “Mikhail?” I look at her. The morning catches her face differently than the bar did. It makes her freckles visible. It makes her look even younger. It makes me feel every one of my forty-three years. “Thank you,” she says. Not teasing. Not defensive. Just grateful.

I nod once because I do not trust my voice. She disappears into the bathroom. The door closes. I stand alone in my bedroom, surrounded by evidence of her. The dent in the pillow. The empty water glass. The faint trace of her perfume beneath the clean scent of the soap she used to wash her face. My bed looks occupied even without her in it.

I hate that. I hate how easily the room has accepted her.

I dress while she rushes behind the bathroom door. I button a clean shirt. Fasten my watch. Put myself back together piece by piece until I resemble the man I am supposed to be.

Son. Governor. Pakhan. Threat.

Not a man who spent the night beside a girl because she asked him not to leave, the scent of her still on his fingers. Not a man who woke with her hand curled in his shirt and did not want to move.

By the time Taylor emerges, I’m fully dressed, and I have folded the shirt she slept in. Her hair looks raked through with fingers, her bangs still uneven, and she has attempted to wash off the rest of her makeup, leaving slight traces around her eyes.

“The car is waiting.”

Taylor follows me down the hall. She moves quickly, then slows when we reach the staircase, suddenly aware again of where she is. The chandelier. The marble. The silence. The men she has not noticed but who have certainly noticed her.

At the bottom, I hold her coat out to her while she slips into it, and for one second, the movement is so domestic it feels indecent. I step back. Her mouth opens, then closes. Good.

Let neither of us say anything we might remember too clearly. At the door, Pavel waits beside the car. He keeps his eyes forward, as he values his life.

Taylor looks from him to me. “You really don’t have to do this.”

“I am not. Pavel is.”

She huffs a laugh. “Okay.” She shifts her weight. “Then…thanks.”

I nod. “You should keep this,” I say, pushing the shirt she wore to bed into her chest.

Sentimentality is the only explanation, which makes me dislike the impulse immediately. It is not like me. None of this is like me except the part where I am putting her in a car and getting her away from me.

Her eyes widen. “What? No. I’m not stealing your shirt.”

“I have others.”

“That’s not the point.”

“What is the point?”