Page 58 of Cruel Demands

She waits. I continue. “If you do not think you will be comfortable here, now that you know you will be working under me—” Color rises into her face. I stop. “Poor choice of words.” Her mouth presses into a thin line. “If you would prefer another placement,” I continue, “I can arrange one.”

Her face changes. Not much. Taylor has some discipline when she remembers to use it. But I see the color leave her mouth. I see the small, involuntary breath she takes through her nose.

Fear. That irritates me immediately.

“What is it?” I ask.

She lifts her chin. “Please don’t fire me.”

For one second, I say nothing. Her cheeks flush as soon as the words leave her mouth, and anger follows the humiliation so quickly I almost smile. “Fire you?”

Warmth curls low in my stomach at the idea of her begging me for anything.

“I need this placement.” The words come too quickly now, as if she knows she has begun badly and must finish before pride stops her. “I know this is awkward, and I know I should have realized who you were, but I didn’t. I swear I didn’t. And I won’t say anything to anyone. Not to Viktoriya, not to anyone in the program, not to anyone back home. I know last night was⁠—”

“Stop.”

Her mouth shuts. She stands with the folder clutched against her chest, breathing too quickly, looking at me as if I’m about to take something from her.

The pleasure dies immediately. Disgust turns in my stomach, aimed entirely at myself. The begging I like, and the fear I usually like, but those things belong to men who owe me money or men who have lied to my face. They should not belong to a twenty-year-old girl on the first day of her internship because she believes a mistake in my bed means I will ruin her future.

I am not that kind of criminal.

“You think I called you in here to dismiss you?”

“I don’t know why you called me in here.”

“To see whether you were comfortable working with me.”

She blinks. Then suspicion returns. “Comfortable?”

“Yes.”

“With you?”

“That was the question.”

Her eyes move toward the darkened glass wall, then toward the closed door, then back to my face. I can almost hear the calculation in her head. Who can see us. Who might speculate. What a closed door means. What she can afford to lose. Not much, apparently. “I’m comfortable,” she says.

“You are lying.”

Her mouth tightens. “I’m professional.”

“That is a different word.”

“I can do the job.”

“I did not ask if you could do the job.”

“Well, that is the only part that matters.”

Now I almost smile. There she is. Afraid, embarrassed, furious, and still somehow willing to argue with the man she believes could have her removed with a phone call. “You have done this all wrong,” I say.

Her body goes still. “Done what wrong?”

I come around the desk. I stop several feet away from her and lean against the edge of the desk. I push my sleeves up my forearms and grip the wood behind me. “You have compromising information about a powerful man,” I say. “And your first instinct is to reassure him?”

Her eyes widen. For a moment, she looks genuinely offended. Then horrified. “I’m not threatening you.”