Page 63 of Cruel Demands

Dima places a hand on his chest. “I never embarrass myself.”

“You dance like an uncle at a wedding,” Katya says.

Dima looks offended. “A cool uncle?”

“The drunk one.”

Mikhail chuckles, and everyone looks at him again. It’s so obvious they don’t know what to do with him like this. Sitting at a sticky little table. His jacket still buttoned. His tie loosened by one inch. His fingers laced together loosely. His presence is disruptive.

“So,” Dima says, recovering first, “Governor Korolev. You dance?”

“No.”

“Never?”

“Not with you.”

Katya laughs, surprised into it.

Viktoriya points at him with her straw while looking at me. “See? Enigma.”

“Not dancing isn’t enigmatic. It’s boring,” Dima says, but his eyes move back to Viktoriya like her opinion is the only one that matters.

Mikhail’s eyebrows lift sarcastically, and he rests his square chin in his wide hand. I try not to look at his hand and think of what it can do, how it can feel. “You want me to dance with you, Dima?” he asks in a far too serious tone. Everyone at the table laughs into their drinks and hands.

Dima’s smile falters just a little, but he continues. “No, I just mean men like you are too important to get to do anything fun. Viktoriya thinks you are being mysterious. I know you are just not allowed. You can only drink black coffee, work, and then go home to your wife, Elena, who chairs a school parents’ committee and wears pearls.”

“I do drink black coffee,” Mikhail admits, loosening his tie a little more but leaving it around his neck.

“See?” Dima says triumphantly, raising both palms to the sky.

“I do not know about an Elena, though,” Mikhail tells him.

“Maybe you have yet to meet yours, but there is always an Elena,” Katya says solemnly.

“Maybe even two Elenas,” Alina adds.

“An older one and a younger one?” I ask, and a small, ridiculous laugh escapes me before I can stop it. Mikhail’s eyes cut to mine immediately. I shut up.

Viktoriya sees. She tilts her head, then reaches across the table to rescue Dima’s abandoned drink before his elbow knocks it over. Her fingers brush his wrist, and Dima goes quiet for the first time all evening. “What do you do for fun, Governor Korolev?” she asks.

He shakes his head and raises his arm to the waiter. He takes off his jacket and drapes it over the back of his chair, getting comfortable. “I drink,” he says in that voice that drips honey. Myself, I’m dripping whenever he speaks. He mutters something into the waiter’s ear, and the waiter returns with a tray of drinks. True Russians, the alcohol loosens the tension immediately.

Viktoriya tells a story about Dima accidentally sending a confidential memo to the wrong department and blaming the fax machine, only to find out they don’t have a fax machine. Dima insists they must have had one at some point, and Viktoriya swears they never did. Alina reveals that she’s in a band, to everyone’s surprise, and that she plays bass. Katya asks me if American bars are really like the movies, with people dancing on the counters, and if the men really all wear cowboy hats. I tell her only in the South, and she nods solemnly, looking to the side like she’s considering the answer seriously.

Mikhail watches quietly, but the air keeps making room for him. People keep checking his face to see if they’re allowed to continue having a good time. I hate that I’m one of them. That’s the thing about him—one of the things about him—he can be silent without disappearing.

I finish the drink Viktoriya ordered for me and feel it settle warmly beneath my ribs. Not drunk. Not even close. Just softer at the edges. Soft enough that when Mikhail’s knee brushes mine again, I don’t pull away fast enough. Or at all. His jacket hangs from the back of his chair, blocking the narrow space between us, and beneath the table, his hand closes once around the outside of my thigh. The touch is brief, firm, possessive, and then it’s gone.

A pulse starts between my legs, and my lips part. My chest heaves before I can control it. I move my leg away. His face doesn’t change.

“Forgive me,” a man says. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”

Everyone looks up. The man standing beside our table is older than most of the people crowded onto the dance floor, but not by much. Late twenties, maybe, with blond hair that falls carelessly across his forehead. He has a kind smile that suggests he usually gets what he wants. He’s attractive and he knows it, and he’s looking at me.

My stomach tightens, not unpleasantly, but nervously. There’s something embarrassing about being noticed by a stranger while sitting beside the man I was begging to take my virginity less than twenty-four hours ago. I pretend not to notice, looking down at my drink until he asks in English, “Can I trouble you for a dance?”

I sigh and tip my head back, laughing. “Is it that obvious?”