Cruel Demands (Forbidden Silver Foxes #25)

Prologue

TAYLOR

“Taylor, could you come in here, pozhaluysta?” Mikhail calls to me, his voice droll and thick like syrup.

Please. As if anything he asks of me is ever really a request.

I try not to think about all the ways I’ve heard that voice say my name before as I stand from my desk and walk toward his office.

Olga is standing beside Viktoriya’s desk, one hand resting on a closed leather folder. She looks up as I pass, her dark gaze sharp and assessing. For one uncomfortable second, I feel stripped beneath it.

She knows. Or she suspects.

Either way, she seems to think someone in my position should not have already caught the boss’s attention. And she’s right. What I don’t understand is why, when her eyes move past me toward Mikhail’s office, the displeasure in them seems directed at him.

As soon as I step inside, I’m struck, as always, by how little the office suits him. The furniture is government-issued and several years out of date, the carpet worn pale along the path between his desk and the door. A radiator ticks beneath the window, fighting unsuccessfully against the cold.

There is nothing luxurious about the room. Nothing that explains the watch beneath his cuff, the immaculate cut of his suit, or the quiet certainty with which he occupies every inch of it.

Mikhail makes the office feel expensive simply by sitting in it.

He keeps writing for a moment, his pen moving across the page in smooth, dark strokes. He doesn’t look rushed. He never does. Men like him don’t hurry. They make the rest of the world hurry around them.

I stand there with my hands clasped in front of me like a good little intern, pretending I don’t notice the way his shirtsleeves are rolled to his forearms or how his tie is loosened just enough to feel obscene.

“You made a mistake,” he says.

My stomach drops.

With the donor list? The event schedule? Maybe one of the thousand tiny mistakes I’m apparently capable of making, no matter how carefully I double-check every email before sending it. Mikhail has a gift for finding them. A comma out of place. A name spelled incorrectly.

“With a file?” I ask, because that is safer than every other possibility in the room.

His pen stops.

“Net.” No.

I swallow. “A donor packet?”

“No.” His eyes lift to mine at last, calm and dark and much too pleased with himself. “Close the door.”

I chew the inside of my cheek as I move to close the door.

Olga looks directly at me through the narrowing gap. Her expression doesn’t change, but one eyebrow lifts slightly. Not accusatory. Not surprised. Almost resigned.

The latch clicks behind me, too final in the quiet room. Before I can turn around, Mikhail’s weight presses against me, the hard length of him firm against the small of my back.

His mouth grazes my ear. “You evaded my men yesterday.”

My pulse kicks, but I force my face into something bored. I twist my head enough to look into his hard brown eyes. “Why would I do that? You know how much I enjoy having my every move stalked.”

“They are guards. They are not stalking you. They are guarding you.”

“I didn’t give permission to be guarded. They follow my every move. They’re stalkers. With better suits.”

His teeth close gently around my earlobe, and I hate that my body reacts before my pride can stop it. “You left through the service entrance yesterday.”

“I went for coffee.”

“You turned off your location.” He doesn’t say it like an accusation. That’s the awful part. He says it as though he’s reciting facts from a report already sitting on his desk. Like my life is something printed, organized, and delivered to him before dinner.

I still, and the hair on my body stands up as the office feels colder. “You have someone tracking my phone?”

Mikhail’s hand slides over my hip and crawls up my thigh.

“I have someone protecting what is mine.” Just his touch is enough to ignite my skin through my tights.

When he gets between my legs, he gently prods his fingers into the growing wet spot of my underwear.

“I know you went and saw that boy again.”

“Dima,” I correct. I do it because Mikhail knows his name. Everyone in the office knows his name. He refuses to use it because reducing Dima to that boy makes him easier to dismiss.

And because I know correcting him makes him furious.

Mikhail goes motionless behind me. Then he exhales through his nose. He hisses into my ear and clamps his teeth against my neck as both of his hands rip my underwear and tights down to my knees. “You are worried I get his name right, kotik?”

Kitten. He knows it makes me crazy. I groan, and he clamps one hand over my mouth.

I can smell my own scent on his fingers, and my eyes roll back as his other hand moves between my legs.

I’m still against the door, and I think to myself that if it weren’t such a heavy-duty one it would be rattling with the force of his body and mine against it.

He doesn’t warm me up. He knows I’m already wet for him.

He pushes my folds apart and slides two fingers into me, filling me up before I can even answer him or apologize for teasing him.

I moan into his palm, and his hand tightens against my mouth as he pumps his fingers into me, his whole arm moving up and down. I want to cry out, but I know I can’t.

“Why do you do it, kotik? I treat you right. I take care of you. I feed you, I gave you a job. And still you run from me and my guards and insult me by seeing that boy. Is it not enough for you? You want more?”

“He’s my coworker.”

“He wants to fuck you.” He says it through gritted teeth, but his thumb brushes my clit.

“He bought me coffee,” I whisper back, breathing heavily against the door.

“In America, this is different?”

“In America, buying coffee usually doesn’t justify armed surveillance.”

His mouth brushes my ear again. “You were already under surveillance.”

“Exactly my point.”

“I know where you went,” he murmurs, dipping his fingers between my legs and gathering the slickness there before circling my clit slowly. “I know where you sat. I know how long you stayed. I know he made you laugh three times.”

The office suddenly feels colder. “You counted?”

I turn around to confront him, and he slams me back against the door, purring, “My men counted.”

“That is deeply unsettling,” I tell him sarcastically even as my knees buckle while he touches me.

“Mm.” He holds me upright against the door, his body pinning mine while his fingers move into me slow, punishing strokes. “And yet you are wet.”

“That doesn’t make it less unsettling.”

“No.” His voice drops. “It means you like it unsettling.” He stretches me out with a third finger, and I let out a cry that earns me a stern shake of the head.

He pulls his fingers out and turns me around, sopping wet with my tights and underwear around my knees, my pussy pulsating and my mouth dripping from my own moans smashed into his warm palm.

I stare at him, unsure of what to do, feeling exposed. He looks me up and down, and I swallow hard, and with a hoarse voice, I say, “It’s enough. I just— He’s a friend. He’s not a threat to you, I promise.”

A smirk crosses his face, the fire that was in his eyes melting away for a moment into amusement. Like I’ve misunderstood the entire conversation. He straightens his tie and lowers his hands to his belt buckle. “I know this, Taylor.”

The words come softly, almost kindly, and somehow that frightens me more than his anger.

I blink at him. “You know?”

“Konechno.” Of course.

He steps forward and lifts my skirt higher, arranging me as calmly as if I am not standing in front of him exposed and trembling, trying to remember which version of myself still knows how to be offended.

“Dima is no threat to me.” He says the name perfectly.

Every refusal to say it before was deliberate.

He wanted me to correct him. He wanted proof that I would defend another man.

“You use him to pretend there is a place I cannot reach,” he murmurs.

“You sit with him. You smile at him. You say friend, friend, friend, as though the word is sacred.”

His mouth curves. “It is not.”

I should tell him he’s wrong. I should tell him friendship does mean something. That my life does not belong to him simply because he decided to surround it with guards. That Dima is allowed to exist without becoming a weapon between us.

But the words don’t come. Because some terrible part of me understands him.

To Mikhail, Dima isn’t the threat. The threat is the hour I spent away from Mikhail’s eyes. The coffee he didn’t buy. The chair he didn’t choose. The conversation he didn’t control. The laugh he didn’t earn.

Mikhail raises a hand and traces his thumb along my lower lip, his expression almost thoughtful. “You think I am jealous because I worry he can take you.”

He leans close enough that his next words brush my mouth. “Net, kotik. I am angry because you still believe there is a part of you I cannot find—or should not have.”

My pulse stutters. “That’s insane,” I whisper.

“Da,” he says simply. Then his hand drops to his belt. “Bend over my desk.”

I lick my lips, my head woozy with possibility as I watch him pull the belt free from its loops and undo the top button of his slacks. He watches me watching him, satisfaction spreading across his scarred face. Then he takes my hand and pulls me toward the desk.

“Davay.” Move. He presses me down until my stomach meets the cold wood. His palm travels along my spine before he spreads my ass cheeks. His fingers slide inside me again, almost idly, as if he is exploring something that already belongs to him.

He kicks my feet farther apart, and I imagine I have to be dripping onto the floor.

I brace myself, expecting the thick head of his cock, and yelp when his tongue touches my clit instead.

He pulls away immediately, his hands gripping the backs of my thighs.

“Taylor.” His tone is admiring, almost conversational.

“Your pussy tastes incredible. It feels even better. But if you make one more sound, I will not fuck you.” I clench wildly around nothing.

He notices. Of course he notices. “I will not touch you,” he continues.

“I will not even look at you until you begin to wonder whether any of this happened outside your imagination.”

He lowers his mouth again, breath hot against me. “So shut your mouth, kotik, and take my tongue.”

I bite the inside of my cheek as he runs his tongue slowly along my slit. For a man so rough, he gives surprisingly gentle oral. He laps at me like he’s starving for it, like I contain something necessary to keep him alive. The contrast makes me dizzy.

When he feels my body begin to soften beneath him, he stands and presses the blunt head of his cock against my waiting opening. “And now,” he murmurs, “take this.”

He pushes inside me in one long stroke. My fingers scrape against the desk.

He gathers a handful of my hair without pulling it, simply holding me in place as he drives into me. His strokes are deep and fast, and tears spring to my eyes. When he sees them, he wipes them away with his thumbs with impossible tenderness before he turns my face and kisses my lips.

“Umnitsa,” he whispers against my mouth. Good girl.

Then his grip tightens in my hair. “If you ever correct me on another man’s name again, I will fuck you in front of him.” He thrusts deeply enough that my vision blurs. “And then I will kill him in front of you.”