6. Mikhail
MIKHAIL
A few minutes later, she looks at me. There is no coyness now. No joking shield. Just awareness.
“My place,” I repeat, “where you can have another drink if you want one, water if you are smarter, and a driver home whenever you ask.”
“And if I ask now?”
“The driver turns around.”
She holds my gaze for a long moment. “Water first,” she says.
I laugh. I can’t help it. Her smile returns, small and triumphant, like she has pulled something from me I did not intend to give.
The car moves through Moscow, past wet streets and glowing windows, past monuments to dead men and buildings full of living thieves. Taylor watches everything with wide, hungry green eyes, as if the city belongs to her because she’s brave enough to look at it. I watch her instead.
By the time we reach my house, I have told myself five different versions of restraint. I will give her water. I will sit across from her. I will let her talk until the liquor leaves her blood. I will send her home untouched. I will not become my father.
Then Taylor steps into my front hall, looks up at the chandelier, the marble staircase, the impossible height of the ceiling, and says, “Wow.”
Not impressed. Accusing.
I close the door behind us. “Wow?”
She turns, eyes bright. “You didn’t mention you lived in a Bond villain’s emotional support mansion.”
“You are not easily impressed.” The house stretches around us, all cold marble, high ceilings, and rooms built to overwhelm rather than comfort.
There are no photographs in the entrance hall, no shoes beneath the tables, no books left open or coats thrown over chairs.
The maid appears at the far end of the hall, takes one look at Taylor, then at me, and wisely says nothing. “Water,” I tell her.
“Please,” Taylor adds. I look at her. She pushes her hair behind her shoulders. “I’m impressed by manners.” The maid’s mouth twitches.
“And some food.” I do not look away from Taylor. “Please,” I add. The maid vanishes through the service corridor.
Taylor rocks back on her heels, suddenly aware of the size of the house, the silence, the fact that she is alone with me in a place built to keep the world out.
She doesn’t see the guard beyond the inner doorway or the cameras above the arches.
She doesn’t know my mother is asleep in the east wing, far enough away that the sound of our voices will not reach her. Her bravery flickers.
I remove my coat and set it aside. “You are safe here.”
She laughs once. Soft. Disbelieving. “Men really love saying that in places where women have to trust them.”
She doesn’t know how right she is.
For a moment, I don’t answer. Then I reach for her coat. As my fingers close around one sleeve, I catch sight of something dark inside the buttonhole of my cuff. Blood. I turn my wrist before she can follow my gaze and continue easing the coat from her shoulders. “You do not have to trust me.”
“No?”
“No. You only have to trust yourself.”
Her eyes lift to mine. “And what if I don’t?”
“Then I call the driver and send you home.”
She looks at me for a moment, as if she expected a different answer.
I wrap the sleeves of her coat around her, trapping her in a makeshift straitjacket. “Until then, I suppose I will have to keep you contained.”
She giggles a little, shakes her head, and meets my eyes.
Her breath trembles once. Then she attempts to close the distance between us, moving up onto her tiptoes with her arms still caught behind her back.
The moment she leans toward me, I release the sleeves.
Her lips are right there, and her eyes are closed.
I look at them, open slightly, waiting, and I hear her nervous breathing, smell the bourbon on her breath.
I close the rest for her. The kiss is not soft or polite. Taylor kisses me like she has been angry at me for years, though we met only hours ago. She lets out little sounds of frustration that go straight through my blood as she tries to stay on her tiptoes. Her mouth tears at mine.
I grip her jawline with one hand, touching her bottom lip with my thumb, stroking it, then biting it before letting it go.
My other arm wraps around her waist, pulling the soft curve of her body against mine.
Slowly, I drop the arms of her coat and peel it away, letting it fall to the floor so I can cradle her face with both hands, her kiss as insistent as mine.
One of my hands slips under her thigh and lifts her leg high around my waist, and then the other, and I’m picking her up and backing her against the wall, holding her there with my body.
My erection presses between her thighs beneath the hem of that little black dress, separated from her by my trousers, her panties, and the mesh of her tights.
She gasps against my mouth, and her green eyes fly open, sparkling with something. Wanting, maybe. Maybe uncertainty.
I stop. Every muscle in my body fights me. “Say yes,” I tell her breathlessly, my hand stamped against her cheek, my other hand underneath her ass, my weight pressing her down.
Taylor’s eyes search mine, and she moves her head slightly to free her hair from her shoulder. I sweep it forward over her chest. Her lips are red from my kiss and smeared lipstick, and her tongue prods her cheek curiously. “Yes,” she says finally.
I remain still. “I thought manners impressed you,” I growl.
Her eyebrows slide together, and I lean forward so that my lips touch her ear.
She groans when I roll my hips, pressing harder against her despite the layers between us.
I murmur against her ear, “Skazhi pozhaluysta.” Say please.
Then I catch the lobe gently between my teeth.
Her fingers tighten around my tie. “Yes, pozhaluysta, Mikhail.” Yes, please, Mikhail.
There it is again. My name. Curious in the bar.
Careless in the car. Now breathless in my house.
I lower my forehead to hers. This is the moment I should end it.
I know that. I know it with the last clean part of me.
I feel that clean part of me slink away when I smash my mouth against hers again instead of listening to it.
The water sits untouched on the console table near the sitting-room doors.
The food grows cold beside it. I don’t know when my maid brought it, my body too focused on Taylor to hear her enter or leave.
I can’t remember the last time I was not split in two by noticing, both as a politician and as a pakhan.
As a politician, it is my job to notice when someone’s mood changes or when the ice melts in his drink, lest he refuse to sign the bill I need signed.
As a pakhan, it is my job to notice the door, the weapon beneath a jacket, the moment fear turns into betrayal.
Tonight, I notice nothing except Taylor.
By the time I carry her down the hallway, I have stopped pretending to have any restraint left in me. I am ragged breathing and a straining cock, and she is red all over and somehow more coy the closer we get to my room.
“Your house is creepy,” she says, looking over my shoulder at the empty corridor.
“You called it emotional support.”
“For you. Not for me.”
“You came willingly.”
“I make mistakes.”
“I noticed.”
I carry her into my room and kick the door shut behind us. The room is as severe as the rest of the house, dark wood and gray walls, heavy curtains, nothing decorative that does not serve a purpose. I lower her onto the edge of the bed and stand between her knees.
Her hands are shaking. Not much. Enough.
I take her chin between my fingers. “Do you want to leave?”
“No.”
“Do you want me to stop?”
“No.”
“Do you know what you want?”
She glances down at the front of my trousers. “I have a general idea.”
I laugh and kiss her again.
In my room, she is all sharp tongue and shaking hands, all laughter that breaks into silence when I touch her, all defiance until wanting makes her honest. I push the straps of her dress from her shoulders but leave the shirt beneath it in place.
I kiss the line of her throat, the hollow above her collarbone, the warm skin just below her ear.
She pulls at my tie impatiently. “You’re wearing too many clothes.”
“So are you.”
“That sounds like your problem.”
“It is becoming one.”
She tugs the knot loose and pulls me toward her, pressing her warm lips to the side of my neck. Then she pulls back. “Mikhail, you’re bleeding.” The teasing is gone from her voice. She pushes my hair away and touches the skin behind my ear.
I glance at my reflection in the mirror on the wall and wipe the driver’s dried blood from behind my ear with my thumb.
She looks at me with concern. Genuine concern.
As though the blood must belong to me. As though it has not occurred to her that I may have arrived here wearing someone else’s. Of course it has not.
“We should get you a bandage.” She starts to rise from the bed, and I push her back onto the mattress by her shoulders. She bounces once, and a startled laugh escapes her before I cover her body with mine. “What are you doing?” she asks.
“Distracting you.”
“From blood?”
“Yes.” I lower my mouth to hers before she can ask again.