8. Mikhail
MIKHAIL
A few minutes later, I sit on the edge of the bed while she changes.
That is a mistake.
Standing would be better. Standing gives a man purpose. Standing suggests departure. Distance. Control. Sitting on the edge of the bed makes me look as if I’m waiting for her.
I am. That’s the problem.
The bathroom door opens. Taylor steps out wearing my shirt. For one second, I don’t breathe.
The shirt is too large for her, falling past her hips, the sleeves loose around her hands.
The collar slips wide enough to show the slope of one tanned shoulder.
Her long, straight, dirty-blond hair is loose now, tangled around her face from my hands and her own, her bangs mussed across her forehead.
She has washed off what remained of her lipstick, but her mouth is still dark from mine.
I thought the shirt would make her look less exposed. I was wrong. The dress was a weapon. Tight. Black. Obvious. My shirt is worse. My shirt makes her look like she belongs here. That thought is obscene enough that I stand.
Taylor stops in the bathroom doorway. “What?”
“Nothing.”
She crosses the room slowly, arms folded over herself. Not modesty, exactly. Defense. She’s trying to decide what to be now that the dress is gone. Now that the alcohol is thinning. Now that I know what she has not done and she knows that I know.
Her eyes flick toward the bed. Then toward me. Then away.
I should tell her to sleep.
I should tell her I will be downstairs if she needs anything.
I should leave before the sight of her in my shirt becomes a memory I keep.
“Mikhail?” My name is softer this time.
I still.
“Don’t,” I say.
Her brows pull together. “Don’t what?”
“Say my name like that unless you want me to kiss you again.”
Color rises in her face. Good. Let her be embarrassed. Embarrassment may yet save her.
It doesn’t save me.
Because she looks at me for one long second, throat working, and says, “Will you sleep with me?”
Every thought in my head disappears.
Taylor’s eyes widen as if she hears herself a second too late. “I mean sleep.”
I don’t move.
“Actual sleep,” she says quickly. “Not sex. Not anything. Just sleep. I know how that sounded. I’m not trying to—” She stops and drags both hands down her face. The sleeves of my shirt fall over her knuckles. “Oh my God. I’m making it worse.”
“Yes.”
Her hands drop. She glares at me. “You could pretend not to notice.”
“I could.”
“But you won’t.”
“No.”
She huffs a small, embarrassed laugh and looks toward the windows. Snow moves softly beyond the glass, pale against the dark. “I just don’t want to be alone in this house.”
I can survive her pride. Her jokes. Her mouth saying my name like a test. I am less prepared for her honesty. I just don’t want to be alone.
I know that voice. I have lived with it longer than she has been alive.
I look at her standing barefoot near my bed in my shirt, trying very hard not to look as young as she is, and I see the path I should take.
No, Taylor.
That is what a better man says.
No. Loneliness is not a good enough reason to let a man like me sleep beside you.
No. I will call the car.
No. You will thank me tomorrow.
I open my mouth. “I keep my clothes on,” I say.
She blinks, like she expected a fight. “Okay.”
“There is a pillow between us.”
“That sounds like a legal distinction.”
“It is.”
Her mouth softens. A smile almost appears. “Do you make a lot of legal distinctions in bed?”
“Not usually.”
The smile vanishes.
Good. Bad. I’m no longer sure which result I want.
I remove my jacket and lay it across the chair by the window. Taylor watches as I loosen my tie, pull it free, and unbutton my cuffs. Her attention is not subtle. She thinks it is. That’s one of many things she is wrong about.
“Are you sure?” she asks.
No. “No,” I say. Her eyes snap to mine. I look back at her. “But I am staying.”
That seems to take some of the air out of her. “Okay,” she says.
I take two pillows from the head of the bed and place them lengthwise down the middle like a barricade. Taylor looks at them with clear offense. “That is excessive.”
“It is necessary.”
“Because I’m so irresistible?”
“Yes.” The answer leaves my mouth before I can dress it as sarcasm. I don’t correct it. She stills.
I go to the opposite side of the bed, pull back the covers, and lie down without a pillow beneath my head. I leave my shirt on. My trousers. Everything. Taylor watches with annoyed amusement for a minute before lying down on her side of the barricade. The mattress dips beneath my weight.
The house is quiet around us. Too quiet for her, I think. She’s used to smaller spaces. Rooms where other people can be heard moving. Pipes knocking in the walls. Cars outside. Some proof that the world has not narrowed to one bed and one bad decision.
My house offers no comfort like that. My house is built to keep sound out. And secrets in.
Taylor lies on her side facing me, the blanket tucked beneath her arms, my shirt visible at the collar.
Her long dirty-blond hair spills across the pillow in a dark-gold mess, her bangs uneven over her forehead.
In the bar, she looked young because she was loud and bright and a little drunk.
Here, in my bed, she looks young because she’s trying very hard not to be.
I hate myself for bringing her here. I hate myself more for being glad she came.
“Are you asleep?” she whispers.
“No.”
She’s quiet for a moment. Then, softer, “Are you angry?”
“At what?”
“Me.”
“No. Why would I be?”
“Because I wasted your time? Because I’m a virgin?”
My eyes close. I should have known she would not let the word remain buried. Taylor is the sort of girl who pokes bruises to see if they are still tender. “No,” I say.
“Liar.”
My eyes open. She’s watching me. There’s no coyness now. No shield. Just embarrassment trying to disguise itself as bravery.
“No, I am angry at myself. That I brought you here.”
“I came here.”
“Yes.”
“I got in the car.”
“Yes.”
“I kissed you first in the hall.”
My mouth almost curves. “You tried.”
Her eyes narrow. “I succeeded.”
“With my help. You are almost a head too short to have succeeded on your own.”
“You are impossible.”
“So you keep saying, yet you ask me to stay.”
The little exchange eases something in her.
I see her shoulders lower against the mattress.
She looks at me for another second, then turns away from me, onto her side, her back to my chest. A safer arrangement.
The blanket slips lower. I see the line of her throat.
The shirt I gave her rides up the back of her thigh.
I see the pale skin there, sheltered from the sun unlike the rest of her, before I turn and look at the ceiling.
There are fates worse than death.
I count, not sheep or numbers, but doors.
Something my father taught me long ago when I was just a boy and could not sleep, when my mother was sick of reading me books and would tell him, “Kirill, deal with your son.” He would come and tell me to keep my eyes open, that I had better not close them.
The same manipulation he used on grown men worked just as well on his child.
Then he would have me count doors. Bedroom.
Hall. Stairs. Front room. Security office. Courtyard. Gate.
When I’m done counting doors, I count men. Nikolai at the east entrance. Yuri downstairs. Pavel in the car. Two more by the outer gate.
I count enemies. That takes longer.
Beside me, Taylor shifts. Then again. Then again. “Stop moving,” I say.
She freezes. “I’m trying.”
“You are failing.”
“You’re not a very soothing sleep companion.”
“I am not here to soothe you.”
“No,” she mutters. “You’re here to lie there like a sexually repressed vampire and judge my breathing.” A laugh almost leaves me. Almost. “Instead of…” she mutters, then trails off and goes quiet. I catch my laugh in my throat, where it turns into something rougher. “Instead of touching me.”
“Go to sleep, Taylor,” I tell her firmly, not listening.
She hates that. I can feel her hating it. Good. Let her hate it. Let her be angry enough to remember she has choices.
“You can still stay,” she whispers.
“I am staying.”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” I murmur, listening to her breathing and waiting for it to even out.
I wake in the silent room with Taylor asleep beside me.
I do not know what pulled me out of sleep, but I honor the buzzing in my body, the cold shooting through my skin.
With my arms behind my head, I move nothing but my eyes, sweeping the dark corners of the room for any boogeymen, all too real in my life.
Then the sheet whispers. Not much. Just a soft movement beneath the blanket. I don’t move, breathing shallowly in my chest, watching the slight rustle at Taylor’s hip.
I hear a strained breath, a gasp she bites off, turns her head, and gives to the pillow.
No, surely she is not doing what I think she is.
My eyes open wider, but I don’t move. At least, not any part I have control over.
My cock twitches violently, and I have to open and close my fists and breathe deeply through my nose.
Then she moves again, and I know. I know exactly what she’s doing.
Her breath goes shallow. Uneven. One hand grips the pillow near her face, a sheen of glowing sweat shining over the high bone of her cheek in the pale moonlight slipping beneath the curtains. Her other hand is hidden beneath the blanket, moving carefully, secretly, desperately.
I stare at the dark line of her shoulder.
I should say nothing. No. I should leave.
No. I should tell her I’m awake and stop her.
No. None of the answers leave either of us unscathed.
She thinks I’m asleep. Or she hopes I am.
Or she wants to be caught and doesn’t know how to ask.
Any of those possibilities is enough to make a saint violent, and I am nothing close to a saint.