Page 45 of Preferential Treatment

“Well, I’m not going to call you that. Is there a short form for Mikhail?”

“Misha. Or even Mishka, though that one’s more… familiar.”

“Mishka?” She tilted her head, considering him. “You could be my Mishka.”

Something unreadable crossed his face. She was getting to know his tells, though. She suspected he was pleased.

“Yes, that’ll do,” she concluded. “Mishka.”

He stared at her, saying nothing. But warmth gleamed in his eyes as he regarded her across the chessboard.

Oof. That look was giving her feelings. She bit her lips to keep from smiling at him like a lovestruck puppy. “Your turn,” she prompted.

He blinked, returning his attention to the board. Just like that, the moment was gone. But the echo of it lingered, making Kate feel snug and warm, ensconced in the quiet of his study, so absorbed in their game, they could have been the only two people in the world.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

With each passing day, Mikhail found himself carving more and more time out of his schedule for Kate. Time he would have previously spent poring over reports, projections, and analytics was being shunted to the side so that he could feed his addiction. He’d never been so ruled by his libido. In the past, these arrangements had been like scratching an itch—he needed relief, he got some, he went on with his life. But this time, each meeting only inflamed him more. She was like a drug, and the more he used, the more he needed.

It would end. All things did. Endings were an inevitable consequence of any beginning. Mikhail had learned that lesson more thoroughly than most people had to. But that didn’t mean he was wrong. His childhood and early adulthood had been a string of severed relationships. He’d been born and immediately abandoned. Raised in orphanages where caretakers came and went. When he showed early academic talent, he was shuffled first to one boarding school, then to another, so any friendships he developed were inherently temporary.

As a young man, he’d chosen to go to the US for grad school, where he ended up immigrating entirely, cutting off all ties with his fatherland and anybody he knew there. As a computer engineer and businessman, he’d learned to never get attached to ideas, people, or places—it was what allowed him to rise to his current position. The only things that had any permanence were those things that Mikhail had created himself—his patents, his company, and the life he had built off of them. Everything else was tenuous and ephemeral. He could guarantee only himself.

And now, the idea of growing close to Kate was both terrifying and painful, because the loss of that connection was inevitable, and he was tired of the pain. People said it was better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all, but Mikhail felt certain that those people had only lost once or twice. Not over and over and over again. Because, at a certain point, there was no point getting attached to anything that you know will be taken from you.

And maybe there was no point in indulging his need for the way Kate made him feel, because he hadn’t even lost her yet, and already the looming certainty of it was making him crazed. He needed her all the time. He had to resist the urge, a hundred times a day, to go see her at her desk. His home felt empty without her. He wanted to call her over constantly, not just for sex, but for a few games of chess. He wanted to buy her things, not because he wanted the gratification of submitting to her, but because he wanted to make her smile.

All of which made the inevitable demise of their arrangement that much more distressing. He knew, logically, that when his interest died out, so too would the fear of losing her. And even so, he lived in dread of that day. Until then, he savored every drop of pleasure, every ounce of ecstasy, and every moment of the strange, quiet contentment he felt with her, hoarding them up as a bulwark against the empty, stretching hollowness he felt when he thought of their eventual parting of ways.

He reveled in debasing himself for her, suffering for her, whether she punished him through humiliation, pain, or denial. He found salvation in serving her, in earning the rewards she doled out with such unrestrained, playful joy. He’d heard this called “play” before, but with Kate, it was the first time it felt like any such thing. Before meeting her, it had been a primal need that he fulfilled like any other. He ate when he was hungry, he slept when he was tired, and he found a woman to submit to when he was horny. But his wicked, capricious, sensual Katya, his knyazhna, had ripped the rug out from under him and turned what should have been a straightforward transaction into something deeper. Sometimes, it terrified him how desperately he needed her. But then he would see her again, be with her, and the fear was forgotten in the joy of her company.

There was no room for fear when he was stripped bare, kneeling at her command, crawling for her pleasure, begging for her mercy. With Kate, he could let go of everything—every unwanted feeling, every dark thought—and simply obey. And then when she’d wrung every possible bit of pleasure out of him, used him for her own ends, and then potentially deigned to allow him the ecstasy of release, there was still no room for any doubt or regret because she was still with him as he came down from the high, seated across the chessboard, amusing him with her competitive surliness.

Playing chess against her was a bit like swimming through a school of piranhas. She attacked so aggressively from so many different angles, attempting to blitz her opponent into confusion until she could find an opening to set up checkmate. Luckily for Mikhail, he was a patient, almost sedate, player. He enjoyed the challenge of parrying her many attacks, focusing on defense while quietly slipping in for the checkmate, like an assassin in the night.

What he enjoyed even more, contrary to his nature, were the conversations they had over the board, growing in intimacy with each passing day.

“Why Chicago?” Kate asked one night, running her fingers through her hair over and over again, a repetitive behavior he’d noticed from her before. “Why not Silicon Valley or Seattle or one of the bigger tech hubs?”

Mikhail watched her continue to comb at her hair. It was obviously clear of snarls, but she kept feeling along individual strands of hair, seemingly oblivious that she was doing it.

“Why do you do that to your hair?” he asked.

She snatched her hand away, looking mildly embarrassed. “I asked you a question first,” she said defensively.

“I chose Chicago because of a non-compete clause I’d signed with my former employer. I’d lived and worked in San Jose before starting Domovoy. And Chicago’s a big enough city, with enough tech workers, that I knew I’d have my pick of a crop of computer engineers and software developers who were hungry for exciting work, but unable to make it to the coasts, for whatever reason.”

“Hmm. Mercenary.”

He shrugged. “It’s a business. Now my question. Why do you fiddle with your hair so much?”

She hesitated, looking down at the board. It was her turn, but she didn’t seem to be contemplating her move. Without looking up at him, she said, “When I was a kid, my parents didn’t take care of us very well. I had to have my head shaved twice because of mats in my hair, and I got lice, like, once a year until I was old enough to figure out how to take care of myself. It’s just a habit now, to always be checking my hair.”

Mikhail was speechless. He hadn’t expected a confession like that. He’d expected her to say that she liked the feel of smooth hair, or something equally inconsequential. Something inside his chest drew tight, like a spring about to snap from the tension.

“Ah, Katya,” he said heavily. “I didn’t know.”

She huffed out a breath, almost a laugh, but without any humor behind it. “Well, you wouldn’t. I’ve made damn sure people don’t see that in me anymore.”

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