Bought for Her Innocence(17)
And then she heard footsteps behind her—a soft tread like a predator that concealed its very ferociousness from an unsuspecting prey. Refusing to give in to the shiver that began at the base of her spine, she slowly turned, her hand still encased in Gaspard’s.
The light from outside the gazebo enveloped him in a halo as he stood at the lower steps. Jasmine couldn’t seem to breathe; her lips tingled, remembering, yearning.
A black tuxedo lovingly draped his broad shoulders, the snowy white collar contrasting against his olive skin. His freshly shaved jaw glinted and Jasmine once again felt the shocking awareness of every inch of space that Dmitri occupied.
He fairly breathed sex and masculinity and power, irrevocably out of her reach.
Until their eyes met. And then it was as though the world melted away around them. Every inch of skin that the silk touched felt hot; every muscle curled tight.
She reached out behind her, the wood grain smooth to her touch, hoping it would cool down this...heat inside of her.
He took the steps and a little chill pulsed down her back as his face was finally bathed in light.
Tight lines bracketed his mouth, that cool facade completely gone. His looks. His mood. His cloak of debonair charm. Everything had fallen away. Suddenly, he seemed like the Dmitri she had known once, and it tripped all her alarms.
“Hello, Gaspard.”
Pure steel clanged in his voice.
Gaspard turned, blanched and then schooled his expression back to politeness. All in the space of a breath. “Dmitri.”
The gazebo, which she had thought lovely seconds ago, suddenly felt like a battleground. Why did Dmitri look like he had seen a ghost?
He took another step, his gaze lingering on Gaspard’s hand over hers. “I see that you’re already hovering around Jas like a vulture.”
“Jas?” the man said, flicking his gaze between her and Dmitri. His nose flared as if he was a hyena scenting something. “But Ms. Douglas has been regaling me with tales of where she grew up...” He looked at Jasmine again, lingering on her diamond pendant and her dress. His brow cleared. The conclusion he so obviously came to was like a slap to her senses. “Is she one of yours, then?”
“I’m not anyone’s, Mr. Devue.” Jasmine wanted to slap the man and then thump Dmitri. “Really, Dmitri, don’t—”
Cutting her off, he clasped her wrist and pulled her roughly to his side.
She resisted, or tried to. As a result, she ended up being slammed against his side.
Her breath left her in a soft gasp, a hundred different sensations swarming at her.
His hip pressed into her belly, the hard ridge of his muscled thigh straddled her legs and his forearm knocked into her breasts. His body was like a hot, hard cage around her shuddering muscles and shivering skin.
Sharp, instantaneous, all-consuming need filled every nook and crevice.
All the while the infuriating man stared at Gaspard, his expression disturbingly menacing. His arm stayed around her waist. “Jas is a childhood friend of mine and is in Athens as my guest.” At least he hadn’t said she was his possession. “She’s not without protection, Gaspard. Do not come anywhere near her.”
“Why don’t you let the lady decide?”
“Unlike the women you terrify, I have nothing to lose.” There was not even a facade of civility in Dmitri now.
Something crawled to the surface in the man’s face, Jasmine was sure, before he spoke again. Something that made her uneasy. “Leah has my information, Ms. Douglas, if you would like to see me.”
With another dark glance at Dmitri, the man left.
Jasmine felt her face flame as she saw that a few people had noticed the exchange. Saw the tasteless conclusion that they immediately came to.
They thought she was Dmitri’s mistress and Gaspard had been poaching.
Bile coated her throat. The entire evening fell apart, instantly became dirty to her in a way that was reminiscent of her old life.
She turned to Dmitri, clutching the fury that threatened to split her from the inside. “What is it with you? Are you so sadistic that not only will you humiliate me but you won’t let another man talk to me?”
Instead of the infuriatingly calm expression she usually got, a tic played in his jaw. “You don’t know that man. It’s got nothing to do with what’s going on between you and—”
“Stop, just stop.”
She looked around, trying to recall the simple joy she had felt this evening when she had put the dress on, when she had looked at herself...when she had, despite her effort not to, imagined the look in his eyes.
“All I wanted was to spend one evening like a normal person. Just dance, meet a few people who don’t know what or where I have come from and have fun. Without you and this whole spectacle between us hanging over my head. Without worrying about the past or tomorrow. Now you have made me into an object of speculation. You made me feel as dirty as I have always believed myself to be.”
His silence only lent weight to her accusation.
“I’m going to go over there and apologize to Gaspard. Stay away from me, please. The last thing I want is to create a scene at Leah and Stavros’s wedding after intruding on it so shamelessly in the first place.”
His fingers clamped over her wrist like a vise. “No, you’ll not. You don’t need to apologize to—”
“No, what I don’t need is you in my life, even for another second. What I don’t need is you dragging me around and dumping me without a word, leaving me to wonder what I’m going to do the next day. What I don’t need is for you to make me feel as though every decision I have ever made is wrong, as if my entire life is one giant mistake.
“God, I’m so stupid I kept making excuses for you. I kept thinking...
“No wonder Andrew didn’t want anything to do with you. No wonder he told me again and again that we were better off without you.”
His skin pulled taut over his bones, his mouth blanching at her reckless words. “You’re wrong, about everything.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
SHE HAD JUST reached her room when Dmitri barged into the room. The thud of the door as he closed it with his shoulder sank into Jas’s bones.
He flung the dinner jacket away, untied the buttons of his shirt. Was he preparing for a fight instead of walking away as usual? she wondered. Even that little bit of attention gathered momentum inside her.
God, she had it bad.
She leaned her forehead against the dark wood paneling of the wardrobe and closed her eyes. “I don’t want to look at you...”
“No. I won’t let you sneak away. Not until you hear me out.”
“That’s the problem with you, Dmitri,” she said, still stunned at his mutinous tone.
Now he cared what she thought of him, that he had made her angry? That he had hurt her? Why?
“I have made it by myself all these years. Until you...stop treating me as if I’m rubbish you have been forced to rescue by a thin thread of conscience that you can’t rid yourself of, I have nothing to say to you. Nor do I wish to listen to anything you might have to say.”
They watched each other for an eternity of seconds. How was it that all her self-worth seemed to hinge on what Dmitri thought of her or how he talked to her? Or how he kissed her?
Was it a genetic trait that her mom had passed on to her, this eternal fixation on one man?
And slowly, sinuously, as if it was a snake waiting to strike, that awareness pulsed into life. Jasmine looked away to beat it back. The luxuriously soft red duvet covering the huge antique four-poster bed stared back at her, and the fever in her blood multiplied.
His arm stretched toward his nape, he finally spoke. “I have never thought of you as rubbish.”
His deceptively flat statement lay in the space between them. Molten gray eyes challenging her to take it up, and hers surely reflecting her panic...
Her struggle lasted all of two seconds, that same something inside her being pulled toward him. As it had always been. “All your actions say otherwise.”
“I was so angry that I could have wrung your neck for not coming to me sooner, yes. But I didn’t think that of you, not once.”
She could see him measuring his words now. What had changed?
Before she could argue, he held up a hand. “I didn’t realize that leaving you in the middle of the night could be construed as—”
“Hurtful? Insensitive? It wasn’t the point you were exactly trying to make?”
“No. I just couldn’t wait to...”
“To go back to whoever was waiting for you, I know.” She thought she might be a little sick. “I shouldn’t have kissed you like that, not when—”
“No, you shouldn’t have. And I don’t have a girlfriend.”
Something tight relented in her chest and she blew out a breath. Just because she lost the little sense she had when she was near didn’t mean Dmitri had to reciprocate. “I only realized this morning how much of your plans I wrecked. I didn’t know that Leah insisted that you make me your plus one. I’m absolutely okay with sitting with the guests. Dmitri, are you listening?”
“You have been thinking about this a lot.”
She commanded herself to not flush. The traitor that her body was, it continued, as it wanted. “This isn’t even your house and you dump me here in the middle of the night, not to mention two nights before the wedding. If Leah hadn’t—”