Bought for Her Innocence(22)

“Selfish man who just made me see the stars and the sky? You’re not too bad, Dmitri. And believe me, I won’t break.”

And to prove it to him, she thrust up experimentally. His hands on her hips holding her down, he withdrew almost all the way and then thrust back in.

Jasmine was in heaven or hell or someplace in between as he moved in and out with slow, measured thrusts that seemed to be for the express purpose of driving her out of her skin. “Faster, please,” she said, and when he didn’t oblige, she bit his shoulder.

The pace of his thrusts became faster, more desperate, less measured, one hand on her hip and one in her hair, his tight grip adding an edge of pain to the scorching pleasure.

The faster and rougher he got, the hotter and higher she climbed, his swift strokes wrenching arousal from her again.

Just for a second, he paused and sneaked his fingers between them and pressed down. And she fell apart. He took up his rhythm again as she came, his face a study in passion and need.

This time she didn’t close her eyes.

She didn’t want to miss the intensity of his passion, the gray fire in his eyes, the tightness of every feature, the corded stillness of his shoulder blades, the tiny beads of sweat along his upper lip, the growl that fell from his mouth as he pumped into her one last time and collapsed over her.

Wrapping her hands around him, Jasmine bore his crushing weight willingly.

She was now irrevocably a woman. And she liked all the perks that came with it. And the man who had taken her there with such an all-consuming passion, the man who claimed to possess no tenderness and did no emotions, who took on blame for her brother’s sins, who made an art of the mask he showed the world... She was falling fast for him.

But whether it was the postcoital haze or the happy hormones their session of lovemaking filled her with, Jasmine couldn’t care.





CHAPTER TEN

DMITRI PULLED JAS with him as he lay back on the bed. The echo of his release still pumped aftershocks through him, a climax that had been as emotional as it had been intense.

Her dares and her questions, the pleasure and pain and joy in her eyes... It wasn’t just her body she had shared with him. Just like the little girl she had been, Jasmine gave whatever she had with generosity, felt everything she did with a sharp hunger that was so incredibly beautiful to watch...

For the first time in his life, sex for him hadn’t been just about animal release but connection and intimacy, about kisses and sweet promises, about give and take of more than just release.

It was impossible to make love to Jas without taking a part of her.

Without a part of him wrenching away from him whether he willed it or not.

He had never felt this satisfaction, the visceral rightness of what had happened. This...sense of joy at a woman draped over him with such possessive pleasure. It went bone deep and he felt absolutely no inclination to get up and move, even though he usually headed directly to the shower after sex.

Her skin was damp to his touch, her breaths coming in panting pulls against his shoulder. Delicate fingers spread out over his chest, she kept her eyes closed.

She looked and felt perfect against the length of him, her hair spilling over his forearm.

He pulled the duvet up to cover them, his mouth going dry at the sight of her round buttocks, the flare of her hip. Still her breasts were flush against his side, and the thought of rolling those plump nipples on his tongue made him hard again.

“You are fine?” His voice came out gruff and growly.

Without opening her eyes, she nodded. Her hand moved restlessly over his chest, traced the ridges of his abdomen, came to rest on his shaft, over the duvet. He clasped her wrist, but she slapped him away and resumed her position. Heat punched through him as she played with it, a soft smile playing around her lips.

As if it was her right to fondle him. As if there was nothing else she would rather do.

“Jas, if you keep doing that, I will take you again.”

Her mouth pressed into his skin. “So who’s stopping you?”

Something between a groan and a growl escaped him as she pushed herself upon her elbow and proceeded to lick his nipple. As though she were a cat and he cream. “Your body is unused to this, to me. Since you don’t seem to possess any good sense, it falls to me. And I’d rather not test my self-control, especially when it comes to you.”

“Okay,” she agreed, and moved her hand up to his chest but showed no signs of releasing him.

Theos, he hadn’t meant to say so much.

Did he have to spell out everything to the infuriating woman? Did she find some perverse pleasure in behaving so outrageously that he inevitably watched over her?

And beneath his increasing fervor to have her again, he found that he liked indulging Jasmine. He wanted to stay there and let her play with him, to see a smile light up her eyes.

Usually, he couldn’t wait to get away the moment his release hit. He had tried a couple of times to stay, to wrench some kind of feeling out of himself but all he had felt was coldness, an instant detachment that curdled any pleasure he had found just minutes ago.

An empty hollowness that he couldn’t rid himself of.

So he moved on, to the next chase, to the next warm body that would provide that ephemeral release.

And yet, languorous heat pumped through him as she caressed him with more of an artless curiosity rather than skilled strokes designed to arouse. With her vined around him like that, he never wanted to get out of the bed.

Dmitri knew he should feel guilty. Or some other horrible emotion should be coursing through him, remonstrating with him for his lack of tenderness or finesse. Or shame that he had willingly given up that thread of honor Giannis had tried to instill in him.

Stavros would tell him, in that forbiddingly arrogant voice of his, that he should feel guilty about not feeling guilty, at least.

Breathing in the wild scent of Jas and sex combined, feeling her soft curves surround him, he couldn’t bring himself to feel anything but the most primal kind of satisfaction.

Sated after the most intense sex of his life, he couldn’t hate himself for it.

How could he when he barely ever felt anything this deep? When even the faces of the women he’d slept with the previous night faded by the next morning? When, sometimes, even sex didn’t fill the void inside him for a few minutes?

The whole world, including Giannis, even Stavros, who knew him better than anyone else, thought he had no discipline, barely any self-control. That he gave in to every self-indulgence because that was all he cared about—pleasure and wealth and everything superficial.

What they didn’t know was his inability to feel anything.

Not after he had cleaved himself in two and removed the guilt of his mother’s death and the pain his father’s fists had wreaked on him. That if he accessed anything deep, if he stayed too long with any woman or in any relationship, he started to panic.

As if that boy was just waiting to come back to life, bringing with him unbearable agony and pain. So he kept his entire life about casual relationships, transient fun. If not for Giannis first, and then Stavros grounding him, he had a feeling he would have become nothing but an empty shell who fed on transient pleasures and swam through life without meaning.

Until Jas had come into his life.

Her eyelids were drooping, and she still had that silly smile over her face. Then he was smiling because she looked infinitely breathtaking in the utter enthusiasm with which she’d embraced tonight.

And that smile knocked over into his life, kicking everything he had ever believed about himself wide-open, as though she was the domino who started it all. Digging his hands into her hair, he pulled her closer. “Why are you still smiling?”

Finally, she deigned to open her eyes and he found himself falling deeper and deeper into her spell. The openness of her expression made it impossible to be anything but. She looked at him as if he was the most wonderful thing she had ever seen.

It filled him with a strangely exhilarating weight that he had not known in his adult life. It magnified inside him, spreading to his chest, filling every nook and cranny. As if he was now responsible for keeping that smile on her face.

Her fingers found his mouth and traced the seam with such a possessive touch. Expelling a harsh breath, he forced himself to relax. He never invited the woman he slept with to touch him, never lingered in the moment after seeing to their pleasure and his own. “Because it was that good.” Her long lashes cast shadows over her cheeks as she struggled to keep her eyes open. “Tomorrow, I swear, Dmitri, you can have whatever you want,” she offered magnanimously, as if she was a goddess granting boons.

He wanted to tell her she had already given him something precious—her trust. But he kept the words to himself. “You can, instead, answer my question now,” he said, wondering anew at how at ease she had been with her body.

Theos, the woman was like a sensual missile, and thinking that about her made him think of her with other men and right now, he didn’t want to go there.

It seemed being in bed with Jas meant every thought he had left him feeling either raw or uncertain or both.

“What?” she said, suddenly tense.

“What did you do all these years at Noah’s nightclub, Jas?”

His heart hammered at her continued silence. Propping himself up, he looked at her.

Her shoulders became a rigid line, her gaze not meeting his as she pulled up the duvet to cover herself up.