“Jas, whatever it is—”
“I was a pole dancer in his underground nightclub.”
While Dmitri grappled with that, she met his eyes. Full of fake defiance and shadows of shame, her gaze did nothing to abate the rage building inside him. “A pole dancer?” he repeated, disbelief and fury and guilt all rolling into his tone.
“I jumped in only because one of the girls was sick one day and was terrified of losing the spot. I told myself it was just for one night. Apparently, awful as I was that first night, I was still a huge hit. Guess I owe it to my father for his contribution toward making me look exotic.” Loathing spewed out when she said that word. As if she hated that about her and what it had enabled her to do.
“But the tips, Dmitri, they were ten times what I got waitressing. Suddenly, I could at least dream of leaving that life. I could imagine a different one.” Her voice became small; her entire body scrunched into herself.
Shame, Dmitri realized slowly—that emotion in her voice was shame. Was that why she had hidden the truth from him until now? Why she thought she was beneath him?
If only she knew his roots...
“So I practiced until my legs felt as if they would fall off, until the heretofore unused muscles in my thighs and calves burned as though there were knives lodged inside them, put on mere scraps of lace and took to the stage. I tuned out every man who looked at me as if I was a morsel of meat instead of a woman with wants and fears, I loathed myself a thousand times for every night I went up there, but I did it.
“I was an instant super hit.”
He blinked to clear the haze of red that covered his vision. “So what did Noah threaten you with that you came to me finally?”
She flinched, her gaze shying away from him again. “In the past year, I went from the side to center stage, and the show went from a huge floor show to an outrageously expensive, custom show.
“Suddenly, the men I’d tuned out all along were too close, their hands pawing me, their comments and their looks getting worse and worse. Noah, unwilling to lose their business, relaxed the security. So in the guise of congratulating me, they kept cornering me everywhere I turned after the show. Even then, I somehow managed.
“Until...he said customers were asking for personal performances. That they were willing to pay upward of thousands for one dance, that they wanted me to get more familiar with them... Some of the girls told me it wasn’t that bad, that they made more money... But all I could see was turning into my mother, hating myself for the rest of my life, falling for one of those men who didn’t even know the real me, deluding myself that one of them would actually want me for something more than a quick...
“I couldn’t bear to do it. I didn’t have the guts to see it through anymore. It just felt as if I would never ever get out of that life if I stayed any longer. There was only so much I was willing to do to repay Andrew’s debt.”
Men, driven by lust and hunger, leering and pawing at her, because the kind of club that Noah owned wouldn’t be anything like the one he had just acquired... The picture her words painted nauseated him. He shot out of the bed, his blood boiling, his emotions raw.
She sat up in the bed, her hair mussed up, her expression so vulnerable that it caught at his chest.
“Dmitri, what is it? Don’t, please, look at me like that. As if I...” She didn’t finish the words, her throat working conspicuously, her hands fisting the duvet.
But he didn’t care what she was feeling. Theos, he was drowning in what could have been. “You could have come to me so much sooner. You could have avoided all that. If any of them had gotten his hands on you, if they had forced you into something that you didn’t want... Christos.” He turned and slammed his fist into the wall.
But even the pain that shafted up his knuckles and arm was not enough to release the fear that crawled through his veins.
“Dmitri, you have to understand—”
“Understand what, Jas? You had a choice. My father was an alcoholic bastard but did you know that my mother was a prostitute?” he said bitterly, giving voice to something he had never shared with another soul. “He drank with her money but hated her for it. It ate through him and he took it out on her and me. Half the time, I couldn’t stop him because I was such a runt...until I learned to use my speed and my fists...
“She was saving to leave London, just enough so that she could bring me to Giannis in Athens, who was her uncle. She had to hide the money because he took all of it from her. And then just two days before we were set to leave, he found out. He was in one of his drunken rages and he pushed her.
“She hit her head on the wall and died instantly, before I could even catch her. Then he locked the door outside and he ran.” He dropped to the bed, his head in his hands, trembling, shivering, still feeling her cold body in his arms. “I sat there for hours, imagining all the different ways I could have saved her. The silence... I have never been able to bear it since. If Andrew hadn’t come to look for me as he always did when he heard from the neighbors that my father was in a drunken rage again, I don’t know how long I would have been there.
“You know what I thought when Gaspard touched you today, Jas? Fear that I wouldn’t be able to save you. And now to hear you so blithely say that’s where you have put yourself willingly for so many years...”
He felt as if he was in that moment today. The pain and the fear that ripped through him... He couldn’t breathe.
Turning away from her, he put on his discarded trousers, his chest cold as ice. He couldn’t bear to look at her, not all that loveliness, that flush to her skin.
Because if he did, he knew either he would be tempted to wring her neck for her recklessness or he would take her against the wall like an animal, her comfort and soreness be damned, just to rid the shiver in his muscles. Just to feel all of her with his rough hands, just to reassure himself that she was here, safe in his arms, beyond that world’s reach now...
And then he would never be able to forgive himself.
He needed to leave until he had a better handle on his emotions, until he understood what was happening to him. He found his hands were shaking.
“Dmitri.” Her soft entreaty seared through him and he turned.
The sheet wrapped around her nakedness, she rose from the bed like a goddess, and even drowning in fury, he was drawn to her. “Don’t, Jas... I can’t bear to look at you.”
Her arm fell back against her body. The wariness disappeared from her eyes and something else set in. He was almost at the door.
“I hated you for never looking back,” she said then, sounding small and broken.
Her words were like a rope that bound him to the room, to her.
“For years, I imagined that you would come back and somehow rescue Andrew and me from that life. I built you up into...this hope in my head when Andrew got worse, when it felt as if I couldn’t take another day.” He opened his mouth but she raised her hand. “I know the truth now, I do. But when Andrew told me those lies about you giving up on us, all that hope instantly turned to hate. Because, you see, that hatred was easier to bear than the pain.
“I thought you had abandoned me. Just like the rest of them. Like my father, my mum and even Andrew. At his funeral, you were so distant, so out of my sphere, full of pity for me. You stood there so coldly, offering me money, as if that was all I deserved from you. As if I was a problem you wanted to fix and then forget about.”
Pity? He had never pitied her. He had looked at her, eighteen and innocent and full of such blazing hatred for him, and he’d thought she was better off without him...
He hadn’t been able to stomach that he had failed at saving another life... That even with all the wealth he had acquired, he had been of no use... The idea of letting Jasmine back in his life, even if he had been able to persuade her in the first place, the fear of failing had been too much...
It was still too much.
“Andrew always said,” she continued in that same, small voice, “pride was my biggest shortcoming. The thought of begging you for help, it made me so angry. I wanted you to look at me and not feel pity... I wanted to prove to you that I could somehow make it without your help... Pathetic, right, that even then, I was so fixated on you.”
“Theos, Jas...”
“Tonight I told myself I had nothing to be ashamed of. That I wasn’t going to hold myself responsible for their mistakes, that I... But I’m in your bed and you are looking at me as if you wish you had never laid a finger on me. Exactly what I had always wanted to avoid.”
She didn’t give him a chance to negate her; she didn’t give him a chance to even process everything she had blurted out in that usual blatantly raw way of hers.
Dragging the red sheet behind her, her shoulders a stiff line, she walked away.
* * *
Jasmine didn’t know how long she stood under the hot spray of the shower after Dmitri had walked out. But there was such cold in her chest that she felt as though she would never warm up ever again.
Dmitri was disgusted by her illustrious career. She had asked him straight and he hadn’t denied her. But even worse than his disgust was the turmoil that churned through her gut.
Because even if he had been able to stomach his disgust, she had betrayed herself, hadn’t she? She hadn’t known what she had been about to say, had only wanted to make him understand why she hadn’t come to him for help. Only wanted to make him see that it had been so hard. Only wanted to take away that anguish in his eyes.