One creamy thigh bared as she slid upward in the bed. Yet as her rose-colored nipples puckered into tight buds under his continued stare, all he felt was an echo of arousal, the way a dog would lift its muzzle at the scent of meat.
Nothing else. Just like the numerous times over the past decade.
He worked, he collected his toys, he slept with willing women, yet somehow Dmitri never felt anything but a surface reaction, as if he was skimming through the very edge of life, incapable of sinking beneath the surface, forever on the outsides of it.
As if what he had turned off all those years ago to live through another day could never be turned on again. Even when he had helped Anya, who had become a sort of a friend, it had been a shallow echo of a different reality, another life where he had saved his mother that night.
Laughter, gravelly and as shocking as if a mountain rose in the midst of the sea, reached his ears, cutting off his unnerving reverie.
It was the afternoon that Leah had invited Stavros and herself to lunch aboard his yacht.
Looking around, he found his jeans and pulled them on.
He had always liked his godfather’s granddaughter. But ever since Leah and Stavros had found their way to each other, which he had been damn glad about because all the drama around their marriage had caused the Katrakis Textiles’ stock to sink, he had begun finding it distinctly uneasy to be in their company.
He knew what the source of that unease was but he was damned if he gave it voice. Neither did he feel up to the disapproving glance that would come from Stavros.
Even though he was only older by three years, Stavros treated him as if Dmitri was still the sixteen-year-old thug that their godfather Giannis had brought to his estate.
“Leave as soon as you can,” he told the woman without meeting her gaze.
As soon as he stepped on the upper deck, Leah pulled away from Stavros and gave him a loose hug. “It’s good to see you, Dmitri.”
The familiar warmth of her slender body chased a sudden shiver through him, as shocking as if a cavern of emotion had opened up amongst the emptiness. Something must have flickered in his face because Stavros studied him closely.
Ever since Stavros had accepted that he was in love with Leah, after years of scorning Dmitri for what he called his reckless, hedonistic lifestyle, Stavros knew how empty Dmitri felt inside.
“I liked you better before,” he said roughly, warning Stavros away.
Leah looked between them, frowning. “What?”
“Nothing,” Stavros delivered in a flat tone. The knot of his gut relented a little and Dmitri breathed easy, slipping into the mode of that reckless playboy that was bone-deep now.
He pulled a chair for Leah and signaled to his staff to serve lunch. Pulling on a practiced smile, he looked at Leah. “So what has prompted you two to emerge from your love nest a week before the wedding?”
Leah sighed. “I would like for you to give me away at the wedding. Giannis is not here and you mean a lot to me, Dmitri.”
“How many more times do I have to give you away?” he teased while intensely glad that she had asked him.
Her gaze twinkling, Leah grabbed Stavros’s hand and laced her fingers through his. “Just this one more time.”
After years of shouldering duty and knowing nothing but rules, Stavros had finally found a measure of happiness with Leah.
Holding Stavros’s gaze, because he would die rather than betray anything else that he might be feeling to his friend, Dmitri said, “It will be my pleasure, Leah.”
The sharp chime of his cell phone drew his attention. Frowning at the strange number, he clicked it.
I need help, Dmitri. Call Noah and find out. Do this for Andrew.
A cold nail raking over his spine, Dmitri stared at the message.
Images and sensations—his father’s drunken rages, his mother’s tired face, his own powerlessness, stinking alleys filled with Dumpsters, fistfights and broken noses, sobbing when Andrew held him hard, and a girl with huge, dark eyes in her oval face...
Jasmine...
Christos, the message is from Jasmine.
His gut clenched so hard that he pushed at the table and stood with a growl, a violence of emotion he hadn’t known in years holding him in its feral grip.
Noah... Noah King... The man who ruled over the lowlifes of London like a king ran his empire... Lending and extortion, bars and nightclubs, pimps and prostitution, there was no pie that Noah didn’t have a finger in.
And Jasmine was caught in it.
A soft hand on his arm brought him back from the pounding fury... He turned to see Leah staring at him with such shock that his breath burst into him in a wild rush.