“I have never denied myself something I want. I want you. Every time you look at me, all I can think of is being inside you. Every time you lash at me, all I can think of is kissing your mouth... To hell with your debt and my honor, and Andrew... To hell with pretending I’m something I’m not. Nothing in the past decade has made me as hungry or as desperate as you have, Jas. So do you want this for as long as it will last? Do you have the guts to actually take me on, Jas? Because if I touch you, I won’t stop.”
For a seemingly infinite moment, she looked as though she would tell him to go to the farthest corners of hell. Theos, he deserved it just for the way he had treated her this past week. He already had a one-way ticket there for what he was about to do.
He was going to slake his lust and move on... Because that was all he did. That was all he had ever been capable of.
But he was through with being something he was not. He was through with denying himself. And he didn’t allow himself to think of the consequences tomorrow. He’d deal with it.
Right now all he wanted was to taste that lush mouth again, remove that hurt from her eyes.
“You were attracted to me all along?” she demanded.
The gold fabric molding her lithe body, she looked like a goddess who had only just realized her power.
His heart threatened to shove past his rib cage. “Attraction is such a lukewarm word, pethi mou.”
Even in that desperate last moment, he had tried for honor, Dmitri told himself. He had sounded nothing like a lover should. Christos, he was more tender with women whose name he didn’t know, but with her, he sounded like an arrogant, lust-riddled jerk.
But at least he had told her what his terms were. If she didn’t want him like that, she could walk away.
He was not seducing her, he told himself.
And then suddenly, she was walking toward him, and he shuddered with relief and tension and anticipation.
Before his next breath, her hands were in his hair and pulling his head down to meet her mouth. They groaned and pressed closer to each other, as if they couldn’t get enough already.
He took her mouth with desperation and rough need, swiping at her trembling mouth with his tongue, impatient to possess her. And she...she was draped around him like ivy, her breasts rubbing and pressing his chest, one long leg wrapped around his as she moaned.
And the last flicker of self-restraint he possessed went out.
The taste of her had clung to him for two days, her jagged whimpers etched on his brain. Never had a woman so thoroughly consumed his every thought, never had she felt so out of his reach... He didn’t question the possessive fire he felt as he learned her.
He had already decided when it came to Jasmine, he was mad.
Dmitri ran his hands over the taut line of her back to her rounded buttocks, the narrow flare of her hips. There were so many places to touch, so many places to learn. And she sank into his rough caresses, gasping and moaning under his mouth. As if she was as out of control for him as he was for her.
He dipped his hands into her hair and molded her scalp, bending her to his plundering mouth. Like raw silk, her hair cascaded through his fingers. She smelled of wildflowers and summer, and he breathed it in, hungry for every texture of her.
The more he touched her and stroked her and tasted her, the smooth forehead, the narrow bridge of her nose, the already red curve of her mouth, the pulse that skittered at her neck, the rim of her dainty ears, the more he thought of someone else’s hands on all of it...on all of her...
Of someone, scum like Gaspard or John King or someone like his father, laying a finger on her, marring skin that was like satin, touching curves that were pure perfection, forever ruining that innocent yet wild spirit inside her, the hotter his anger and desire burned...
He took and took, licked and bit, stroked and tasted, plundered and devoured her mouth until she was panting and moaning, and gasping his name...
“Dmitri...” she whispered against his bristly jaw.
The trailing heat of her mouth against his neck made his throat dry. He pulled her up again, afraid that he would ravage her if she so much as kissed his skin...
Then she said it again, his name.
It fell from her mouth like a warm caress, an entreaty and command all wrapped in one... Hearing his name on her lips did what the little will he had over his body couldn’t... It calmed him down, called him down from the edge.
He couldn’t take her like every other woman in the world, not because of her innocence, but this was her...
“Keep saying my name like that,” he commanded, looking for a hook, or a zipper, something that would reveal her to him.