Chapter 8 Jasmine
Jasmine
He looks like a man carved from shadow and light, and for a horrifying moment, my breath gets stuck in my chest because I can feel something in the air between us shifting again.
I shouldn’t be aware of him like this. Not after everything I’ve run from. Not after the bruises still blooming along my ribs from having to run from the last man I trusted.
But I am.
He is watching me with this focus, like I’m the only thing anchoring him to the present moment.
I shouldn’t be looking at him like this, I know I shouldn’t.
Everything that’s happened to me in the past few months should’ve wrung any trace of desire out of me.
I should be terrified. I should be edging toward the door, planning escape routes, holding onto the last scraps of self-preservation I haven’t already burned through.
But instead I’m standing here in a fluffy robe, barely holding myself together, staring at a man I met less than fifteen minutes ago like he’s the one who can hold me together.
It’s ridiculous. It’s dangerous.
It has to be some kind of trauma response. The broken part of my brain clinging to the closest thing that feels powerful enough to protect me, even if it’s madness. Even if it’s wrong. Even if it makes no sense at all.
Matthew taught me all the wrong instincts. He taught me that danger comes dressed as romance, that you can be kissed with one hand and shoved into a wall with the other. I know that. I know I should be wary of men like Adrik Korolyov.
My body just isn’t listening.
My heartbeat won’t settle, my skin is tight with awareness. Every breath tastes like him. Something dark, expensive, and terrifyingly calm.
He’s still holding my hips. Not hard. Not demanding. Just firm enough that I can feel the strength in his hands and the restraint in it too. Like he’s touching me because he can’t help it, but also because he’s giving me every second to pull away.
I don’t. I don’t want to.
All I can think about is that this man, this stranger, looked at me one time on a monitor and something inside him snapped in my favour. Some dark, ancient, brutal part of him chose me.
Chosen.
Not blamed, or punished, or owned like property.
Protected.
And that shouldn’t make me feel safe, but it does. It does so strongly it shakes me, right down to the center of who I am. It scares me more than Matthew ever did, because it means there’s something in me, albeit something soft and starving, that recognises him on a level I don’t want to examine.
This isn’t sane. It isn’t rational. I must be broken in ways I haven’t even begun to understand.
He’s studying every tiny shift in my expression. Like he’s mapping out every fracture line in me so he’ll know where to hold me and where I’ll hurt.
"Jasmine," he murmurs, voice low enough that it sinks right through my ribs. "You’ve nothing to fear with me."
Fear? No. Fear would be easier.
What I feel is heat and hunger. What I feel is an ache at the base of my spine that shouldn’t exist after everything I’ve been through.
"Why are you saying all this?" I whisper, even though I already know the answer. "Why me?"
His jaw flexes. His eyes narrow slightly, like he’s fighting a truth too heavy to speak out loud, and then he doesn’t fight it at all.
"Because something in me recognised you," he says simply. "Before I knew your name. Before I knew anything."
Something inside my chest folds in on itself, sharp and trembling. It doesn’t make sense.
He’s a stranger. A powerful, dangerous stranger. And I’m responding to him like he’s oxygen.
Trauma response, my mind insists. Primal survival instinct. Attachment to the person who feels safest in the moment.
But when he looks at me like that, like I’m the first earthquake in his perfect world, something deep and old inside me whispers that this is more than fear scrambling itself into attraction.
It feels like recognition.
My fingers tighten on the knot of my robe. My pulse is a frantic, fluttering thing, tapping against my ribs. His hands are warm even through the fabric.
"If you keep looking at me like that," I breathe, "I won’t know what I’m doing."
His voice dips even lower. "Tell me."
Tell him? God, I can barely tell myself.
"I shouldn’t want you," I say, and the words fracture on their way out. "I barely know you. Everything in my life is chaos. I shouldn’t feel anything other than the instinct to survive."
His eyes soften in a way that destroys me. "Wanting something, someone, isn’t a crime."
"It is when it’s this fast," I say. "When it’s this… intense. It doesn’t feel normal. It feels like—"
I stop because I can’t say it. I can’t tell him that it feels like the universe cracked open in that casino and shoved me onto a path I wasn’t ready for.
He leans in a fraction, just enough that I feel his breath on my cheek.
"—like madness," he finishes quietly.
A shiver rolls down my spine.
"Yes," I whisper.
He still doesn’t move any closer. He’s letting me decide. Me. The girl who hasn’t been given a real choice in months.
And somehow that’s what tips me over the edge.
My heart slams once, hard and decisive, and the world narrows to the line of his mouth. To the warmth of his hands. To the fact that for the first time since everything went to hell, I feel alive in my own skin.
I rise onto my toes before I can overthink it, and before fear can wrench me back or sanity can ruin it.
I close the small distance between us.
My lips press to his in a soft, trembling kiss that feels like stepping off a cliff, terrifying, impossible, and somehow exactly where I’m meant to be.