Mine to Crave (Mine #4)(45)
Author: Cynthia Eden

Chapter Eleven

“So I’m supposed to reveal all my secrets to you?” Jasmine asked as she rubbed her arms. There was no reason for her chill, but she still felt it. “Is that the way this works?”

He was seated at a small, wooden table. His legs were stretched in front of him.

“I tell you mine,” she heard herself say, “and I’ll want to know yours.” She thought those words might scare him. She should have known better.

His head inclined and her heartbeat raced.

“You first,” Jasmine blurted because she was a coward at heart. Had he realized it? Sure, maybe she could walk on a three inch ledge to a balcony ten feet away, but sharing anything personal?

Terrifying.

“What do you want to know?”

She sucked in a deep breath. “The woman…Anna Jean…did you love her?”

“No.”

Such a flat response.

“I wanted her, I cared for her, but…I never loved her. I don’t think I’ve loved any woman.”

Jasmine cleared her throat.

“Have you slept with them?” Drake demanded.

“Them?”

“Victor Monroe. The too familiar agent.”

Jasmine shook her head.

“And Maxwell?”

“No. He was an assignment, nothing more.”

His eyes narrowed and she realized that she’d slipped up. Jasmine hurried toward him. “Why casinos? You were in the military, and going into the casino business seems like a serious one-eighty to me.”

“Life’s a gamble.” He shrugged. “You realize that when you spend your days and nights dodging bullets. When you cheat death over and over again, you realize you’ve hit a lucky streak.”

Hell, his whole life was a gamble. Now it made sense to her.

“Then your luck runs out.”

She stopped near his side and stared down at him. “Is that what happened to you?”

A faint smile tilted the corners of his mouth. “My turn now.”

Oh, right.

“Why did you run away at fifteen?”

Talk about getting right to her darkest, most carefully guarded secret. “I don’t like this game anymore.”

He caught her hand. Held it in his. “It was never a game.”

His touch scorched her.

“Tell me.”

She stared at their entwined hands. She didn’t want to look in his eyes when she revealed her shame. “My mother…I realized what she was when I was nine years old. Before that, I just…I thought she had a lot of boyfriends. That was what she called them, you see. Her boyfriends.”

Mommy’s going out with her boyfriend tonight. You just stay inside and keep the lights turned off. I’ll be back soon.

“She liked drugs and she liked to drink and she needed money…so she got it the only way she could.” Had her mother been different once? Maybe before Jasmine had been born? Long ago, she must have been different.

Drake’s hold tightened on her.

“When I was fifteen, she tried to give me to one of her boyfriends.”

His hold became painful.

“She said she was tired and that he liked me, and it would just make things easier if I…if I…” No, Jasmine would not say it. “I left, and I never looked back.” Her breath whispered out. “Maybe ease that grip a bit?”

“Sorry.” He immediately lightened his hold. Then he brought her hand up to his lips. Kissed her wrist. Her palm.

Jasmine could only stare at him. “That wasn’t how you were supposed to react.”

He looked up at her.

“I’m the daughter of a drugged out prostitute. She overdosed a week after I left her. She died and they found her naked and alone in that trailer park.” She shoved back the pain. “You’re not supposed to react this way. You’re not supposed to just sit there and stare up at me and—”

He kissed her hand again. “The first time we talked, I realized how strong you were. I thought you might just be the strongest woman I’d ever met.”

She shook her head. She wasn’t strong. She was weak. A—

“You should see what I see,” he told her, tilting back his head. “When I look at you.”

“A liar and a thief.” She already knew what he saw.

“No.” He pulled her down, and Jasmine sprawled over his lap. “I see a beautiful, smart, strong woman who needs to believe in herself. Life’s been hard, damn brutal to you, but you’ve survived.”

He was making her heart hurt. “Like life hasn’t been brutal to you?”

“We all have our scars.” His thumb moved lightly along the inner column of her wrist. Jasmine knew he had to feel her racing pulse.

Yes, they did have their scars. “When I was a little girl, I wanted another life. Any other life but the one I had. I would dream of starting some place new. A new name. A new past.” She swallowed. “A new future.”

“Is that why you’re still running? Because you want that new life?”

Her lashes lowered. “Sometimes it doesn’t matter how long or hard you run, there’s no escaping the past.”

“Don’t I know it? You can’t even bury that shit sometimes.”

Her gaze jerked back up to his. “Is that what you want to do? Bury your past? Forget about Anna Jean?”

“Her blood will always be on my hands.” His voice roughened. “I hate what I did. I hate that I got drunk and screwed my friend’s girl. Tucker and I…we were close and that destroyed him. Tucker mattered to me. Tucker, Noah, and Trace—they were my family after my mother and grandfather died. And I wound up hurting them all because I couldn’t keep my pants zipped.”

“Drake…”

“She was the only woman who ever got close to me. She looked at me and lied, and I didn’t even realize it.” He paused. Studied her with a hard gaze. “I know when you lie, but the problem is…I don’t seem to care.”

She needed to pull away. Instead, she leaned in closer.

Their lips were almost touching.

“Why do you stare at Noah York and look as if you’re losing your whole world?”

His question sank into her, nearly piercing her heart. Too late, she did try to pull away, but there was no place to go.

“I won’t betray my friends. Not ever again,” he vowed. “There’s something there, between you and Noah. He doesn’t remember you—”

“Why should he? We never met.” He was the lucky one.