Chapter 6 - The Touch of a Sinner
Jackson went completely rigid as Jasmine’s warm fingers brushed against his cold skin. For a man who spent his life surrounded by people who either wanted to kill him or obey him, her gentle, unpretentious touch was a shock to his system.
"You don't have to do this, Jasmine," he said, his voice dropping to a low, raw gravel. "I am not a good man. If you knew the things these hands have done, you wouldn't be within ten miles of this room."
"I know who you are, Jackson," Jasmine said softly, carefully cutting away the old gauze with a pair of medical scissors from his desk drawer. The wound was a shallow knife slice along his ribs, angry and red, but missing the vital organs. "But I also know that you haven't slept in three days because you're terrified someone will find a breach in the security grid. You're fighting a war, aren't you?"
Jackson looked down at her dark hair, his chest heaving slightly as she applied an antiseptic ointment to the cut. "The Ivanov family. They are the old guard of the Russian syndicate in North Philadelphia. They think because I am American-born, I don't have the stomach for a protracted conflict. They are trying to squeeze my supply lines at the Delaware River."
"And Harper?" Jasmine asked, wrapping a fresh, clean white bandage around his waist.
"Harper is the only piece of my soul I have left outside of hell," Jackson whispered, his hand suddenly coming up to cover Jasmine’s fingers, stopping her movements.
Jasmine looked up, her gray-blue eyes meeting his cold gray ones. The proximity was intoxicating. She could feel the intense, radiating heat of his body, smell the sharp scent of whiskey and leather that always followed him. In that quiet, blood-stained room, the monster of Philadelphia looked remarkably human.
May you like
"Thank you, Jasmine," he said, his grip tightening just enough to convey the depth of his words before he let her go. "Go back to bed. The alarms will be set in five minutes."
Jasmine stood up, her heart racing for a entirely new reason. She left the room without a word, but as she lay in her luxurious bed, she realized she was no longer just Harper’s companion. She was falling for the king of the underworld.
