by Tara Pammi
It jolted her out of her feverlike delirium and Jasmine tried to collect her breath.
“It might be a flesh wound, but you should still have it sterilized and cleaned up,” the man continued. “It doesn’t look as though Jasmine uses that knife for chopping vegetables.”
She looked up to find Dmitri looking at her with a sardonic gleam in his eyes, his brows raised in question.
He held her wrist aloft and returned it to her side. Then he gently nudged her back. To his friend, he added, “Hand me the first-aid kit, Stavros.”
Enough, Jas!
Was she so desperate for a connection from their awful past, so lonely that even Dmitri’s begrudging help would do?
She was damned, however, if she let his posh friends walk all over her, or insult her dirty roots.
Stavros, whose face was a study in austerity and cold arrogance, gazed at her, his expression inscrutable.
“I assure you, Mr. Sporades, my knife is not as filthy as you imagine.”
A smile touched the man’s mouth but his expression didn’t lose the severity. “You mistake me, Jasmine,” he said, assuming a familiarity that shocked her. “I’m in awe of how cunningly you found a way out of your predicament. Although I—”
“He wishes, rightly—” Dmitri cut in, frost turning his eyes into a thundering gray “—that you had not put yourself in such a dangerous situation in the first place.”
“Put myself in that situation? You talk as if this was a game to me. You think I...I wanted to sell myself like that?”
Such a savage growl erupted from Dmitri that it was like seeing a cat transform into a tiger, vicious claws unsheathed. “You don’t want to know how I dare ask that question, yineka mou, not in front of company. That is a discussion you and I will have later, when I’m not in danger of strangling you for the company you keep.”
The silence that followed the softly spoken threat was deafening, the shock on his friends’ faces sending a ripple down Jasmine’s spine.
Jasmine felt as if she had been slapped, as if her shame was written all over her face. There was none of that easy humor, that uncaring attitude that he had worn in the past couple of hours. “I’ve had enough of you and your insulting—”
She had barely turned around when his broad frame, bursting with contained violence, blocked her. “Do not test my patience, Jasmine.”
Something in the glint of his eye warned Jasmine to shut up.
“How bad is that cut?” Stavros intervened as if the room wasn’t crackling with furious energy.
“I can attend to it myself.” Dmitri turned and grinned, a wicked glint in his eyes. The transformation from brooding violence to charming rogue was so swift that Jasmine did a double take. “Or Leah can attend to me.”
Jasmine had never seen him smile like that.
Innocence had never been a luxury they had been afforded, and for as long back as she could remember of her childhood, Dmitri had been in it. And not this smiling, outrageous playboy who looked as though nothing touched him...
The expression in his eyes was dazzling, wicked and not...completely real. He knew what his outrageous remark would do and he had used it to deflect attention from him and his wound.
That smile was a practiced facade, she thought with a frown.
Leah shook her head. “Dmitri, stop taunting him. And, Stavros, really, enough with the caveman—”
“Tell your husband that I’m not sixteen anymore and he doesn’t need to patch me up.” This was Dmitri again, winking wickedly at Leah. “I had hoped you would have cured him of all this duty nonsense in your bed, pethi mou.”
A curse flew from the deceptively calm Stavros.
“You’re his wife?” Jasmine said to the blushing Leah, realizing she had spoken out loud when Dmitri looked at her.
“Who did you think she was?”
Challenge. Dare. Belligerence. All of it wrapped in a smooth tone.
With three sets of eyes resting on her, Jasmine flushed but refused to let him embarrass her. She poured defiance into her tone. “Your current squeeze.
“I’m sorry.” She said this to Leah, who was shaking her head at both men.
“Don’t be.” Leah smiled. “Dmitri is being his usual beastly self. I’m Leah Sporades. Giannis, their godfather, was my grandfather.”
Jasmine stood awkwardly as Stavros and Leah argued with Dmitri with an obvious familiarity while he threw outrageous remarks at them.
I knew him before you did.
The errant thought dropped into her head and she sent a startled glance toward Dmitri.
His gaze stayed on her, intense and brooding, as if he would like nothing but to skin her alive with his words. Seconds piled on as that same awareness locked them in their own little world. What would happen when his friends left?
Running a hand over her forehead, she looked away. The faster she got out of here the better.
She grabbed the kit from the unsuspecting Stavros and turned to Dmitri. “Stop with the macho posturing and sit down. The cut is on the far left side and you’re left-handed.”
His grin vanishing, Dmitri looked at her as if she had suddenly sprouted two heads.
She sighed. That mutinous, wary expression in his eyes... That she remembered.
“Strip, Dmitri.”
“Usually I’m filled with uncontainable anticipation at that command from a woman,” he said with an exaggerated leer, “but give back the kit to Stavros, Jasmine.”
Unbuttoning his shirt, Dmitri pulled it off his wound. Only a jerk of his mouth betrayed his pain. Ridges of leanly sculpted muscles defined his broad chest, only a smattering of dark hair dotting the olive-toned skin.
Her cheeks instantly tightened, her mouth dry as Jasmine tried to not stare. She took a step toward him, determined to act normal. “I’ll make it fast.”
Dmitri glared at her. “I’d rather you not touch me at all.”
“Why not? I’ve sewed up so many of Andrew’s wounds growing up that I—”
“Like Stavros pointed out so well, we don’t know where you and your hands have been. And yes, you are supertough to have made it all on your own for so many years... But we both know that you are a little fragile right now, ne? You were crawling all over me on the bike and—”
“Because you were driving like a maniac,” she yelled, her face heating up.
“—and a minute ago, you got upset at the sight of the small gash. I’d rather you not look at me with those sad, puppy eyes while you tend to me as if this was some grand reunion that we both have been breathlessly waiting for for years. My generosity toward you is fast disappearing and the cut burns like hell.”
The kit fell from her fingers, thudding like a drum in the silence.
There were so many offensive things in there that for a second, she couldn’t even sift through them all. Only stood weightless while the cruelty in his words carved through her.
Then the slow, merciful burn of humiliation spread across her throat and cheeks, merciful because anything was better than that hollow ache, her ribs squeezing her lungs tighter and tighter.
His words should not have touched her. He was nothing to her. She had hated him for years on principle. And yet his words knocked the breath out of her.
Was it because she had never been so literally saved from a situation before? Because, for most of her life, she had only depended on herself, and seeing a man like Dmitri come to her aid was warping her sense of reality?
Or was she just like her mum after all? One kind word from a man and she was ready to fall over herself and into his arms?
She struggled to hold his gaze but she did, pouring all the hatred, for him and for herself, into that look.
“You’re right. I’m not myself...” She drew in a shuddering breath.
“And you... You’re not...”
His face was a tight mask over his angular features, his eyes suddenly hauntingly vulnerable. “Do not assume to know me, Jasmine.”
She shook her head, feeling immensely weary. “No, I don’t, do I? Have your cut looked at or let it fester and rot you, for all I care. I need a little more of your precious time and then I want out of here.”
Holding her shoulders rigidly, she turned.
The sympathy in Leah’s eyes was much too real, and Jasmine steeled herself against it. Stumbling through the lounge, she ducked into the first room and closed the door behind her and then walked into the en-suite bathroom.
A sea of white marble greeted her. With a tub long and wide enough for her to swim in, with gleaming gold taps, cold porcelain tiles and thick, fluffy towels, it was her version of paradise.
Tempted as she was to soak in the bath, she stripped and headed for the shower, needing to wash off the fear and grime of the past two days. If only she could so easily wash off the stink of her life...
The moment the water hit her, something in her unraveled. With a deep breath, Jasmine let the tears that had been threatening all night, out.
Only once, Jas, she warned herself.
She would cry just this once, without caring what it meant. She would let herself be weak just this one time. And then she would walk out and not look back.
She had been right in rejecting his offer of money when Andrew had died.
With the hatred of a thousand suns, she promised herself she would never set eyes on Dmitri Karegas again after tonight.
CHAPTER FOUR
DMITRI HISSED OUT a sharp breath as Stavros dabbed his wound with an alcohol wipe. Yet the burn of it over the open flesh was nothing compared to the burn in his gut.
The image of Jas’s face, her mouth trembling, her wide eyes stricken with hurt, would haunt him for the rest of his life. Along with a hundred other images of her.
Jas, looking at him with a toothless smile, Jas, at nine, sitting by him in companionable silence while he nursed a broken nose, Jas, her tears overflowing onto her cheeks as he said goodbye to her and Andrew...
Jas, as she glared at him with bristling hatred and fury at Andrew’s funeral five years ago...
And now this Jas, who saw through his veneer to the real him, who had melted into his arms with such vulnerability in her eyes...
Who had looked at him as if he was everything...
A furious cascade of such hunger churned in his gut that he had to grasp the handrest to anchor himself. Just the torrent of emotions that had deluged him ever since she had come at him with that knife was proof enough.
No! That look had been nothing but a result of shock.
He didn’t want her to look at him like that, as if he was her hero and knight wrapped in one.
He was no one’s hero, and definitely not hers. He shattered women’s silly romantic notions of him on a regular basis.
Yet the hurt in her eyes disturbed him far more than it should have.
Theos, where was the woman who had so thoroughly despised him that day?
Setting Jasmine’s expectations regarding him shouldn’t require this much thought and second-guessing.
“You know,” Leah’s voice cut in, “I always thought you were the kinder one between Stavros and you.” She sighed. “I’ll wait in the limo, Stavros. I don’t want to embarrass Jasmine anymore but if possible, please convince her to come with us.”
“She won’t accept anyone’s charity,” Dmitri said, before he could curb the words. Because he had tried once and she had bristled as if he had made an indecent proposition.
Leah’s displeasure swelled in the silence even after she left.
Unrolling gauze, Stavros leveled him a flat look. Dmitri refused to take the bait.
Stavros cut up a strip of medicinal gauze and covered up the wound and then neatly put on a plaster. Then he shut the plastic case and tucked it away. Uncoiling to his height, he finally met Dmitri’s gaze. “She seems...very innocent, Dmitri.”
He understood the awe in Stavros’s voice. Dmitri had been prepared for the shock of seeing Jasmine after all these years, but she was nothing like he had imagined.
From the moment he had entered that house, a tight fist had formed in his gut and it showed no signs of loosening. To find her like he did today, to imagine what would have happened if he had been late... Everything inside him ignited into a mindless fury, every lesson he had learned in controlling his temper consumed by that fear.
“Something I didn’t have when Giannis plucked me from there, you mean?” he challenged Stavros.
“Yes.”
Stavros’s unsaid question reverberated in that single word, but Dmitri was in no mood to talk about the lack of his innocence. Stavros had come to mean more to him than even his godfather but he wouldn’t go into his past even for him.
He refused to let it leave a mark on him.
“You don’t know to handle her,” Stavros said in that arrogant tone of his that drove Leah crazy.
“You’re afraid I’m going to corrupt that innocence,” Dmitri stated flatly.
Jasmine was like the key to the Pandora’s box he had left behind a long time ago. And all he wanted with the key was to throw it away and not look back.
“No,” Stavros replied, surprising him. “But it is also obvious that she—”
“She’s a debt, Stavros, and I pay them.”
A lethal smile touched his friend’s mouth. “Tell me your plans for her.”
He remained silent, drawing a complete blank.
What was he supposed to do with her now? She had no place in his life, even a minuscule one.
“We both know that you can’t just let her walk out of here. Not without ensuring she’s not going to be a danger to herself.”
“Danger she’s courted recklessly.” The words rattled out of Dmitri on a wave of anger.
Why the hell hadn’t she come to him before this? Theos, he understood addictions and the damage they caused, but for Andrew to leave her with so much debt, a debt that Dmitri had no doubt was the result of his gambling...?
Fury and powerlessness flew in his veins because Andrew wasn’t even here anymore for Dmitri to take it out on.
“So she deserves to be left to her fate?” Stavros asked with rising incredulity. “Is this how you would’ve helped if Calista had been in trouble?”
“Christos, she’s not going to...” The horror of the night when Stavros’s sister had died cut him off.
But then, none of them had known Calista had been on such a self-destructive path until it had been years too late. Pain pounded through his veins at the thought of Jasmine going down that path. Look at the situation she had found herself in. “She’s not going to calmly accept whatever I propose.”
“I know you hate responsibility of any kind, Dmitri, but this is—”
“Theos, Stavros, she does not belong with me. Not for a moment, much less for days.”
Stavros looked at him again, something emerging in his gaze. As if he could sense the panic in Dmitri’s words. As if he could see the noose tightening around Dmitri’s throat. “Then, you should have never answered her call for help.
“What about her is bothering you so much, Dmitri? I have never seen you in such a...state when it comes to a woman. You change them on a weekly basis. Why is she different?”
Dmitri pushed a hand through his hair, feeling as though his life was slipping out of his hands. How he wished he could fob her off on Stavros...
“You don’t want to be responsible for her and yet your conscience won’t let her walk away. How about you do not anger her, then?”
“Where was this infinite wisdom when it was Leah we were dealing with?” he couldn’t help
pointing out.
“Learn from my lesson, then, won’t you?” Stavros growled, steel edging into his tone. As it always did when even the mention of how close he had come to losing Leah came up. “If you hurt her again, the damage she does to you might not be so minimal. Or even worse, she could just turn around and go back to that same world.”
“Her feelings are not my concern.” That was it. Jasmine could rant and rage at him all she wanted. All he cared about was that the woman was alive. If he had to shred her to pieces to do it, he would, again and again. But he wouldn’t let her return to that life.
He had failed so many people in his life, but he couldn’t fail Jasmine.
* * *
Jasmine stepped into the elegantly decorated bedroom and flopped onto the bed. The robe she had put on slid silkily against her skin but she just couldn’t get herself to wear the same jeans and sweater again. Not until she got them washed, at least.
Only silence came from the front lounge. Her heart thudding loudly, she looked up.
Dmitri prowled into the room and leaned against the wall, the movement pulling one lapel of his unbuttoned shirt higher, exposing a rope of leanly sculpted muscle. A gauze pad near his abdomen stood out white against his olive skin.
One of his brows lifted, a sardonic smile twisting his mouth.
Sinuous heat bloomed low in her belly, the sight of his naked torso a temptation like she had never imagined.
The luxurious black satin scrunched in her fingers painted a picture of her writhing beneath that leanly coiled frame, all of that simmering intensity unleashed on her, while he worshipped her with the mouth that had pierced her so much...
“Jasmine?”
His frown prompted her out of her fantasies, her skin heating up.
She was used to attention of the most extreme kind, knew lust in all its forms. And yet, when Dmitri looked at her, even innocently as he was doing now, as if he could see into her head and soul, she was extremely aware of it.
Of all the men in the world, something inside her reacted with a violent energy to Dmitri. Maybe it was because she had known him as a kid. Maybe because, for the first time in years, she was with a man and she didn’t have to worry about whether he was motivated by lust or some other inferior motive.