by Tara Pammi
Every inch of her froze as he slid the ring onto her boneless finger and the damning, breath-stealing, soul-wrenching thing was that the ring fit her so perfectly. The cold weight of it felt unfamiliar against her skin, her breath ballooning up in her lungs.
Jasmine looked at the ring for several seconds. Shock and joy roped together in her veins, and beneath all of it, fear pulsed.
She looked up and tried to smile, but it wouldn’t come. Her hands on his chest, she expelled a long breath. “I don’t know what to say, Dmitri. Wow, I just... This is... I...”
Clasping her cheeks, he took her mouth in a long kiss that stole all the air from her lungs again. “Say yes, Jas.” His hands moved to her back and pulled her closer to him, until all she knew was Dmitri and his broad shoulders, and his corded strength and his thrilling words. She felt as if she was floating on a different plane, far removed from reality.
“I have the license ready and we can marry here tomorrow evening. Once we tell them, Leah and Stavros will stay on. Leah undoubtedly will have a dress that’s as gorgeous as you are in her wedding collection, and everything else has already been taken care of.”
Burying her face in his chest, Jasmine willed her racing pulse to slow down, to give her a chance to breathe. And the moment her heart settled to normal, something else followed. “Tomorrow?” Only the one word escaped her.
Stroking her lip with his tongue, he breathed his answer into her mouth. “Yes. I want us to marry as soon as possible. That way...you don’t have to worry about making a living, don’t have to jump into something that you’re not sure about.
“Take a couple of courses at the university if you like. Just take it easy, matia mou. Or if you decide all you want to be is Mrs. Karegas, that’s perfectly fine, too.”
Her head spinning, Jasmine pushed away from him and slid off the desk. “You don’t want me to work?”
He shrugged, his hands in his trouser pockets. “I don’t ever want you to worry, Jas, about anything. Everything I have is yours.”
“Wow, Dmitri. I...I’m drowning here,” she said, feeling dizzy with the number of emotions claiming her.
“All you have to say is yes, Jas. And tomorrow night, we can set off on our honeymoon to wherever you want to go.”
Impulsively, she hugged him, the scent of him pushing the word yes to her lips.
And yet something held her back; something punctured the utter joy of the moment. Panic fueling her movements, she jerked away. “Wait, Dmitri, let me breathe, won’t you?”
He smiled and nodded, his gaze moving hungrily over her.
Rings and diamond sets, dresses and wardrobes, it seemed there was nothing Dmitri couldn’t wait to lavish upon her. But love... There was nothing of love in his words. That was it.
Because she loved him with all her heart, she thought in a daze. Somewhere between knifing him and kissing him, she had irrevocably fallen in love with him, had moved from a childhood obsession to feeling as though she would never have enough of him.
It had been that moment when he had told her about Andrew’s deception. Or maybe the moment when he had called her perfection. Or when he had held her so tenderly as she had sobbed her heart out.
Everything in her life was shifting and uncertain, but how she felt about Dmitri... There was no doubt about that.
Shaking at the realization, utterly terrified now, she looked at him.
He had removed his jacket, and the white shirt hugged the breadth of his shoulders, a perfect contrast to the olive skin. He looked so utterly gorgeous and he wanted to marry her.
He could have any woman in the world. Why did he want her?
Did he love her?
Did he know how she felt about him? She had never really tried to hide her feelings from him, had she?
Questions burned through her head in an endless loop, slowly but surely siphoning off the warmth from her.
But suddenly now she wanted to hide away from him, wished she could give herself time to let the truth sink in.
Why else would he want to marry you? the hopeful part of her, the part that had forever loved everything about him, said.
Her thoughts still scrambled, she turned to him and said the first thing she could think of. “You’ll give up your playboy status? You’ll give up all those women? Because marriage is nothing without fidelity and respect, Dmitri.”
He didn’t seem in the least bit offended by her questions. On the contrary, a smile cut grooves in his cheek as though he wanted nothing but to allay her fears. “I will be the most faithful husband in the world, pethi mou. I’ll give even Stavros a run for it, yes?”
Reaching her, he put his hands on her hips, kissed her temple. And standing in his arms, soaking in his words, Jasmine desperately wanted to say yes.
“I’ll do everything in my power to make you happy, Jas, to take care of you. You’ll want for nothing, you’ll see.”
Just like that, Jas felt her answer float away from her lips. Her happiness, her well-being, all Dmitri talked about was her. As though she was one of his possessions—a well-oiled bike, a smoothly run nightclub, a well-maintained portfolio that only kept on giving.
What about him?
What did he feel for her?
What had shifted that he wanted to marry her?
Still grappling with how deep her feelings ran, how much weight each word of his carried with her, Jas felt his words like a rope binding her to him. “What about love, Dmitri?” she said finally. Her chest was so tight, her fingers chillingly cold as if she had dunked them in ice.
He became absolutely still, but something uncoiled in those gray eyes. “What about love, Jas?”
So he was going to torture this out of her. “Do you love me, Dmitri?”
“No, but then I don’t believe I’m capable of it, Jas. I feel a certain affection for Leah, loyalty for Stavros, but that’s about the breadth of my emotional range. And you—” her breath hung in her throat “—you’ll have my fidelity and my friendship.”
Her hopes fell away, his words shattering her heart into a thousand pieces inside her chest. She slumped against the table, her limbs shaking uncontrollably.
He reached her instantly and caught her. “Theos, Jas, I thought you would be happy. I thought this was what you wanted.”
And there it was...the final proof in his own words.
Cradled against him, Jas felt herself tearing into two halves, one gleefully, treacherously ecstatic that this strong, powerful, honorable man would be hers, and the other, warning away from a fate that could leech away every ounce of joy from her life.
If she married him because he made her feel safe and because he was offering friendship and because of the wild heat between them, if she willingly went into this knowing that he would never even open himself to the possibility of love, knowing that his vows were born out of guilt and a protective instinct that was a mile wide while she, bound to him irrevocably, would wait for him to open his heart, while she crucified herself wondering if it was something within herself...
The fear that she had been holding at bay for so many days, years actually, twisted and swelled inside her...until she saw herself turning into her worst nightmare. Her mother had waited and wasted away her entire life for a man who had never looked back.
Would that be her fate, too, if she weakened in this minute? Was her choice to smash her heart into pieces now or wait for it to fall apart piece by piece over years?
“I never wanted you to marry me, Dmitri. I would have settled for...” Her words seemed to dissolve on her lips when he pinned her with his gaze.
Because then, she could hope for a better future than the one he had so thoroughly mapped out for her. Because then, she had foolishly thought, she would make herself worthy of him, that she would somehow make him proud of her.
/> A stillness seemed to creep up into his face while his gaze, that gaze that had never been able to lie to her, burned with a ferocity that he had kept leashed until now. “I offered marriage because you deserve better, Jas.”
Her throat was so thick with ache that she thought she might be sick.
God, if he talked about her one more time as if she were something to be cosseted and protected, she was going to scream. And then crumple into a heap. “Have you offered marriage to every woman you have ever slept with? Or is it a special offer reserved for virgins?”
“Theos, you’re different from the numerous other women I screwed. There, is that enough?”
“How? How am I different?”
“You’re Andrew’s sister.” Jas wanted to cover her ears and scream. “And you’re the most annoyingly stubborn woman I’ve ever met.”
Before she knew, he was clasping her to him and plundering her mouth with his.
It was a kiss meant to possess, to captivate, to lay claim. And still, Jas lost herself to it. Lost herself in the erotic strokes of his wicked tongue, lost herself in the heat he so easily stroked into life, lost herself in the hard body.
Lost herself in the man who promised her so much except the one thing she really needed.
One hand cupped her breast reverently while the other pulled her snug against him to feel his rigid shaft. Her breath left her in a soft flutter, tears she couldn’t fight anymore spilling onto her cheeks.
“I promise you, Jas, I have never known anything like this fire between us... You would walk away from this?”
She caressed his jaw with her mouth, breathing in the scent of him. “I have to.”
How could something that felt so good eventually turn out to be bad for her? Her body, pulsing with need, seemed to find it impossible to grasp.
Steeling her spine, she pushed away from him for the last time. “I can’t marry you, Dmitri. I have barely found myself after years of living buried under others’ mistakes, others’ addictions. I can’t do that to myself again.” Not even for you.
“I’m promising you a life that will lack for nothing. How is it not—”
“But this is about guilt, your guilt. I’m your project for all the things you failed at. For not being able to save your mother all those years ago, for your supposed failure with Andrew, for not saving me from my tasteless past soon enough.
“All of this—” her voice broke, a deluge of tears knocking at her eyes “—is only because you want to feel better about yourself.”
“I know how you feel about me.” His control slipped then, his anger spewing into his words. As if she was the one hurting him, as if somehow this was all her fault. As if she had somehow damaged him. “I know what that night meant to you. How does it matter when I’m offering everything I can of myself?”
Was this how it felt when one’s heart broke? Did the world keep on turning? “It’s because I feel so much that I can’t accept this. I can’t let my love for you break me, Dmitri.
“Because I do love you. I love you so much that there’s this voice inside that’s screaming that I’m stupid to walk away from this, that I should grab it with both hands. That I should take what little I can get of you.” She grabbed her head, as if she could silence it. “And it won’t stop. I don’t think it will ever stop.”
“Then, listen to it. For once, thee mou, do what is good for you. Don’t walk away, Jas.”
Grasping the door handle, Jas looked at him. The thing that hurt the most was that he didn’t understand. He didn’t see how painful it was for her to walk away, how hard it would be for her to accept the little he gave of himself when she wanted everything.
When he walked toward her, she shook her head. “No. Don’t touch me and don’t come to my room. Don’t...do anything more for me, Dmitri, please.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
DMITRI DIDN’T KNOW how he had made it through the night.
He remembered pacing the study like a caged animal. It was how he had felt in that first year when Giannis had brought him to this very house. He had once called it house-training a wild animal.
He had, through will hanging by a thread, kept himself in the study. Every cell in him wanted to convince her the only way he knew but then he told himself she deserved better.
So he paced and drank and paced some more, trying to think of ways to stop her. It was now morning and he was no closer to a solution.
Except the renewed resolve to keep her in his life. And the panic that flared at the thought that he might fail, that he had somehow lost Jas irrevocably, and that it was nothing compared to all the losses he had lived through...
For a man who had floated through most of his adult life loathing his inability to feel anything, loathing the fact that his father had stolen more than his mother from him, it was like drowning after being parched for years.
* * *
He needed dark, blistering coffee to ground himself, to make sure he didn’t do anything that he would regret later. His shirt half undone, his hair in disarray, he reached the breakfast room.
The scent of sweet pastries and coffee filled the room, the house blissfully silent after last night.
Dressed in a long-sleeved sweater and slacks, his hair still wet from the shower, Stavros looked like the very picture of matrimonial bliss. Their gazes met and held.
Stavros poured some of the thick, dark coffee and pushed a cup toward Dmitri. “You look terrible.”
“Why aren’t you in bed with your wife, Stavros? Or better yet, why aren’t you gone yet? This is my estate now.”
A brow raised, Stavros stared at him. “I was waiting for you.”
Dmitri took a long sip and felt marginally human again. He ran a hand over his jaw and felt the bristle. Theos, he must look like the savage he felt like. He would have to shower and shave before he went up to see her. He still didn’t know what he was going to say.
Do you love me, Dmitri?
He had offered her everything and she had asked for the one thing he didn’t know how to do.
Fear and confusion like he had never known before gripped his insides.
It felt as though overnight he had lost something, something precious he hadn’t even known he had. Not for a moment had he thought she would say no.
If she loved him, wouldn’t she want to spend her life with him?
He finished his coffee and turned toward the door. To hell with civilizing himself.
She was the one person in the world who knew what he was beneath the mask he showed the world. She hadn’t even relented until he had showed himself to her. Had goaded him, challenged him...had made him feel so much again.
There was no way he was just letting her walk away from this.
He had almost reached the door when Stavros spoke. “She’s not here, Dmitri.”
The words hit Dmitri as if they were fists he couldn’t evade. His breath knocked out of him. He didn’t think, even for an infinitesimal second, that Stavros might be talking about Leah; he couldn’t delude himself even for a second that his entire world hadn’t just cracked under his very feet.
And fury came to his aid, filling the hollowness in his gut. “What do you mean she left?”
“Leah said Jasmine was waiting for her when she came down. That she begged her to help her leave. That she couldn’t stay another minute here. So I had the jet readied and she left.”
His gut dropped. “You let her go back to that pit that she calls home?”
“Jasmine said she never wanted to go back there, asked Leah if she had a job for her, even carrying coffee back and forth at her factory. Since she has the screen test in two days, Leah insisted that she stay at her old flat in Athens for a little while. She went with her because Jasmine looked as if she was barely keeping it together.”
/>
Dmitri exhaled a relieved breath, once again eternally glad that Leah and Stavros had such generous hearts.
And the relief was followed by a cavern of longing ripping open in his gut.
He slid into the chair and buried his head in his hands. He should be glad she was gone, shouldn’t he? If she was safe, why didn’t the weight on his chest lift?
When had wanting to keep her safe changed to missing her as if he had lost a vital part of himself?
If this was what it felt like to lose Jasmine after a mere matter of weeks, what would it feel like after a month, a year or a decade of the marriage he had proposed? What would it feel like to lose her forever, to become the man who had pushed her into losing herself?
And suddenly, he understood her panic. He understood how hard he had made it for her, how strong she was to have walked away.
He realized the truth in her words. It had not been about protecting her at all, just as she had said.
It had all been about him. About pacifying his guilt, about his selfish needs, about keeping her in his life, about taking everything she gave without reserve but giving nothing of himself.
Was that what he had always done? Had the gut-wrenching pain of his mother’s death made him a self-fulfilling prophecy, a man who only chose the shallowest of relationships, the most ephemeral of things to fill his life?
Could he reach for more now? Could he risk that pain, knowing that he might have lost his chance with Jasmine? Wouldn’t that pain still be better than this emptiness?
He felt Stavros’s arm on his shoulder, feeling as though nothing would ever touch him again. “I thought you would be angry with me for interfering,” Stavros said softly, as if he knew how raw Dmitri felt inside. “I thought you would come at me with your fists.”
But then, nothing in the world had ever laid him this low.
Breathing through a throat rough with emotion, Dmitri shook his head. “Because you did what I was unable to do and cared enough about what she wants? I was determined to not let the past matter, Stavros. I was determined that it wouldn’t leave a mark on me. And yet...”