Bought For Her Innocence

And suddenly, it was as though a hard fist jammed into his throat. She had known he was rich, then. She had known that he could have helped. Even as she refused to admit it, she had known, all along, that he would come if she asked.

And yet, she had waited so long... Which night would have made it too long?

Fury, reminding him of broken bones and painful fists, flew hot through him. “Have you? Gratifying to know that I held your interest for so many years, pethi mou. And a little shocking that you have somehow lost the good sense I thought you possessed.”

The lift opened just then and he walked out without checking to see if she followed.

* * *

By the time she walked past the dramatic reception hall into the sitting lounge of the suite, Jasmine felt numb to the extravagance of her surroundings.

It was a toss-up between the electricity that burned between Dmitri and her and the reach of his wealth and sphere.

A finely carved wood and marble fireplace dominated the lounge, which was decorated with black leather furniture.

Her running shoes sank into the thick carpet with a soft hiss.

Jasmine had barely caught her breath when a woman walked into the lounge. Her hair was mussed around her fragile, sleep-ruffled face, her long legs bared in shorts.

“Dmitri?” she whispered, her shocked glance taking in the both of them. “You took so long...”

“Leah? What are you doing here?” The concern in Dmitri’s voice was as unmistakable as the lacerating sarcasm when he addressed Jasmine.

Suddenly, being a spectator to a romantic reunion between Dmitri and his latest girlfriend was the last thing Jasmine wanted to be.

The woman crossed the last few steps, genuine worry etched on her brow. Dmitri enfolded her so gently that it sent a pang through Jasmine. “When you were taking so long, he dropped me off here. He’s been calling every fifteen minutes...” Her gasp pierced through Jasmine.

“Dmitri, you’re bleeding.” With that, Leah clicked her cell phone on and left the room.

The sharp hiss of his exhale, the way he had held himself so rigidly on the bike... Her gut heaving, Jasmine turned him around roughly and lifted his leather jacket.

A patch of red stained the tear on his pristine white shirt around his abdomen, a stark contrast against the rest of it.

Jasmine stared at the dried blood and the way the shirt clung to his skin. Bile filled her throat as the metallic scent washed over her. Shivers set forth from the base of her spine. As if her attacking Dmitri when he had come to save her was the last straw...

Pressing her hand to her forehead, she tried to breathe past the rawness in her throat. “I could have killed you... I thought John would sneak in in the middle of the night and I was just being cautious... I never...”

“I did not ask why you attacked me,” he said in that monotone voice again. He sounded angrier at her being upset than that she had wounded him. “Theos, I don’t care that you tried to protect yourself. I care that you have led a life that requires that you sleep with a knife under your pillow.”

She flinched at the disgust in his words.

For as long as she had known, men had only looked at her cheaply, with lust glimmering in their eyes. And once she had started working her current job four years ago, it had only gotten worse, shame and self-disgust her only companions.

So why the hell did she care what Dmitri thought of her?

His hand under her chin, he lifted it up. She clutched her eyes closed to lock away the tears. The depth of her reaction to him, his words scared her.

“Look at me, Jasmine.” Something rumbled in that soft command. She would have called it desperation if she thought she could hold together one sane thought at the moment.

His hands moved up and down her arms as if he was calming down a spooked animal. “You’re shaking again. Theos, stop being afraid of me.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” she whispered, opening her eyes. Dark stubble surrounded that carved mouth. “I’m so sorry, Dmitri...”

He shook his head. “You grazed me really good with the serrated edge but it’s only a flesh wound.”

She ran a shaking finger over the mended bridge of his shattered nose, a tendril of desperate emotion engulfing her.

“I don’t remember ever being so terrified as that night when John punched you,” she said, remembering the horrific night when John had broken Dmitri’s nose. “I thought you would kill him.”

A haunting memory flashed through those deceptively calm eyes. “If not for Andrew, I would have.” A smile cut his mouth then, transforming his face again. It was like seeing someone intensely familiar slip on a mask and become a stranger. “For a woman who defends that filthy world, you’re acting strange at the sight of a little blood.”

Her finger moved down his nose, hovered over his mouth, her heart thundering in her chest.

“Jas...” Her name was a raw warning on his lips.

An immense stillness seemed to come over him, the faintest of shudders moving his narrow seamed mouth. His fingers clasped her wrist tight, as if he was truly afraid of her touching his mouth. “You’re still in shock.”

Was he convincing her or himself? she wondered. She had seen her mum waste herself away in a bottle of rum, had seen Andrew breathe his last... Grief and fear for her life had all been consuming her since Noah’s men had arrived at her doorstep three days ago, and yet it was this moment that threatened to shove her heart out of her chest...

This craven yearning to touch him, to discover if there was anything left of the boy who had treated her as if she was the most precious thing he had ever held... It was madness.

Because he had left that boy behind a long time ago when he had walked out with his godfather. Leaving Andrew and her behind.

Far, far behind.

“Dmitri?” a man’s deep voice called.

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.

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