LITMIR.BIZ

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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,

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