LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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