LITMIR.BIZ

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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.

      That was it.

      Dmitri, for all his crushing words, was safe.

      For years, she had wondered if the life she had adapted to to survive had somehow corrupted her ability to feel this kind of need, if her body would ever feel like it was anything but an instrument she had honed to make a living…if she

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