Bought for Her Innocence(24)

Instead, she had blurted out things even she hadn’t fully realized, didn’t know what to make of.

She rubbed her head, where an ache was beginning. In reality, she was sore all over, between her thighs especially. Her skin felt extrasensitive to the spray of the complicated jets of the shower. On her hips, where his fingers had dug in so hard and held her down when he had been thrusting into her, her scalp where he had held her for his kiss... He was all over her, inside and out.

Fixated on him, really, had she no self-respect left? Was she going to beg him next to keep her in his bed?

He had made love to her—no, sex. It had been explosive sex, yes, but only that, and here she was, pushing her fears, her fixation for him onto his plate. A long jump for a man who had admitted to just wanting her, under extreme conditions, too, to her dumping her sob story over him.

No wonder he had said he couldn’t bear to look at her. No wonder he hadn’t been able to even stay in the room another minute.

It felt as if there was a lead weight in her chest that she couldn’t push down or breathe out, blocking her very breath.

And knowing what she had learned from him today, she wondered if even his attraction to her was a product of his protective nature, couldn’t help but wonder if he would ever really see the real her.

Not his friend’s sister, that friend whom he thought he hadn’t been able to save, not as a way to satisfy the guilt that obviously had settled inside him as a teenager who had seen his mother’s horrific death...

But just her, Jasmine Douglas, ex-virgin pole dancer, penniless and with no prospects of a career, weak when it came to helping abusive family members and desperately falling for the teenage boy she had known once.

But hurting all over, she couldn’t summon the energy to be angry with herself. She had decided today to carve her own life, to make her own mistakes if that was what it took, to stop living in the shadow of the past.

Maybe her first mistake was to fall for a man who would never see her, much less want her in his life.

She had a career that reminded him of a past he clearly wanted to forget, she had thrown herself at him, first for help and now for sex, and she had blurted out her obsession over him. Why would a man who had everything in the world want a woman like her?

* * *

Dmitri stepped out from the house into the open grounds, the desolation and shame he had heard in Jas’s voice running through him in an endless loop.

Theos, he had only realized after he had lost it so thoroughly how she had lived with that shame for so long, how low her self-esteem must have been.

He had thought her merely attracted to him, whereas it went so much deeper. And tonight, by telling her about Andrew’s deceit, he had torn down the last barrier.

Her words and the weight of them... He was not ready for them. He was never going to be worthy of them.

He saw another shadow join his in the silence and turned.

His suit jacket gone, Stavros stood with his hand on the stone bench. They had spent many nights sitting on the bench, looking at the stars, each increasingly awed by the generosity of the man who had saved them both from certain hell. And determined to their last breath that they would make him proud of them.

Full of integrity and honor, Stavros had taught him so much. But right now, he was the last man Dmitri wanted to see because he wouldn’t lie to spare Dmitri’s feelings. He wouldn’t spare anyone, especially when it came to doing the right thing.

“You seduced her, didn’t you?” Stavros finally said, sounding utterly disgusted.

Gritting his jaw tight, Dmitri strove to calm himself. He would not lose it tonight, not again.

“Before you lose it, your little temper tantrum was witnessed by everyone at the party. Then you followed her and neither of you emerged for the rest of the night. Leah was worried about her.” The bastard went on, unperturbed. “The interesting thing is that you’re pacing here in the middle of the night. Which means at least you feel some regret.”

“She was a pole dancer at that club.”

The statement fell into the dark silence like a grenade waiting to be detonated. His gaze stunned, Stavros looked as though he was out of words.

“That’s not the worst,” Dmitri added. He needed to fix the situation, but for the life of him, he still couldn’t hate himself for what had happened.

“What is, then?”

“She...she’s full of shame over it, still just as stubborn, however, she’s very vulnerable to me, some kind of leftover from our past together—” God only knew why “—and now I seduced her, yes. So it’s a lot worse. If I had known how much she—”

“Theos, Dmitri, don’t start lying to yourself now.”

Dmitri felt it like a lash, loathing Stavros for being right.

He would have taken Jas come what may. That he had even resisted that long was a miracle in itself.

But he could not simply walk away from her. To do so would mean to torture himself eternally about whether she was safe. About who she was with, if there was another man who had taken over his place in her life, whether that man was worthy of her, if he would treat her well...

Christos!

And the thought of Jasmine with any other man but him, the thought of any man taking that smile, that double-edged innocence, of any man kissing her or learning that sensuous body of hers... It drove him crazy.

He had never ever felt this possessive about a woman, only a cold detachment. At most, sympathy when it had come to Anya.

He knew that Jasmine hadn’t given herself to him lightly, and telling her that it was a night of madness for him would only hurt her.

And he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t hurt Jasmine, not when there had been a hundred people in her life who had only ever done that.

The solution, the only solution to the tangle of mess he had created, came to him slowly, quite simple in its brilliance.

His heart seemed to freeze for a moment, and then stuttered into life, pounding even harder after that pause.

“I know what to do,” he said softly, the idea settling into his every pore, every cell, sinking into him deep. Tilting the very axis of his life. But he didn’t feel in the slightest bit worried. It was perfect for the situation he had created, the right thing finally.

His austere features bathed in shadows, Stavros, if possible, became even tenser. “And what would that be?”

Dmitri sighed, wishing he could walk away without answering his question, without giving a damn. But try as he might, he had never been able to wrench that detachment for Stavros.

Giannis had done a fine job of making them more than brothers. He had made them each other’s conscience. “I’ll not hurt her, Stavros.”

“There’s more than one way of hurting, Dmitri. I stole five years of her life, five years that I can never return, from Leah. Don’t be so blindly arrogant as I was to decide her fate for Jasmine.”

“I’m not forcing her into anything, Stavros.”

He would not force Jas. He would only give her what would make her happy, do what he should have done all those years ago. He owed Andrew that much, despite Andrew’s mistakes; he owed her that much. And it wasn’t as if he was making a huge sacrifice, either, when all he did was flit from woman to woman, trying to fill the emptiness he felt.

At least, with Jas, there would be the satisfaction of doing the right thing. At least, with Jas, there would be no emptiness. Not when she looked at him like that.

“Dmitri, I’m—”

Dmitri had had enough. He turned away from Stavros and went back to the house. For the first time in forever, he had found something that made him feel as though he was alive again. Something that helped him look in the mirror and see a worthy man.

Something that he was determined to hold on to.





CHAPTER ELEVEN

TWO DAYS LATER, the most beautiful day dawned, as if the elements had decided to behave in the face of such true, abiding love as Jasmine saw in Leah and Stavros’s eyes.

A lone tear slid down her cheek as they posed for a picture under the arch of lilies. With her eyes twinkling and her mouth painted a luscious red, Leah was a perfect contrast to Stavros’s severely stunning looks.

She was so glad to have witnessed the wedding, the best part in her mind when Dmitri, looking so breathtakingly gorgeous in a black tuxedo, had walked Leah to Stavros and handed her over.

Something had passed between the two men, a sliver of tension that paused the whole tableau, but then Dmitri had kissed Leah’s cheek and gone to stand by Stavros.

If she had thought her life strange before, it was nothing compared to the roller coaster of the past two days.

It had been close to dawn when, after hours of tossing and turning, she had fallen into a fitful sleep that night after he had walked out with such anger. While she had refused to cry or pity herself, she had relentlessly wondered where Dmitri had gone. Wondered if he would disappear again.

And then suddenly, he had been there in her bed just as the sun touched everything in the room with a pink glow.

Naked and gloriously, arrogantly masculine, he had been a cocoon of warmth and hardness behind her.

Had she resisted him? Had she even put up a token fight when he had come back to her bed as if he belonged there?

No, all she had felt had been unprecedented joy that he had come back to her, utter relief that he didn’t loathe her for what she had told him. She had been weak, yes, but Jasmine didn’t know how to be anything else when it came to Dmitri, didn’t know how to arrest her heart from jumping into her throat when he looked at her, or how to stop her skin from tingling with one casual touch of his.