Bought for Her Innocence(27)

Reaching her, he put his hands on her hips, kissed her temple. And standing in his arms, soaking in his words, Jasmine desperately wanted to say yes.

“I’ll do everything in my power to make you happy, Jas, to take care of you. You’ll want for nothing, you’ll see.”

Just like that, Jas felt her answer float away from her lips. Her happiness, her well-being, all Dmitri talked about was her. As though she was one of his possessions—a well-oiled bike, a smoothly run nightclub, a well-maintained portfolio that only kept on giving.

What about him?

What did he feel for her?

What had shifted that he wanted to marry her?

Still grappling with how deep her feelings ran, how much weight each word of his carried with her, Jas felt his words like a rope binding her to him. “What about love, Dmitri?” she said finally. Her chest was so tight, her fingers chillingly cold as if she had dunked them in ice.

He became absolutely still, but something uncoiled in those gray eyes. “What about love, Jas?”

So he was going to torture this out of her. “Do you love me, Dmitri?”

“No, but then I don’t believe I’m capable of it, Jas. I feel a certain affection for Leah, loyalty for Stavros, but that’s about the breadth of my emotional range. And you—” her breath hung in her throat “—you’ll have my fidelity and my friendship.”

Her hopes fell away, his words shattering her heart into a thousand pieces inside her chest. She slumped against the table, her limbs shaking uncontrollably.

He reached her instantly and caught her. “Theos, Jas, I thought you would be happy. I thought this was what you wanted.”

And there it was...the final proof in his own words.

Cradled against him, Jas felt herself tearing into two halves, one gleefully, treacherously ecstatic that this strong, powerful, honorable man would be hers, and the other, warning away from a fate that could leech away every ounce of joy from her life.

If she married him because he made her feel safe and because he was offering friendship and because of the wild heat between them, if she willingly went into this knowing that he would never even open himself to the possibility of love, knowing that his vows were born out of guilt and a protective instinct that was a mile wide while she, bound to him irrevocably, would wait for him to open his heart, while she crucified herself wondering if it was something within herself...

The fear that she had been holding at bay for so many days, years actually, twisted and swelled inside her...until she saw herself turning into her worst nightmare. Her mother had waited and wasted away her entire life for a man who had never looked back.

Would that be her fate, too, if she weakened in this minute? Was her choice to smash her heart into pieces now or wait for it to fall apart piece by piece over years?

“I never wanted you to marry me, Dmitri. I would have settled for...” Her words seemed to dissolve on her lips when he pinned her with his gaze.

Because then, she could hope for a better future than the one he had so thoroughly mapped out for her. Because then, she had foolishly thought, she would make herself worthy of him, that she would somehow make him proud of her.

A stillness seemed to creep up into his face while his gaze, that gaze that had never been able to lie to her, burned with a ferocity that he had kept leashed until now. “I offered marriage because you deserve better, Jas.”

Her throat was so thick with ache that she thought she might be sick.

God, if he talked about her one more time as if she were something to be cosseted and protected, she was going to scream. And then crumple into a heap. “Have you offered marriage to every woman you have ever slept with? Or is it a special offer reserved for virgins?”

“Theos, you’re different from the numerous other women I screwed. There, is that enough?”

“How? How am I different?”

“You’re Andrew’s sister.” Jas wanted to cover her ears and scream. “And you’re the most annoyingly stubborn woman I’ve ever met.”

Before she knew, he was clasping her to him and plundering her mouth with his.

It was a kiss meant to possess, to captivate, to lay claim. And still, Jas lost herself to it. Lost herself in the erotic strokes of his wicked tongue, lost herself in the heat he so easily stroked into life, lost herself in the hard body.

Lost herself in the man who promised her so much except the one thing she really needed.

One hand cupped her breast reverently while the other pulled her snug against him to feel his rigid shaft. Her breath left her in a soft flutter, tears she couldn’t fight anymore spilling onto her cheeks.

“I promise you, Jas, I have never known anything like this fire between us... You would walk away from this?”

She caressed his jaw with her mouth, breathing in the scent of him. “I have to.”

How could something that felt so good eventually turn out to be bad for her? Her body, pulsing with need, seemed to find it impossible to grasp.

Steeling her spine, she pushed away from him for the last time. “I can’t marry you, Dmitri. I have barely found myself after years of living buried under others’ mistakes, others’ addictions. I can’t do that to myself again.” Not even for you.

“I’m promising you a life that will lack for nothing. How is it not—”

“But this is about guilt, your guilt. I’m your project for all the things you failed at. For not being able to save your mother all those years ago, for your supposed failure with Andrew, for not saving me from my tasteless past soon enough.

“All of this—” her voice broke, a deluge of tears knocking at her eyes “—is only because you want to feel better about yourself.”

“I know how you feel about me.” His control slipped then, his anger spewing into his words. As if she was the one hurting him, as if somehow this was all her fault. As if she had somehow damaged him. “I know what that night meant to you. How does it matter when I’m offering everything I can of myself?”

Was this how it felt when one’s heart broke? Did the world keep on turning? “It’s because I feel so much that I can’t accept this. I can’t let my love for you break me, Dmitri.

“Because I do love you. I love you so much that there’s this voice inside that’s screaming that I’m stupid to walk away from this, that I should grab it with both hands. That I should take what little I can get of you.” She grabbed her head, as if she could silence it. “And it won’t stop. I don’t think it will ever stop.”

“Then, listen to it. For once, thee mou, do what is good for you. Don’t walk away, Jas.”

Grasping the door handle, Jas looked at him. The thing that hurt the most was that he didn’t understand. He didn’t see how painful it was for her to walk away, how hard it would be for her to accept the little he gave of himself when she wanted everything.

When he walked toward her, she shook her head. “No. Don’t touch me and don’t come to my room. Don’t...do anything more for me, Dmitri, please.”





CHAPTER TWELVE

DMITRI DIDN’T KNOW how he had made it through the night.

He remembered pacing the study like a caged animal. It was how he had felt in that first year when Giannis had brought him to this very house. He had once called it house-training a wild animal.

He had, through will hanging by a thread, kept himself in the study. Every cell in him wanted to convince her the only way he knew but then he told himself she deserved better.

So he paced and drank and paced some more, trying to think of ways to stop her. It was now morning and he was no closer to a solution.

Except the renewed resolve to keep her in his life. And the panic that flared at the thought that he might fail, that he had somehow lost Jas irrevocably, and that it was nothing compared to all the losses he had lived through...

For a man who had floated through most of his adult life loathing his inability to feel anything, loathing the fact that his father had stolen more than his mother from him, it was like drowning after being parched for years.

* * *

He needed dark, blistering coffee to ground himself, to make sure he didn’t do anything that he would regret later. His shirt half undone, his hair in disarray, he reached the breakfast room.

The scent of sweet pastries and coffee filled the room, the house blissfully silent after last night.

Dressed in a long-sleeved sweater and slacks, his hair still wet from the shower, Stavros looked like the very picture of matrimonial bliss. Their gazes met and held.

Stavros poured some of the thick, dark coffee and pushed a cup toward Dmitri. “You look terrible.”

“Why aren’t you in bed with your wife, Stavros? Or better yet, why aren’t you gone yet? This is my estate now.”

A brow raised, Stavros stared at him. “I was waiting for you.”

Dmitri took a long sip and felt marginally human again. He ran a hand over his jaw and felt the bristle. Theos, he must look like the savage he felt like. He would have to shower and shave before he went up to see her. He still didn’t know what he was going to say.

Do you love me, Dmitri?

He had offered her everything and she had asked for the one thing he didn’t know how to do.

Fear and confusion like he had never known before gripped his insides.

It felt as though overnight he had lost something, something precious he hadn’t even known he had. Not for a moment had he thought she would say no.