by Tara Pammi
Andrew had been viciously angry with Dmitri that last time they had met, just months before he had died, because Dmitri had refused to give him any more money. Because Dmitri had wrongly hoped that cutting Andrew off after so many years would curb his gambling habit.
He had never thought Andrew would poison Jasmine against him, however, that he would lie about all the times Dmitri had lent him money.
But then he shouldn’t have been shocked. Didn’t he know firsthand the consequences of addiction and self-loathing it built up? How it only looked for a scapegoat?
For years, Dmitri had faced his father’s fists just because his father hadn’t been man enough to accept that his alcoholism had been responsible for the miserable state of their lives. No, his cowardly father had blamed his mother instead.
After everything he and Andrew had been to each other, Dmitri had become that scapegoat for Andrew.
No wonder Jasmine despised him. And he had no intention of telling her the truth, either. He needed the distance her hatred for him put between them.
But the sense of honor Giannis and Stavros had instilled in him wouldn’t let him wash his hands of her.
It meant he couldn’t just pad her bank balance and remove her from his life. Not until he figured out this whole auction mystery about her. Not until he was completely sure that Jasmine could walk away from that life.
Unbuttoning his shirt, he entered the bedroom and stilled.
The blinds were open and the sunlight made every inch of the room glitter with a soft, golden glow.
And in the middle of it, on the chaise longue, lay Jasmine. Her hands were folded under her cheek, her long legs half dangling on the other side revealed delicate feet with red-tipped toes.
She was only a few inches shorter than him, which meant she had to be uncomfortable as hell on the chaise. While a perfectly good king-size bed lay in touching distance.
Stubborn woman!
If not for sheer exhaustion, she would have crawled out to the corridor rather than take his help, he knew.
Without intending to, he found himself moving closer to her.
Her dark hair was finally out of the knot and spread against the beige upholstery like nightfall, lustrous and wavy. Spiky eyelashes curved against her cheeks, her plump, wide mouth, for once not pursed in disapproval.
She looked like a wild, beautiful horse he had once seen on Stavros’s farm, a horse that had refused to be mounted by anyone. An incongruous, irresistible combination of untouched innocence and untamed wildness.
One minute, she was consigning him to hell for his sins and more, the next, melting into him.
He sank to the floor and leaned his head against the bed, memories he had locked away rushing at him.
He didn’t remember a moment of his childhood without her in it.
She had been such a tall, gangly little girl when he had left, her black eyes filled with fat tears when she had said goodbye.
For years, after he had moved in with Giannis, he remembered that face and her wet kiss on his cheek.
Even now, at first glance, she looked scrawny, the robe sticking on her angular shoulders, drowning her lithe form. But that was where the girl he remembered with such fondness ended.
Honey-gold and smooth, her skin shone with a brilliance no amount of makeup could achieve, transforming her face. There was a lean, tensile strength to her body, a fluid grace and energy that had slammed into him when he had tackled her.
Curves that had pressed against his forearm that he couldn’t see now...
Theos, was he so shallow that he was this desperate for a peek at what she so desperately wanted to hide? Had he truly become that playboy who had the hots for every woman that came into his life?
Was there nothing he wouldn’t take to sate that perpetual emptiness within him?
Because, for once, Stavros was wrong, his faith in Dmitri misplaced. There was something between Jasmine and him, and every inch of him wanted to explore what it was, and she...she was no match for him.
Theos, this was Andrew’s little sister, the last woman he needed to tangle with, however much she made him feel things he had never felt before.
He pushed himself off the floor, called Reception and requested a different suite.
He had plans for tomorrow, for next week, for the next month. And he intended to keep those plans.
And that meant the bachelor party he was throwing Stavros at a strip club in Monaco. Something he had been looking forward to ever since Stavros had pronounced that he was marrying Leah again, properly this time.
* * *
By the end of the next three days, Jasmine was ready to throttle Dmitri with her very hands. And more than annoyed with herself for being a naive idiot.
She had woken up long past midday, feeling as if a speeding bus had run her down. Her body was a mass of bruises from being tackled by the giant brute, her neck ached from sleeping at an awkward angle for so long on the chaise longue, which she kicked out of a perverse anger when she was up, and of course, her foot hurt because of that.
The worst was the feeling of being caged in the sophisticated but deafeningly silent hotel suite. What had seemed so secure in the dark of the dawn now felt like a jail that cut her off from the rest of the world.
Looking out of the French windows, she had seen the bustle of Bond Street and yet, she felt worlds away.
She hadn’t minded it so much the first day, having spent two hours soaking in the decadent marble tub. Not even when the hotel physician and a nurse had arrived, on the orders of Mr. Karegas of course, to ensure Ms. Douglas suffered no ill effects after the stress of her previous day.
Not when she had been served a five-course meal with as much aplomb as if she were the queen.
In fact, she had been impressed and softened and whatnot by the time she’d finished her chocolate-dipped strawberries and mint tea. Even convinced herself that she had been extremely stupid in not coming to Dmitri for help sooner.
By the evening of the second day, she was ready to hitch herself up on the prestigious artwork and climb the walls.
So dressed again in her freshly laundered old jeans and one of Dmitri’s Savile Row dress shirts—she couldn’t bear to even look at her old sweater—she had stepped out of the suite and found a hulking giant following her down the corridor and into the lift.
He had appeared by her side as she waited for the doorman, his hand on her wrist sending a current of fury through her.
“You’re not to leave the premises of the hotel, miss,” he had replied when she had glared at him. “Mr. Karegas ordered that you stay put until he’s sure you’re safe,” he had said with a repressive shudder.
Flushing as if she had been caught out being particularly naughty, she had mumbled off something and dutifully headed back into the room. Only later had she realized that Dmitri had practically made her a prisoner.
Even then, she had warmed up, so devoid of basic security her life had been.
So she had waited, over the next day and another day. Patiently and with even a growing sense of gratitude and warmth, her gullible, ever-ready-to-succumb-to-temptation mind painting pictures of their blossoming friendship.
Until she had surfed the channels and seen the latest tabloid channel report.
Dmitri Karegas was living it up at the illustrious bachelor party he was throwing his best friend and business partner of years, Stavros Sporades.
Hadn’t Leah said she was Stavros’s wife?
The feature went on to talk about the world-famous strip club, the hundred different champagnes that had been served, a burlesque show that apparently was the raciest thing ever and the sexiest, the most raucous bachelors from the world attending, including a Hollywood movie star, a sheikh from the middle east and a Japanese media mogul...and Dmit
ri Karegas.
Stavros, the supposed groom, Jasmine realized, was conspicuously absent.
Somehow, she had a hard time imagining that austere, almost forbidding man giving in to the kind of excesses that would go on at the party that feature boasted about.
Because her job had given her ample exposure to it, especially when she had waitressed at a private party once, too terrified of taking on her usual duties.
Drinks, dancing, women...and Dmitri, with his reputation for a voracious sexual appetite in the middle of it all...
Her gut heaved so violently at the very thought that she pressed her hand to it...
What the hell was wrong with her? She was acting as if they were...
No, she wouldn’t even think it.
Two photos of the party had been leaked through the usual social media sites.
One showed two buxom blondes—really there was no other way to describe the décolletage of the two women—corralling him on either side, holding their empty champagne flutes aloft while Dmitri popped the cork open with a thousand-kilowatt smile for the flashing camera bulbs.
The second one was a close-up of him, a grainy shot clicked with a cell phone camera. Those hauntingly beautiful eyes of his held a smirk...a challenge? A chasm of emptiness that she wished she understood...
Did no one else get glimpses of the man she did? It felt as if only she could see beneath the mask he wore to the real man.
Something swelled in her chest, so intense was her longing to understand him again like she had once.
Her cell phone’s chirp, a text from her mother pleading with Jas for any cash she could spare, pulled her from the trance. A technologically delivered slap to pull her back to her reality, so to speak.
Of course, Dmitri wasn’t worried about her. It was nothing but a ruse to scare her into staying put just so he could feel better about his unwanted duty toward her.
Hadn’t she started this whole thing because she didn’t want to be anyone’s prisoner?
There was an ongoing...negotiation between Dmitri and her, that was all.
A string of softly spoken words, a kind glance and some pasta Alfredo and she was ready to turn into his next groupie.
He owed her nothing, having paid a thousand times over. He had clearly told her that she was but an inconvenience, ordered her to stay on the periphery of his life.
Where was this sense of betrayal coming from then? Dear Lord, how desperate was she for some kind of connection that she projected it onto the first man who had looked at her with nothing but a begrudging kindness? One who had been disgusted by her lifestyle?
The next two hours she spent in the suite waiting for the giant security guard to change shifts was the longest of her life. The minute the clock struck four, she grabbed her handbag, stepped into the lift and ran out of the building.
If she hurried, she could make it to her bank on time and withdraw cash for her mum.
Ten minutes into walking into the neighborhood she grew up in, unease gripped Jasmine.
Something sinuous settled in her belly at the thought of going back to her dinky flat. No, it wasn’t the flat as much as it was the life she didn’t want to lead anymore.
She needed to start a new chapter in her life. Needed to use this time to make a clean break of it, once and for all.
Tomorrow, she would start looking for a new job. As soon as she thought it, her heart sank. The only connections or contacts she had were the ones revolving around the nightclub, her brother’s friends and Noah’s men.
Except for Dmitri.
Dmitri, who it seemed could turn her inside out just by existing.
She spent the next few hours running errands—withdrawing cash, buying groceries and mulling over new career possibilities that would help her earn a hundred thousand pounds fast enough. And catching quite a bit of gossip at her old haunts.
Apparently, the fact that Dmitri had bought her was something of news in their little flea-infested, junkie-ridden neighborhood and she was the star of the feature. The almost envious lewdness that dripped from the comments that in the end she would go in the same career route as her mother, of course with a bit of an upgrade to it, what with Dmitri being a billionaire and all, had been extremely hard to swallow.
Had she thought she was better off here for even a minute? She had no education, no job training, and she knew nothing except keeping herself in good shape and keeping her head down. Hours of rigid exercise and practice had made her a good pole dancer, but what other job could use that?
Her skin clammy with sweat, she packed a quick bag, stuffing in underwear, another pair of jeans, a few blouses and the few cosmetics that she owned.
And the diamond pendant, her one precious belonging, that Andrew had given her for her eighteenth birthday.
This was it.
She was saying goodbye to this life. Her pride and her curious weakness when it came to Dmitri... She would have to find a way to deal with it.
It was past eight when she finally reached her mum’s flat. The same frustration built up inside her as she borrowed the keys from old Mrs. Davies, but this responsibility, Jasmine realized, she couldn’t walk away from. Not until one of them was dead.
She cleaned up the one-bedroom flat, emptied the grocery bags and then loaded up the cardboard boxes with empty bottles. She put the check she had made out at the bank in an envelope and left it on the counter.
The bulky box in hand, she had barely made it down the steps when the hairs on her neck stood up, like the antenna on her mother’s old TV.
The long lines of a dark limo slowly materialized under the sadly flickering streetlight, the sleek vehicle a stark contrast against the dirty pavement.
And leaning against it, his long coat fluttering against the wind, his denim-clad legs crossed at his ankles, stood Dmitri. Moonlight illuminated his face in shadows and strips but still enough for her to see the arctic blaze in his eyes.
Soundlessly, he moved toward her and Jasmine let out a yelp, trying to escape him.
The cardboard box slipped from her fingers and thudded to the ground, the bottles causing a loud tinkling sound. Anything she had been about to say fell away from her in a horrified squeak as he lifted her off the ground, threw her over his shoulder, waited for his chauffeur to open the door.
And then threw her onto the long leather seat as if he was dumping out yesterday’s garbage.
Undignified protests sputtering from her mouth, she had barely even straightened on the seat when the limo took off.
“What the hell do you...”
The dark scowl etched on his brow shut her up instantly, his silver-plated watch glinting in the dark as he barked out commands in Greek.
Jasmine pressed her fingers to her temple and forced herself to breathe in and out. She sat up straight and looked out the window, struggling to rein in her temper. Of course, the tinted glass offered up a reflection of the man’s aquiline nose, sculpted cheeks and a mouth made for sin.
He didn’t get off the phone all through their drive through the city. They had left her dirty neighborhood, drove for a long while and finally had crossed the motorway when the limo came to a stop. Even then, he didn’t look at her. Only waited patiently when the door was opened.
Jasmine scrambled out with as much dignity as she could muster, given that he was dragging her with him as if she were a recalcitrant child.
“Oh, wow...” she said, as she finally noticed the sleek lines of the jet that was already idling. Glancing around only now, she saw the acres of empty land stretched out on all sides, a string of lights marking a couple of runways. They were at a private airstrip, miles away from the city.
She pulled at her arm. His fingers dug into her flesh.
“Ow, ow... Dmitri, you’re hurting me.”
&nbs
p; He let her go so suddenly and with such force that she half stumbled. She couldn’t believe it was the same man who had fed her pasta with such tenderness. “What is wrong with you?” she yelled.
Fury gripped his features. “You were not supposed to leave the hotel suite. There was a report of a young woman’s body found near the...”
Turning around, he kicked at the ground, causing asphalt to fly around them.
She put her hand on his arm and he tensed. “I was never in any danger.”
“Theos, Jas, do you want to go back to that life? Is that it? You’re just as addicted to the danger and desperation of it as him? Like the whole infernal lot of people I’ve been cursed to know?
“If you are, tell me now. Because I won’t have your death on my conscience, too.”
Andrew. He was talking about Andrew, Jas realized slowly—about Andrew’s lifelong gambling addiction.
How long had he known? Had he found out after he had talked to Noah?
But Jasmine couldn’t bring his name up. Not when the very subject of Andrew seemed to push them both into a dangerous territory. Not when she didn’t trust herself to say something nasty just because Dmitri was here and her brother wasn’t.
Dmitri had had a benevolent godfather who had come for him just at the right time, true. But the whole world knew how hard he and Stavros had worked to turn their godfather’s small factory into a global empire.
While Andrew had only continued to make worse and worse choices.
“I’m not Stavros. I won’t save someone against their own wishes to self-annihilate, Jas. If I walk away now, I will never come back.”
“No, I don’t want to go back,” she answered, all her fury fizzling out at the anguish in his words. “Not for a day. I was angry that you...” Her claim sounded so childish to her own ears. It wasn’t his fault that she was feeling so fragile.
She met his gaze squarely. “I only went back to collect a few things, Dmitri. I was going to beg you to...” She paused, realizing she hadn’t actually come up with a plan except to throw herself at his mercy.
Again.
“Beg me for what?”
