Bought for Her Innocence

“Dmitri, what is it? Don’t, please, look at me like that. As if I...” She didn’t finish the words, her throat working conspicuously, her hands fisting the duvet.

But he didn’t care what she was feeling. Theos, he was drowning in what could have been. “You could have come to me so much sooner. You could have avoided all that. If any of them had gotten his hands on you, if they had forced you into something that you didn’t want... Christos.” He turned and slammed his fist into the wall.

But even the pain that shafted up his knuckles and arm was not enough to release the fear that crawled through his veins.

“Dmitri, you have to understand—”

“Understand what, Jas? You had a choice. My father was an alcoholic bastard but did you know that my mother was a prostitute?” he said bitterly, giving voice to something he had never shared with another soul. “He drank with her money but hated her for it. It ate through him and he took it out on her and me. Half the time, I couldn’t stop him because I was such a runt...until I learned to use my speed and my fists...

“She was saving to leave London, just enough so that she could bring me to Giannis in Athens, who was her uncle. She had to hide the money because he took all of it from her. And then just two days before we were set to leave, he found out. He was in one of his drunken rages and he pushed her.

“She hit her head on the wall and died instantly, before I could even catch her. Then he locked the door outside and he ran.” He dropped to the bed, his head in his hands, trembling, shivering, still feeling her cold body in his arms. “I sat there for hours, imagining all the different ways I could have saved her. The silence... I have never been able to bear it since. If Andrew hadn’t come to look for me as he always did when he heard from the neighbors that my father was in a drunken rage again, I don’t know how long I would have been there.

“You know what I thought when Gaspard touched you today, Jas? Fear that I wouldn’t be able to save you. And now to hear you so blithely say that’s where you have put yourself willingly for so many years...”

He felt as if he was in that moment today. The pain and the fear that ripped through him... He couldn’t breathe.

Turning away from her, he put on his discarded trousers, his chest cold as ice. He couldn’t bear to look at her, not all that loveliness, that flush to her skin.

Because if he did, he knew either he would be tempted to wring her neck for her recklessness or he would take her against the wall like an animal, her comfort and soreness be damned, just to rid the shiver in his muscles. Just to feel all of her with his rough hands, just to reassure himself that she was here, safe in his arms, beyond that world’s reach now...

And then he would never be able to forgive himself.

He needed to leave until he had a better handle on his emotions, until he understood what was happening to him. He found his hands were shaking.

“Dmitri.” Her soft entreaty seared through him and he turned.

The sheet wrapped around her nakedness, she rose from the bed like a goddess, and even drowning in fury, he was drawn to her. “Don’t, Jas... I can’t bear to look at you.”

Her arm fell back against her body. The wariness disappeared from her eyes and something else set in. He was almost at the door.

“I hated you for never looking back,” she said then, sounding small and broken.

Her words were like a rope that bound him to the room, to her.

“For years, I imagined that you would come back and somehow rescue Andrew and me from that life. I built you up into...this hope in my head when Andrew got worse, when it felt as if I couldn’t take another day.” He opened his mouth but she raised her hand. “I know the truth now, I do. But when Andrew told me those lies about you giving up on us, all that hope instantly turned to hate. Because, you see, that hatred was easier to bear than the pain.

“I thought you had abandoned me. Just like the rest of them. Like my father, my mum and even Andrew. At his funeral, you were so distant, so out of my sphere, full of pity for me. You stood there so coldly, offering me money, as if that was all I deserved from you. As if I was a problem you wanted to fix and then forget about.”

Pity? He had never pitied her. He had looked at her, eighteen and innocent and full of such blazing hatred for him, and he’d thought she was better off without him...

He hadn’t been able to stomach that he had failed at saving another life... That even with all the wealth he had acquired, he had been of no use... The idea of letting Jasmine back in his life, even if he had been able to persuade her in the first place, the fear of failing had been too much...