“I can attend to it myself.” Dmitri turned and grinned, a wicked glint in his eyes. The transformation from brooding violence to charming rogue was so swift that Jasmine did a double take. “Or Leah can attend to me.”
Jasmine had never seen him smile like that.
Innocence had never been a luxury they had been afforded, and for as long back as she could remember of her childhood, Dmitri had been in it. And not this smiling, outrageous playboy who looked as though nothing touched him...
The expression in his eyes was dazzling, wicked and not...completely real. He knew what his outrageous remark would do and he had used it to deflect attention from him and his wound.
That smile was a practiced facade, she thought with a frown.
Leah shook her head. “Dmitri, stop taunting him. And, Stavros, really, enough with the caveman—”
“Tell your husband that I’m not sixteen anymore and he doesn’t need to patch me up.” This was Dmitri again, winking wickedly at Leah. “I had hoped you would have cured him of all this duty nonsense in your bed, pethi mou.”
A curse flew from the deceptively calm Stavros.
“You’re his wife?” Jasmine said to the blushing Leah, realizing she had spoken out loud when Dmitri looked at her.
“Who did you think she was?”
Challenge. Dare. Belligerence. All of it wrapped in a smooth tone.
With three sets of eyes resting on her, Jasmine flushed but refused to let him embarrass her. She poured defiance into her tone. “Your current squeeze.
“I’m sorry.” She said this to Leah, who was shaking her head at both men.
“Don’t be.” Leah smiled. “Dmitri is being his usual beastly self. I’m Leah Sporades. Giannis, their godfather, was my grandfather.”
Jasmine stood awkwardly as Stavros and Leah argued with Dmitri with an obvious familiarity while he threw outrageous remarks at them.
I knew him before you did.
The errant thought dropped into her head and she sent a startled glance toward Dmitri.
His gaze stayed on her, intense and brooding, as if he would like nothing but to skin her alive with his words. Seconds piled on as that same awareness locked them in their own little world. What would happen when his friends left?
Running a hand over her forehead, she looked away. The faster she got out of here the better.
She grabbed the kit from the unsuspecting Stavros and turned to Dmitri. “Stop with the macho posturing and sit down. The cut is on the far left side and you’re left-handed.”
His grin vanishing, Dmitri looked at her as if she had suddenly sprouted two heads.
She sighed. That mutinous, wary expression in his eyes... That she remembered.
“Strip, Dmitri.”
“Usually I’m filled with uncontainable anticipation at that command from a woman,” he said with an exaggerated leer, “but give back the kit to Stavros, Jasmine.”
Unbuttoning his shirt, Dmitri pulled it off his wound. Only a jerk of his mouth betrayed his pain. Ridges of leanly sculpted muscles defined his broad chest, only a smattering of dark hair dotting the olive-toned skin.
Her cheeks instantly tightened, her mouth dry as Jasmine tried to not stare. She took a step toward him, determined to act normal. “I’ll make it fast.”
Dmitri glared at her. “I’d rather you not touch me at all.”
“Why not? I’ve sewed up so many of Andrew’s wounds growing up that I—”
“Like Stavros pointed out so well, we don’t know where you and your hands have been. And yes, you are supertough to have made it all on your own for so many years... But we both know that you are a little fragile right now, ne? You were crawling all over me on the bike and—”
“Because you were driving like a maniac,” she yelled, her face heating up.
“—and a minute ago, you got upset at the sight of the small gash. I’d rather you not look at me with those sad, puppy eyes while you tend to me as if this was some grand reunion that we both have been breathlessly waiting for for years. My generosity toward you is fast disappearing and the cut burns like hell.”
The kit fell from her fingers, thudding like a drum in the silence.
There were so many offensive things in there that for a second, she couldn’t even sift through them all. Only stood weightless while the cruelty in his words carved through her.
Then the slow, merciful burn of humiliation spread across her throat and cheeks, merciful because anything was better than that hollow ache, her ribs squeezing her lungs tighter and tighter.