Uncontrollable shivers overtook her. Hunger and lack of sleep from the past two days hit her like a battering ram, the sheer willpower with which she had kept herself going, shattering finally. “No. Bound to you eternally by this debt is.”
She swayed and sank to the thickly carpeted floor.
A soft curse ripped through the air before she was pulled up like a rag doll. “Theos, Jas.” His voice wasn’t loud, yet it carried something. His gaze searched her, his fingers splayed against her jaw, a strange glitter darkening his eyes. “Now is not the time to lose that reckless pride.”
Pushing his hands away, she sank back onto the chaise longue. Her body felt boneless, as if she would never stop falling.
All she wanted was to curl up and sleep for the next decade. All she wanted was to let someone else bear the burden, just once. “How am I going to pay you back? Lord, what am I going to do?” she muttered to herself.
The bedroom door opened and an army of uniformed staff set down an array of dishes that had her gut twisting with hunger. She looked at the clock, which said five in the morning.
The staff vanished just as they had appeared, with minimal fuss, making her wonder if she had imagined them.
“Until you figure out a way, you will eat, sleep and generally keep your presence in my life to a minimum.”
Swallowing at the mouthwatering aroma from the dishes, she nodded. Eyed the distance from the chaise to the table and groaned.
With a curse that sounded filthy to even her untrained ears, he stopped by the table and lifted a silver dome off a plate. “When did you eat last?”
“A cheeseburger about twenty hours ago,” she whispered pathetically.
Pushing her legs out of his way none too gently, and careful enough to not even accidentally touch her hip that was propped up, he sat down at the foot of the chaise. Forking pasta with his left hand, which was such a familiarly intimate gesture from her childhood that a lump formed in her throat, he brought it to her mouth.
Jasmine closed her mouth over the farfalle eagerly.
“Don’t make a habit of this, Jas.”
He sounded uncomfortable, wary. Was he afraid that she would climb all over him again and embarrass them both?
Closing her eyes, Jas chewed, relishing the thick white sauce. “Won’t even remember this, Dmitri.”
She ate in silence while the influx of carbs lulled her to sleep. She finished off a bottle of water and stretched back down on the chaise.
“I’ll see you later.”
She lifted her thumbs as he stilled by the door, pensive. She felt like that mangy dog again. Only instead of letting the doorman kick her, Dmitri had decided to keep her.
Something strange was going on with him. The fleeting thought came to her even as her head felt as if it was filled with cotton candy.
One minute, he was shredding her into pieces with such ruthlessness, and the next...such tenderness showed in his eyes that she thought she would shatter in the face of it.
“Where are you going? When will you return?”
He stared at her for a long, disturbing, soul-crushing moment before he covered the distance between them. Still reclining on the chaise, she waited with bated breath, her heart hammering behind her rib cage.
He would surely cut her to pieces for asking that question, for assuming such...
Kneeling down to her level, he took her hand in his. Her hand was delicately slender in his huge one, and suddenly, she felt a sense of security she hadn’t known in a long time. It was as if a fuzzy feeling unspooled in her gut.
“I have a very irate portfolio manager that I have to mollify after my latest bout of shopping frenzy,” he whispered, and she laughed through the weariness.
“Tonight I can sleep, can’t I? For as long as I want?”
He squeezed her hand, and she thought how rough his palm was. “Yes, you can, Jas. No one will come in. You’re...safe here.”
Her eyelids felt as if they would glue together forever. Jas squeezed his hand back and whispered, “Thank you,” before giving in to the sleep claiming her.
Maybe she didn’t have to hate Dmitri so thoroughly, the thought came to her. She would still pay him back, yes, but they could at least be friends, couldn’t they?
As much friends as she could be with a man who had bought her and who set her pulse racing like nothing in life ever had.
A man who was making it harder for her to hate him.
CHAPTER FIVE
DMITRI RETURNED WELL past eleven, his entire morning spent in a fruitless search. He still had no answers whatsoever as to what Noah had intended. He had been shut down at every avenue he had pursued and he knew why. Noah didn’t want word getting out about Jasmine getting out of her debt. Even though the greedy old bastard had milked the occasion for all its worth.