And then there was the real culprit that sent a simmering awareness through his blood for the sheer intimacy of it.
His pristine white, custom-made Armani dress shirt that she wore.
He was bulkier and broader and she was thin, waiflike... The shirt should have looked like a bag on her scrawny build.
The shoulder seam fell to her upper arms, while she had rolled up the sleeves. Tucked into those tight jeans, it billowed over her torso. But with the outline of her black bra visible through the thin cotton, the wide collar flashing peeks at golden honeyed skin every time she moved, it was the most erotically feminine thing he had ever seen.
Never had a woman so thoroughly covered up fired his curiosity to such depths.
She made his shirt her own in such a sexy way that he wanted to rip it off her, press his mouth to that silk-like skin, so that he could discover, for himself and for her, what lay beneath.
Theos, he was turning rock hard and he hadn’t even touched her...
No other woman in the world had ever baffled Dmitri like her; no other woman shook his compass in such a shattering way.
Despite everything, there was an inner strength to Jasmine that scorched him every time he looked into her eyes. Add to that, that instant charge whenever she looked at him out of those big black eyes.
“Is your mother well?” he said, choosing a topic that would surely defuse that charge.
A line of tension immediately bunched her shoulders tight before she slowly turned toward him. Her mouth closed on the bottle as she took a long sip. His blood rushed south as a picture of that saucy mouth wrapped around him came forth...
He pressed his fingers to his temple, searching for a shred of decency.
“As fine as she can be.” She screwed the cap back slowly. “Even Andrew’s death changed nothing for her.”
The bitterness in her tone took him aback first. Then it cycled to guilt and frustration.
He should have gone back for her after Andrew’s death, shouldn’t have walked away just because of his past failures. He knew, firsthand, the price a child paid for a parent’s destructive addiction. Even if her mother’s alcoholism had resulted in neglect of her children and not something much worse. A cold chill climbed up his spine. “Does she still—”
“Drink like a fish and then spiral into pitiful sobs remembering Andrew’s dad and then mine in that order? Yep... The worst are the stories about me turning into some Arab princess overnight when my father comes back for her after all these years. Thinks it’s going to be Princess Diaries—Jasmine-style.”
Her smile too wide, the glitter in her eyes too bright, she looked as if she would break with a gentle tap. Tenderness like he had never known engulfed Dmitri. He didn’t know what to do with it, didn’t know how to stop feeling it.
He had no words of comfort to offer. “Do you want me to look for him?”
Shock widened her eyes. “My father?”
He nodded. “It might not be that hard now that—”
“He spun stories, used her for a year and skipped town the moment she told him she was pregnant. She was nothing but a convenient mistress for a visiting diplomat. He had twenty-four years to change his mind. I don’t need another parent who looks at me as if I was the reason their life took a miserable turn.”
“Then, why did you go to see her again?” Frustration mounted inside him. “Why were you running around all evening loading up groceries, cleaning up?”
She frowned. “I haven’t checked on her in a week.”
“How much did you end up giving her this time?”
Her neck moved this way and that, that ugly knot at the back of her head making his fingers itch with the urge to unravel it. She was stalling, he knew.
That run-down flat was in a dilapidated part of the city; the empty bottles she carried out, the way she had almost cringed into herself in the darkness... Image after image flashed in front of his eyes... Theos, how did you protect someone from their own na?veté?
Suddenly, he had newfound respect for what Stavros went through with Leah.
Studying her neatly trimmed nails, she cleared her throat. “You’re making too much of...”
“How much, Jas?”
It felt as if a vein would burst in his temple, as if his very life was shifting in front of his eyes.
He hadn’t meant to shout. He hadn’t meant to get so angry. He hadn’t meant to spend every waking minute thinking of the infuriating woman or wanting to wring her neck. Or kiss her senseless.
“Just a little...” She swallowed when he continued to glare at her. “Okay, fine, most of what I saved. Her rent was overdue by two months and she had—”