Hot liquid filled her eyes. Jas blinked, trying to keep the tears away. “Dmitri, are you listening? I’m not afraid anymore.” She clasped his jaw, willing him to understand. “I won’t break like I thought. Loving you makes me stronger, not weaker. All I want is to be with you.”
“And if I do ask you to marry me again, not to protect you, but because I love you?”
“You’re not playing another game with me, are you?”
“No, pethi mou. I’ve been counting the days, waiting to show you how much I need you... I thought I would show you that you’ve changed me already. Irrevocably.”
“Wait, that’s what you’ve been doing? Selling your bike and yacht?”
“For years, I filled myself with expensive toys that gave nothing but fleeting pleasure, with women who made me feel nothing but an echo. But with you... You have made me see that I never forgave myself. That I never thought myself worthy of anything meaningful, even though Giannis tried his hardest to tell me that it wasn’t my fault that she had died.”
Her chest aching for the boy he had been, Jasmine embraced him with everything she had. “It wasn’t your fault, Dmitri. Just as it wasn’t my duty to sacrifice my life over Andrew’s and my mother’s mistakes. I want to live this life for me and I want to live it with you.”
“I will wait as long as it takes. I will spend my entire life showing you that I love you.” He kissed her so softly then tenderly, as if he was determined to fill all the lonely places inside her with his love. “I love you, matia mou. I love you so much that the world itself feels colorless without you.
“Marry me, Jas. Marry me because I want you to be mine eternally. Marry me because I need you. I need you to make me laugh, to make me feel, because I need you to love me every day for the rest of our lives.”
Her heart overflowing, Jas buried her face in his chest. Fear still pulsed through her, but it was a soft echo rather than the raging growl it had been when she had come in. They would make this work; they loved each other too much for it to fail. “I love you, too, Dmitri. I want to wake up with you. I want you to help me figure out what the hell I’m going to do with my life. I want to grow old with you. I want to be a part of the family you have with Leah and Stavros. I want to spend forever with you.”
“Then, you will,” he said before crushing her mouth. “I promise, Jas. I will never treat you as if you were something to be protected. I will never shower you with gifts and riches instead of my heart.”
“Your kisses, those are all I want,” she moaned, air already an alien concept.
“Those you will have, in abundance, and in every imaginable place. Remember how you promised you would give me anything I wanted?”
Her reckless offer pulsed in the air around them, turning his eyes into a stormy sky.
“Would you dance for me one night? Just once, Jas,” he said softly, but it didn’t hide the guttural quality of his voice.
She braced herself, but instead of that usual wash of shame that had always flooded her, something else filled her.
Anticipation, joy, even a sense of power. Wrapping her arms around his nape, she pressed herself into his chest wantonly, reveling in the thunderstorm she could unleash in his eyes. “For the man I love? I would do anything, Dmitri.”
With a smile that set her nerves on fire, Dmitri picked her up and walked over to the sitting area. And while Athens burned bright around them, he made love to her so tenderly, so softly that Jas fell in love all over again.
EPILOGUE
JASMINE WOKE UP with a huge smile on her face and then realized it was Christmas morning. Her first Christmas with Dmitri and a happy one after a long time, she thought, lazily soaking up the warmth of the Egyptian cotton sheets.
Her smile turned into a frown as she remembered her upcoming three-week trip to New York in January.
If truth be told, she had been more excited about seeing New York than her photo shoot. And now, even the attractions of the city that never slept paled in the face of not seeing Dmitri for so long.
Would Dmitri come to New York if she asked him?
Imagining all the ways she could try to convince him, she quickly showered in the en suite and dressed in a red-and-white sleeveless knee-length collared dress. She quickly braided her wet hair, applied some lip gloss and went in search of Dmitri.
The atrium gleamed in the morning sunlight, the sound of voices drawing her to the cozily contemporary kitchen.