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In the aftermath she felt as though she were melting into the bed in a boneless state and the very last thing she needed then was Raj freeing himself from their entangled limbs and springing off the bed to breathe rawly, ‘You’ve got some explaining to do. You lied to me!’
CHAPTER SEVEN
GRABBING THE SHEET to cover herself, Zoe hauled herself up against the tumbled pillows, watching Raj yank on his jeans. Going commando, she noticed, colour flaring in her face. It was as if her mind weren’t her own any more. She couldn’t take her eyes off his lithe bronzed body, couldn’t concentrate.
‘I didn’t lie,’ she reasoned stiffly.
‘You lied,’ Raj repeated wrathfully. ‘You said it was time you tried sex again when clearly you had never had sex before—’
‘Well, I may have blurred the edges of the truth a bit,’ Zoe mumbled defensively.
‘You lied and I detest dishonesty!’ Raj shot back at her fiercely.
‘So what?’ Zoe fired back, her temper sparking in answer to his. ‘It was my decision to make—’
‘And mine. I wouldn’t have touched you had I known I would be the first!’ Raj bit out curtly. ‘But you chose to withhold that knowledge, which was unfair—’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake...’ Zoe thrust the blonde hair falling round her hot face back off her damp brow. ‘It was just sex. Why are you making such a production out of it? We’re consenting adults, neither of us is in another relationship.’
Raj skimmed scorching dark eyes to her. ‘I don’t do relationships.’
‘Well, I’m afraid you’re stuck in this one,’ Zoe told him with unashamed satisfaction. ‘You can’t have it both ways, Raj. If you don’t do relationships, then you should be quite happy to have had no-strings-attached sex.’
Dark colour scoring his superb cheekbones, Raj shot her a blistering look of derision and strode out of the room. She listened to his bare feet thumping down the wooden stairs and then the slam of the front door signifying his exit from the house. Switching out the lights, she got out of bed to walk over to the window and finally picked him out striding down onto the beach. Moonlight glimmered along the hard line of his broad shoulders and danced over his curls.
Mortification gripped Zoe, who was conscious she had said stuff she didn’t actually believe to hit back at him because she had felt humiliated by his annoyance. It had been her decision to have him as her first lover, hadn’t it? But she wasn’t liberal enough to plan to have casual sex with anyone, even if she had made it sound as though she were. She had simply wanted that experience, had wanted him. Was that so bad? But it also felt wonderful to no longer fear the act of sex, to no longer feel that she was somehow less than other women and missing out on an experience that others enjoyed.
Uneasily aware then of the ache at the heart of her from that first experience, she went into the bathroom and ran herself a bath to soak in. She had messed up, brought sex into their platonic relationship...but, hey, hadn’t Raj been the one to make the first move? Why hadn’t she thrown that at him? It was his fault they had ended up in bed. Why, in his eyes, would it have been acceptable to become intimate if she had had more experience? How had it somehow become wrong because she had been inexperienced?
Throwing on a cotton wrap and stuffing her feet into flip-flops, Zoe left the house and trudged across the sand to where Raj was walking through the whispering surf.
Raj heard her approach. There was nothing stealthy about Zoe crossing sand. He breathed in deep and slow, rising above his angry discomfiture and the guilt she had inflicted him with.
‘All right, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you beforehand, but you’re the one who dragged me into bed,’ Zoe reminded him flatly, her face burning. ‘Regrets now are a bit late in the day and they’re not going to change anything.’
‘In my culture a woman’s purity is highly valued and respected. That may seem outdated to you—’
‘Very much so. Why should a woman be any more restricted with what she does with her body than a man is?’ Zoe slung back at him half beneath her breath.
‘I feel guilty that I took that innocence from you,’ Raj admitted harshly.
‘Even if it’s what I wanted? It’s not like I’m still a teenager in need of protection,’ Zoe argued vehemently, surprised herself to realise how strongly she felt about the decision she had made. ‘I just wanted to be like everyone else and know what it was all about instead of feeling...feeling odd,’ she framed grudgingly.
‘You deserved more than I gave you. It wasn’t special...it should have been special,’ he asserted with conviction.
‘Was your first time special for you?’ Zoe demanded, cutting in.
Disconcerted by that unexpectedly bold question, Raj gritted his teeth and opted for honesty. ‘No.’
‘Well, there you are, then, once again you didn’t practise what you preach.’
A reluctant laugh was torn from Raj and he turned to look at her, so tiny she barely reached the centre of his chest and yet in so many ways she was absolutely fearless in her outlook, happy to express her views even when they conflicted with his. She was also too stubborn and independent to even acknowledge his point that if she had valued herself more she would not have entertained surrendering her innocence to him. People rarely confronted Raj with his mistakes or criticised him but Zoe had no such filter. She was quite correct: he had dragged her into bed.
‘And I’m sorry if you don’t feel the same way,’ she added stiffly, ‘but what we shared did feel special to me.’
Disconcerted, Raj sent her a gleaming glance and then his lashes dropped low. ‘I’m sorry if I upset you but I do hate lies,’ he murmured grimly.
‘I’m usually very honest but I didn’t want you to back off,’ Zoe completed unevenly.
‘You were curious,’ Raj commented, wondering if he had ever had such an extraordinary conversation with a woman before, a conversation in which he was painfully honest and she was as well. He didn’t think so and there was something remarkably refreshing about the experience.
‘Yes, sorry if that makes you feel a bit like an experiment...but I suppose you were, rather, a new experience, I mean,’ she mumbled apologetically.
Exactly like having a day out behind the wheel of a supercar, Raj thought again with relish, and he burst out laughing. No, no woman had ever dared to tell him before that he was an experiment, but then none had ever used that word, special, for what they had shared with him either. ‘Am I allowed to ask how I scored?’
‘No. That would be bad for your ego...’ Zoe gazed up at him, encountering moonlit dark eyes that shimmered, and her heart skipped a beat.
‘You were amazing...and special,’ Raj murmured, lifting his hands to gently comb her tousled mane of hair back from her cheekbones, the pads of his fingers brushing the petal-soft skin of her face, sending a quiver of awareness arrowing through her. ‘But I shouldn’t have touched you. I had no right.’
‘We’re married.’
‘In name only,’ he reminded her with scrupulous accuracy, and for some reason she wanted to kick him. ‘It’s not meant to be real but it’s starting to feel very real, which is worrying.’
‘Why worrying?’ she prompted.
‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this. We were supposed to live separate lives and make a few public appearances together and that was to be that.’
‘So, we departed from the set script. But we’re not hurting anyone,’ she whispered, her hands settling to his lean waist, her fingers rubbing over smooth, hot skin, feeling the ripple of the muscles of his abdomen pull taut at even that slight touch.
‘I don’t do relationships,’ he reminded her stubbornly even as he leant down to her, drawn by the ripe pink swell of her mouth.
‘You’re right in the middle of a relationship with me...stop kidding yourself!’ Zoe countered. ‘Do you think you’re about
to wake up some morning and find yourself handcuffed to the bed and trapped?’
