Meghna raised an eyebrow. “Are you seriously trash-talking on your mom’s behalf?”
Karthik laughed. “I didn’t mean to. I was just telling the truth. Ammaneverloses.”
“Well, we’ll just have to see about that.” Meghna slowed down before coming to a complete stop at a red light. She almost turned right, but realized it was pretty presumptuous of her to head straight back to her apartment. She and Karthik had a lot to talk about. A lot to figure out. “Do you want to go get dinner?” she asked.
Karthik shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Uh, if you want to. Sure. We can.”
She peeked at him from the corner of her eye. He was lookingstraight ahead. Spine straight. Jaw tense. His hand clenched into a fist. Almost as if…as if he was restraining himself.
A lick of fire coursed through Meghna’s body.
“Or we could go back to my—”
“Your place. Yes. Let’s do that.”
She almost laughed at his eagerness, but managed to rein it in. Still, she couldn’t help but tease him.
“Or…I could just pull over?”
Two seconds of silence. Then a loud exhale.
“Yes,” Karthik said, his voice gravelly and rough. “Please.”
Meghna shivered. She’d meant it as a joke, but she was dead serious about it now. If she didn’t get her hands on him soon, she might combust.
She turned onto a quiet street and had barely put the car in park when she felt Karthik’s hands on her body, lifting and pulling her over to the passenger seat.
He moved all at once, a blur of motion, capturing her lips with his own. He moaned into her mouth and the sound set her ablaze. God, she’d missed this. The feel of his body against hers. The softness of his lips. The coarse texture of his beard.
The logical side of her mind knew they’d been kissing just a little while ago, but those kisses had been like cotton candy: sweetness that was so fragile, so delicate, that it melted on the tongue. Wonderful. Magical. Tender. Fleeting.
But this kiss? This kiss was a bite of green chili. Scorching heat. The kind that built and built and built, numbing her tongue, her mind, her senses. But she didn’t care. She wanted more. She bit down on his lower lip, and he let out a sound that was half-groan, half-growl. She bit down again, gentler this time, then soothed the sting away with her tongue. Quick as lightning, he broke away, moving his mouth along her jawline to her ear, nipping her lobe lightly.
She gasped.
“You like that?” he asked, catching her lobe between his teeth again.
“Yes,” she breathed, her hand coming up to grip his shirt collar. She didn’t want him to move. She wanted to keep him there. Right there. For as long as possible.
“Good,” he said. He planted a soft kiss behind her ear, then trailed more down the line of her neck. “I like it too.”
His hands came around her waist, and he gently pushed her toward his knees. He held her there for a few seconds, his breaths loud and harsh. Then he leaned his forehead against hers, almost involuntarily. As if he needed some space to calm himself down, but couldn’t help but touch her.
His hands traveled up and down the sides of her body. “I’ve been thinking about this since the card game. It was torture. Back there. In here. I needed to touch you.”
“Me too,” she said. “I needed to touch you. Ineedto touch you.”
She scooted forward slightly, needing to be closer. To feel him. To press against him. But Karthik’s hands tightened around her waist, so she stopped, going still.
“I don’t want to—” He broke off with a laugh. “That’s not true. Iwantto. So badly. But not like this. Not here. You deserve…you deserve better than this. You deserve more. So much more.”
She wanted to disagree, to say that she was more than happy to get it on in the car, but his voice held a note of somethingelse. Something small and sad and resigned.
He let out a sound of frustration. “You deserve someone who would plan a perfect night. Who’d buy you flowers and arrange some elaborate surprise and sweep you off your feet. Not someone who just…justmaulsyou in a car.”
Meghna snorted, and Karthik pulled back, looking at her in disbelief.
“Are you laughing?”
