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That she’d survived the trauma intact.
Ten years ago, she’d desperately wanted everything Virat had given her, but she’d been tentative, wary, passive, still reeling from the events surrounding the end of her marriage. Now Zara knew her own needs, could demand what she wanted. For a few indulgent seconds, Zara couldn’t help but lull herself into thinking he knew exactly what she was thinking. That he could see how much she’d needed that kiss. How much she needed him right now. Even after everything that had happened.
Would he give it to her if she asked?
She didn’t know what he saw in her eyes, but a mocking smile curved his lips and he dipped his head in a blazing challenge. Zara looked away, her pulse hammering through her body.
A group of laughing, excited young women surrounded her, alleviating some of the tightness in her chest. She took the dark shades one of them offered and they all struck up a fun pose for the photographer.
And when one of the young women looked up at Virat and then back down at her and whispered, “How does it feel to have hooked the notoriously single playboy whose girlfriends don’t last more than a month at most?” Zara faked a laugh and said, “All I know is that man can rock my world with one simple kiss.”
Pretending to be hot for Virat Raawal was the easy part. Not falling into the fantasy she weaved every time he so much as looked at her...not so much.
CHAPTER FOUR
VIRATWALKEDONTOthe terrace as dusk streaked orange in the sky. He felt restless at too much partying and posing. He wanted to be back at work. And what bothered him the most was how easily he’d lost control of himself in Zara’s kiss.
How much he still wanted her.
Was that such a bad thing, he asked himself with the same honesty that he did everything else. Would it be so wrong to indulge himself? And her? Judging by their kiss, they both clearly had a hell of a lot of heat still brewing between them.
She wanted him. And unlike ten years ago, this Zara clearly had no qualms asserting herself. Demanding that he give her more. Indicating what she wanted from a lover.
She thought she was saving him, he had no doubt. And at least until things calmed down after this latest scandal with the minister’s wife, he decided he would let her save him. Maybe this was exactly what he needed, too.
He’d fallen into a creative fugue, too. The dark subject he was handling with the docuseries could be the reason. And yet, he couldn’t lie to himself. His work was beginning to be tainted by his self-imposed isolation. By his growing disillusionment with the world. By the distance he’d created between himself and the very essence of life—attachment and love and affection.
Being angry with the world took a whole lot of energy out of a man. He laughed at the irony of it. Zara’s proposal couldn’t have come at a better time. If nothing else, he would have fun needling the perfect composure she wore as a mask, and maybe stealing one or two more kisses.
And this time, he knew who and what he was dealing with.
It was a little past midnight but the party was still in full swing, showing no signs of dying down. Virat found Zara in one of the private nooks scattered over the palace, on the second floor, with a perfect view of the dance floor that had been set up at the center of the open courtyard.
A lazy quiet dwelled on this floor as there were no guest suites up here.
Up above, the dark sky glittered with twinkling stars and a soft breeze carried the scent of the sweetly pungent jasmine creeper that covered one entire wall of the hotel.
Virat stood still for a moment and stared at her through the open archway. She looked like a beautiful prisoner of some jealous maharaja in this setting, hidden away from covetous eyes.
They’d already paraded themselves in front of the wedding guests. Already answered enough probing questions for today. Looked at each other as if they couldn’t bear to be apart. Not that they had to manufacture the soft hum of attraction that threatened to simmer over every time they touched.
That kiss was like a constant peal in his body. Both taunting him and mocking him for how easily he could fall apart when he was near her.
He shouldn’t seek her out like this. Clearly, she was desperate for a break.
Except for the haunted look she’d worn all day. That flash of vulnerability was what had tugged him here.
With the colorful array of fat pillows and hand-sewn quilts sitting atop plump divans, the wall still retaining the original, hand-painted art, and small, dimly lit electricdiyasplaced artistically in tiny, hand-carved grooves in the rust-colored walls, it was a cozy, darkened escape from the madness below. The beats from the fusion hip-hop, Bollywood music pumping through the dance floor provided a background score.
He had to admit that with every step he moved toward her, his own heart matched the bop-bop of that dance beat. He was still that damned twenty-year-old when it came to her.
Attraction was different from affection, he reassured himself. Attraction could be worked out of one’s system. Attraction didn’t make you vulnerable.
Leaning his arm against the entry archway, he studied her.
Zara was reclining against one pillow, her knees demurely tucked sideways, her skirt spread around her in a circle as if someone had posed her like that. She had wrapped a silky shawl around her bare shoulders. From thelehenga-choliin the morning to the white crop top and blue skirt she’d changed into for the dance party, her transformation was seamless.
She wasn’t slender or petite. Her statuesque form, the high forehead and the wide eyes all defied conventional definitions of beauty. And yet, in the last decade, the beauty he’d seen back then had only matured and sharpened. There was no doubt that Zara had come into her own.
