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When he spoke, his words painted her palm with a warmth she desperately needed to feel elsewhere. Everywhere. All over. She wanted to inhale the warmth of this man and have him heat up the parts of her that had frozen with fear over the years. She needed him. “I know that,shahzadi.”
She raised a questioning gaze to his.
He shrugged. “Let’s just say I have a radar when it comes to these things. Or maybe I’m just tuned into you. You’ve been the perfect best friend, a charming actress and a loving fiancée all day. But there’s been a haunted look in your gaze, too.”
Zara wasn’t surprised by his perceptiveness. The gentleness in his tone threatened to knock down all the barriers she’d pulled up around her heart. Shatter the concrete she’d built to keep out the guilt and joy and pain of this particular day. “I... A long time ago, my husband died on this day. It’s difficult for me to talk about... Please don’t ask me any more about it now,” she added, on a wave of that same guilt and pain roping together.
But it was unnecessary. Because even back then, Virat had never probed. Never asked her for more than she was willing to give.
“Then I won’t,” he said with that easy acceptance she adored. She loved everything about him then, the tensile strength of his arms around her, the warm, male scent filling every empty space inside her. “We’ll simply sit here for as long as you want.”
“Why?” she asked, suddenly desperate for more.
“Because I want to,shahzadi.Because we’ve ended up here in this moment again. Forget the past, Zara, and forget the future. Here, right now, you’re safe.”
And just like that, he made Zara crave more from him. More from this moment. Not the future. Not an uncertain tomorrow. Now. Just now.
“I want more, then,” she said, the whispers in her head turning into words on her lips with an easy familiarity that colored their every interaction. “Something more from you.”
He didn’t move or speak or blink and yet a stillness came over him.
He waited, without giving her empty reassurances. And Zara realized he knew. And that he was waiting for her to ask. That this had been inevitable from the moment she’d wrangled him into acting as her lover at the magazine launch.
“Make love to me, Virat. I desperately need something real today to anchor me here. I want to feel. Not think.”
CHAPTER FIVE
VIRATSCANNEDHISbrain for all the reasons he should be saying no to this. In the few days since they’d been reacquainted with each other, Zara had proved to him that he didn’t know her at all. And yet, as he inhaled the scent of her skin and felt the sweet slide of her body against his, he knew he wouldn’t say no. The taste of his defeat when it came to her was wholly exciting.
Despite what the world liked to believe, he wasn’t indiscriminate when it came to his sex partners. He had however always been able to separate the emotional realm from mutual chemistry. Only with Zara had those lines blurred. But he wasn’t that reckless twenty-year-old anymore.
And this Zara was a wholly different woman. This Zara knew what she wanted and had no hesitation asking for it. This Zara had seen a problem and tackled it head on. This Zara was fierce when it came to protecting the ones she loved. This Zara...damn it, he had seen the flashes of this Zara before. She’d always been there beneath the surface, waiting to break free.
This Zara was the one who could topple him all over again. And it was that very prospect that fired his blood. Conventional wisdom had never worked for him. The very idea of having this bold Zara—willing and wanton—in his arms, at his mercy, made the beast inside him roar.
He calmed the urgency in his blood, giving her his standard warning. Making it clear, as he always did. “This can be nothing more than sex. Nothing else. It can’t—”
She bent her head and rubbed her lips against his stubbled jaw in a raspy whisper that tightened every muscle in his body. “I want nothing but to feel you inside me. I want...you, Virat. I don’t think I’ve ever stopped.” Those words came in a breathless rush as if she hadn’t been meaning to say them. The flash of dismay in her gaze told him as much. But they were real, and knowing that, Virat lost what little control he had over this situation and of himself.
He sank his fingers into her hair and brought her mouth to his, unraveling at a level he couldn’t fathom. With most women in his life, he played a part—the rebel, the scion of Bollywood royalty, the director who held someone’s career in his palm, the bastard...but Zara seemed to so easily peel away all those masks he’d worn. Until she found the core of him. The kiss that followed was a war for control and yet they were both victors. It was a very different kiss from the first one in the pub. There was no polite finesse or soft exploration. It was all frenzy and fierceness, their bodies sliding against each other, limbs tangling and untangling in a wild search for more. And better.
Their lips and tongues and teeth met in a tug of want and heat. She was warm and soft in his lap, her tongue licking into his mouth as if she couldn’t survive another second without his taste.
Harsh breaths fell into the silence as he let them up for air. He ran his palms up her back, his fingers tangling in the myriad colorful strings that held her blouse together. “These flimsy strings have been taunting me all day,shahzadi.” He gently grazed his knuckles over her breasts and she shivered and pressed herself into his touch. Her head thrown back, her eyes closed, she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. “One hard tug and everything unravels. Will you unravel, too, Zara? For me?”
“Yes,” she whispered and pressed another hungry kiss against his lips before she moved out of his lap. The door to the nook closed with a soft thud, and the bolt clicked into place. With the light from the portico cut off, little illumination remained in the nook. Just enough from the tiny lanterns to make out the determined tilt of Zara’s chin and the rise and fall of her chest.
Desire uncoiled in his veins with the energy of a lightning bolt. “Here?” he asked softly, tracing the outline of her body in the dark with his hungry gaze.
“Here. Now,” she said, slowly coming away from the door. “I’m protected. Are you clean?”
“Yes,” he said, pushing off the divan and covering the distance between them. “But the window can still carry sounds down.”
“It’s past midnight and they’re all half-drunk anyway. I don’t want to go back to my room and discover all the thousand reasons why this might not be a good idea.”
“Doubts already,shahzadi?” His fingers landed on her waist and he twirled her toward him, loving the soft gasp that fell from her mouth when he wrapped his arms around her from behind. The taut swells of her buttock pressed against his groin, sending his libido into overdrive.
“Not doubts so much as worry that ghosts of the past might rear their ugly heads again.”
