You Can't Fight a Royal Attraction (10 page)

‘Saira!’ The call arrested her when she would have turned away. The grating note of need in a single word that crashed through her barriers and made the earth tilt a little. Oh God.

He sat up, a large hand closing on her arm to stop her.

‘Let’s stop torturing ourselves.’ His gaze was brilliant as it held hers. ‘Let’s take it where it wants to go. This desire between us. This tension. You know very well it demands assuaging.’

She swallowed. ‘I… it’s too soon.’

‘I’ve tried to fight it too. But all I did was hurt you. And in a way myself too.’

The admission made her breath catch but she shook her head. ‘I hardly know you, Rihaan.’

He took a deep breath, chest expanding. ‘What’s that got to do with it? What’s to know about me, anyway? A moody writer, an absent-minded plotter. What would you like to know?’ He gestured broadly with his hands. ‘You know what I do, you’ve seen my place and you know how I live… I’m not a neatness freak but I keep my desk organized, so I know what to find if I’m in a hurry. I’m no cook myself but I can’t abide live-in help. I eat packaged food and takeaways more times than not. The only thing I can cook is jaggery rice. I don’t have fixed hours for writing, so my bedtime is variable too.’ He paused and cocked an eyebrow. ‘That suffice?’

‘Actually, no.’ She met his gaze. ‘Those are personal quirks but it takes more to form a person than random likes such as the colour green being favoured over pink. I’d want to know more. What have you been through in your life? If you had a happy childhood or a sad one? How do you feel about love? Why do you write what you do… the stories of men driven too harshly to the end of their tether by circumstances no one can control? You didn’t even tell me what made you get the tattoo.’ Had she said too much? Probably, as usual. A dark look crossed his face, which became hard, like carved granite for seconds.

‘You have a lot of questions,’ he said finally. She waited, wanting to know, suddenly curious about all the questions she had voiced. She hadn’t even known she’d had them in her mind.

Studiously he raked the sand, admitting, ‘I’ve left a lot behind but all that is irrelevant to my life now.’ Slowly, he scooped up the grains, his hand closing on them with such concentration that she wondered if the past was related to
the desert he had left behind. If he was perhaps thinking of another kind of soil when he looked so fixedly at the grains of sand? A sudden flash of intuition convinced her it must be so.

With an impatient gesture, he dusted off his hands. ‘It’s the here-and-now we’re concerned with, not with our respective life histories. Would knowing all those things change anything? Make any difference?’ he asked. ‘Not to this.’ Deliberately he let his fingers curve around her ankle and then slide a path up her leg, moving in a slow, seductive climb that made her draw in her breath even as she watched, fascinated. His hand crossed her knee and spread and she placed her own over it, arresting the movement out of an instinct of self-preservation. Possessively, he kept the contact there. His voice grew throaty. ‘It wouldn’t make a difference to the way you feel when I touch you. Nor affect the way
I
feel when you devour me with your eyes.’ He smiled wickedly at her shocked gasp. ‘Oh yes, you do.’

‘You know everything about me. I have no idea…’ Her protest was weakened by breathlessness.

The knowing sherry gaze hooked her, as heady as wine, but his expression was serious. ‘We won’t be kids indulging a momentary impulse, Saira. We go into this with our eyes open. You’ve had a bad experience of whatever people call love. You don’t want marriage again. At least not so soon…

‘If you want to know something important about me, let’s just say I’ve tried attachment at one point in my life and found it as sour an experience as you have.’

She tried to assimilate that. Rihaan in love. Was that why he had left Rajasthan? Come to find his fortune in the tricky cinematic world? She tried to think. To imagine how it had been for him. But with him so nearby, the
balmy breeze blowing against her, bringing his warmth to her, thinking was a lost cause.

Rihaan said, his voice low, almost curt, ‘I’m not the easiest person to get along with so I’m not a worthwhile option if you want something long-term. But if all you want is a bed partner, I can promise you one thing. And that is… pleasure.’ His voice caressed the word, rolling it slowly off his tongue. ‘If you want a sample…’ His grip tightened on her thigh, sending shockwaves through her as he leaned in way too close. Somehow, she was pressed back on the towel, her body trapped beneath his. Her pulses hammered. Wind shifted over her, over too sensitised skin, then the air was gone as his body covered hers. Firm male lips touched the base of her neck. Cool, because her skin was hot, frenzied hot as his mouth traced the path from the vulnerable line of her throat to her jaw to her lips.

She nearly groaned at the delay, revelling as he neared his target. Her thoughts went haywire, her mind hazed as she waited for the completion of his kiss.

Pecks. He gave her little pecks that tantalised and made her blood race. Made her lips want to cling to his. Torturing, teasing, he delayed the contact, heightening her anticipation. He nibbled her earlobe, sending shivers stealing over her skin. Yes, he promised pleasure. A deluge of it.

She moaned in protest and he finally ended the torture. Or began it. Their mouths fused and a rush of pleasure surged into her, flooding her veins, reaching every nerve ending. His kiss was everything she wanted it to be. More. It was wine and headiness. A soft torture deepening into an abyss of pleasure that only made the ache inside her sharpen. Her body become more aware of what he promised and what she had been missing.

He groaned, his hand stealing upward, finding the curve of her breast. His palm covered it and she gasped, sensation clenching low in her body as he moved his thumb unerringly
over the nub. Shivers rocked her and settled into a knot in her belly as she moaned her need aloud, fingers trapping into his hair, stroking down over his nape. She clung to him as though she couldn’t ever let go. Hungrily absorbing the feel of his skin.

In a minute she’d be completely undone. Even now the urge to cast every barrier aside and go with him over the edge was furiously pumping in her bloodstream, pounding with every heartbeat, suffusing every cell.

Somehow she pulled away from him. Only a vestige of sanity remained. Breathless and disheveled, she came up as he shifted away.

Dark gold eyes held her gaze, potent like vintage wine. She shook away the temptation—the burning craving—to slide back into his arms and forget whatever existed beyond that precious, sensual, insidious circle.

Impulse. That was all it was.

She had given in to the impulse.

She waited for her breath to come back. For reason to come back.

‘Need another demonstration?’ His voice was tinged with mockery and the rawness of suppressed desire.

‘Following the moment brings its own consequences, Rihaan. I learnt that the hard way.’ She had been the rule-breaker. The one not afraid to try the deeper waters. And then she had gone too far. The price she had paid, she hadn’t even known she was paying it till it was too late.

He would have to accept her refusal. ‘You were right the first time. We need rules. One shouldn’t just rush headlong into things. It’s… it’s devastating when it all ends,’ she whispered.

‘Tell me.’

She stared at him. With desire still fresh, all she wanted to do was get away from him and hide. As though sensing her desire for escape, he caught her wrist, anchoring her.

‘What happened?’

‘The food—’ she started to say, gesturing towards their picnic hamper.

‘In a minute,’ he told her. ‘It has something to do with these, doesn’t it?’ He traced the scars at her elbow.

She flinched. So much for thinking he hadn’t paid much attention to them. He probably even knew, or at least had an intelligent surmise of how they had formed. No hope of hiding them from him now. No length of sleeves would cloak their presence from his eyes.

Yet that was the idea. To take what came in her stride and not hide any more. Wasn’t it?

Beyond the desire to open up, the deep need to know in his gaze prodded her on. She shook her head, ‘I don’t know where to start. It’s so complicated.’ She started in a low voice, gaining confidence as she went on. ‘From the early months of our marriage, Munish and I had troubles. We weren’t getting along well. Things just kept getting worse. In retrospect, I can see everything leading to the final breaking point. But at the time it didn’t feel like that. Things would get bad then they became normal again or even surprisingly better at times like family functions and weddings. Yet his mother kept getting more and more openly insulting to me. I thought, for Munish’s sake, I should tolerate everything she and his family put me through. That I had to be strong.

‘The thing is, I wasn’t being strong, Rihaan. I was being weak. I was refusing to face what was before me. That I didn’t feel the same as I did when I married him. Even refusing to admit it when I no longer wanted him. I made excuses for not wanting sex. I was tired. I was in a bad mood. But the truth was I didn’t want him to touch me. He thought he had every right as my husband—’

‘He didn’t try to force you!’ Shock sounded in his voice as a fist curled at his side.

Instinctively she put out a hand on his arm. She shook her head. ‘He had that much decency when it came to it. But I wouldn’t go through it again. I was frightened because he came close to losing control more than once. Very close.’

Rihaan swore a string of ear-burning words. ‘I would like to kill that bastard.’

‘No. He was just the product of his environment. Maybe that was his way of loving me even.’ She forced the words past the tightness in her throat. ‘He gave me everything in the way of material goods. Everything, but he didn’t know what I wanted was to have and hold up my pride. Not be humiliated again and again by taunts and deliberate put-downs from his mother like I was every day. I couldn’t laugh the way I used to because it offended them, I couldn’t talk or mingle. She was his mother and any way she acted was sacrosanct to him. He couldn’t understand why I couldn’t cope.’

‘Then?’ The single word resounded in the evening air.

‘Then came the breaking point I mentioned.’ She fell silent, staring out at the sea, absently noting the sun touching the watery horizon. She had used to wonder what on earth had gone wrong. Cried over it. But now she was wiser. She knew it had been inevitable. Munish had been weak from the start. Weak enough to break his promise to marry Vishakha and run away with Saira instead. He had deceived everyone without a qualm. And Saira had been too full of compassion for him, too confident of her love to see that.

Why was she telling Rihaan all this? She hadn’t told this part to anyone. Not even her parents. Not the gory details to even Vishakha.

She resumed her tale. ‘I was frying
puris.
Lots of relatives had come for a get-together and I was making dinner. I was slow, maybe, I don’t know. I was doing my best.
It wasn’t easy to take out the puris then run out across the corridor, into the dining room, smile and serve them, and then come back again to work over the hot oil. Anyway,
she
came and God knows why, she was really angry. She muttered something and I said I was going to serve the next lot. That was it. I was so preoccupied I didn’t even notice her action. She took the hot skillet I had left in oil and banged it on my arm. “Can’t you hurry?” she screamed at me.’

Rihaan reached for her arm. His thumb moved over the harsh ridges. ‘The reason you always wear sleeves.’ He cursed again. ‘That bitch. She ought to be admitted to an asylum.’

‘It did really hurt,’ she admitted. ‘But not as much as what Munish did later. I was literally confined to my room, supposedly recovering. I didn’t have my cell. I wanted to call Mom. In the pain, I just wanted to hear her voice and get some comfort but he kept putting me off, saying the battery wasn’t working or something. Then I overheard him and his mother and found that they were intentionally keeping me from seeing my parents. I found the cell. He’d destroyed the sim card. He kept telling his mom I would come to my senses. That he would talk to me. Bring the useless worker to trained condition like I was a horse to be broken.’ The bitterness spilled over in her voice despite herself.

She continued. ‘I got out. Very quietly. Went to my friend’s house. Papa was ill and I didn’t want to disturb him. Munish found out where I was and came to persuade me to come back. But the scales had fallen from my eyes. I knew I would never trust him again.’

‘And you were right not to,’ he said quietly. He leaned forward and brushed the tears she hadn’t realised were falling from her cheeks. ‘Why are you crying?’ he demanded, a rough edge to his voice. ‘If it’s for him…’

‘No, it’s for the things which are gone. Things which won’t ever come back.’

‘Those that won’t, won’t,’ he said. ‘Don’t cry, sweetheart. God, I could strangle them.’ His jaw tightened as he seemed to dwell on the prospect for a moment, then he said roughly, ‘Forget them. Forget it all. Don’t think about things not coming back. Maybe they weren’t meant to be in the first place. Let them go.’

‘I keep thinking if I had tried harder…’ Her voice caught between a sigh and a sob.

‘I could shake you for that. What you did was very brave. You were braver than most women can be. Nobody has the right to devalue you. And whoever does that to a person deserves to be ditched. You did no wrong, Saira. Never feel that.’ Rough, intense words, they rang with conviction till she had no choice but to believe. More tears came into her eyes at his obvious unquestioned acceptance of her admission. How could Rihaan understand but Munish, who had supposedly loved her, hadn’t been able to?

‘Come here.’

With a small sound she went forward. His arms came round her. To hold her. Some time ago they had threatened. Now they represented the deepest security she had known. She marvelled at the change. Then stopped marvelling. Stopped thinking. Just let him comfort her. Enjoyed the healing warmth seeping into her senses. Her eyes stung. Her heart felt a new kind of pain. But it wasn’t a bad pain. Somehow she knew it as she clung to him, squeezed tighter in an embrace which felt as though he’d always hold her secure.