A Bollywood Affair

by Sonali Dev

  His heart began to pound; hot thrumming gushed through his veins. He lifted both hands and did what he hadn’t stopped craving since that first time he’d done it. He grabbed fistfuls of her curls as they spilled to her waist. Silken softness tightened between his fingers. He tugged her head back and turned her face up to his. Her face was wet. Silver moonlight bounced against her tears—against her onyx eyes, against her spiked midnight lashes, against her lips, her cheeks. She was all soaked and soft and yielding. He leaned over and pressed his face into the wetness.

  Mili sucked in a breath. For a few moments neither one of them moved, their wet faces pressed together. Samir was trembling in her arms, the pain inside him too much to bear. She stroked his back, his arms, the tight cords of his neck. She tried to make soothing sounds, but his name was all that came to her lips. “Samir.”

  He pressed his lips into her cheek and dragged sweet fire across her skin, her forehead, her eyelids, the bridge of her nose. Until finally, finally he found her lips. Hunger exploded in her chest. She dug her fingers into his hair, clutched the heavy strands, and tugged him closer.

  He moaned her name. “Mili.” The crazy beat of his heart slammed against her breasts, stinging sadness in every beat. She wanted it gone, she wanted to suck it out of his heart, wanted to grind down every harsh edge jabbing into him. She pushed apart his lips, and reached into his pain. The world went soft and hot. Everything inside her melted and slid down her body and pooled in the ravenous space between her legs.

  His hands molded the globes of her butt. He yanked her up, straightening to his full height and lifting her molten body high against his. She flowed over him, draping herself around him. The entire length of her arms wrapped around his head. She devoured his mouth, nipped, licked, sucked. His taste so familiar it stole her breath. She dived into it, inhaling every sensation like it was her last. It was. It had to be. Her legs wrapped around him, flattening her wet heat against the solid muscle of his belly. All her blood, every fiber of awareness that held her together rushed to where their bodies met.

  A raw moan rumbled in his chest as he slid her down his body until turgid hardness fit itself against aching softness. “Mili,” he moaned against her lips. “God, Mili.”

  She pushed closer. “It’s okay, Samir. It’s going to be okay.” She locked her feet around him. “I promise.”

  He spun with her in his arms and pushed her against the tree, shielding her back from the trunk with his arms. But he let nothing shield her body from his. Every inch of him pressed into every inch of her as he swallowed her moans, and shoved his own into the heat of her mouth. There was such desperation in his lips, in his hands, such hunger, it was as if he wanted to drown in her. Their hearts slammed against each other and found the same beat.

  How had she lived without this? How had she lived without him? How had she ever dreamed of another man? Samir was part of her, wrapped around her like blazing sunshine and pouring rain, her breath and her blood, her every thought.

  His lips traced her throat and found her collarbones on an indrawn breath. He dragged fire across her flesh, taking her to the edge of a chasm, pushing her toward it. His mouth dipped lower. Through the bunched-up cotton, he captured the peak of her breast. She screamed into the night, reeling over the chasm. He pulled away, and she whimpered a desperate plea. “Samir. Please.” She clamped his head closer and pushed herself into his mouth.

  His response was fierce. Teeth and tongue, he gathered her up, consumed her, tender one minute, ruthless the next, until she forgot his pain, forgot her own and sobbed for more, crazed, mad with hunger. From the very deepest part of her soul, she threw herself open, her arms, her legs, every last part of her open. Exposed. His.

  Samir came up for air. It flooded into his lungs, her smell, her taste, her very essence flooded into him. She tore through everything he knew, everything he was feeling. She was a dagger that slammed into his heart and cleaved him in half, and settled at the very center of his being as if he was exactly where she belonged.

  Except he wasn’t. He wasn’t ready to have her pour life into him. There was too much anger inside him and years of deadness. She started trailing kisses down his jaw, her panting breath fanning the sweet wetness her lips left on his skin. Her fingers clutched his hair, the trust in her hold kicked him in the gut. He’d already violated it beyond redemption. He pulled away from her mouth, away from the impossibly hard nubs of her breasts pushing into his chest, the taste of them imprinted on his tongue. She moaned and tried to pull his mouth back to hers.

  “Mili,” he said against her lips, “go back into the house. Go back now while I can still let you go.”

  Her dazed eyes heated with purpose. She wrapped her hands around his face and speared him with her burning onyx eyes. “No.”

  He searched through their wide-open depths, but there wasn’t one shred of doubt inside her. “Mili, if you don’t go now, I won’t be able to hold myself back. I’m just not that strong.” But, God, he’d crumble to dust if she left him.

  “Don’t,” she whispered, pushing her soft, pliant body into his. “Don’t hold anything back.” She closed her eyes, threw back her head, and offered him everything. “Please.”

  All that kept him sane flew out of his head.

  He found her lips again and shoved his tongue into her mouth, not seductive, not artful, but as clumsy as a teenager, every movement a movement he had to make. His hands searched her body, finding their way under her shirt, learning, touching, breathing her in skin to skin. The keys of her spine, the silken softness of her skin, the lush weight of her breasts. She pushed into his hands. Every inch of her screamed for more. Her mouth chanted his name. Samir, Samir, Samir, over and over as he kneaded and circled and stroked.

  His mouth nipped at hers; he couldn’t let go of her lips.

  “Samir, please,” she moaned. “Please.”

  He reached down between their tightly pressed bodies meaning to give her the release she craved. But his fingers touched soaking wet cotton hot against swollen flesh and the very last thought exploded in his mind and disappeared with a blinding bang. He had to have her around him, now. The cotton bunched in his hands as he ripped it off her legs. He wanted to trail kisses up her legs, down her belly, but all he could do was yank down his zipper and lunge for her mouth as he pulled down his pants. She grabbed his shoulders and squeezed her thighs around him, her groan so fierce the inferno inside him flared, consuming every tenderness. He backed her into the tree and pushed himself into her.

  She was too tight, too slight for how much his hunger had engorged him. He tried to stop, tried to slow, tried to ease into her. She whimpered and pushed into him. Her hot slickness clenched with need and he lost all semblance of control and drove into her like a crazed beast.

  And for the first time in his life came up against a barrier.

  Panic gripped his throat, an almost unbearable rush of tenderness burst in his heart. He tried to pull away, but she made a wild sound, tightened her legs around him and clawed his shoulders. It was more than he could take. One hard thrust and he ripped past the resistance. This time her cry was laced with pain. She went rigid in his arms.

  “Shh, sweetheart. I’m sorry. It’s going to be fine. Trust me.”

  “I trust you, Samir,” she said through a sob.

  He slid his tongue into her mouth, stroking her in the deepest kiss, shaking with the effort to hold still inside her. The tension melted from her body; she loosened against him and wiggled closer. That was it. He lost his mind, plunging and plunging until she sobbed into his mouth, and pulsed and squeezed around him. He slammed into her, mindless frantic thrusts until he exploded, and exploded and exploded without end.

  When he found his mind again, Mili sagged limp in his arms, slick with sweat, and shaking. Her arms were still locked around his neck. Her face was pressed into his chest. Where their bodies joined, hot sticky sweetness glued them together. Her legs started sliding off him. He pushed them back up,
spun around, and pushed his own back into the tree trunk.

  He had just taken her standing up against a tree, out in the open. And this had been her first time. Every complication separating them, all the lies and deceptions, all the reasons why this was the very last thing he should’ve done came crashing down on him. “Shit, Mili. That was terrible. That should never have happened.”

  She stiffened, lifted her face off his chest, and slid off him. He wanted to stop her, but he couldn’t move. She stepped away, her shoulders slumped, her head bowed, her legs unsteady. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It was my first time. I didn’t know what to do. I thought . . .”

  What the fuck? “Mili, listen.” He reached for her, but she skittered away from him like a dazed animal who didn’t know it had just been hit by a car. He knew exactly how she felt.

  “I shouldn’t have—I shouldn’t have brought you here. You’re right. None of this should’ve happened. I’m sorry.”

  “Stop saying that,” he said more harshly than he had meant to and she said no more.

  Just waited. Seconds ticked by. She stared up at him, her huge eyes bewildered, and waited for him to say the words to make it better, to tell her not be sorry, to tell her what she’d just given him, what she’d made him feel. But he just stood there slumped against the tree, horrified at how he had hurt her. Bastard. Bastard.

  When he didn’t say anything, she looked away and started searching for something. Then leaned over and picked up her panties. Even in the moonlight, he saw her cheeks flaming. Awkwardly she bunched the scrap of fabric in her hands and ran toward the house. He was about to follow her, but her gait faltered, as if she hurt between her legs. And his limbs locked in place. Shame flooded him. He was a monster. A monster who’d hurt her and didn’t know how to make things right.

  When he could move again, he pulled on his jeans, walked back to the porch, and sank into the swing. His shock at what he had done made his movements slow and stiff. Mili was gone. The thought of her back against the tree trunk, her pained, indrawn breath as he rammed into her, clawed at his gut. He had gone crazy when he’d touched her. All these years of seducing women, and he’d lost all control like some starving animal. And then he’d sent her away feeling like she had done something wrong. Over the past month he had gone from being the kind of bastard he didn’t mind being to the kind of bastard he would like to beat the crap out of.

  If this is what being in love did to a man, he was essentially screwed.

  Mili slung her hair across one shoulder, swung the porch door open, and stepped outside. Samir sat slumped in the swing, his head in his hands, his burnt-gold hair flopping across his forehead. The memory of those thick strands fisted in her hands as he claimed her body made heat spread across her skin. The desperate need in his eyes, in his touch—need for her—it’s what had forced her to come down those stairs, to come back outside.

  Samir lifted his head from his hands and started when he saw her. The huge white T-shirt Kim had let her borrow slipped off one shoulder. His gaze lingered on her fingers as she tugged it back in place before he met her eyes. Meeting those golden eyes made her entire body reach for him. The pain in his eyes when he’d called what happened between them horrible made her want to crumple to the ground and start crying again.

  But she couldn’t sit upstairs and sob anymore. She wouldn’t. Not after what had happened between them. She hadn’t meant for it to happen, not with the shambles her life was in, or his. Not when his mother lay sick in the house. A house he couldn’t even seem to go inside without hurting. But no one could call what had happened between them horrible. No one. And yet he had. She had to know, just had to know, how he couldn’t have felt what she felt. She sucked in a breath, and spoke before she ran out of courage. “Samir, I’ve never done this before. So I have to know.” Her fingers trembled on the out-of-shape neckline. “Was it really horrible for you?”

  His eyes widened, then narrowed. His molten gold gaze hitched at her heart in that way it always did. The swing creaked as he rose and came to her, traversing the five-step distance with a deliberation that made each breath an effort. He reached out and touched her cheek. Without meaning to, she leaned into his touch and closed her eyes.

  He waited until she met his gaze again and held it. “Mili, from the first moment I saw you I’ve wanted you.”

  She blinked, startled.

  “Ever since that first day, I’ve imagined making love to you. I’ve imagined being inside you, fantasized about how you would feel around me, dreamed about all the different ways I could take you.” His finger stroked her cheek. “You’ve driven me completely insane with lust these past weeks. The expectations I had—nothing could’ve matched up.”

  Understanding dawned on her in a rush. Understanding and crushing pain. She opened her mouth to speak. Although she had no idea what she could say.

  He pressed his thumb to her lips. His touch always so tender, so possessive, it was imprinted onto her soul. “No. You don’t understand. Despite that, despite my impossible expectations, how touching you felt, what being inside you felt like—I could never have imagined anything so . . . I had no idea such a thing was even possible. You made me lose my mind, Mili. Do you understand what I’m saying? I forgot myself. And I forgot to take care of you. Hell, I forgot how to speak. I hurt you. That’s what I’m sorry about. Only that.”

  Stupid, dumb tears rose in her eyes. An even dumber smile blossomed in her aching heart. It must have floated to her lips because he stroked it with his fingers and gave her that half smile of his in return.

  “Really? You mean that?”

  “You have no idea how much.”

  “So, that was you not taking care of me?”

  His half smile spread all the way across his face.

  She reached up and touched it. Dear God, was it even legal for someone to be this handsome? “So it gets better than that?”

  He squeezed his eyes shut and nodded. “For you, I should hope so. For me, I would die.”

  She stepped closer, until her entire body touched his. Joy and tenderness and fierce hope kindled inside her like a prayer lamp. She had no idea who she was anymore. But she knew exactly what she had to do. She went up on her toes. “Samir?” she whispered against his ear.

  His smile pushed against her cheek and made sensation sparkle all the way down to her toes. “Mili?”

  “Could you, you know, show me? Please.”

  He scooped her up in his arms and gathered her against himself. She snaked her arms around his neck and stared at his beloved face as he used his back to push the porch door open.

  When he stepped into the house his stride was sure, not an ounce of pain inside him, and it made such joy, such relief burst inside her, tears spilled from her eyes even as laughter bubbled from her lips. He pulled her closer and carried her up to his childhood nursery, blasting through the demons of his past, taking her away with him, away from her own past to a place where her past could never touch her again.

  “Sure, Mili,” he said, sprinkling kisses across her lips as he went, “I can show you.”

  24

  Usually when Samir had sex, once the deed was done, all he could think about was getting off the bed. He always forced himself to wait the polite fifteen minutes, just to make sure everyone came off their high feeling good about themselves. But that was about it. Even if girlfriends slept over, they had their side of the bed and he had his Lazyboy with inbuilt, noise-cancelling Bose headphones. Tonight, however, he couldn’t stop checking to make sure that Mili was still tucked into his side.

  Her cheek was pressed into his shoulder. Her fingers clutched his skin. She was dead to the world, her exhaustion complete, every inch of her body replete. Who could sleep with such a sight to look at? He could spend the rest of his life just looking at her. Her silken mocha skin, her midnight curls, her onyx eyes. Her dark beauty sparkled like the night sky, as fresh as the glow of dawn, as hypnotic as the glimmer of dusk, softer than moonlight
and warmer than the blue flames of a midnight bonfire.

  An unfamiliar feeling of peace blanketed their intertwined bodies, lighter than the whispers they’d spoken into each other’s ears. Each time he’d entered her, each time she’d sobbed in release, the crushing weight of the air in this house had lifted off his shoulders, off his heart.

  He tucked a stray curl behind her ear. She didn’t move. He felt like one of those head cases, poised to pull her back if she moved even an inch away from him. But she stayed sprawled across him. And finally, somewhere in the wee hours of morning, he stopped worrying about losing her and fell asleep, grinning like the fool he was.

  The sound of laughter woke Samir. Not nightmares. Not a cold sweat but Mili’s laughter. Husky, unreserved. The spot next to him was cold. She was gone, but his arm was still curved around her missing form. She had remembered to pull the blinds and darken the room. But a stray ray of sunlight broke through the gap in the old blinds and poked him in the eye. She laughed again.

  He sprang out of bed, a rampant yearning to see her tearing through him like hunger. He was starving for her. He pulled on his jeans and walked to the door, cracking it open to see Kim give her some clothes and go down the stairs. He opened the door and pulled her in, wrapping her in his arms and falling back against the wall. She fell against him, wet ringlets framing her face and sticking to his bare chest. She smelled like sunshine and night-blooming jasmine. He dug his face into her hair.