by Nalini Singh
* * *
Christmas Eve morning was a late start for the entire Sharma family. Nayna had hoped to make her aborted rendezvous with Raj that night, but Madhuri came over with a Bollywood DVD and a hopeful look in her eyes and Nayna couldn’t say no—Madhuri was like Teflon; things usually just rolled off her, but this one hurt, it had stuck.
Christmas Eve was the anniversary of the day her husband had abandoned her in a strange mining town on the edge of nowhere, taking off in their car and with what little savings they had. I have to be with my sister tonight, she told Raj. It’s a bad time of year for her.
Understood, was the single-word response.
Nayna wasn’t sure if that meant exactly what it said or if he was annoyed or irritated. She decided on the former. Raj wasn’t the subtle or passive-aggressive type when it came to the words he’d written to her. He said what he meant and meant what he said.
Christmas Day also dawned quietly but quickly became busy. For the Sharmas, it was a day about family, and this year Nayna’s parents were hosting the annual barbeque for their relations. Even though everyone would turn up with salads, cakes, cooked dishes, and more, Nayna’s mother was convinced they had to prepare a million different things.
“Ma, no one will starve,” Nayna pointed out while frying the samosas. “You realize we’ll have leftovers for a month?”
“Silly girl. You know everyone wants to take leftovers away. We don’t want to be the stingy ones who never had any leftovers.”
“I wonder if Iosua will bring his trifle,” Nayna said. “I wouldn’t mind eating a great big bowl of that.”
“I told him to bring it,” Shilpa Sharma said while busily chopping up vegetables for a fancy salad. “Every time we have a party, I’m so happy your cousin married a dessert chef.”
Laughing, Nayna fished out the samosas and put in a fresh set to fry. Meanwhile, her father was outside making sure the grill was all set to go, and Madhuri was doing decorations. Aji sat at the kitchen table, mixing dough for a fried treat Nayna loved—basically sweet, cakey balls with raisins. She’d have no problem cooking those.
And eating them.
“Did I tell you your father invited Raj’s family?” her mother said casually just as she was about to scoop out the second lot of samosas.
Nayna’s nipples grew into hard little bullets. Pavlov’s dogs had nothing on her. “What?” she squeaked out past the thumping of her heart.
“Don’t let the food burn.”
Nayna worked automatically. “Ma.”
“I knew you’d blush!” Her mother grinned—though Nayna wasn’t blushing and even if she had been, no one would know. “It’s fine. You don’t have to worry. They’re hosting their own family today or they’d have come—they were so disappointed to turn us down. But we don’t have New Year’s plans and they don’t either, so we’ll do something then.”
Nayna felt a sudden constriction in her chest, a large weight settling on her shoulders. It was happening, the inevitable closing of the cage. Their families were already starting to make plans together while indulgently “letting” them “decide.” It didn’t matter that she liked the man in the cage with her—it was still a cage.
And it panicked her.
* * *
When Nayna didn’t respond to his Happy Christmas message, Raj didn’t worry about it—if her family was anything like his, it was probably organized chaos right now while the preparations were going on.
Then his father started talking about the New Year’s Eve gathering he and the Sharmas had planned. “Just casual,” he said. “No stress. Relax and eat and drink.”
Raj’s muscles went rigid. He’d known when he made his move at the wedding that he was declaring his intent, but he’d made his “no interference” requirement clear to his parents. He needed more time to get under Nayna’s skin, more time to assuage her doubts, more time to show her that he could give her the adventure and freedom she craved.
He, a man who’d been old even when he was young, was falling hard for a brilliant wild butterfly. Nayna might not describe herself that way, but that’s what he saw—a bright, lovely woman with so much life and joy and love inside her. Raj was trying to learn to give her what she needed, but one thing of which he was fully cognizant was that the parental involvement would only push her away.
Since he had no desire to add to the pressure, he didn’t message her again. His gut twisted as the hours passed, as he waited to see if Nayna would run.
Aditi, meanwhile, giggled as she exchanged messages with Harlow around the food prep in the kitchen. “Don’t worry, bhaiya,” she said with an impulsive hug when Raj raised an eyebrow. “We’re not doing anything naughty. Harlow’s sending me dumb knock-knock jokes.”
A minute later, she snapped a selfie while pretending to bite into an entire cake and sent it off. As long as his sister kept the images she sent Harlow Chan G-rated, Raj wouldn’t have to find the boy and smash his phone to smithereens.
His own phone finally pinged with an incoming message around five: Hope you’re having a good Christmas Day.
It was a message that told him nothing, made him feel as if she was distancing herself. Raj’s abdomen tensed, his jaw tight. About to reply in an effort to break through her self-defensive walls, he thought of Aditi sending her crush photos, and he thought about how Nayna had touched him that night at the party—and in the park.
Ducking into his flat for a little privacy, he took a photo just for her.
It took him three tries to get it right.
He’d never in his life done anything like this, but the current cock-up called for desperate measures. I got you a gift, he wrote, trying to figure out if he was flirting right—he wished she was in front of him so he could kiss her and melt her and remind her that the promise of what they had was worth a little risk.
Oh, you didn’t have to do that, she wrote back.
Raj sent the photo of his upper body, adding, From Santa, to the message at the last minute.
2.7/10 she replied.
Raj’s grin spread slowly across his face. It sure looked like he was doing the flirting right, because her response fairly demanded he avenge his honor. Maybe he’d send her a photo a day. No, one in the morning, one at night so she couldn’t forget him even if she tried. More, he’d do everything in his power to throw a wrench in their parents’ New Year’s Eve plans. He would let no one make Nayna feel hunted.
* * *
Having stolen a moment of privacy, Nayna fell back in her bed, her phone clutched to her chest and a surely goofy smile on her face. Lifting up the phone, she stared at the photo again, at gorgeous ripped abs and smooth brown skin. He had a small scar on his upper left pectoral that she wouldn’t mind licking, and the sprinkling of crisp hair on his chest made her fingers curl into the sheets as her breath caught.
She couldn’t help rubbing her thighs together in a vain effort to assuage the ache he’d aroused. “You’re a fiend,” she whispered to the man who was playing with her again, then carefully made a new folder in her photos just for him.
The panic that had held her captive all day receded a little, but it wasn’t gone. She still had the feeling of having boarded a runaway train, and every so often her heartbeat would spike, her skin burning in a way that had nothing to do with pleasure. It didn’t help that Madhuri flitted around the Christmas party, carefree and without worries once more.
As if the past had never been.
But it had been and it had left scars on all of them. Her father, who patted her on the shoulder and called her a good girl for making sure the food table was never empty but who never hugged her. Gaurav Sharma had stopped being affectionate with her after Madhuri’s defection, as if he blamed his occasionally indulgent parenting for having set Madhuri on the wrong path.
Her mother, who smoothed her hair and whispered, “You’ll have your own home soon, Ninu, your own family” in a way that told Nayna that, on some level, Shilpa Sharma was aware of her yo
unger daughter’s need to break free of this inhibited and stifling existence full of people she loved.
Her aji, who was dressed in a glorious gold-and-pink caftan for this event and who smiled at Nayna and said, “I know I can rely on you, beta,” when all Nayna had done was bring out a chair so she could rest her feet. “I know I never have to worry about you not being there if I need you.”
And even Madhuri, who hurt one day a year… and who couldn’t commit to any man now, though the entire time they’d been growing up, being married and having “tons” of babies had been all she’d talked about.
By the time Nayna turned in that night, she was exhausted both in the body and in the soul.
When her phone vibrated, she picked it up, looked at the message, and moaned. Raj had sent her another photo, this one focusing on his flexed arm, part of his naked chest visible along with half his face.
He was smiling.
Nayna traced the line of that smile, utterly and totally demolished, her heart mush.
3.2/10, she wrote back, and her fingers, they trembled. This man, he was dangerous to her. He could seduce her into abandoning her dreams of freedom to live life in the predefined world that had been chosen for her. And yet she couldn’t just walk away. Couldn’t give up this serious, often-unsmiling, and rock-solid man who was cracking his shell bit by bit to let her in.
19
Half-Naked Raj (No Further Enticement Required)
Nayna ended up out of town the next day when Aji suddenly asked if she wouldn’t mind driving her to the small coastal town of Raglan. “My old friend, Parvati, is visiting her younger son there and then going straight back to Wellington. I haven’t seen her in, oh, twenty years!”
The road trip went fine except for a flat tire on the return leg that meant they got home after dark. In the interim, Raj had sent her three ab selfies. He was wearing a hard hat in one of them, streaks of dust on his chest—he’d captioned it to tell her he was putting in some time on a job over the vacation period in order to free up his schedule for a large project that was looking like it might be more complicated than initially believed.
I thought you might like to see me in my natural environment, he’d added.
If he’d been standing in front of her, Nayna would’ve pounced on him like the she-cats in Aji’s “leopard cologne” ad. Missing him far too much but scared and confused at the same time, she squeezed her phone and fought the urge to ask him to meet her despite the late hour. In the end, she decided he must already be in bed after pulling a long day—he’d snapped that hard hat photo that was the stuff of her pornographic dreams at around eight in the morning, which meant he must’ve already been on the site for some time, taking advantage of the summer light.
She fell asleep wondering if he’d mind recreating a live-action version of that image and woke the next morning bad-tempered and wildly aroused. No matter what, she was hunting him down tonight and ordering him to do something about it! It was his fault she was a walking bag of hormones.
The phone vibrated while she was scanning through her private Raj folder.
Tonight?
Nayna bit down hard on her lower lip and almost broke the phone typing back: Soon as it gets dark. Bring the hard hat.
That night, fate decided to have another giggle at their expense.
A water pipe broke while she was impatiently waiting for night to fall, and, after turning the water off at the mains, her father said, “Call Raj! He probably knows a plumber who’ll come out during the holidays at night!”
Raj turned up himself and crawled under the house to diagnose the problem as something he could fix. He’d brought supplies and was under there for an hour while Nayna’s father held the flashlight for him and Nayna despaired of ever getting time alone with him. When he finally emerged, the pipe was fixed and he was filthy.
Nayna wanted to haul him into the shower and join him there. Naked.
But after shaking hands with her father and directing a nod toward her that held none of his playfulness in the messages, he left. Her phone vibrated two minutes later: I can shower and be back in thirty minutes.
Nayna’s heart pounded. Meet you then.
Which was how she found herself literally sneaking out her window. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she muttered as she pushed up the window with care for squeaks. Everyone was still wide awake—and though Aji had given her a measuring look when she said she was tired and turning in early, she didn’t think her grandmother had any idea Nayna was about to sneak out.
She hadn’t even done that as a teenager.
Lower lip caught between her teeth, she got one leg over, then the next, and dropped easily onto the grass in her tennis-shoe-clad feet. All she wore above that were panties and a strappy sundress over which she’d thrown a light cardigan. It was a very deliberate choice of outfit. Nayna wanted Raj’s hands on her body and she planned to be brazen about it—after she finished being flustered by his masculine beauty.
Since she had no intention of leaving the window up as an invitation for any opportunistic burglar who might be wandering the streets looking for a chance, she carefully pulled it all the way down. She’d have to sneak back in via the kitchen door—if Aji could do it without being busted, so could she.
Raj was waiting for her at the end of the drive, smelling of soap and freshness, his hair damp but his jaw still scruffy. Her insides clenched. And clenched even harder when he ran his hand down her back and leaned down to murmur in her ear. “Come for a ride in my truck.”
A gorgeous hunk of a man was luring her into his truck in the dark of night while all she wore was a thin layer of cotton and not much else. “Let’s go.”
He didn’t kiss her when he boosted her up into his truck, but his eyes smoldered so hot that she felt singed. Hauling himself up on the other side, he shut the door and pulled out. Throat dry, Nayna rubbed her palms down her thighs as the radio played slow night music, and tried not to wriggle in her seat.
“Nayna.” His voice held a warning.
Startled and all but bursting out of her skin, she said, “What?”
“Stop wriggling.” The words were extremely calm, but a muscle jumped in his jaw.
As Nayna had already learned, Raj wasn’t actually calm when he got like this. To test her theory, she crossed her legs, causing the sundress to ride up a little.
He slammed through the gear change, the truck’s tires squealing as he turned the corner of a deserted road. Nayna’s entire body sizzled. “Where are you taking me?” she asked belatedly.
The muscles in his arms stood out as he spoke, his big body all but humming. “A private place.”
It proved to be a hilltop that looked out over one of the wild west coast beaches… and was currently utterly deserted, not another human or human habitation in sight. “How do you know about this place?” It wasn’t an official parking lot or route; she’d seen no signs, no streetlights along the last part of the drive.
“I worked on a site not far from here. Found it one day while checking out the area.” Turning off the lights and the engine, he opened his car door.
Not sure what he intended, Nayna stayed put until he came around and opened her door. But when she swiveled her legs around to get out too, he stopped her by putting his hands on her thighs and stroking upward. Nayna’s panties went embarrassingly damp at the rough caress of his touch and she waited, breath tight in her throat, to see how far he’d go.
To a dangerous edge, then back.
Again and again.
Watching his hands and her trembling thighs the entire time.
When he lifted his head, his gaze was way beyond a smolder. “Wait,” he nearly growled, then left her to go get something from the back of his truck.
She sucked in a breath when he rolled out a thick outdoor blanket onto the ground, her heart drumming in her chest.
Raj came to her, put his hands on her waist. “Yes?”
Nayna nodded. Wherever this led, she
wasn’t about to back away. She placed her own hands on his shoulders, and he swung her down to the ground, then shut the door behind her. Feeling awkward, Nayna turned to him. “What—”
He slammed his mouth down on hers, his hands hauling her hips to close the final distance between them. A second of shocked surprise and then Nayna was rising on tiptoe and kissing him back just as hungrily, her breasts crushed against the hard planes of his chest. When he rumbled something and took them to the blanket, she cooperated fully.
Then his weight was over her, though he was careful to brace himself so he didn’t crush her, and she was being kissed like she was his air and he couldn’t breathe. Nayna gripped his hair, stroked his nape, and kissed him back with all the frustrated passion inside her. When she bent one leg at the knee, he took advantage of the position to stroke the back of her thigh, going all the way to the edge of her panties.
Her pulse hitched, her cardigan suddenly stifling. “I have to take this off,” she gasped out after breaking the kiss.
Rising off her, he gave her room enough to get the garment off and was back before she could ask him to strip off his tee. God, he was so hot, so hard. His erection was blatant, the hand he ran up her thigh and to her hip confident. Finally breaking the kiss as he played with the lace side of her panties, his chest heaving as hard as hers, he looked into her eyes.
Whatever he saw there had him stroking his hand around her hip and under her panties to cup her bare cheek. Shyness threatened to drench her. She tugged at his T-shirt in a desperate fight to stave it off. Getting the hint, he rose and got rid of it before settling right back into his previous position, her bare cheek in his hand and all.
His fingers moved, stroking.
She swallowed and ran her hands down his chest, glorying in him. When she rose to press kisses across his skin, he shuddered. She loved how he tasted, the inherent masculine scent of him below the freshness of soap intoxicating. Squeezing the part of her he held, he dropped his mouth to her neck, kissing and nibbling his way down.