“I was barely a grown up and that is no defense. I am sorry.” He hung his head. “I wrecked the mood.”
She tried to smile but her heart was not in it. “I am going to change into something that doesn’t smell of man sweat and gym. You can order us some food? Wheatgrass power smoothies only go so far and I am starving.”
Bharat touched her hair once, a curiously vulnerable gesture. “Sure. Of course.”
~~~~~
Sophia went into the bathroom in turmoil. She absently looked for a bathrobe and found a freshly laundered tee shirt.
She smiled; her turmoil receded. She might not know a lot of things but she knew how Bharat felt about huge tee shirts on her.
Sophia shucked off everything else but her panties; washed her face and slathered on moisturizer everywhere. As she wore his tee shirt, feeling the soft, worn cotton slide against her skin; she felt powerful. His scent, Hugo Boss and man sweat, surrounded her.
Sophia felt protected too.
There were so many unanswered questions between them, all the odds were stacked against them but maybe…just maybe…they could celebrate tonight.
She took a look at herself in the mirror. A flushed, nervous woman with insane hair stared back.
Sophia did not know how on earth he found her irresistible. But she wasn’t about to let it go to waste. “This is not your first time, Pechu. Get it together.”
Then she opened the door and stepped out.
~~~~~
Bharat was on the hotel phone, ordering food when he turned and glanced over at her. His pupils dilated.
She could see it happen across the breadth of the room. Feeling bolder, Sophia fisted one hand on her hip and struck a pose against the door. The shirt brushed her at mid-thigh, more demure than the LBD she’d worn, come to think of it.
“New outfit. Like it?”
His eyes flared to incendiary life and he said one curse word out loud. A really bad one.
“You said you wanted to celebrate,” Sophia reminded him. “Didn’t you?”
“I ordered champagne too. Good thing I did.”
She pretended to think it over. “How much time do we have before the food gets here?”
His eyes glazed. “Forty to fifty minutes.”
“You should hurry then.”
They were walking towards each other with every line of conversation. They finally met in the middle of the room.
“Remember this?” Sophia raised the hem of the tee shirt a little higher, showing succulent brown thigh.
Bharat swallowed visibly. “Is this like some weird porn thing?” He continued before she could reply, “You know what? Don’t answer. Don’t ruin it.”
“I wasn’t going to.” Sophia winked. “But, yeah, I do. I remember the heels also. It’s a shame I forgot my heels.”
He stopped breathing. “You’re killing me, Sophie.”
“Bharat?” She crooked one finger and he came closer. Really close. So close she could feel his breath stir her hair. “I am going to seduce you now.”
“Thank god.”
Sophia smiled and went on her toes. He stood quite still while she felt his heart start beating like a freight train; it added to her courage. She nipped at his lips, sucked the bottom one and gave it a luscious squeeze.
Bharat’s hands gripped her hip inside the tee shirt. Hard. She changed angles and kissed him properly.
He raced his hand under the tee shirt, finding her delectably, deliciously naked under his tee shirt. He gripped the back of her neck and took control of the kiss. Wild. Wet and endless.
Sophia discarded the buttons on his shirt and he tugged it off along with his jacket. His pants soon followed. She was still dressed, still being kissed mindless.
“I’m going to preserve this thing cryogenically,” Bharat murmured as he tugged off one shoulder of his tee shirt. Dropped a hot kiss on the soft skin there.
She brushed closer to him, heat to heat and he almost lost his concentration. He bit the shoulder and she trembled. It was heady stuff. This thing between them.
Her tee shirt came off then; in one swift tug. Bharat held her. Just held her, before sweeping her off her feet.
Sophia squealed and clutched his shoulders. “This Tarzan routine is not as sexy as you think it is.”
He laid her on the rose petals and the scent rose around them. Pungent and mixing with the desire scenting the air. He made to lift up but she would not let go of him, urging him down till he was half prone on the bed. They sighed at the body to body contact.
“I think I am supposed to be seducing you,” she whispered in his ear before blowing one hot breath into it.
He shrugged massive shoulders. “I am a control freak. Can’t help it.”
In retaliation, she bit his lobe and he shuddered.
They rolled over the bed, each trying to gain the upper hand, sweat dewing on bodies gone heated, trembling, with need and desire. Out of control desire.
Bharat sucked and kissed every single inch off her as she tugged his hair up and tried to kiss him. She gouged his back while he did so. When Sophia took him – hot and hard - in her mouth, it was almost game over between them. But he held on.
She crawled up all over him, her sexy hair sending chills down his spine, kissed him on his fast-beating heart, the strong pulse that thudded at the base of his throat and sucked on the pulse, giving him a hickey to remember.
The song wailed on, on loop, punctuated with the soft, intimate sounds of two lovers making love.
When he finally came into her, they were long past playing seduction games or battling for control.
It was pure need when Sophia gripped his shoulder and moved against him. It was mindless desire that had Bharat biting out a harsh curse when he fit inside of her like a glove.
And when they came together, it was like a red giant dying. Perfect. Miraculous. Precious.
~~~~~
Forty to fifty minutes later, she was nestled against him and tracing lazy circles on his chest. Arijit Singh had given way to Amit Trivedi but Bharat didn’t notice. For once, he wasn’t paying attention to tech. That knowledge pleased her.
“Bharat,” she said finally.
“Hmmm?”
How do you tell someone you love them like crazy after mind-blowing sex without it becoming a regular thing? “I just…”
There was a knock, followed by the buzzer ringing. Loudly.
“That’s the champagne and food. I am starving, too. I skipped lunch today, you know.” Bharat took the comforter, wrapping it around his waist like a lungi. Sophia shrieked and dived under the top sheet.
He was whistling as he flipped the lock and opened the door. “Hey, hi,” Bharat said.
“Where is she?” Sophia heard Nakul’s voice from the other side. “Where is my sister, kankir pola?!”
The blood drained from Sophia’s face as she heard her brother call her lover a son of a bitch. Her heart sank and fell thirty-seven floors down to the bottom of Darling Harbor.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The whole plane ride over, all eighteen hours of it and the two-hour overlay, Nakul was full of a righteous fury so deep, he was afraid it would swallow him whole. He’d called Sophia’s cell a number of times but it had gone straight to voicemail and he’d had to stop leaving her messages when the flight took off.
He didn’t know what to think, how to react.
Sophia was the glue his world stood on. Underneath everything he said and did, the decisions that meant keeping the company afloat quarter after quarter had all happened because he’d known Sophia was there. Half a world away, and in his heart.
His Pechu always supported him - one hundred percent. No questions asked.
He would never admit it to her but that knowledge had kept him going more times than he could count. She was his sister; she knew what this meant to him. And she was always on his side.
Always.
So, yesterday when she’d said that she was out, she was done…
something had snapped inside of him.
A long-held line of control was gone. Sophia could not leave him. He didn’t know what he would do if she did.
He didn’t really know what his plan was, except he had to see his sister, talk to her. Convince her to talk to that achoda Shrinivasan. Maybe punch him in the nuts if he ever saw him.
Nakul had even broken protocol and directly called Teresa Luigi once he’d cleared customs and made it out of the airport. Sophia had made him promise on their mother’s grave that he’d never call any of her friends. He wouldn’t be that over-protective annoying big brother.
Tessa had been very informative and chatty. She’d told Nakul about ConCon and how popular Sophia was at the blackjack table. She’d even told him Sophia had not come to work today. That she was at the Aria with her boyfriend, Tessa had said.
Then, Nakul had done something awful. “Her boyfriend’s Bharat Shrinivasan, isn’t he?” he’d said casually.
Teresa had laughed her sexy model laugh. “Sophia was right to be freaked of you, Nakul. You’re like the Indian Sherlock Holmes, figuring all this out.”
Nakul’s ears had started ringing like a drill machine was going on right beside them. They hadn’t stopped, the entire four-hundred-dollar cab ride over from the airport to the Aria.
He also saw red, bloody, crimson, murderous red, for the thirty-seven floor elevator ride. Sophia was in Bharat’s room. Hours after she’d told her own dada she didn’t want anything to do with their vendetta she was here.
It was enough to tip him over the edge.
Nakul didn’t think about it now, he just punched Bharat solidly in the stomach. Nakul’s knuckles were bruised. The fucker had some serious muscle.
Bharat gave an oomph; clutched the sheet and doubled over. He didn’t say a word. Just looked stonily at him.
“Where is she, you fucking bastard?” Nakul purposefully kept his voice reasonable; it would make killing Shrinivasan all that more a surprise.
“Nakul,” a voice said from the inside. A female voice. “Dada.”
The ringing in Nakul’s ears stopped. The world stopped.
“No,” Nakul whispered. Pain, a massive physical pain spread through him, leaving him breathless and immobile. “No!”
“Nakul,” Bharat said, in a slightly winded voice. “Please come in.”
He pushed the door open and Nakul closed his eyes. But not fast enough. Because he could see her.
His sister; his own flesh and blood. Wrapping a sheet over her naked, unclothed body while she stood up. Her hair in complete disarray. Obviously someone who’d just enjoyed time between the sheets. Each separate aspect of this scene was imprinted on his brain. Like a bullet wound. Like alpha code.
“Hello, Sophia,” he said. He knew the enormity of the gesture wasn’t lost on her. Nakul never ever called her Sophia. Not since the day she was born. She’d always been Meethi or Pechu.
Sophia swallowed but looked her brother straight in the eye. “Hello, dada. What are you doing here?”
Nakul chuckled. An ugly ghostly sound in the tense room. “I could ask you the same, Meethi. But it’s kind of obvious, so I am not going to.”
“I…”
“Save it,” he advised her mildly. “I am done here.”
Bharat reached out and touched his arm and Nakul punched him again. This time on the nose.
Bharat didn’t flinch. He took it like a man as blood spurted from the punch and dripped down his chin. A reluctant spurt of admiration grew in Nakul. The fucker had balls. He might be a destructive, selfish bastard but at least he took his punches like a man.
“Don’t ever touch me,” Nakul said calmly. “I will kill you.”
“I think you need to hear what Sophia has to say before you…”
“You’re not fit to say her name much less fuck her,” Nakul snapped back.
Sophia gasped and covered her dry mouth with trembling fingers.
Nakul shot his sister a derisive glance. Almost weaved on his feet at the endless sorrow he saw in there. She didn’t deserve it. Not his love. Or his respect. Or his pity.
She was a fucking traitor. Sleeping with the enemy.
~~~~~
“But, then again, that should have been my sister’s call to make. And evidently…” He gave an eloquent shrug instead of finishing the sentence.
“Nakul, please,” Bharat said quietly, as storms swirled inside of him. “Please listen to me, man. Please.”
He didn’t dare look back at Sophia. He wasn’t sure what Nakul would do if he made a move in that direction and he didn’t want to find out.
“Is this part of the special services provided by The Lotus Dragon?” Nakul asked his sister directly.
Silent tears coursed down Sophia’s cheeks. She absorbed the shock of his words in the slight stiffening of her shoulders. But she stood there, silent and cowering, while Bharat felt towering anger take over the embarrassment of the moment.
He didn’t care who that was, no one spoke to Sophia that way. No one.
“Apologize right now,” Bharat said evenly.
Nakul shot him a wrath-filled glance. “Fuck you. You can’t stop ruining us, can you?”
“Nakul,” Sophia said brokenly. “I’ll see you downstairs in five minutes. Please. Give me a chance to explain.”
Nakul’s face crumpled, a mask of utter pain.
And Bharat felt all the regret and sorrow of six years, of the last five minutes return back in full force. Holy heaven. How was he going to fix this Greek tragedy in the making? There didn’t seem anyway out here. Not one.
“There isn’t anything to explain. There isn’t. I am done here. I am done with you, Sophia. I am done,” Nakul repeated before he walked out. Without a backward glance.
~~~~~
Sophia didn’t know how she got through the next five minutes. But somehow, she managed to find her clothes in the bathroom and stepped into them without once looking at Bharat.
Her movements were jerky, graceless. Her head was pounding. There was so much pounding it felt like a bomb was about to go off in her skull.
Bharat made it easy by not saying a word. Just sat there on the chair, she’d sat for two minutes before he’d pulled her into his arms wanting to dance with…Sophia shut the thought down cold.
No more thinking of romantic interludes. No more Bharat.
She could not afford to think of Bharat anymore. Ever again. She had to fix things with Nakul now. God. What had she been thinking? What was wrong with her? How could she have betrayed her family this way?
Sophia grabbed her sling purse out of the closet and saw Bharat’s neatly packed suitcase. No extra underwear, nothing untoward here. He was not a messy man. Her breath hitched and her vision grayed for a second.
Bharat was not a messy man. He would not make this difficult for her.
She turned away from the closet. He was standing, not two feet away. And it might as well have been Canada.
“I have to go,” Sophia said evenly.
“I know,” Bharat replied in the same even tone. “I am not going to stop you. Or say anything. Because…” His eyes were tempered with a desperate sort of calm. “Let’s just leave it at that. We don’t have to say anything else.”
She nodded once and made to move.
He held a hand as if to touch her and she shrank into herself. Watched incredible, indelible hurt shadow his face. Those beautiful eyes broke. She felt a corresponding great wall of tears welling up inside of her. They had no place here.
She was losing time.
I never had anyone to celebrate this shit with before…
The knowledge of what she was doing to him broke her. But there was nothing she could do. No way she could fix this. No way to choose him without losing her family. And Sophia wasn’t strong enough for that.
“I should say I am sorry,” Bharat said as evenly as her. There was the slightest break in his voice. Her heart broke in two at the hitch. “But the truth is, I am not. I
am glad I met you. That I got to spend the last week with you.”
“Stop talking.” Sophia’s voice grated the air in the room. Thick and stifling, filled with regret and grief. So much grief and heartbreak. “I have to go.”
This time she did move past him and towards the door. He grabbed her arm in a desperate move. “Sophia, wait.”
Sophia wrenched it free. A single hot tear slid down her cheek and she angrily brushed it away. “I get it. I do. I am the thing in your life you want the most in the world. I understand you want me. But what happens when you go back to your precious company? When I say something to embarrass or contradict your investors? What happens then?” She almost threw the words at him.
“I don’t care about that. I thought we established that. I want you. I’ll never stop wanting you.” He was all dignity now. Much more gracious and collected than she had ever been around him.
And, all of a sudden, she resented him for it. Resented him for walking into her life and devastating it.
“I get all that. But what’s love, Bharat?” She hurled at him savagely. “You didn’t even know me a week ago. My brother has stood by me for twenty-eight years. I know you don’t understand the concept of family loyalty but that doesn’t mean I don’t.”
She shut up when she realized what she’d just said. How cruel she’d just become. More tears poured down her cheeks and she brushed them away.
Bharat’s face closed up. Nothing was visible anymore. She could feel it happening right where they stood up. One second he was there, trying to reach her, the next he was gone. A vacuum of a man stood in his place.
“You’re right. I should not have said anything.” He nodded, straightening to his full height.
“I didn’t mean…” Sophia twisted the strap of her purse. Feeling it knot and knot against nerveless, agitated fingers. “I am sorry.”
He nodded again. “I know. I know you’re sorry. And it’s okay. I understand.”
He didn’t understand any more than she did. But there it was. The out she could use.
Against All Odds Page 17
