He wasn’t even any different these past two days than he’d been for the last six months.
He looked the same, remote and with a hard-face could break granite. He dressed the same, jeans and sweaters to ward off the mild chill that signified the end of spring. And he definitely had the same take no prisoners expression on that he always sported.
Yet, for the life of her, Ziya couldn’t understand why she suddenly found everything about him distractingly appealing.
Even his usual morose taciturn behavior couldn’t make her stop watching him covertly, through the corner of her eyes. At the way those long, tanned fingers used the fork to shred some butter chicken before chewing it slowly. Those same hands had touched an unexploded ordnance (she’d looked up the term on the Net last night) and come off the victor.
Those same hands had touched her too.
With such unbelievable strength she still had finger marks on her arm she’d covered with a long-sleeved shirt.
But it wasn’t the pain she remembered or even her own justifiable anger at his high-handedness in ordering her about.
It was just the sensation of his fingers touching her flesh. Hot, searing on impact. As if there was a current running between them that had shorted a few circuits in her brain.
Made her aware of a very unpleasant fact about Krivi Iyer.
Namely, that she was aware of Krivi Iyer. More than she’d wanted, more than she thought possible and now, more than was comfortable for her.
Because he was still the same silent assistant manager who refused to look her in the eye for the hours they shared office space.
Ziya turned back to her own food, determined to not join in Noor’s delighted teasing. Determined to not let anything get to her. Especially the way Krivi was plowing through his food, as if he couldn’t eat and get away from the dinner table fast enough.
Such an unsociable animal he was.
And yet, he’d smiled at her with something close to sexiness. And promised her he wouldn’t blow them all to kingdom come.
Heroes, Ziya decided, were a strange breed. And she wanted nothing to do with them. She ate some of her own green leaf salad with local mustard and apple cider dressing and looked up to see Sam grinning wryly at her.
She quirked a brow and mouthed, “What’s up?”
Sam shook his head and addressed his next comment to Dada Akhtar who’d stopped eating while the saga was being unfolded for him in full, Technicolor detail. And certain embellishments on the part of one Noor Saiyed.
“I wasn’t there to see Krivi tackle my Amazonia.” Sam smiled fondly at Ziya who rolled her eyes at the nickname. “But I did see how he did the wrestler routine to stop both Ziya and Noor from breaking into the perimeter. And still lives to see daybreak. You’re a strong man, Krivi. Fortunate too.”
Since the last comment was addressed directly to him, Krivi looked up and saw Dada Akhtar’s avid, grateful face. He did the decent thing and smiled modestly.
“It’s nothing, Major. Always glad to help out in an emergency.”
Noor’s mouth dropped open and Sam leaned to his side and shut it before her mouthful of food dropped down on her lap.
It was Dada Akhtar who said, “But this wasn’t an emergency, beta. This was a bomb threat, Krivi. A whole different world from the word emergency.”
Noor hugged Krivi’s side who was sitting to her left and announced, “Superheroes are extremely modest, Dada. Don’t you know?”
“And what else do you know about superheroes, Doctor?” Krivi asked her, his eyes indulgent.
Sam caught Ziya looking at him again and grinned. “Maybe Ziya has some thoughts on superheroes, huh, Zee?”
Ziya gave the table a bland look. “The only superheroes I know are extremely flawed because they feel the need to hide their humanity under tights and outside underwear, which is an extremely tacky fashion choice,” she ended judiciously.
Sam looked a little nonplussed but Krivi’s lips twitched and there was a look of interest sharpening the remoteness in his black eyes.
“Touché, Zee,” Noor said. “But you have to admit, Krivi would look extremely hot in tights and outside underwear.”
~~~~~
Krivi put his fork down and looked at Ziya… who wrinkled her button nose and said, “I wouldn’t know. My imagination is not that vivid.” And she carefully did not look at the man in question.
Dada Akhtar reached over and squeezed Krivi’s shoulder in a gesture of support and affection.
“Whatever the reason, whatever the circumstance, I am just glad that you were there today to look out for my two girls. I can’t begin to thank you for this debt, beta.”
He’d called him son again. Dada’s beetle black eyes gleamed with emotion under bushy white brows, surprising Krivi. Moving him a little, enough that he covered the wrinkled, still strong hand with his own and returned the squeeze.
“It’s not a debt, Salman,” Krivi said, formally. Uncomfortable by the sudden somber tone of the conversation. Uncomfortable even more to find that every eye around the small table was finally on him. The swarthy Major included.
“And I don’t think—"
“Krivi?”
Ziya’s low voice made him stop. Mostly because she never called him by his name. Just like he never did hers.
Ziya. A small short name for a very complicated, hard-to-figure-out woman.
“Yeah?”
“Shut up and accept the compliment for what it is. Yeah? Dada doesn’t shower praise on just anyone. You need to shove aside that chip on your shoulder that’s obstructing your throat and say thank you graciously. Okay?”
She smiled pleasantly, although her eyes were roiling like storm clouds.
He again had the insane urge to grin at her, the way he had when she had told him off for not smoking in the car, but wisely kept the impulse and its consequence to himself.
“Yes, ma’am, Miss Maarten,” he murmured.
And, turning back to Dada Akhtar, said in perfect Urdu, “Thank you, for being so kind as to call me a hero. I don’t deserve it but I will try and live up to it, anyway.”
“Shukraan, beta,” Dada Akhtar managed.
“I think we can safely say that between Sam and Rambo, we are not going to have a problem if aliens invade Goonj, Dada,” Noor said, confidently.
And after a second of disbelieving silence, the whole table burst out laughing. Dada Akhtar laughing so hard, his little pot belly shaking with his mirth. Noor and Sam put down their forks and held onto their stomachs, tears running down their faces. Even Ziya was smiling and chuckling as if the joke had been funnier than it was supposed to.
Krivi smiled because it would have been rude otherwise. But he knew the one thing that the other four didn’t.
Aliens were scary beings because you didn’t know the first damn thing about them. Least of all, how to beat them.
Ziya’s silver eyes lit up with laughter and humor as she gave him a passing glance.
Yeah, he thought morosely. He didn’t know the first thing about beating this alien woman.
~~~~~
Noor prowled into the kitchen where Ziya was busy scooping out vanilla ice cream on bowls which held gulab jamuns. A traditional Indian dessert of round balls made from flour, saffron and floated in sugar syrup. It was scrumptious and Noor’s downfall.
“I am going to bloat,” she wailed, even as she took a golden jamun out and stuffed it whole in her mouth. An expression of utter bliss crossed her face before she opened her dreamy, satisfied eyes and nailed her best friend with an intuitive expression.
“Krivi is hot.”
“Hmm?”
Ziya didn’t really hear the statement, because she herself was contemplating eating one jamun. “I shouldn’t eat one…should I?”
“I said, Krivi is hot,” Noor said patiently. “Like, hero hot. And that’s a lot of hotness, babe.”
Ziya shook her head in disbelief.
“Stop talking and eat your dessert, h
oney. Your brains are obviously scrambled.”
Noor poked her in the shoulder. Hard enough that Ziya stopped ladling the ice cream and shot her an annoyed look.
“What?”
“You like him. You want to jump his bones because he hauled you around like a sack of potatoes and then, like, five seconds later went and saved the world. All without breaking a sweat. Or even being unduly concerned about you or the world. It’s hot. All that implacable indifference.”
Ziya chuckled.
“Yep. Brains. Scrambled. With tomatoes and onions. Maybe you should give up breakfast, Noor.”
Noor shook her head.“You can lie all you want to me, babe. But the truth is there in your eyes when you forget no one is looking at you.”
“And what truth would that be?” Ziya’s face was rich with amusement.
“You look at him,” she answered promptly. “You don’t want to, but you look at him.”
All the amusement faded from her eyes and she said, “Shut up, Noor. You have no idea what you’re saying.”
“I do. And it scares you, because he really is who he is. And you are intrigued by the indifference and the hero complex.”
Noor was so confident in her assessment that Ziya was sure she must have slipped up and said something to her, after all.
But, then common sense reasserted itself and she said, “I am not intrigued by a man who has all the manners of a retarded mute and what you call hero complex, I call macho arrogance. And yes, he is indifferent to everything but mostly to me, and I return the favor,” she ended sharply.
Sharper than she had intended because it was all so close to what she herself was anyway feeling. She just wasn’t ready to admit it out loud yet. If she ever would be.
Noor’s eyes rounded in dismay. And Ziya asked her, “What? Now what?”
There was a loud cough from behind her.
Ziya whirled around, ladle at the ready. To see the object of her derision standing at the kitchen entrance. Thundercloud face and impassive eyes.
The ice cream dripped onto the floor as he told her with a straight face, “I am not indifferent to your gulab jamuns. If that counts for anything.” Then he nodded at Noor and said, “I’m taking off now, Noor. The…fulsome praise has more than satisfied my appetite.”
Then he turned and left without acknowledging Ziya at all.
Ten
Ziya took a deep breath as she struggled to handle her anger and embarrassment at having been caught bad-mouthing him. An employee, no less. Which was inexcusable in her book, even though it was all his fault.
Noor watched as a host of emotions flitted across her friend’s usually calm face and she said, casually, “He does pack a punch when he opens his mouth.”
Ziya flicked a distracted glance at Noor who was enjoying her second gulab jamun. She came to a decision that had been simmering at the back of her head, for a long time, for six months, perhaps. She placed the ladle on the kitchen island carefully. Wiped her hands on the small dishcloth she wore around the waist of her jeans.
“I have to end this,” she said, mostly to herself.
“Go, Zee.”
But Noor’s encouragement fell on deaf ears as Ziya half-walked, half-ran out the kitchen and down the passage that led to the living room and then out the door, without pausing to grab a jacket against the chilly night.
Srinagar had cold nights in May and tonight was no exception.
Dada Akhtar and Sam looked on in fascination and surprise as she streaked past them and then shrugged when Noor came out with dessert. They had more important things to worry about.
Ziya had to run downhill, and it was a mostly easy path but even then she was winded hardily, her breath coming out in gasps that made little white puffs of air as they escaped her lungs.
She could see Krivi’s dark form moving ahead, almost at the edge of the fence where the gamekeeper’s cottage began. She put on a sprint and reached the wooden gate just as he was going to unlatch it.
Ziya tapped him on the shoulder; having to reach up to do it since she was not in heels but practical Nikes.
Krivi whirled around with dizzying speed, something feral leaping into his eyes that she instantly shrank away from.
~~~~~
“Don’t sneak up on me again. Ever,” he ordered her. “I could have punched your lights out.”
Her small chin went up haughtily, the grey eyes flashing stormy. “You could try, damn you. Who the hell do you think you are?”
He inclined his head and stepped a discreet inch back as her anger and seductive, female scent swirled in a thick condensation. Tightening the bubble around them.
“I am the assistant manager of Goonj Enterprises. The other stuff’s not important.”
She shoved him back with one hand, and he was so surprised at the gesture that he actually stumbled.
She came forward and did it again. But this time, he was prepared so he caught her wrist in one loose hand. When her other wrist came up with a swing, he caught that one too.
All without taking his dark eyes off her furious beautiful face.
“What are you spitting at me for?”
“Ziya,” she said coldly.
“I beg your pardon?” He restrained her with a simple hold, while she struggled, trying to escape his fingers, his touch. He immediately let go of her.
“Ziya!” She practically shouted. “My name is Ziya. Learn it, live it. I don’t care what you do outside of the office, or here in Dada Akhtar’s home, but I am damned if I am going to have you talk to me anywhere like I am some small child that needs to be pacified, or worse, a woman who doesn’t know what she is doing.”
Her chest was heaving, and because of the way he held her, almost in his embrace, he could feel each movement against his own, suddenly rioting body. He tried to step back again.
“Look-"
“Look, Ziya!” She yelled. “Are you deaf? Or just that cruel? Let go of my hands, you arrogant baboon. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Stop moving, please,” he said, in a low voice. His patience strained, his own emotions running up to take the place of the patience.
“I won’t! I am your boss! I am good at what I do and I have lived twenty-nine years without some Neanderthal telling me what to do every five minutes, goddammit. You take your orders from me, Krivi, not the other way. Now let me the hell go.”
~~~~~
Ziya blew a gold-streaked bang off her forehead and glared at him. So mad, so very mad at the casual ease with which he could subdue her and the indifference with which he held her.
She was even madder at herself for wanting to talk to him at all, and cursed her wayward hormones to hell and back.
“Ziya—"
“Good.” She smiled, and it was blade-sharp. “Now say it a million times and we won't have a problem.”
Something snapped. It could have been a twig, could have been the air, or it could be his control which broke free from restraint in four long years and he dragged her closer and ravaged her mouth with his.
Ziya was so surprised, shocked out of her wits, that for a single, trembling second she just hung in mid-air, gravity having no pull on her muscles. It was Krivi, his mouth that held her anchored. Then his hands dug into her wrists and she grabbed his hands in return and kissed him back.
Hard.
Using her teeth to bite at his lower lip, hard enough to draw blood.
And he groaned as he staggered back, taking her with him. They hit the fence and he released her hands to run restless, rough hands over her shoulders, into the short mop of her hair as he ruthlessly kissed her.
And she opened her mouth and let him in to do exactly what she’d ordered him not to.
Take over.
But being taken over was a glorious melding of tongues and breath and a scent that could only come from a man who’d faced down death. Taken over meant running her hands over the hard planes of her shoulders, and into his hair. Clutching it hard, desperately a
s she tried kiss him deeper.
He bent her back, holding her still by the head, taking a single kiss into depths she hadn’t known existed until she groaned.
And only half in pain.
They both sprang apart in the same instant.
Ziya’s eyes were silver-bright, her breathing flushed, a rosy glow on her lovely face. She lifted a hand to her face and pressed her fingers to her hot cheek.
Krivi clenched his hands into fists to stop from reaching for her.
“I—"
“Go,” he said, before he could say anything else.
The bright, confusing glow in her eyes dimmed. “Krivi…”
“Just go.” He waited a beat. “Ziya.”
She looked at him for a moment more, the wisdom of women and its fallout visible on that very readable face. And he stepped back, a full foot.
“Learn to say my name without choking,” she ordered, and then turned and walked back.
~~~~~
Krivi stood at his gate, watching the white shirt and the slim figure who wore it, right till she climbed the tiny hill that separated the cottage from the main house. He waited till she opened the door and slipped inside and was seen no more.
He waited even till he saw the light come on in the second-floor window and he saw a silhouette moving through the curtains across the distance that separated them.
“Goodnight, Ziya,” he murmured.
And went inside.
Eleven
Krivi woke up as he always did.
Snatching his consciousness from the depths of the nightmare that gripped him.
It involved a navy-blue Ford and a couple making love in the cramped backseat. The woman in the dream was always Gemma, with her crackling red hair and booming laugh that turned heads whenever she belted it out. And the man was sometimes him, sometimes Joe, Gemma’s husband.
Sometimes, Gemma was laughing that laugh that had made him so crazy for her.
Sometimes a single tear slipped off the corner of her eye and she whispered, “I’m pregnant.”
The man making love to her always tightened his arms around her when she did that, whether in tears or joy. And a stunning peace filled him. His very soul permeated with it.
Warrior Knight Page 7
