by Alisha Rai
He took another step. “What are you looking for?”
She pressed her lips together. “You.”
His body jerked.
“Funny how that happened,” she said with a lightness she didn’t feel. “The perfect guy slipped through all my filters for the perfect guy. It’s like my heart knew what I needed better than my mind.” She took a deep breath. “But taking a break doesn’t mean I don’t want someone who will love me and adore me for as long as I live. I do. I want forever. And I’m not going to settle for whatever scraps you throw me, and I’ll handle it really poorly if we get together and you dump me again for my own good. Like, I’m talking burning-this-motherfucker-down, handling it poorly.” She looked him dead in the eyes. “I don’t want to be someone’s step, Micah. I want to be someone’s destination. I want to be their ending. I…I deserve that. I’m worth that.”
“You do.” He took another two steps, until they stood so close his wide chest brushed against hers. His dark eyes were warm as they rested on her face. “You are. I was an idiot. You said I saw you as a step, and maybe I did. A way to get back to where I was, to who I was.
“I went back to therapy.” His smile was sardonic. “I don’t like it, but I’ll keep going. I don’t want you to feel like you’re my therapy, because you’re not.”
“I—”
“Let me finish. I realized something when I didn’t have you anymore. I always thought my life before the attack was perfect.” His brows met, and he looked terribly, adorably confused. “But how could it have been? You weren’t in it.”
“Oh,” she managed. How. Utterly. Romantic.
He cupped her cheek, calluses and healing scars rubbing against her skin. Some familiar, some new. “My life was easy. But easy doesn’t always mean better. I don’t want to go back to a world or a time when I don’t have you.”
She couldn’t speak. He’d killed her vocal cords dead with his cuteness.
Mistaking her silence as hesitation, his jaw tightened, his eyes sharpening. “I told you we had to break up for your sake, but that was a lie. I broke up with you because I was a coward. I was scared of failing and disappointing you eventually. I don’t want to be scared anymore. I want to put the work in, because I know the rewards will be wonderful.” His thumb rasped over her lower lip. “You said once that you see me. Not only my scars. Look around you, Rana. I see you too.”
She did look around, and he allowed her to, releasing her so she could turn around in a complete circle. Though the paintings were in various stages of completion, each one conveyed something different: excitement, lewd invitation, vulnerability, impish mischief, seriousness. All the things that made her up, neither Old nor New, but her.
Her stomach lurched with excitement. She placed her hand on the head of the rough sculpture. “I didn’t know you sculpted.”
“I don’t. I haven’t, not for the past ten years.” He came to stand next to her, shoulder to shoulder, and covered her hand. His skin was nicked, covered with healing scars, some a few weeks old, others fresh.
She examined his fingers. “You injured yourself.”
“Learning curve. Relearning curve. As soon as I started working, I remembered how much I loved it.” His lips quirked. “I shoved sculpting aside. Because it was too hard.”
She eyed all of the paintings and the budding sculpture. “Have you been sleeping at all?”
“Not much.” He stroked his finger over the sculpture’s flank. “This was supposed to be a cast. I was going to do it in granite, and it was going to be my grand gesture to win you back. But it took me so long, I couldn’t wait for the finished product.” He shook his head, a sheepish smile forming on his face. “God, it’s awful, isn’t it? It’s going to take me forever to work all the kinks and imperfections out of it.”
“I like the imperfections.” Rana inhaled, thinking over his words, his declaration that he loved her. “For how long?” How long did he want her for?
He didn’t miss a beat, somehow understanding what she was asking. “As long as you’ll let me.”
“I’m selfish.” She lifted her chin. “I might let you forever.”
He didn’t shy away. “Forever would be quite ideal.”
“I demand the sex remain amazing. You’d still be my muffin. Only, like, my permanent muffin.”
His lips twitched. “I would be honored to be your long-term sweet.”
She gave a decisive nod. “No other models. Unless I’m in the room. I’m that selfish.”
“I don’t particularly want any others. I’ll use my brain. Or you.”
Relief ran through her. She understood that he hadn’t slept with models as a regular course of events, but, well…she wasn’t perfect, and jealousy happened.
He hesitated, looking bashful for a second. “I actually have some ideas. For sculptures. They’re…nothing like what I’ve done before. I want to think about them. Maybe learn the craft better. If I sell the paintings I have in storage, I have lots of time to figure that part out.”
“That sounds fine.” She pulled his head closer. “Now you kiss me?”
“Gladly,” he murmured. His lips sipped at hers, tentative at first and then pressing against her with more surety, his tongue stroking hers.
She tilted her head back when they separated for a breath. He ran his thumb over her lower lip. “Coral, today,” he murmured. “I do love all your lipsticks.”
“I’m glad you say that. Because after I used my modeling money to buy your blinds, I blew the rest on makeup.”
He blinked. “That was a lot of money.”
She puckered up her lips and laughed. “Honey. This isn’t cheap.”
His answering grin was foolish. “Then I suppose you’ll just have to model for me again.”
She twined her arms around his neck. “We haven’t known each other long. People are going to say this is crazy.” Wacky Rana. Jumping into everything feet first.
Yeah. It was part of her charm.
“What are you talking about?” His smile was brilliant, a flash of white, prompting an answering smile from her. “We’ve known each other forever. Since you first started peeking in my window.”
She winced. “Stop. We should stop talking about that. It definitely was not my finest moment.”
Micah wrapped his big arm around her waist and hauled her close. The candlelight flickered over his face, playing with light and shadow. He dipped his head, until his lips hovered over hers. “You’re right. It was mine.”
Glutton for Pleasure
Read Glutton for Pleasure!
They’re craving something sweet. She likes it spicy.
Devi Malik knows how to heat things up. She does it every night as head chef in her family’s Indian restaurant. Her love life, though, is stuck in the subzero freezer. Now, with a chance to fulfill a secret fantasy with her long-time crush and his brother, it’s time to put her desire on the front two burners.
For Marcus Callahan, a love-’em-and-leave-’em attitude isn’t only a necessary evil of their kink. It’s a protective device. Lately, though, his brother Jace has been making noises about craving something more.
Jace’s dissatisfaction with their lifestyle grows with every glimpse of sweet little Devi. Yet Marcus is too haunted by the pain of their shared past to give love a chance.
Despite their reputation for vanishing with the dawn, they discover one night with Devi isn’t nearly enough. And Devi finds herself falling in love with two very different men.
It’ll take more than explosive sex to light up the shadows surrounding the Callahan brothers’ secrets. But Devi’s never been afraid of the dark.
Warning: This title contains two sizzling men for the price of one, ménage a trois, oral sex, anal sex, fun toys, great food, and creative uses for syrup and dressing rooms.
A Note From The Author
Thanks so much for reading Serving Pleasure! I hope you enjoyed it.
•If you would like to know when my next book is
available, please sign up for my newsletter, visit me at www.alisharai.com, or follow me on twitter @AlishaRai.
•If you haven’t yet read Devi’s story, you can check out Glutton for Pleasure. If you’re looking for other books of mine that are similar in heat level/genre to this book, I recommend The Bedroom Games Series or A Gentleman in the Street.
Finally, for any readers who may already follow me on twitter and know of (and have laughed at) my (many) online dating mishaps: while I may have taken some inspiration from real life scenarios, everything in this book is purely fictional. Similarly, Mama Malik is nothing like Mama Rai.
…Except those two ladies do share a fondness for scoping out potential sons-in-law on Indian matrimonial websites. Yes, friends. Those are all too real.
Other Books By Alisha Rai
Pleasure Series
Glutton For Pleasure
Serving Pleasure
The Campbells
A Gentleman in the Street
Bedroom Games Series
Play With Me
Risk & Reward
Bet On Me
The Bedroom Games Bundle, Books 1-3
The Karimi Siblings
Falling For Him
Waiting For Her
Single Title
Night Whispers
Hot as Hades
Never Have I Ever
Cabin Fever
Copyright © 2015 by Alisha Rai
Cover by Kanaxa
Edited by Sasha Knight
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
