Married For One Reason Only by Dani Collins
CHAPTER THREE
DON’TGO, VIJAY told himself.
That advice might have been easier to obey if he hadn’t been staying in the same damned hotel. If he hadn’t had to pass her floor to get to his own.
I want to hang on to what little time we have together.
Him too, for more reasons than the fact he was randy as hell after hours of flirting and footsie, then a kiss that had set his blood alight. He liked her. Enough that he felt like a heel for keeping secrets from her.
She wasn’t looking for a relationship, though. Many things about their lives would remain a mystery from each other. Some people made this sort of relationship a habit, preferring to know as little as possible about their sex partners.
And some people waited until a few days before a wedding before revealing how shallow and faithless they truly were, he thought dourly.
Oriel was offering refreshing honesty, a night without the false promises that kept a person dangling on a string. If they were both law-abiding, consenting adults, did it matter why he’d knocked on her door in the first place?
Vijay collected the box of condoms from his luggage and, moments later, knocked on her door again.
“Your concierge request,” he said dryly when she let him in.
She blushed, chuckling as she took it, and set it aside. She sobered as she noted he wasn’t laughing. “Am I being too presumptuous?”
“Not at all. I want to use one. More than one, if we are so blessed.”
That made her laugh throatily, and somehow they were close enough that he snagged his arm around her without thinking. She pressed into him.
He was lost. Any better thoughts went out the covered windows as he folded his arms around her and pressed her curves into his long-term memory. She was all softness and spice, hair spilling around her shoulders as she tipped her head back and showed him the glow of exhilaration in her eyes.
She had taken off her shoes, but was still tall enough that her nose was even with his mouth. Her long, dark throat was more than he could resist. He dipped his head and tasted her skin.
She gasped and shivered, and he automatically closed his arms tighter around her, holding her still for the swirl of his tongue against her skin. How had he thought he could resist her when she responded so immediately? So wantonly. She ran her hands into his hair and arched to rub against the erection straining against his fly.
Slow down, he ordered himself, but they only had tonight, and he wanted every inch of her. She seemed equally urgent, plucking at his shirt until he lifted his mouth and fused his lips to hers.
As they kissed deeply, his pulse throbbed so hard his entire body shook under the reverberations. His hands gathered and roamed over the filmy fabric of her dress, filling his palms with her heat, her lithe waist and her round, firm ass. He had never wanted to rip a woman’s clothes off, but the impulse was there tonight. It took everything in him to seek the zipper against the indention of her spine.
“There’s a hook,” she said as he lowered the tab.
Maybe there was, but he had enough room in the opening to caress the smooth skin above and below the band of her lacy bra.
She flexed and her hand bumped into his, trying to finish opening the dress. She moaned with frustration. “Oh, just break it.”
“Thank you,” he said fervently, clutching the edge of the zipper and popping the hook. The delicate dress tore in a burst of barbaric satisfaction. He swept the ruined garment forward, peeling it off her front and brushing it down her hips so it landed as a puddle of blue around her feet.
“Mon Dieu,”she said on a pang of helpless laughter. “I’ve never felt like this.”
“Me neither.” When she began to untuck his shirt, he yanked it open, tearing the cuffs as he roughly pulled it free of his arms, all the while keeping his gaze fixated on the ice-blue lace of her bra and panties.
He may have spent a little too long studying her online photos in skimpy lingerie exactly like that, but reality was even more potent. As he freed his hands from his sleeves, he ran his touch from beneath her arms to her waist and down to her hips before coming back. The soft abrasion of lace against the downy warmth of her skin was a delightful contrast, as was the hint of pink rising beneath her golden skin. He wanted to bite at the dark circles of her areolas, barely visible through the lace in the cups, and devour the shadow behind the triangle at the top of her thighs.
“Kiss me.” She ran her hands across his bare shoulders and cupped his head, drawing his mouth to hers.
He groaned as he covered her lips and gloried in how her mouth softened in surrender beneath his. He caught her hair and dragged her head back, kissing across her jaw and down to her throat. “I’m going to kiss every part of you,” he promised.
Her collarbone, her shoulder where he brushed aside the strap of her bra, the place where her scent gathered between the swells of her breasts.
She opened her bra, and he nearly lost his mind as her breasts spilled into his hands. Her beautiful dark nipples were already pebble-hard as he circled his thumbs across them. He kept swirling his thumb on one while pulling the other deep into his mouth and stabbing at the little bead with his tongue.
A small cry left her, and her hands clutched at him while her weight sagged. His blood throbbed in the tip of his erection, hammering imperatives into his brain.
He ignored his own need and shifted his grip on her, bending her across his arm so he could consume her other nipple. She squirmed, and her helpless pants made him smile with dark satisfaction. When he slid a hand down to silk and discovered it was soaked with her response, he nearly lost it.
“Vijay.” Her eyelids were fluttering, and she covered his hand, urging him to press harder.
“Are you going to come?”
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s see, hmm?” He slid a finger under the lace and caressed between her slippery folds, so hot and welcoming. As he dipped his head and found her nipple again, he discovered the hard nub of her clitoris. She stiffened and trembled as he stroked, digging her nails into his scalp. He sucked harder and rolled his touch rhythmically across that little pearl, feeling her quiver and shake.
Her tension gathered until he thought she would break. Suddenly she cried out, shattering so completely, it was like holding a charge of lightning. She electrified him.
Then she went trustingly limp in his embrace, moaning with gratification.
“That was incredible.” Vijay swung her up in the cradle of his arms.
“It was,” she murmured, curling a heavy arm around his neck and nuzzling his throat. That orgasm had destroyed her in the most exquisite way. “I can walk,” she claimed, even though she wasn’t entirely confident in that statement.
“I could carry you to a cave on the top of a mountain right now. Somewhere that no other man will ever find you, so you would be mine forever. All mine. Only mine.”
She didn’t normally find possessiveness sexy, but ooh. She sought his mouth and sucked on his bottom lip. She would be his if he would be hers.
He wouldn’t. They only had tonight, she recalled with a catching sensation in her chest.
She might have descended into a fog of despondency then, but he stopped walking to give her a long, luxurious kiss, playing his tongue against hers. When he released her, his dark eyes held a feral glitter.
“Do you mind?”
It took her a moment to realize he wanted her to pick up the box of condoms.
More than one, if we are so blessed.
Oui. Si’l vous plaît. She did, and seconds later, he set her on the bed.
Her gaze snagged on the ceiling fan. She had a brief moment of unease as she recalled they had only met this morning. He had been correct in saying she didn’t do one-night stands. Her first sexual experience had been a seduction at the hands of a young man trying to get close to her mother for career reasons. All the rest of her relationships had died of neglect.
Her last attempt at dating had made the complaint, You’re not a virtuoso like your mother. Why does your career mean so much to you?
In this moment, as Vijay peeled her panties down her thighs as though savoring the opening of a Christmas gift, she realized the reason her career always took precedence was that no man had made her feel like this—cherished and wanted and necessary. She was both helpless and powerful, sated yet aroused. Self-conscious, but losing inhibitions by the heartbeat.
“Come here.” He dragged her bottom to the edge of the mattress as he lowered to his knees on the floor beside the bed.
“You—I—” She lost her ability to speak as he set her legs on his shoulders and tasted her. No inhibition on his part, either. She groaned in tortured joy as he brought her replete flesh back to searing life.
He drew her to a height of tension, then slowed and soothed, then intensified his ministrations so her need for more became acute again.
“Vijay, please,” she begged, and tangled her hands in his hair. “I need you inside me.”
“The problem is, my beautiful goddess...” He stood and opened his belt, dropping pants and briefs in one swift skim. “I don’t know how long I will last once I’m there.”
Oh, he was beautifully made. From the tree of life that decorated his torso to the root of hair that gathered in a nest at the tops of his thighs to the thick spear of flesh dark with arousal. He reached for the condoms, and she watched as he rolled one on and squeezed himself in his fist.
Her body clenched internally with anticipation.
“Yes?” He touched her knee in a request that she open her legs for him.
“Oh, yes.” She was dying and scooted herself into the center of the mattress.
He settled over her, bracing on an elbow as he traced the swollen, sheathed head of his penis around her wet entrance.
“Quit teasing.” She nipped at his earlobe.
His crown nudged for admittance. He had girth to him. Her body instinctively tensed as his thickness began to invade. She made herself relax, and he pressed into her. All her sensations intensified as he slowly filled her.
“You’re so hot,” he breathed, backing off slightly before letting his weight settle so he sank to the limits of their flesh.
She had never felt anything like this. Perfectly full. She was so aroused and swollen and sensitized, she could feel his heartbeat in the steeliness lodged within her.
“Your heart is racing,” he murmured as he cupped her breast and played with her nipple.
The small caress sent a tight jolt down into the place where they were joined, and she clenched in reaction. Sensations glittered through her, making her catch her breath.
“Like that?” He continued to roll his thumb around her nipple as he kissed her. Long, lazy kisses that drove her mad because her sex was growing wetter and needier, and he used his weight to keep their hips completely still.
She stroked her hands over the curve of his hard buttocks, then twined her legs up around his waist and dug her heels into his hard globes, inviting him to thrust with muted pulses of her hips. She blatantly thrust her tongue into his mouth and arched to encourage him.
He groaned as he rocked back and thrust in, seeming to pull sensations from her like the strings of a harp, then releasing them to send glorious vibrations shivering through her.
She couldn’t help the strangled noise that left her. She twisted beneath him, almost overcome by the intensity of the sensations.
“Almost too good to bear, isn’t it?” He worked his hand under her tailbone, tilting her hips so he could thrust with more power. As he invaded, he touched places inside her that made her vision go white.
Sharp spears of joy pierced her. It was inescapable, so she embraced it, clinging to him and moving with him, moaning unreservedly. His hand fisted in the sheet beneath her shoulder, and the slap of their hips was a primitive drumbeat beneath the song of their sobs and groans.
Climax licked and teased and tantalized.
“Not yet,” he growled. “Wait.”
She had never been held like this on the precipice of exaltation. It was exquisite torture. She clutched at him and said filthy things. “Deeper. Harder. Don’t stop. I need more.”
He kept to that rhythm that was driving her mad, held them in that place of utter abandonment that was too sharp to be withstood, but oh, she wanted to be right here forever.
“Now,” he commanded through gritted teeth. “Come.”
He unleashed himself, pushing her toward the high, wide ledge with unconstrained thrusts. A viscously sweet sensation clenched within her, then released her into the universe, scattering her into pieces.
From a distance, she heard him roar with the force of his own orgasm. He fused his hips to hers and pulsed hotly within her. They stayed locked like that for long, euphoric moments, holding tight to that state of utter perfection before he collapsed upon her, sweaty and heavy and replete.
She sighed, drenched and drugged by a kind of pleasure she had never experienced in her life.
And never would again, she acknowledged with a pang of melancholy.
“Who was the thief?” the photographer asked as Oriel prepared for her photo shoot the next day.
“What do you mean?” She turned from hanging the robe she’d been wearing over her first bikini.
“The one who left fingerprints on your bottom. We’ll have to call the constable to dust them.” The photographer winked at his own joke and waved at the makeup artist.
The woman was grinning with amusement as she brought forward a tray of pots in an array of flesh tones from ivory to intense brown and began to mix them like a painter.
Mon Dieu.Oriel wanted to die. The poor woman had already spent an hour trying to disguise the dark circles under her eyes. Now Oriel had to stand here in all her ignominious glory while the sable hairs of a brush tickled the curves of her derriere.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” the woman said when she rose from her squat and saw Oriel’s expression. “Unless he wasn’t worth it?”
“Oh, he was,” Oriel said ruefully. She had absolutely no regrets. That’s what she’d been telling herself as she rose from the bed and had a quick shower a couple of hours ago.
Vijay had been gone when she emerged, but he’d left a note on hotel stationery.
Thank you for an amazing night.
She had his number from the previous note still tucked in a pocket of her bag. She’d been trying to decide if she should text something similar or let last night be a wonderful, stand-alone memory for both of them. Coming on as clingy was the last thing she wanted, but the yearning to keep him in her life was nearly overwhelming. It wasn’t that she had felt “complete” with him, but for those hours from dinner through waking beside him, she had stopped feeling so deeply alone.
After several hours of shooting, when she was physically drained and about to change into her own clothes, she took a selfie in the full-length mirror. She was wearing a neon-pink bikini that was almost entirely made of loosely woven strings with a few tiny patches of solid nylon over the important bits.
At the last second, she cut her head out of the photo. Wasn’t that the first rule of sexting? Keep it from being too incriminating?
She sent it with a message.
Miss me yet?
Almost immediately, she saw the three dots of a reply.
Niiiice. Who dis?
She texted back.
Not funny.
Then, as it occurred to her that she might have sent it to a wrong number, she asked with growing horror:
Who is this?
Erlich. Send more.
Non, non, non. With a whimper, she turned off her phone, resolving to get a new number the second she arrived back in Paris.
Oriel didn’t text him. Which was fine. This wasn’t his first rodeo, as they said in America. They had agreed their affair would only be the one night, and he’d crossed some ethical boundaries by accepting her invitation.
Vijay had struggled as he lay in her bed listening to the shower come on. He’d considered leaving his card, but decided that slipping away with only a thank-you note had been the most prudent course. If she wanted to reach out to him, she had his number from his earlier note. Leaving it had been a way to explain his stealing her toothbrush and to forestall any awkward involvement of hotel management, but at least she had it.
Three days later, he was still fading into lusty memories of their being all over each other, dozing off their sexual gratification before greedily demanding more. The third time, Oriel had instigated it, reaching for him in the predawn light.
“My alarm will go off soon,” she had murmured. “Do you want to...?”
Her caress on the inside of his thigh had been all he needed to recover and harden despite the fact he should have been drained dry. He’d pulled her warm, silky body atop him and filled his hands with her smooth skin while their legs braided together. He’d done his best to memorize her with his touch, letting her set the pace since he imagined she was tender after so much lovemaking.
Her damp mouth and cool hair had drifted a tickling sweep across his chest all the way down to his stomach and lower, anointing him in a way that had him forgetting why breathing was a thing anyone bothered to do.
When she had risen to straddle him and guided herself onto his hardness, he hadn’t had a condom on yet, but after that much lovemaking, he had known he wouldn’t come right away. He had let her lazily ride him and enjoyed the way she crested with a broken gasp and shivers of ecstasy. Her rippling pleasure on his supremely aroused, sensitized flesh had nearly taken him over the edge, but he’d managed to hold back.
After she calmed, he had slipped out of her, put on a condom and taken control. He’d aroused her with his mouth, making her squirm and writhe. He’d tried to be gentle because they’d been at it for hours, but by the time he was moving inside her, the beast had been gripping him with insatiable talons.
He had known it would be their last time. Each stroke had been bittersweet. Powerful. They had completely abandoned propriety, both moaning and encouraging the other until the people in the next room had banged on the wall and yelled, “Give it a rest!”
He couldn’t. He had wanted to meld them into one being for all time. Parting from her was going to leave a piece of himself behind. When the culmination arrived, he’d nearly blacked out from the force—
“Vijay!”
His sister’s voice snapped him back to his office. He shifted in his chair, arousal dying a quick death as he leaned to see her across the small courtyard they shared. They left their doors open for exactly this, so they could call across whenever they had a question.
Kiran was glaring at him.
“Are you worried about the language around the patent? Me too.” They’d both been studying the offer from TecSec. At least, that’s what he was supposed to be doing.
“Why is Jalil texting from the coffee shop, asking me if I want a chai latte and whether I’ll be sitting in on his meeting with you?” Kiran demanded.
“Is he here? We can do it in your office if you like.”
He rose and walked through the courtyard. It was really just a short hallway with a skylight and a water feature against the back wall to provide some cooling and atmospheric noise.
The rest of their company offices were on this same ground floor of a four-story, glass-fronted commercial building. It looked onto an abstract sculpture and a collection of taller buildings. At the far end was the café where Jalil bought Kiran coffee. Above them was an architecture firm, a publishing agency, and a call center for a company in America.
They hoped to take over all of that once the acquisition went through because this was such a good space for Kiran’s wheelchair, but they would also open a center in Delhi before looking to Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai over the next few years.
“What is this about?” She watched him close the courtyard doors with a glower of suspicion.
“Just a quick hand of poker.”
“Is this why you disappeared for a few days on your way home from Europe?” She narrowed her eyes. “Look, just because I haven’t found proof that Lakshmi visited a clinic while she was away, doesn’t mean anything. A clinic like that would be very discrete about how they handled their records. Twenty-five years ago, they might have still been using paper.”
Vijay didn’t have to respond. There was a knock, and Jalil was shown in. He was a healthy widower of fiftysomething with strands of silver in his otherwise thick black hair. He held a cardboard tray of three disposable cups.
As he and Kiran saw one another, the pair lit up and smiled and shared a look of tangled emotions that was so intimate, Vijay had to look away.
He had thought he had that once, the feeling of someone else’s emotions being his own. It had been a lie, and he was not looking forward to picking up the pieces when Kiran realized Jalil was toying with her.
Actually, he had thought he might have something like it with Oriel, too, but her silence spoke volumes. Sexual connection was simply that, a trick of biology, and he wouldn’t allow Jalil to use it on his sister.
He couldn’t wait to expose the man and kick him out of their lives once and for all.
“Vijay, Kiran said you like black coffee.” Jalil’s warm smile turned stiff. He set the tray on the corner of her desk and pulled out each cup.
Kiran and Vijay provided a well-stocked break room full of coffee, tea and soft drinks for their staff, but Jalil liked to impress Kiran by overpaying for takeaway.
This was what annoyed Vijay about the man. He could have kept his pursuit of his “niece” entirely professional, but he hadn’t.
Did you?
Oh, shut up, Vijay told the irritating voice in his head.
“It was kind of you to think of me,” Vijay said as politely as he could. “And thank you for coming in.” He waved at a chair in invitation, waiting until Jalil had seated himself before saying, “I have good news.” Jalil wouldn’t see it that way, but Vijay certainly did. “While I was in Europe, I was able to intercept Oriel Cuvier and get a DNA sample—”
“You told her?” Kiran cried.
“No. I stole her toothbrush and sent it to the lab we use. I didn’t put her name on the paperwork. It’s Sample X, but Jalil can offer his own sample, and we can put an end to speculation.” Vijay leaned on Kiran’s desk, facing Jalil. He crossed his arms and ankles and conveyed a silent and ruthless checkmate.
“I can’t believe you would jeopardize Jalil’s confidentiality.” Kiran rolled out from behind the desk to move next to Jalil. “I am so sorry I told him what you had asked me to do.”
“Don’t be,” Jalil said, patting Kiran’s arm in a placating way. “Your brother has gone to a lot of trouble on my behalf.”
Vijay had absolutely not done it for Jalil’s benefit, and they all knew it. He was trying to get rid of a man who was playing his sister.
“I know it must seem as though I’m grasping at straws,” he said to Vijay. “You have every right to be skeptical of my motives, but this is something I’ve wondered every day since Lakshmi returned from Europe. When I saw those photos of Ms. Cuvier and read up on her details, I couldn’t stop thinking about this possibility, but I didn’t know how to ask her without tipping my hand. I would be devastated if Lakshmi’s reputation was tarnished by false rumors. This is perfect. Thank you. How do I proceed?”
“You want to give a sample?” Vijay tried not to let his jaw hit the floor.
“Of course.”
Vijay had just had his own bluff called.