Chapter 3
3
T he drive took DP forty minutes. Then he had to find parking that didn’t cost a kidney. Halfway through the ten-minute walk to the high-rise, he went back to the car for an umbrella as the mist turned to a downpour.
The chrome and glass exterior of the building gleamed with rain thumping against it. Clearly, class and wealth didn’t guarantee basic common sense. Getting off on the forty-fifth floor, he found the apartment number and plugged in the entry code.
“Chaaru?” he called out softly, not wanting to spook her.
“In here,” came her reply.
DP walked through a couple of corridors. The place was a damned maze.
“Marco,” she shouted, loud enough for him to turn around.
He laughed, shouted ‘Polo’. Finally, he was standing outside her room. “I’m here,” he said, before nudging the door open fully.
He should’ve guessed she’d be undressed given what she’d told him. But he hadn’t expected to see her sprawled out on the bed like a seventies’ bombshell from the center-spread of a men’s magazine. In the few seconds it took him to look away, the image of her burned into his retina.
With two enormous bay windows flanking it, the black metal bed sat in the center of the large room, with the duvet kicked out at the foot of the bed. Wrist hanging from the headboard, smooth brown skin contrasting against snowy white sheets, Chaaru looked like a decadent invitation to his filthiest dreams.
Pink bra and matching lace panties kissed her skin in a startlingly sexy contrast. The light fixture on the ceiling, some modern funky thing in the shape of a flower, sprinkled patches of light all over her skin like soft petals.
Her usually straight hair was messy. Wide shoulders, small breasts, thick hips and thighs he could anchor himself against…every inch of her called to his base instincts. A flush climbed his cheeks as desire filled him to the brim.
God, he’d lusted after her for nearly two decades. Now this image of her—splayed out on the bed like a goddess waiting to be worshipped, would forever haunt him.
“DP?”
“Yeah?” he said, finally meeting her brown eyes. The four seconds he’d just spent in his head, worshipping her body, were four eternities in a different universe. He felt dizzy and incoherent in this one.
She blinked and he wondered what she saw in his expression.
“You just totally zoned out,” she said, a soft smile curving her lips. “I know you’re getting old, my man, but I didn’t think senility was already coming for you.”
He shook his head, his eyes popping out of his sockets like some cartoon character, eager to follow the line of her long, silky-smooth legs. “I’m right behind you, Char, following in your footsteps, keeping you in my sights.”
She laughed, then sobered. “Actually, you look pale and flushed.” Pulling one knee into her chest, she peered at him while he lingered at the entrance like a naughty child called into the principal’s office. “Are you coming down with something? Remind me to make you some soup when we get home.”
“I’m a little tired,” he said, folding the parking receipt as if it held the secrets of the universe, willing his arousal down. “Maggie took a statistics class that’s killing her. I’ve been helping her study at night on Facetime.”
“Sorry I made you leave in the middle of your date,” Chaaru said. “I called Mona, but she’s at the clinic overnight and-”
“It’s okay,” he said, forestalling her. “I don’t mind.”
Her expression turned sheepish. “Was Pooja angry?”
“More disappointed, I think.”
She let out a wolf-whistle, teasing him as if she hadn’t had the evening from hell. “Of course she was disappointed, you sly fox.”
He walked the perimeter of the expansive room, just to give himself something to do instead of gawking at her. “Where are your clothes?”
Her brown eyes flashed with frustration. “The jackass took my dress.”
“Asshole!” he said, turning toward the rich mahogany dresser that sat against the opposite wall. “Let’s steal the poor painter’s designer shirt.”
“Ugh, no thanks.” She sounded disgusted by the prospect.
“I should’ve brought something for you to wear,” DP said, looking at her over his shoulder. “Should I-”
“Don’t leave.” She threw her legs over the bed and cursed when the cuffs limited her movement. “The last thing I want is to send my knight-in-shining-armor away. Just give me your shirt and put the sweater back on.”
“What?” He sounded like an inane parrot with only a handful of vocabulary.
“I knew you’d show up in one of your famous sweater vests. So, chop chop. I want to get out of here and get you back to your date.”
DP opened his mouth to protest and decided against it. There were going to be no more dates with Pooja after tonight. Not that he could tell Chaaru that right now. He still felt unbalanced and shaky at the little nugget the smart lawyer had thrown in his face.
Walking towards the bed, he pulled at the hem of his sweater when Chaaru’s giggles fractured the silence. Her shoulders shook as she grabbed her purse, breasts bouncing, the thick curve of her belly folding and rolling with her laughter. Mesmerized by the sight, he stilled. His cock, now as rigid as a steel pole, begged for friction.
“ Strip, love ,” Chaaru said, her accent put upon. She fluttered a ten dollar note in his direction. “Don’t worry, young man. There’s more where that came from.”
He stared at her, reality and fantasy blending and blurring.
Finding Chaaru half-naked and waiting for him. Stripping in front of her while she ate him up with those bold bedroom eyes. And then crawling into bed to show her she had everything she needed in him. Hadn’t he dreamed of this exact scenario?
“Ha ha,” he said, pulling his sweater over his head. Shifting to the side, he pulled the ends of his shirt from his trousers, hoping she didn’t spot the action happening downtown.
“The jerk turned on the AC, just to torment me.” She covered her breasts with her palms and shivered. “My nipples are turning into ice crystals.”
DP barely suppressed a groan. He had to rifle through a couple of drawers before he found the key to the cuffs. The keychain was a black frilly thing he wanted to crush in his palm, like an angsty teenager who’d discovered the girl he had a crush on was seeing someone else.
Walking across the room to her, he wondered if this was how the rest of his life would play out—daydreaming about Chaaru while she ‘dated’ other men.
This close, she looked even more gorgeous. Real in a way he could never put into words.
Wide brown eyes, a round-tipped long nose and a thick-lipped mouth that he could write poems to, and he didn’t have an artistic bone in his body. Thick curves he wanted to kiss and touch and worship…she was all of his fantasies spun into reality.
Or was it that his fantasies had simply taken her form over the years?
Even twenty years ago, when he’d first met her, she had possessed that brazen, in-your-face kind of sexuality that turned men’s’ heads. Layer her sunny temperament and naturally exuberant nature on top, she attracted people like bees to honey.
It was the very quality that had made her ex-husband obsessively suspicious of every man who looked in her direction, and of her.
Now, her beauty was more than skin-deep. No inward bowing of her shoulders because she’d been called big-boned. No minimizing her statuesque build, her megawatt smile, her innate sexuality, or her intelligent, thought-out opinions.
She put it all out there as if daring the world to tell her to make herself small. He’d seen her go from scared and shrunken to beaten down by divorce and abandoned by family. And then discovering her strength, not only for herself but for her son. Finally, settling into her own skin.
Having been present through it all, DP could appreciate everything she’d become a thousand times over.
Fingers slipping, it took him three tries to get the key into the cuffs. Exhaling, she rotated her wrist.
“Hurry, before he gets back,” she said, reaching for the buttons on his untucked shirt. “I don’t want to deal with his whiny-ness.”
When the tips of her fingers brushed his bared stomach, DP jumped back like a scalded cat. Closing his eyes, he cursed himself. The last thing Chaaru needed after that asshole’s tantrum was to deal with her best friend coming onto her, even unintentionally.
Her gaze grew wide with confusion at his weird sidestep. “I didn’t mean to jump on you-”
“Don’t be stupid,” he said, fighting to keep his words steady. “Your fingers are icy, and you know what a baby I’m when it comes to cold.”
“Right,” she said with a forced laugh, shaking her fingers at him threateningly. Her gaze tracked his features like some laser pointer before colliding with his.
A sudden, near-tangible electricity filled the large bedroom.
DP undid button after button, his breath hovering outside of his body, unable to look away. He was a forty-year-old man, for fuck’s sake, twisting himself inside out because the woman he loved wanted to drape herself in his shirt.
Either make a move or get over her . Pooja’s words were like dunking himself in an ice-bath.
He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life wondering who Chaaru was with, what kind of fun escapades she was getting into, or the worst of all, when she might meet the one guy who’d tempt her into breaking her own cardinal rule.
She might not realize it, but Chaaru was born to love, made to be loved. Eventually, she’d see that whatever shadow her ex cast on her, she’d long ago rid herself of it. That beneath her pursuit of fuck-bois and one-night-stands and fun flings…she was a woman who would thrive in a relationship with a man who knew her worth.
A man who would worship her. Like him.
Not that he thought her casual attitude about sex was wrong. Only that she’d been so intent on being her own person, to crawl out from the influence of all the people who would mold and minimize her, she’d gone striking hard to the other end.
One day, she’d find the right man. The thought made his chest feel like a twenty-pound dumbbell was sitting on it.
No, he couldn’t spend his entire life circling her like some abandoned puppy.
And yet, if he were to make a move, how would she react? Did he dare cross the line between them? Could he bear losing her if she hated him for it?
Thoughts unraveled in his head as he reached the last button. His nape prickled, and a loose, lazy heat unspooled in his limbs. He looked up to find Chaaru’s gaze sweeping down his torso, air puffing out from between her parted lips.
His chest was liberally sprinkled with hair. Doing abs and crunches with TJ who used DP as his guinea pig, and the rock-climbing and mountain hiking meant he was in good shape. His stomach jutted out like a barrel, densely muscled.
Like ice sliding down his heated skin, her gaze followed the rise and fall of his chest. Throat thick with desire, he played with his belt buckle. Her own throat bobbed up and down, a soft flush claiming her cheeks.
She wanted him. The realization rocked his world. A ringing erupted in his ears and his lungs gasped for breath. “Char?” he said, his entire world pulsing in that word.
“You look good, DP,” she said, her voice husky, managing the sudden arc of heat between them with that casual, no-nonsense attitude. “Guess TJ’s putting you through the paces, huh?”
Blood slowed like honey in his veins as he shrugged off the shirt. The tips of their fingers touched when he handed it to her. His body thrummed as he put his sweater vest back on.
Her long exhale coated his mouth as he helped her push her stiff arm through the armhole. Gently clasping her fingers, he turned her wrist over. The damned cuffs had left dark red ridges on the sensitive skin. “I wish you would screen these assholes better,” he said before he could stop himself.
She clasped his cheek in that affectionate gesture she always used. “I swear he was harmless. His ego, on the other hand…”
Nodding, DP shot to his feet and collected her purse.
Minutes later, Chaaru joined him in the living room. His shirt barely covered her upper thighs, the outline of her pink panties an alluring sight. There was something infinitely intimate about seeing her clad in his shirt, engulfed by the heat of his body.
“Ready to go?” he said, his tone gruff.
“Yep. Just one more thing,” she said, then picked up the pizza box and six cans of beer. Catching his gaze, she tucked her arm through his and they stepped out together.