Chapter 1
Abandoned mid-break-up while shackled to the bed wasn’t how Chaaru Raj had seen her Friday evening going.
That her lace-clad ass was resting on eight-hundred-thread Egyptian cotton sheets in a beautiful room with high ceilings and exposed beams, or that she could see the dusky outline of the city of Seattle through the large windows, didn't make any difference.
Cursing, Chaaru tugged at the feathery cuffs.
What was the chance that her lover of two weeks and four botched encounters would have playful cuffs in his arsenal when he needed GPS to find his way around her body?
Sam was a thirty-two-year-old painter whose mother had hired Chaaru’s concierge housekeeping business to clean, cook and generally organize his life for four weeks.
Usually, the Adulting Package was popular with working women in their thirties and forties, juggling home life and careers. But business was business and Chaaru didn’t judge. During those four weeks, he’d caught her attention with his impassioned talks about strong women being his inspiration.
Two weeks with him had proved that the man was as lazy in bed as he was everywhere else. Assuming he would handle her breaking up with him like a grown-ass man was her own fault.
Being the horny resident of the third circle of perimenopause-hell at forty-three, she’d stayed when he’d asked for another chance. After years of slogging to build her business and raising her son alone, this was finally her chance to have the good sex she’d only read about in romance novels. Wasn’t it?
When he’d kissed her wrists, it had seemed like, finally , he could take instruction. Instead, he had cuffed her to his headboard claiming ‘ he was going to prove to her that they belonged together’ .
Now she was stuck, half-naked and shivering, in his cold apartment. She had a suspicion sensitive Sam was also spiteful Sam and had turned the temperature down before storming out.
Thank God he’d left her phone within reach. Switching it on, she jumped to contacts and called the first number.
Her best friend Mona answered. “Hey babe, do you think getting Dom involved in my boudoir shot might defeat the entire goal?”
“Uh…umm…no,” Chaaru said. “Not if you prepare him beforehand. I’m sure he’ll be over the moon to learn that you’re doing it to feel good in your own skin. And it could be another shared experience that can elevate your…sex life. Just don’t spring it on him.”
“Yeah, so like give him a chance to get his balls waxed?”
“Exactly,” Chaaru said, running her palm over her smooth leg. Hell or not, one of the side effects of perimenopause was that her body hair didn’t come in thick anymore.
She preferred hair on a man compared to waxed, oiled chests though.
Like her friend DP who effortlessly carried the lumberjack look. But then DP was nothing like Sam, who was all talk and no substance. DP was…more than just attractive. He was solid, dependable, a true gentleman.
“Makes sense,” Mona said. “I mean, Dom schedules sex and calls it cuddle time on his calendar. Although I have to say he’s been better this last year with delegating work.”
After a rocky temporary separation last year, Mona and her husband Dominic were celebrating twenty-five years of marriage. Shitty as her own marriage had been, her friends had restored Chaaru’s faith in romantic love. Not that she was ever going to be in the running for it personally. “I can’t believe we’re all going to Cancun in three weeks,” Chaaru squealed. “You and Dom are sweethearts for putting us all up at a luxury resort.”
“We want you all there, celebrating with us,” Mona said, tears coloring her voice. “And this way, we’ll see the kids during Christmas and don’t have to feel guilty for flying immediately after.”
“But they’re joining us for the final day in Cancun, right?”
“Right. Wait,” Mona said, shuffling sounds on the line. “Wasn’t tonight your breakup with the sensitive painter?”
Chaaru bit her lip. “Promise you won’t freak out on me.”
“What? What did he do? Do I need to mobilize Dominic and DP and our other friends?”
“No, nothing like that. He…cuffed me to his bed and then stormed out. A little tantrum that I broke up with him.”
“Jesus, Char! Why did you let me go on? Where’s his apartment?”
“I just remembered that you are at the hair clinic overnight,” Chaaru said with a sigh. As a result of hormonal imbalances, Mona had lost a lot of hair and was getting implants. “That’s nearly two hours of driving. Never mind.”
“I can’t believe he left you there.”
“I thought he was different,” Chaaru said, feeling utterly foolish.
“ Oh, honey! ” Mona said, with just the right amount of sympathy and admonishment. Like only best friends of thirty-three years could. “You met him because his mother hired your ‘Adulting Package for Adults Who Can’t’. This spoilt, rich kid who lives in an apartment his parents pay for can’t do a load of laundry? Can’t buy his groceries?”
“He’s a painter, Mona. The artistic type that’s not great at admin stuff, you know? Doesn’t make him a loser.”
“I’m not saying that. But there’s a thing called responsibility, no? I mean, can you imagine Kaasi or Sanjana or Sid being so unaware of their privilege?”
Chaaru shook her head and then said, ‘no way’. Her son Kaasi and Mona’s twins were good kids. No, they were fantastic kids.
“Babe,” Mona said, gentling her voice, which inanely made Chaaru want to cry.
Even having known her all her life, she kept waiting for Mona to find Chaaru lacking in the same way her entire family and her ex had. When her best friend showed her this…gentle, unconditional affection, Chaaru felt both panic and peace.
Panic that the next time, she might see her flaws and warts, and peace that…this love was hers.
“Don’t let the whiny baby get to you,” Mona said in her stern voice. “All you wanted from him was hot sex before menopause swallowed up your libido in its gaping maw. Please tell me you got that.”
“Not really,” Chaaru said. “His mother might as well have hired me to draw him a map to a woman’s clit. He kept knocking backdoor because he couldn’t find where he wanted to go.”
Mona burst into giggles. “So I don’t have to be jealous that you’re out there having all this fantastic sex with young, hot partners?”
“Not this time, no,” Chaaru said, cutting her off. Mona was TMI queen about their sex life. Not that Chaaru thought they shouldn’t share that stuff. It was just that when Chaaru saw Dominic, which was at least once a week, she remembered all his sexual tells and tics in technicolor. “But then, not everyone can be the Big-Fat-Dong.”
Mona made appropriately inappropriate sounds about the bartender Chaaru had seen for two weeks after six years of fighting her nasty ex for divorce and custody. He had shown her how good it could be when lovers paid attention to each other.
As a twenty-one-year-old bride with na?ve notions of love, she’d spent too many years letting her ex-husband shame her for her sexual desires. As if wanting an orgasm or to explore her own sexuality within their relationship was unnatural. All Ravi had wanted was that she lie back, take it, and make appropriately eager sounds. He’d shot down any small suggestion she’d made to improve their sex life by calling her a slut.
“The technician is here, Char,” Mona said, cutting through her blast from the past. “Are you sure you don’t want me to drive over? I can cancel.”
“No, don’t. I’ll get someone else,” Chaaru said, rubbing a hand over her face.
After promising to text Mona as soon as she got the hell out of there, Chaaru considered calling her business partner Laura. Then, she remembered that Laura and her husband Leo had planned to take their boys out for skating. So yeah, Laura was out.
Her cousin Veena was another option. If Chaaru was okay with the entire world learning about her disastrous date and the color of her undies.
She cursed a mile in three different languages even as she tried to jimmy the cuffs open. The damned things didn’t budge an inch.
Her last two options were her twenty-one-year-old son Kaasi and her friend DP.
Although, calling Kaasi wasn’t a choice at all. For all that she’d tried her best to keep their relationship open and honest, she couldn’t stomach the idea of Kaasi finding her in a compromising situation, abandoned by some strange man. Her sweet boy would worry over her endlessly.
So, it had to be DP.
Chaaru banged her head on the headboard and groaned. She had no doubt that DP would come get her even if the sky was falling down. Which meant she was pulling him away from a date with the perfect woman that she herself had found for him.