Chapter Two #3
She swallowed helplessly, wondering what she’d set into motion. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Caio. Please...believe me, it’s all me. Me and my stupid...”
Suddenly, the lamp on the desk was turned on and golden light warmed her face and he was standing too close and...there was no way to avoid looking at him. Or to stop him from seeing her. Everything she felt and wanted and craved would be written in her face.
But she remained rooted to the spot, studying him in turn.
Dressed in dark gray sweats and an anime print T-shirt she’d printed for him, he looked like a dark angel demanding answers she didn’t want to give. Of cheap quality, the tee had long faded, leaving the short sleeves and chest pulling tight against his defined body.
Her breaths turned shallow when he turned the leather chair.
“The truth, Anushka.”
Her name, this time, was a warning and she realized with a surge of disbelief that she’d wounded him that evening.
Her words of hate and resentment had found a weak spot in the mighty and ruthless Caio Oliveira’s armor and drawn blood.
She didn’t know why, didn’t know how she knew, didn’t care if he was aware of it.
And even as an irrational, selfish part of her gloried in the fact that she’d at last reached him in that twisted way, a big part of her disliked herself for her willful words.
She wasn’t the kind of woman who took out her frustration on others.
She didn’t want to be full of bitterness like her mother.
She didn’t want to hurt the man who’d always stood by her side for more than a decade—through hardships and successes—a man who’d been kind to her, again and again, because he thought she held some indefinable quality he himself had lost.
She looked up to find him staring at her, the gold of his eyes darkening, his nostrils flaring.
“I’ve already lost Thaata and the thought of losing you too makes me—” Tears filled her eyes and the sob she’d been fighting since Thaata’s stroke, since her grandmother’s death, and Mama’s deteriorating health, broke through her paltry defenses.
She closed her eyes and tried to fight it, but her throat burned and Caio was there pulling her into in his arms and there was no stopping the dam from bursting.
They came in hot rivulets, of grief and loss, of bone-deep fear that everyone she loved would leave her.
That she’d always be lonely and unwanted and that years would pass by and she’d never even act on. ..
“Shh... Princesa,” Caio kept whispering, his arms a loose but comfortable weight around her shoulders. “You’re not losing me, Nush.”
His body was a hard shield around her that could keep all her troubles at bay. It was the kind of thinking that had got her into this mess, but right now, she couldn’t care.
For a long while, Nush stayed in his embrace, letting the solid weight of him soothe her.
She knew she’d left splotchy wetness on his tee, but she didn’t want to move.
Not yet. Not when she might not have a right to hold him like this ever again.
Not when he was busy spinning strategies, making new alliances that would push her out of his life.
Her fingers gripping his biceps, her cheek pressed to his chest, she inhaled deep, willing some of that impenetrable strength into her.
A pure, untarnished moment of comfort and security and peace that she’d rarely known in her life. And she wondered if that was the reason for her attraction to him—that Caio presented an indefatigable promise of constancy, an indomitable presence in her life that she’d never had with anyone else.
Eventually, her tears dried up, and something else simmered in her veins.
Like the flickering light of a candle, desire she’d tried to hide so hard for months roared to life.
It was impossible to fight it when she’d programmed her brain to find the very scent of him arousing, intoxicating.
And now all she could smell and touch and feel were the hard contours of him reshaping her softness to fit him.
Nush tightened her arms around him and moved her face up into his neck, into the hollow at his throat.
Moved her lips against the corded column of his neck, let the taste of his skin and sweat and him seep into her.
For no longer than a breath’s span, she lingered over that hard line between them, an airy lightness fizzing through her.
She heard the indrawn hiss of Caio’s breath, the hard clench and release of his body around her. His hands gripped her hips, tight and arresting.
“Nush?” His eyes searched hers in the darkness, his features woven tight into a forbidding mask that locked up every emotion.
Even now, fear and cowardice urged her to laugh it off. To act like it was unintentional, that she was mindless in her grief. Sweat dampened the nape of her neck and her forehead.
No, she batted away at her fears.
There was nothing wrong with her desire for him. Nothing wrong that she wanted him. And God, she was tired of fulfilling that desire with men she wasn’t even interested in. Of hiding what she felt. Of telling herself that it wouldn’t work. Of running away from life.