Chapter 4
CHAPTER 4
DHEER
I had just seen Diya kill a man. If I had any sense at all, I wouldn’t do my best to not piss her off. But I’d never had any sense where she was concerned.
Even when we were children, I had allowed her to goad me into trouble of all kinds. And as she grew up, she had morphed into quite a different kind of trouble.
She finally quit squirming in the saddle and settled down against my chest. I heaved a long sigh of relief because all that squirming had had an… embarrassing effect on me. We were sitting face to face on the saddle, or rather crotch-to-crotch. And try as I might, I could not will down the erection that sprang up at the feel of her softness against me.
I silently recited the names of the member countries of the ex-Soviet Union and their capital cities, but my body had a mind of its own.
Nine years.
I had yearned for this very moment for nine years. I had yearned to hold Diya in my arms and bury my face in her thick curly hair. I had yearned for the feel of her soft curves against the hardness of my body. I had yearned for the sweet smell that had lingered in my memory for years. And that’s what made this moment even more bittersweet because it reminded me of everything that I had lost. Everything that I had thrown away.
I moved my hips a few inches away from hers and hoped she couldn’t feel the betraying hardness. If she did, she didn’t react to it. But then, Diya was still in shock over the events of the past few minutes. I had no idea how she went from meeting Ayush for the first time to being attacked by his men within twenty-four hours.
But I knew for sure that his men would never have dared to attack Diya of their own accord because she was a guest in his house. Which only meant one thing. Ayush Goel had tried to kill Diya.
A wave of fury rose in my chest and I wanted to storm the Goel mansion and burn it down. Kill them all like the vermin that they were. It was bad enough that he had even aspired to marry her when he wasn’t worthy of even being in her presence. But to try and kill her? I was going to make Ayush regret his actions for the rest of his life, I decided viciously as I rode into the courtyard of my palace.
The valet rushed to help Diya off the horse, and the groom took charge of Pasha as I dismounted.
Diya winced as she took a few steps.
“What is it? Are you stiff from the ride?” I asked, reaching out to grab her before she fell.
She shook her head and bit her lip as she took a few more steps.
“Why are you limping?”
“My feet hurt,” she whispered. “From all the running.”
She stopped and stared at the palace for a moment before she turned to me.
“Thank you for rescuing me, Dheer. But I don’t want to trouble you anymore. If you could arrange for a car to send me home… eeeeep !”
She broke off with a little scream when I picked her up and began walking towards my front door.
Diya slapped my shoulder hard, but I ignored the sting and kept walking.
“Put. Me. Down,” she bit out.
“You’re hurt. You shouldn’t be walking in this state,” I replied.
“I agree! Which is why I asked you to arrange for a car to take me home.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” I informed her firmly.
Her mouth opened and closed like a fish. For the first time ever, I had rendered her speechless. From what I remembered, she’d always had a ready retort. Even when I’d asked her to congratulate me on my engagement to Raksha, she’d very politely told me to rot in hell. So this felt like a bit of a triumph.
“Wh… what the fuck do you mean? You can’t keep me here against my will!”
“Who’s going to stop me?”
Diya shot me a disbelieving look.
“Umm… everyone? Isha, your mother, your grandmother! This isn’t the tenth century, Your Highness. You can’t just abduct a woman off the desert and hold her hostage.”
“That’s a good thing because I’m not holding you hostage. I’m keeping you safe.”
The butler rushed to open the front door and I carried Diya across the threshold with her glaring at me as if I had killed her favourite puppy.
“I told you I don’t want to be here,” she hissed, with a wary glance at the butler who kept his eyes resolutely on the ground.
“Ramsingh, please call Princess Isha,” I ordered because I refused to get into an argument in front of the staff.
“Hukum, the princess is not at home,” he replied.
Damn it! I was hoping to hand Diya over to Isha while I dealt with Ayush and his men.
“In that case, please call my mother.”
“She’s not here, either, Hukum. And neither is Dadi Sa. They all went out together, and they won’t be home for dinner,” he said apologetically.
Of all the days for the women of my household to be away from home, this was the worst. I let out an exasperated breath and thanked him before I carried Diya up the stairs to my room. I did want to keep her safe, but nothing had changed as far as the two of us were concerned. She still couldn’t be mine. Which meant that every minute that I spent with her was torture. It killed me to touch her and know that she wasn’t mine to touch.
“Can you please put me down? Your butler is staring at us,” she begged.
“No, because I don’t want you bleeding on the stair runners,” I replied and she growled under her breath.
Her eyes widened when I kicked the double doors to the Maharaja Suite open. I ignored her protests and carried her straight to the huge ensuite bathroom.
“I can take it from here,” she exclaimed, as I set her down on the wide vanity counter.
“Relax, I just want to check your feet,” I replied, pulling out a first aid kit from one of the drawers.
Diya’s eyes widened at the sight of the big box that contained equipment to deal with everything from a gunshot wound to a scorpion bite.
“What’s this?” she asked, pointing to a sealed tube.
“Epi-pen,” I said shortly.
“And in this box?”
“Suturing kit?”
“And these vials?”
“Antivenom. And what’s with that judgmental look?” I demanded.
She shrugged in reply.
“Nothing. I’m just wondering if you’re running a mobile hospital in here.”
“It’s just a basic first aid kit,” I replied.
“If you’re in a war zone,” she shot back.
“All of life is a war zone,” I said grimly.
My statement was met with silence. When I finally looked up, she was staring at me thoughtfully. I stared back at her, wondering when she was going to tell me why Ayush’s men had tried to kill her. It looked as if she wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened. As if she hadn’t killed a man in self-defence.
“Take off your shoes,” I ordered.
Diya silently shrugged off her flimsy sandals and I was aghast at the state of her feet. They were covered in dried blood and sand, and she hissed in pain when I rubbed some of the sand off. I realised there were deep cuts in her soles. I had to clean the cuts before I bandaged them. First, she needed a drink to jolt her out of her shock. Because she might be bantering with me like before, but she was shivering.
I resisted the urge to pull her into my arms and hold her until she felt warm again and poured her a small glass of brandy.
“Drink this,” I said, and she took me at my word.
Diya downed it like it was a jello shot. And then she let out a yelp as the brandy burned its way down her throat. She held out the glass.
“Hit me again,” she ordered, almost daring me to object.
She looked disappointed when I poured her another one without a word. Maybe she wanted a fight, but I wanted her mellow because what I was about to do next was going to hurt like the devil.
“How did this happen?” I asked as I prepared a foot bath with a bit of hydrogen peroxide in lukewarm water.
Diya groaned in pain when I lowered her feet into the tub.
“Is this necessary?” she bit out before she drained the glass and set it on the counter.
“Yes,” I snapped. “Your soles are covered in cuts. What did you do? Walk across a bed of nails?”
She sighed heavily.
“I jumped into a huge bougainvillaea bush. I had no idea they were so thorny,” she said defensively.
“Why did you do something so stupid?” I demanded.
“Because I was trying to escape,” she mumbled.
“From what?”
“Ayush,” she said starkly.
My hands froze in the act of wiping her soles clean.
“But why? What did he do?”
“He threw a woman off the terrace of his house,” she replied.