Chapter 23
Simran sits on the bed, one leg crossed over the other, foot wiggling madly when Leo lets himself into the room a few minutes later.
“Hello,” she says as he closes the door and leans back against it. There is a delicate crackle of anticipation in the air. His eyes are on her and greener than she’s ever seen them.
“Hi,” he replies. He smiles but makes no move to come any closer.
“So …” she says, trailing her fingers over the velvet bed runner.
She looks up at him. “Hotel room to ourselves for the night. What should we do?”
Leo’s smile slopes sideways as he pushes off the door. “I thought we could practice.”
Her eyebrows go up. “Practice?”
“My Hindi and Tamil, of course.”
“Of course,” she replies, uncrossing her legs and placing her hands on her knees. Her fingers are trembling.
He stops in front of her. “I’ve been having some trouble with synonyms.”
She looks up at him. “Do tell.”
“Well, for example, in Hindi, ‘body’ is …”
“Badan,” she replies as he takes each of her hands in his and pulls her to stand.
He nods. “But ‘body’ is also …”
“Shareer.”
“And …”
“Jism.”
“See?” Leo says, running his hands up and down her arms. “It’s very confusing.”
“If you think there are a lot of words for ‘body,’ you should hear how many there are for ‘love,’” Simran tells him, sliding her hands up his chest, toying with the lapels of his suit jacket.
“Really?” Leo raises his eyebrows. “Lay it on me.”
“Well, in Tamil, there’s ‘kadhal,’” she says, slipping the jacket off his shoulders. It falls to the floor. “And ‘nesam.’” He smells like the city after a downpour, lush and still.
“And in Hindi?” Leo asks, as she points to the various places where she’s pinned into her outfit and he begins taking them out.
“Oh, even more in Hindi,” she says, pulling his tie loose and then off. “Ishq.” He kisses the side of her face.
“Pyaar.” Behind her ear.
“Mohabbat.” Down her neck. “Chaahat.”
And then there are no more words she can think of, in any language. Her mind hushes as she loosens the fastening on her skirt and turns her back to Leo so he can undo the ties at the back of her top.
“The only thing keeping this on all night were these three flimsy strings?” he asks, tugging the first one loose and trailing his fingers over her bare skin.
She looks back at him. “Yes.”
He groans, resting his forehead in between her shoulder blades as he undoes the others.
Turning her, he nips at the hollow in her neck as she curves into him.
She’s in only her underwear, and the textures of the clothes he’s still wearing rasp against her oversensitive skin: the plastic press of his shirt buttons, the cool stamp of his belt buckle, the smooth rub of his dress pants.
He tilts her head back for a searching kiss.
“Sim,” he says.
“Yes,” she replies. When he says her name again, she realizes that he’s actually trying to talk to her.
“What is it?” she asks.
He swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing. “Before we do this, I just want to make sure we’re both on the same page.” She glances down pointedly to where she’s clutching his hips to hers. He laughs and she feels it, along her fingers, against her stomach, deep inside. “Not about that. About your family.”
“Leo. I really don’t want to talk about my family when I’m this close to naked.”
“Trust me,” Leo says, straightening as he exhales deeply and looks down at her.
“I really don’t want to talk about anything when you’re this close to naked.
So you know I mean it. I spent so many years liking you from far away, but the crazy thing is, the closer I get, the better it gets.
The more I know you, the more I get to be with you, the more incredible you become to me.
So whether this plan succeeds or fails, you tell your aunt and family.
You tell them that you’re with me and I’m with you and there’s nothing to do about it, except let us be happy together. ”
She almost teases him that this is just his competitiveness making him want to win Operation DDLJ, but the tenderness in his gaze stops her. Leo has never asked anything of her.
“Okay,” she whispers, and he strokes her face almost reverently, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. He splays his fingers against her back, drawing circles down her spine as she takes his face in her hands, running her thumbs over his lips. For a perfect moment, they don’t move.
And then he dips his head, kissing her so deeply she feels it in all the tips and crevices of her body. His long fingers are tangled in her hair and he coaxes her mouth open further so he can run his tongue along hers fully, till she’s alight all over.
He’s made her burn so slowly, she didn’t even realize she was on fire.
He wanted her for years, but now they’ve switched roles.
She’s the one who can’t get enough of him and doesn’t care how desperate she appears and he’s calm, controlled, doling out touch and just enough pleasure that she is ravenous for more as she takes off the rest of their clothes.
And then she’s overcome by the textures of him: the hard knots of muscle, the hair dusted across his thighs, the strong, proud jut of him into her.
She chases down the dizzying spiral of want as he sits on the bed, pulling her to stand between his legs, dragging his mouth from her rib cage down, down, down so deliberately slow that she thinks she might combust. But she’s too impatient and moves into his lap, a knee on either side of his hips, the closest they’ve ever been.
She tilts his chin up. “No more waiting, Leo.” Briefly, before she loses the ability to, she thinks that it may not have been thirteen years, but he has certainly taught her how excruciating even a little bit of waiting can be.
And then there really is no more waiting, just touch and feel and mouths and hands and skin.
Simran finds herself astonished by this side of Leo.
The playful man she’s known for years is still here, in the pleased curl of his mouth when she gasps as he flips her body under his.
But the intensity of his focus is new, as if he still wants her even as he has her, even as he is having her.
It pulls her over the edge once, and then again, before he follows.
“We have a problem, y’know,” Leo says a little while later. Despite the molasses-slow satisfaction in her body, they’re both wide awake, Leo stretched out on his side next to her, head propped on his hand.
“We do?” She can’t think of a problem in the world right now. She can’t think at all.
“Yes,” he says. “You are with a man who loves … to talk on the phone.”
She groans and rolls away. “Nooooo. What have I done?”
“You? What about me?” Leo says, pulling her back to him.
“This woman, who I’ve liked for literally half my life, the star of my dreams—regular and dirty—likes to text.
Fifteen messages coming in rapid fire, not to mention a new essay in a giant block of blue shooting up before I’m even done reading what she’s just sent, completely unrelated rambles connected only by ‘also!’” She laughs at how accurately he’s summed up the way she texts.
He continues, “So tell me: What can I do to get you to talk on the phone? Regular and dirty.”
“Sorry, there’s nothing regular you can do.” She smirks. “And you’re going to do the dirty stuff anyway.”
He sits up. “So you’re telling me, years from now, when I call you to say ‘Honey, I’m running late, can you take the dog for a walk?
’ you’re just not going to answer. Me, the man who wakes you up with coffee every morning and always unloads the dishwasher because you hate doing it.
You’ll see my devastatingly handsome picture pop up on your phone and think, ‘It’s Leo, the joy in my days, the thrill in my nights’ and send me to voicemail? ”
She’s full-on laughing as she replies, “Can I point out that it’s easier to ask me to take the dog for a walk by text?” He opens his mouth, but she interrupts before he can go on another rant. “What’s our dog’s name?”
“Biscuit,” he replies, lying down again. “A total rascal.”
“I’d expect nothing less,” she says, scooting into his side. “Biscuits. Plural.”
“This is our dog, Biscuits,” he says to the room before turning back to her. “Yeah, I like that better.”
There’s a sense of serendipity, she thinks.
University housing randomly placing her and Liv as roommates.
Their immediate friendship. Liv having a younger brother who first was her friend, and now so much more.
It almost feels predetermined, if she goes back even further: her parents’ passing, coming to live in New Jersey, Rutgers being the college she chose.
All those things, good and bad and between, that took place exactly the way they did. She’s never believed in bargaining with the past; what’s happened has happened. Time moves inexorably forward. But how sweet of it to lead her here, to this room, with this man.
“All right, flip onto your stomach,” he says with a light tap to her bottom.
His demand thrills her. “To do what?” she teases.
“To give me a good memory that’ll get me through the last few days of sleeping on Ravi uncle’s terrible pullout couch.”
She laughs and then gives a cheery “Okay” and rolls onto her front before looking at him over her shoulder. His eyes blaze with some swirling mixture of arousal and affection. “How are you real?” He kisses the base of her spine, asking the bones there quietly, “How are you mine?”
As he moves over her, she thinks the same thing about him.