Bollywood and the Beast (Bollywood Confidential) Page 14

  “Bewakoof,” Nani muttered, punctuating the gentle insult by chucking a ball of yarn at his head. “What are you doing here?”

  “I live here,” he reminded her.

  “Nahin.” She eyed another ball of yarn like a bowler sizing up a cricket ball. He instinctively hunched over, shielding himself from the potential missile. But she only waved her hand. “You stay here. You don’t live here. You live with that girl. In her laughter. In her sadness. In her shadow and her light.”

  He’d thought Urdu the language of poets, but Nani’s Hindi was no less lyrical…and no less astute. Rocky had become all things to him in just a handful of weeks. Light in his shadows. Hope in his perpetual despair. Fresh, clean air when he had taken breath for granted. “She does not need me. Not in the same way.”

  Again she made that incongruous sound of dismissal. “Who says? Did you ask her what she needs from you? What you give to her?” Nani’s eyes were bright, her lined face set with determination. “Women are strong in different ways, weak in different ways. That does not mean we do not need.”

  Rakhee had touched him like she cherished him, made love to him like she craved him. But her mind had remained her own, as he warned her against loving a monster but never asked why she did so anyway. Stupid. He was so stupid. And a coward. Pushing his body to its limits but never pushing his heart. And still he grasped at excuses. “I will die before her, you know.”

  This time, the second ball of yarn did go sailing toward him, bouncing off his chest and rolling to the floor. “As your nana-ji died before me. So? You still have forty beautiful years ahead. Spend them in her arms.”

  How could he conceive of forty years in Rocky’s arms when he’d spent ten locked behind the walls of this house? He’d gone out exactly four times: hospital visits early on, for grafts and tests and torments. And the world, her world and Archana’s world, had moved on without him.

  Bollywood built armored superheroes now, with computer-generated animation. Everyone had a fancy mobile, a tablet, a Twitter. What did he have but a map of scars and a forgotten story?

  “You have her,” Nani said, as though he’d asked aloud. “You have her, dear grandson. Go and get her.”

  Taj didn’t know if he could.

  But he knew one fundamental thing: if he did not try, it would be the biggest failure of his life.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The barest whisper of a touch woke him. Not quite Sleeping Beauty’s kiss. But then his story was not the fairy tale in this house. And the man who awaited him, no prince. Ashraf stirred atop the sheets, his second night in a row in Kamal’s bed just as oddly restful as the first. But this time…this time Kamal was there when he opened his eyes.

  “What are you doing here, Chote?”

  That voice…that mesmerizing, unearthly voice. He would hear it forever. Even if he went deaf in old age, it would echo in his ears. Only, he’d hear it saying…

  “Ashraf,” he corrected, still half in dreams. In glorious, filthy dreams. “My name is Ashraf.” Class barriers, master and servant, childish nicknames…he had no use for these things now. Not with the phantom memory of more than just a tentative hand stroking his hair still clinging to his skin. Not with here and now so terribly close. “Intezar,” he added, rolling to his side, propping his heavy head on his hand. “I am waiting for you.”

  It could’ve been dialogue from a movie, were anyone outside the art house making such films. But Kamal did not follow any script. He stood stiffly at the side of the bed, almost at military attention. Was it Ashu’s imagination, or was there more gray in his beard? More age in his eyes? Strange to think that such a timeless man could take on the weight of years so quickly.

  “Are you a ghost?” Ashraf asked softly, in Hindi.

  He held his breath—as if, this time, Kamal would answer in the affirmative. But he shook his head, a quick, jerky motion. “Nahin. I am still only a man.”

  “So you still have a heart.” It felt like he stretched his hand across a great chasm just to rest two fingers on Kamal’s chest, over the organ in question.

  It might as well have been the blow of a fist, for Kamal stumbled back a step, his breath exploding from him in a whoosh. And then his throat moved, the apple bobbing as he swallowed. “Yes.”

  It was cruel to push him again. But Ashu had no choice. He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. The two fingers he’d placed over Kamal’s heart turned into four and a thumb, curling inward against the soft cloth of his shirt to tug him close. Close enough so that their knees brushed. Electric current seemed to pop to life in that simple contact. “Do I still live there?”

  Had he ever noticed Kamal’s mouth before? So stern and yet so soft? Dark and bowed…and never so beautiful as when his lips shaped one simple word: “Always.” Kamal glanced down at Ashu’s hand, at their knees. And then he took in the room. As if it was the entirety of this house. “Do you still live here, Ashraf?”

  He exhaled as though he had been holding his breath since the first time he left for Mumbai. Perhaps that was true. Perhaps now, all he needed for air was one simple word. “Always,” he assured him, leaning just slightly forward. “This is my home. You are my home.”

  They would not kiss now. Ashraf knew that. Nor would they embrace. Not yet. Perhaps it would be a year before they ever unbuttoned a shirt or explored beneath a zipper. But their fingers laced together in a delicate design—far stronger than it looked—and, today, it was enough.

  Even before the clamor and hubbub of the busy set went unnaturally silent and still, she knew.

  She felt it. Sensed it. On every level.

  The air changed, as if molding to his uneven gait. The faint scent of roses overlaid the chemical tang of the fog from the smoke machine. And Rocky’s heart stopped beating and abruptly started again.

  He’d come for her.

  Taj Ali Khan had come back to Mumbai for her.

  She turned so quickly that her ankle almost twisted, but the misstep was worth it. The catch of her breath was worth it. He stood tall, her Beast, his long hair swept back and his dark eye blazing with “fuck you” defiance as if he was daring the cameramen to record and the PAs to snap pictures and instantly upload them online. But this, too, she knew: what he was really daring was himself. To keep walking. To keep going. And for her to meet him halfway.

  Little did he know that Rocky would meet him at the gates of hell if he asked her to. She ran the last few yards, and when she launched herself into his arms, his misstep was worth it, too.

  “Rocky.” Her name was a groan of relief. Maybe even a nonbeliever’s prayer. “Sweet Rocky,” he murmured into her hair as he gathered her close.

  She clung to him, practically ripping holes in his crisp button-down shirt with her nails. He was real. Solid. Smelling of sandalwood cologne and heat and man. “You’re here,” she marveled, breathing him in. “You’re really here.”

  His laugh rumbled between them like thunder, and his fingers tangling in her hair were lightning, sending tiny shocks through her body. “It’s the brilliant thing about airplanes. They can carry me places as easily as they carry you, hai na?”

  “Not as easily. I know that.” She pulled back, just enough to take in his face. His stupid, arrogant, beautiful face. “I know that,” she repeated.

  His mouth quirked up at the corners, and there was almost, almost a twinkle in his eye. “I know it is not easy for you, Rakhee. Caring for a man like me.”

  A man. Taj had called himself a man. Was it bizarre that such a little, verbal thing almost meant more than the grand gesture? “That’s where you’re wrong,” she assured him. “Loving you is the least complicated thing in my life. One look at you, and I was done.”

  He only left her for a moment, likely flashing back to that look, that first exchange in the shadows of the haveli’s front parlor. “And to think I was so rude to you that day.”

  That day. And so many days after. It was what he knew. It was part of who
he was. She wouldn’t trade an ounce of it for flowery compliments and false promises. “We’ve said it before: you’re lucky I have a soft spot for assholes.”

  He stroked his thumb along her jaw…and then followed the line with his lips, apparently not giving a damn what the people gawking at them thought of such an intimacy. “Haan,” he whispered against her skin, “I am very, very lucky. To have found you. To have loved you.”

  More little words with gargantuan meaning. Rocky was dizzied by them—and glad to be held in the safe circle of his arms, so that she could savor the sentiments…and tease him about them, too. “Only past tense, Taj?” She knocked his knee with her own.

  His growl was pure theatrics. But when he nipped at her ear, a deliciously sharp tug of teeth, that was serious. “Present also…and, if you choose, future as well.”

  Was it really in question? Had Taj doubted her just because she’d left Delhi? Rocky would never, ever give him cause to doubt again. They could, and would, have everything she’d ever dreamed of. “I choose. Of course I choose.”

  And the happily-ever-after—fights, flights, thorns and all—was a given.

  About the Author

  Writer and editor Suleikha Snyder always dreamed of being a published author…but she took the long way around and got a little lost en route! Cue fifteen years of detours involving a degree in English literature, a job in college administration, and a gig in entertainment media. After publishing her first romantic short story in early 2011, she’s finally putting pedal to the metal on the fiction freeway.

  Suleikha lives in New York City with her neuroses, her sense of humor and a menagerie of stuffed animals. Find her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/suleikhasnyder and online at suleikhasnyder.blogspot.com.

  Look for these titles by Suleikha Snyder

  Now Available:

  Bollywood Confidential

  Spice and Smoke

  Spice and Secrets

  When fear writes the past, only love can direct the future.

  Spice and Secrets

  © 2012 Suleikha Snyder

  Bollywood Confidential, Book 2

  Priya Roy is back in Bollywood with a rock-hard body, a precious gem of a secret and a heart of ice. Producer/director Rahul Anand won’t waste this second chance at his first love. He’ll melt Priya’s resistance at any cost—even if it means returning to acting and negotiating his way onto her next project. Hell, if she’d give him half a chance, he’d write himself into every scene of her life.

  Talk show host Sunita “Sunny” Khanna and her brand-new producer, Davey Shaw, are determined to get Rahul and Priya on her show for a ratings-boosting reunion episode. She and Davey strike instant sparks, but Sunny, burned after her disastrous marriage to a Bollywood bad boy, is determined not to fall into the fire.

  Lurking on the edges of the frame is Rahul’s stepmother, trouble-making man-eater Nina Manjrekar. And when she hijacks the script, only honesty can turn a first draft into the romantic superhit it’s meant to be.

  Warning: This book contains smoking, smoking and then kissing, kissing while lying, and some really, really questionable décor.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Spice and Secrets:

  “What do you want?” she asked him, as if she honestly didn’t know.

  Rahul shouldered past her into the room before he answered. “Everyone’s partying in the lounge. Trishna asked for you.” It was a flimsy excuse in the age of the text message, and they both knew it. But he’d waited for her for weeks. Biding his time. Pretending he cared about the production when all he was truly invested in was her arrival on set. Now that she was here, he didn’t give a damn about anything else.

  Her eyes flashed. “So you presented yourself as a volunteer to find me? Ah-ha, ki generous,” she dismissed, her tone dripping with sarcasm.

  A sudden smile tempered the righteous indignation—and all the other emotions— coursing through his system. Unlike Trish Chaudhury, who’d grown up a Bombay girl and fired off Hindi like a weapon, Bengali was still Priya’s default. During the shooting of their one and only film together as actors, he’d constantly marveled at how she switched between three languages. He’d marveled at everything about her.

  She was no less marvelous now, with her hair loosed, face clean of makeup and sparkles, dressed in a simple ankle-length nightgown. She didn’t look like the soft, baby-doll nineteen-year-old he remembered, but neither was she the seductive item girl who’d brought nearly every man on the set this morning to instant erection. She was something else. Something new. But his wanting…that hadn’t changed one bit. It still tasted sharp and young and reckless.

  It was that recklessness that prompted him to remind her, “There was a time you didn’t mind my brand of generosity.”

  Priya recoiled, shutting the door and pressing up against it. And then she looked to her vodka. “This is my brand tonight.”

  “Oh, really? I can guarantee it doesn’t taste as good as a kiss.”

  She was well within her rights to strike him for his boldness. Instead, she tipped back the bottle, draining the last of the small measure of booze. She made a show of licking her wet lips. “No need, Rahul. Yeh kafi hain. This is enough.”

  The hell it was. He crossed to her, plucking the tiny glass bottle from her fingers and tossing it aside. “Liar. It’s not enough for you, and it’s certainly not enough for me.”

  There had been others in his life over the years. Even a brief engagement arranged by his father. But the prospect of bedding sweet Rashmi on their suhaag raat had turned his stomach. He’d been one girl’s first—God, and his arrogance, willing, her only—how could he be another’s? He’d cried off before the wedding cards could be printed. Every good memory he had of love was wrapped up in the woman before him. So how could he not wrap her in his arms?

  Here, too, she should have slapped him, but Priya didn’t move. Pale faced, her beautiful brown eyes huge with surprise…it was as though he’d embraced a statue. A warm, soft, breathing statue. Minutes seemed to tick by before she reacted. And when she did, it was with a single, barely audible, word: “Yes.”

  “‘Yes’ what, Pree?”

  “To what you came for.” This was louder, but still remote. Almost mechanical. “That is why you’re here, na? To take me to bed?”

  Yes. No. Definitely yes. He could lie to her. Lie to the world. But not to himself. Till his dying day, he would want her. Rahul reached out, stroking a wild strand of her hair before tucking it behind her ear. “I don’t want to take, Priya. I want to share.”

  She wasn’t quite unresponsive when he kissed her. More…unmoved. Holding herself back, away, as if she was only humoring him. “Nahin, Priya,” he chided against the curl of her lips. “Don’t invite me and also reject me.”

  “I didn’t invite. I accepted the inevitable. Big difference hain.” She showed him the details of such difference then, leaning in and returning his kiss. Here was her emotion: her fury, her resentment, her missing him. It was in the vodka-sharp taste of her mouth and the insistent attack of her equally bladed tongue. She raged, clawing at him, saying all the things with her kisses that she was still too sweet to speak aloud.

  Rahul groaned, sweeping her up into his arms. It was a short trip to her bed and an even shorter fall to nirvana. Tugging up her gown, undoing his jeans, remembering to rescue the condom from his wallet. He kissed everything he could reach, committed to memory the altered plains of her body. There were straight lines where once there had been curves, ridges of muscle where there’d once been rolling hills. But he didn’t dare linger. Not when her favor clung as tentatively as her hands to his shoulders.

  Thankfully, her body was more forgiving. She was slick and hot and ready, and they joined too fast, too hard…too in tune for a pair who hadn’t said so much as namaste in six years. She panted his name against his ear: harsh, erotic gasps. He cradled the points of her hips, rocking into her as deep as he could go. Not an invite, she’d said, just the inevitable.
And, inevitably, it was over when it felt like it had just barely begun. Ten, fifteen, minutes crunched into a haze that seemed like mere seconds.

  “Baby, I missed you so much,” he confessed as he collapsed into her…only to find that the gates were shut once more. She was utterly still, devoid of any passion—passion he knew she’d shared. There was no warmth to be found, no shelter after the storm. Still, he knocked. Thrice gently against the cage of her ribs. “Pree, let me in. Please, jaan.”

  “Never. Never again.” She slid out from beneath him. As if the very rub of his skin was a trespass. “Get out,” she whispered, clutching the sheets to her chest. “Jao. I never want to see you.”

  He tried to touch her, to stroke the sweat damp silk of her shoulder, her throat, but she jerked away. Something shifted in the pit of his belly, and his breath caught in his lungs. So this was how it was going to be: a dirty little secret. Something she could condemn, deny and then forget. Rahul zipped and buttoned his jeans and then climbed, slowly, from the bed. Only when he was fully armored against the coldness of her eyes, did he trust himself to speak. “Nahin, Priya. Too bad and too late. You will see me again.”

  She would see him again…and she would love him again. It was all he’d ever wanted, and if he could not accomplish it in one night…he had eternity stretched ahead of them. Forever was a long time—just long enough for success.

  She is the one dream that never had a chance to come true…until now

  Exhale

  © 2013 Dakota Harrison

  Takeshi is finishing up a brutal double shift in the ER when a familiar—and bloody—face erases all thought of heading home. The broken body of the woman fighting for her life belongs to Gabby, his best friend’s mother. A woman he has rarely seen since he turned nineteen and foolishly declared his love for her.