“Yeah, his friends do a party every year.” Aditi wandered over to the end of the counter near the fruit bowl.
“You can look if you like,” Nayna said, spotting Aditi’s curious eyes on a pack of photographs she’d had printed the other day. “It’s only photos of family and friends.” She turned to find the rest of the sweet chili dip. “We still like to do albums.”
“Ma does the same,” Aditi murmured, opening the pack.
Aha! There was the dip, shoved behind a giant head of lettuce. Grabbing it, Nayna went to scoop it out into the serving bowl.
“Hey!” Aditi held up a photograph. “Why do you have a photo of Harlow?”
Nayna smiled, remembering the day at ísa’s apartment when she’d snapped the shot. “He’s my best friend’s brother—stepbrother, technically.” ísa just called Harlow her brother because that was who ísa was, a woman with an incredible ability to love. “Do you know him?”
Aditi nodded, a shy smile curving her lips. “We met at this thing our schools did together.”
“He’s lovely, isn’t he?” One of the sweetest teenage boys Nayna had ever met.
Aditi’s cheeks pinked and she bit down on her lower lip. After glancing out the door as if to check if anyone else was nearby, she said, “We’re going to the movies together next week, when he has a little time off from his internship. Just, you know, as friends,” she added quickly.
“Do your parents know?” She didn’t want this spunky girl in trouble.
But Aditi nodded. “Raj bhaiya spoke to them,” she said, using the word for brother after Raj’s name—a normal thing for such a younger sibling. To simply say her older brother’s name would sound wrong, a harsh scratch on a record.
Aditi gave Nayna a measuring look. “He’s always been as strict as them, really overprotective. But… he’s changed.”
Nayna had to fight not to show her reaction, but the warmth uncurling inside her felt like a living thing. “Has he?” she asked, and it came out husky.
“Yeah,” Aditi said. “I mean he’s still bhaiya.” A roll of the eyes. “So bossy and wants to know every detail of where Harlow and I will be, but it’s like he really thinks about what I ask him before he gives an answer instead of just saying no to stuff like this.”
Nayna finished preparing the tray, a tightness in her chest. “He sounds like a wonderful brother.”
“The best,” Aditi said at once. “Even before. Shall I take that tray? And can I keep the photo of Harlow?”
“Thank you, and yes, you can.” Nayna handed over the tray, then reached out to fix one of Aditi’s curls so that it was no longer bouncing in her eye.
She waited to let out a shaky exhale until after the girl had disappeared into the backyard, where everyone was gathered under colorful lights Madhuri had strung up. Aditi’s words, what they implied… they cut her knees out from under her. Raj had listened to Nayna. Not only had he listened, he’d understood.
Confusion reigned in her, crashing against the need to break the shackles and a compulsion to shackle herself to Raj.
* * *
Raj slipped into the house five minutes after he saw Aditi come out and realized everyone aside from Nayna was out on the lawn. He tracked her down in a hallway inside the house. Pinning her between the hands he’d braced on the wall on either side of her, he said, “It’s nearly midnight.”
“Raj.” She pushed at his chest while casting frantic looks around him. “They’ll notice!”
“No they won’t. Our parents are involved in a heated discussion about that Indian soap opera they all watch, and our sisters are playing a game on Madhuri’s phone.” He nuzzled her, taking her scent into his lungs, settling the tension wrapped around his gut. “I’ve never kissed anyone at midnight on New Year’s Eve.”
Her hands paused pushing at his chest, curled in instead, and he wanted to shudder in sheer relief. “Never?”
“Never.” He wondered if he should tell her what other things he’d never done. “Have you?”
She shook her head, her eyes huge and her teeth biting down on her lower lip.
“How about it?” It came out a rough request.
Running her hands down his chest in that possessive petting way that gave him hope, she rolled her lips inside her mouth and when she parted them to speak, they were pink and wet. “Okay,” she whispered. “But you have to figure out how.”
“Leave me to it.” His jeans were ridiculously uncomfortable in the crotch region right now. “I have to go get my cock under control first.”
Her eyes dipped to his jeans, and he saw the pulse jerk in her throat. “I can’t believe you just…”
Loving her scandalized response when he’d sucked and licked her bare breasts not so many nights ago, he bent close to her ear and whispered, “My cock feels like concrete. It wants to be inside your hot and tight—”
“Nayna!” It was a singsong cry from the kitchen. “I didn’t tell the folks you were in here with Raj, but you better show your face soon or you’re busted.”
Raj pushed off the wall. “I’ll see you at midnight.”
21
Happy New Year
Nayna’s breasts were sulking when she walked into the kitchen, so addicted to Raj’s touch that the tiny mounds ached at being denied it. “Where’s Aditi?”
“Keeping the folks distracted.” Madhuri gave her the once-over. “Huh. You don’t look like you’ve been doing anything at all.”
It was a good thing Madhuri didn’t have X-ray vision.
Her sister’s phone beeped before Nayna had to come up with an answer. Pulling it out of her pocket, Madhuri glanced at it. A dreamy look softened her face, her lips curving.
“Who is he?” Nayna asked her sister.
Madhuri was a flirt, had always been a flirt. However, despite what some people might believe, she didn’t take it beyond flirting with most men. Regardless, she had a far richer dating history than Nayna.
Which wasn’t hard since Nayna had never actually been on a date.
As for Madhuri—Nayna didn’t know what their parents believed, but her sister had been dating steadily since the divorce. Madhuri might be commitment-shy, but she liked men, and she liked being around men and being taken care of by men.
Even living alone, Madhuri was never short of male help. The last time Nayna had been over, she’d found Madhuri’s middle-aged landlord helping her sort out a problem with her television. And there’d been nothing slimy about it—the man had just been happy to be around Madhuri’s effervescent feminine presence.
It had always been that way.
Growing up, Nayna had watched in awe as her sister drew male attention at every wedding and every large party to which they were invited. The marriage offers had begun pouring in the instant Madhuri turned eighteen, but their parents had turned them all down.
“We want our daughter to be educated and able to stand on her own feet before marriage,” her father had said to more than one hopeful suitor.
When those suitors had assured Gaurav Sharma that they’d support Madhuri’s continued studies even after marriage, he’d shaken his head. “No, this is old-fashioned. Marriage at eighteen is not what we want for our girl. She should have her university years.”
That, Nayna thought, was partly why it had hurt their parents so awfully when Madhuri eloped at nineteen. She’d thrown egg into Gaurav’s and Shilpa’s faces, caused them even more shame in the community than engendered by the affair with the master’s student. Raj had deliberately been a bastard that time at lunch, but he was also right: there remained families who wouldn’t allow their precious sons within a hundred meters of Madhuri.
Not that Madhuri cared; she had more men in her thrall than she knew what to do with anyway. Six marriage offers had arrived since Pinky’s wedding. Two from divorced males, three from never-marrieds, and one from a man who was separated as of a bare two months ago but already looking. He’d gone directly into the discard pile. No one wanted to be with a jerk.