Rohan was an all-or-nothing kind of guy and getting the full weight of his absolute attention and care made me feel like I could reach for the stars. I was living the cheesiest of clichés where he was the first person I wanted to see in the morning and the last person I wanted to talk to at night. Rohan wasn’t my other half. I was a twin. I knew what other halves felt like.
He didn’t complete me; he complemented me and that was a zillion times better.
To be ripped from that would destroy me.
I cupped his cheek. “I believe you.” Well, I believed he believed it.
Fingers crossed that would be enough.
The outfit I chose was a curve-hugging black sheath with cap sleeves and a hemline that hit just below the knee. It looked almost demure until I turned around to reveal the plunging back, the fabric draping softly at the base of my spine. I paired it with red lips and red heels.
Rohan gave me a wolfish grin when I flounced into his room. He prodded me backward until my legs hit his mattress. “Show me how it comes off.”
“None of that.” My stomach fluttered; my push against his chest was more insistent. “I want you desperate for me.”
He nipped my bottom lip, his hand sliding over the stretchy fabric to cup my ass, and pressed his erection against my belly. “Done. Take it off.”
I allowed myself one inhale of his spicy, musky cologne with the underbite of iron that was all Ro, before sidestepping him. “Good and nope.”
I picked up the bluish-gray tie, similar in color to my eyes, that he’d laid out to go with his turquoise shirt and slid it around his neck. Fussing over my man, a quiet intimacy. It was nice.
“Nava.” Rohan gasped, his skin getting a tad purple and his eyes glassy.
I fumbled at the choking knot that got tighter the more I worked at it. Damn ties. My dad always made putting these on look so easy. What the hell was the stupid trick? Over, under–no. I tried again.
Rohan pushed my hands away, extended the blade on his index finger and sliced the thing off. The tie fluttered to the ground. He frowned. “I liked that tie.”
I opened his closet and, pulling out an identical one, thrust it at him. “Please. You buy your ties in pairs.”
He strung the tie around his neck. “Good ties are hard to…” He paused, his knot half-formed. “Did you snoop through my closet?”
I patted his cheek. “Of course I did.”
He slid the tie down through the loop he’d created and pulled it tight, making the whole “over/under” thing look like anyone could learn it. Shrugging into his suit jacket, Rohan escorted me out of the room, his hand on the small of my back. “Try not to gape too much when you meet Mahmud.”
“Is he horribly disfigured?”
Rohan shot me a what-is-wrong-with-you look. “No. He’s your type.”
“I have a type?”
He laughed.
I was determined to prove him wrong, but when we entered Lotus and Mahmud stood from his table to greet us? Yeah, I checked my chin for drool.
Tall, hot bod, suit tailored like a second skin–those were basic Rasha-issue. But his dark brown skin, intense black eyes, goatee, and black hair scraped back into a messy ponytail, all coupled with these full pink lips whose evolutionary function was to be sucked on? Let’s just say that other than Malik who’d had a couple thousand years to perfect tall, dark, and sexy, Mahmud, despite only having maybe thirty years to cultivate his hotness, was the first man to make Rohan look a little plain.
“Hi. I’m Nava.” I stuck my hand out for him to shake.
His grasp was firm, warm. “Mahmud.” His husky voice curled inside me like syrup.
“Pleasure,” I squeaked out.
Rohan snorted.
To be fair, my recovery time was pretty fast. This was work after all. Plus, the boyfriend standing right there.
Rohan pulled my chair out for me, and from Mahmud’s assessing look, he got our status.
The waitress came to take our order. Slender, with dark curly hair, dressed in a crisp white shirt and black cigarette pants, her dimpled smile lit up her whole face. Given that the majority of other customers were middle-aged couples and a couple of groups of business men, serving us was hitting the jackpot. Well, serving the men.
“I’m Olivia. I’ll be your server tonight.”
“Hi, Olivia.” Rohan turned his rock fuck grin on her. Power to the chick for staying upright.
I kicked him under the table. He covered the flinch pretty well, his knee brushing against mine, remaining there, connecting us. He trapped my hand loosely against his thigh as he told her which dishes we’d decided to share.
“So, Nava, what was your first impression of the Rasha?” Mahmud said.
I sipped my green tea. “You want the honest answer or the polite answer?”
His eyes twinkled as he leaned in. “Oh, now I definitely need the honest answer.”
I entertained Mahmud with my initial meetings of Baruch, Kane, and Drio, while Olivia brought out sumptuous sushi rolls plated on daikon and fat pieces of melt-in-your-mouth sashimi.
Mahmud’s single failing was that he was hopeless with chopsticks. Sushi wreckage was strewn across his plate. He licked off a couple of grains of rice that were stuck to his finger. “I’m a disaster. Apologies.”
“You’re fine. But you might want to hold the chopsticks down farther.” I held mine up to demonstrate.
He adjusted his grip and tried again with slightly better results. “Not that I’m not always delighted to see your hairy ass, Mitra, but I get the sense you invited me for more than my good looks.”
“Oh, he invited you for that too,” I quipped.
Mahmud laughed and Rohan kicked me under the table.
“Askuchar,” Rohan said. With that one word, all levity at our table fled. He topped up all our sake, serving himself last.
“What about it?” Mahmud’s expression was bland.
I gripped my chopsticks, my eyes darting to Rohan’s.
A flash of impatience darkened his face. “Don’t play politics. This is you and me and no bullshit. There was no logical reason for those yaksas to have trekked from Nepal through India and into Pakistan. Why Askuchar? Conveniently isolated for burying evidence? That mission was all kinds of wrong, man, and you know it.”
“Yeah.” Mahmud scrubbed a hand over his face. “I keep seeing those villagers ravaged. Yaksas are bloodthirsty, but that? It was like they’d gone berserk.”
Or they’d been forced to attack. I shook my head at Rohan, willing him not to voice our suspicions.
“How did you hear about the four Rasha that had originally been killed looking for the demons?” Ro asked.
“Got a call asking me to track. They were missing, not yet confirmed dead at that point.” Mahmud held out his sake cup for Rohan to refill.
“Who called?” I expected him to say Rabbi Mandelbaum.
“Ferdinand Alves.”
Rohan jerked the sake back so sharply that alcohol sloshed onto the white linen tablecloth. I blotted it up, grateful for something that would keep my head down and not reveal how all the color had drained from my face.
“You know him?” Mahmud asked.
“Not personally,” Rohan said. “Heard he died.”
“Yeah. While we were still in Pakistan. Car crash outside L.A.”
“Demons?” I asked.
“Don’t think so.”
Rohan was staring at his plate, his tuna sashimi untouched, his brow furrowed.
“Do you know if he was in Prague in early April?” I said.