I haven’t danced in years. But the words that came out were, “I could use refresher lessons.”
“In dancing? In writing? In speaking your mind?” He was angry on her behalf, more livid than she’d ever seen him, and it ripped her wide open.
Reaching up, she pressed her lips to his.
The lightest, most terrifying touch.
A shudder vibrated through his body. A tsunami of wanting rolled through her. She pulled away, the intensity disorienting her. His hands tightened in her hair, but he didn’t pull her to him. Fear and hunger roared inside them, freezing them.
Then she moved, unable to hold back, and it unleashed something in him. He pulled her to him, his mouth devouring her. The blast of his taste plunged her under so swift and hard she whimpered and clung to him, nails digging, skin breaking. He was the wave and the raft. The oxygen and the water trapped in her lungs.
The sound he made was nothing she’d ever heard. He dragged her into his lap, dragged her body into his. Arms against arms, legs against legs, skin chafing, everything flint and sparks. She was fire. Flames and tongue and unbearable need. Her body was an inferno.
More. It screamed. MORE.
“Ayesha.” He spoke her name into burning lips.
His fingers eased on her arms, where pain and pleasure gathered from the greedy pressure. She gasped from the loss of it.
“God, did I hurt you?” His eyes hitched on her bruised lips, her bruised arms. They were wet again. Wet and filled with the worship she’d missed.
She bit his lip. Hard. I missed you. So much. She wanted to say it. So much.
Say. It.
She kissed where she’d bitten him and let herself unravel. “I missed you.” The force of the words made her shoulders shake. Tears she’d shoved deep trembled up and out. An avalanche.
“Oh, baby. It’s going to be okay.” His words took her pain. Impossible as that was, they took it all. His body absorbed her reborn anger, her inexhaustible grief as he held her and held her and held her.
“It’s never going to be okay,” she said when she could speak again. “Nothing is ever going to be okay.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t manage me, Emmitt!”
His hand stroked her back. “Who could ever manage you, Ayesha.” He stroked her cheeks, an impossible smile spreading across his lips. “I hope you have more of those wipes.”
Oh no. Her makeup.
“Bela paid what I make in a year for this makeup. Then again, this is all Bela’s fault.”
His smile tipped into a laugh. “Don’t be angry with Bela. Speaking to her, having her tell me how you were. It kept me going. If not for her, you might be Mrs. Rat.”
She tried to pull away. “You’re not allowed to call me that if I marry him.”
His arms tightened around her. “You’re not marrying him.”
She stroked his face. There was no messed-up makeup there—a fact that made her angry for women everywhere. But the generalized anger was a relief, the nebulousness of it easing the pointed pressure inside her.
Just touching his beautiful face made time disappear, made her herself again.
“You were right earlier,” she said. “I’m afraid. Of Amma never having the chance to be happy if something . . .”
“If something happens to her,” he finished.
She pushed herself off the floor and started pacing. For all its grandeur, the cellar was tiny, but she needed to move.
“I can’t put her through more.”
When their father died, Amma had been a rock for her children. We’re going to be fine. We’re going to be fine. Her determined smiles and her solid arms holding them had saved Ajay and Ayesha.
But after Ajay, Amma had been frayed fabric, unable to hold more. She’d ripped right down the middle.
Emmitt’s arms went around Ayesha from behind. “You’ve both been through too much.”
Ajay had been everything to Amma. Her hopes and dreams. The light at the end of her tunnel. Her promise of relief. Her reward for putting up with her troublesome younger child.
Emmitt’s arms tightened around her.
“I can’t defy her anymore. Everything is different. I’m not the same person.” He had loved to say that her fieriness had saved him, but she had none left. “I don’t have anything left to give.” And it made her tremble, and fall apart again.
His lips pressed tentatively into her ear, warm breath on sensitive skin. This need he had to ease her, to soothe her, was better than anything he could say. And still the words he finally said were exactly what she needed.
“You’ve always been all I wanted. You. I’ll take whatever I can have of you. Anything, Ayesha. Anything you’ll let me have. For however long. I’ll be your friend, if that’s all you want. I’ll leave, if that’s what you want.”
She turned in his arms, a tornado twisting inside her at the thought of losing him again. Suddenly the fact that they were locked in here felt like magic.
It had to mean something. It had to. The hand of destiny. Fate.
How could she fight fate?
Just like that, they were kissing again. Gentle, then rough. Hungry, then sated all the way to their souls. Their hands everywhere. His shirt unbuttoned, her blouse tugged down her shoulders. Teeth and lips, devouring. Nothing else mattered. Only this. Only this thing they’d craved for so long.
Her hands were on his belt when he tugged them away. “Ayesha.”
She pushed back, needing to touch him.
“Listen to me. Baby, listen. There’s something you should know.”
Her groan was a thing of frustration. “What now?”
His smile was a thing from her dreams. “I’ve missed you snapping at me.”
“I know. I’ve missed me snapping at you too.” So so much. How had she felt doubt? There was no doubt in her now.
His laughter fell against her temple. “We’re not locked in here.”
“I know. I know what I want matters to you. I want this.”
“I don’t mean that as your favorite figure of speech. I’m not being metaphorical. We’re not locked in here, because I know how to open the door.” Disengaging from their entwined bodies, he went to the door. Then with a deft push-and-lift maneuver he turned the door handle, and it clicked open.
Their eyes locked, the sharp blue of her birthstone slicing through her defenses. She’d never cared if sapphires were lucky for her or not. She’d never believed in luck or fate or destiny. She didn’t need any of that to know what he was to her. He’d offered her what she wanted, and she wanted him. Just this once. She’d give him up for what had to be done. But not yet. In this moment, she had to be the version of herself she’d lost.
“Why did you tell me?” Did he not want her?
He stroked her jaw. “I didn’t want you to do anything because you thought we’re stuck here. I want you to want me, but not because you think it’s a sign.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. How could he still read her thoughts this well? How had she survived without it?
“Thank you. Because I wasn’t thinking.” She slipped past him, letting her body brush against his and watching as it made his breath catch. Then she grabbed the door handle.
He swallowed. That damned Adam’s apple moving in his throat laid bare every bit of yearning coursing through his body, but he didn’t stop her. He waited.