My Last Love Story (35 page)

As if that explained anything. “So, you had dinner with my brother and then you came here. But what about your sister’s wedding? Isn’t it next—”

“Fuck the wedding!” he shouted into my face.

I flinched then, which seemed to enrage him even more. He went electric, fairly sparking lightning bolts. I sat up straight.

“Fuck you, Simeen. Fuck you for destroying my life. For not waiting. For letting me think…God. You don’t know what I’ve thought all these years. Fuck you for not trusting what we had.”

His chest heaved up and down. So did mine. Our breaths were coming in bursts, as if we’d climbed a huge mountain up to the summit where the air was thin and our fall certain.

Suddenly, Nirvaan wasn’t the only link between us. Zayaan and I had a history quite separate from Nirvaan—a history that, in my most fanciful moments, I’d traced back to Persia. A history I’d ripped to shreds the night I was raped.

Zayaan was right. I hadn’t trusted him. More tellingly, I hadn’t trusted my love for him. I hadn’t believed that our love was strong enough to survive the horror of what I’d suffered at the hands of his brother and his mother. And I’d pushed him away. For his sake and mine, I’d run away.

He didn’t know of the rape. I was sure of it. My brothers wouldn’t tell him without my consent. Nirvaan, by his own admission, hadn’t told him. And Gulzar Begum didn’t have the guts to tell her son the truth. But I had to tell him. I knew that, too.

Zayaan closed the distance between us in two strides. He grabbed my shoulders and pulled me to my feet, shaking me. I recoiled. I couldn’t help it. He was being too rough, and I struggled to break free.

“Damn you for fighting me. Damn you for bringing religion between us. For leaving me when I needed you the most.”

He yanked me close and put his mouth on mine. His tongue plunged in—hot, abrasive, unbelievably erotic. His arms banded around me, squeezing me hard, and I whimpered. My body was ultra sensitive tonight. He ripped his mouth off of mine and backed up so fast that I was left hanging on to a phantom kiss. His face was as white as the moon behind him.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…fuck. I don’t know what came over me. Bloody hell. Simeen, don’t look at me like that. I know you don’t want me. That you find me crude and needy and…just not good enough.” He stepped farther and farther away. “I shouldn’t have come. I’m sorry,” he said. Then, he spun on his heel and stormed off. He was out the door in seconds.

I was frozen in place. I was shocked, elated, cold, hot, relieved, and devastated—all at once.

How long would I let Rizvaan rule my life, my choices? How long would I blame Zayaan for his brother’s sin? He wasn’t responsible for my rape any more than I was responsible for Nirvaan’s cancer. Wasn’t it time I stopped punishing us both?

I raced after him, shouting, “I do want you!”

Zayaan stopped on the steps and turned around. But he didn’t climb back up. He was waiting…allowing me time to come to my senses, to reject him again.

“I never said that you’re not good enough. And I want you so much that I tremble with it. You make me crazy with wanting you.” I held my arms out to him. “Make me tremble, Zai. Make me forget everything but the little world we’d once made for the two of us.” God, I wanted to touch him. I wanted him to touch me so badly. I was through with denying myself this man.

I’d shocked him. It colored his face, sparkled his eyes. He hadn’t expected me to go after him, to say what I’d said. He’d expected another lie.

I laughed when he leaped up the porch steps and hugged me tight. For a long time, we just stood there, wrapped in each other’s arms. My face pressed to his chest, I sobbed.

When I quieted, he picked me up, as if I were a fragile and precious thing, one of his ancient scrolls of Persian poetry, and he strode into the house, into my bedroom. It didn’t escape me that he’d first taken a step in the direction of his own room, but then he’d stopped and deliberately turned toward mine…and Nirvaan’s.

There were so many things I had to say to him, to ask of him, but I didn’t know where to begin. And, honestly, I didn’t want to talk or think right now. I only wanted to feel.

He placed me on the bed I’d shared with my husband, never taking his eyes off me. His hopes and desires, guilt and self-loathing, were naked on his face, and for the first time in a dozen years, I allowed myself to drown in the feelings he evoked in me.

If Nirvaan were here, he’d have made the love-was-a-dish-best-served-naked comment. He and my father were right. There should be no lies, no secrets, not even clothes between lovers.

I started with my clothes. “Get naked, Zai.”

His eyes flared with heat at my command. I kneeled on the bed and pulled my granny nightgown over my head. I wasn’t wearing a bra, and I left my white cotton panties on—for now.

Zayaan shucked off his shoes and socks. He slowly unwound his scarf and threw it aside. He flicked open the buttons on his jeans, every flick deliberate, devastating, delicious. The tease. His hands toyed with the hem of his sweater until I raised my eyes to his face.

“We need to talk,” he said.

“We will. But I want to make love to you first.”
Before I tell you the truth, and you walk out on me.

The heat in his eyes turned into a conflagration as they journeyed over my nearly naked body. An answering blaze crackled through my belly when his eyes touched the blue-black spots on the outer curve of my upper thigh where I’d injected myself, and then they backtracked over my swollen belly to my ripe pink-tipped breasts and to my flaming face.

“You’re doing the IVF again.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.” I sat back on my haunches, or I’d have fallen over. My knees were shaking so hard. I placed a hand over my belly. “I had the embryo transfer yesterday morning.”

His throat convulsed. “You could be pregnant.” Another statement.

“Yes,” I said with hope and dreams beaming out of every part of me.

Would he stay, or would he go now?

He sat on the bed, facing me, his striptease forgotten. I wasn’t half a foot away from him, but suddenly, I felt as if a great gulf had opened up between us. He’d brought me into Nirvaan’s bedroom. Wasn’t he okay with the rest, too?

“Is this a problem?” I asked quietly.

It was one thing to be an honorary uncle to your best friend’s child. It was another to be…what? Exactly what was I asking him to be? A father? A stepfather? A godfather? An uncle? None of the above? No wonder he looked dazed.

I reached for him, to reassure him, and his arms came to rest on my hips at the same time.

“I won’t let it be a problem,” he swore, bringing his mouth down on mine.

Elation robbed my breath, and I moaned into his mouth. He was so warm. I couldn’t get enough of kissing him, touching him, needing him. I was burning, and he willingly fanned the flames.

He pushed me back against the pillows and rolled on top of me. The glorious full weight of him settled on me for a second before he raised himself, planting a hand on either side of my head. I arched into his kiss. He nipped my lips, sucked on my tongue, licked my mouth, as if it were candy. I was still nearly naked, and he was still fully clothed. I tried to balance the equation.

I pulled his sweater up, shoving at his shoulders to get it off. He wouldn’t let me, and when I whined against his mouth, he bit my lower lip.

“Patience,” he murmured.

He kissed my throat, the ridge of my shoulder blade, making me forget what I was about. I forgot my own name. He got me drunk on soft, soft, feather-like kisses. The quick tiny darts of his tongue and teeth on my skin drove me crazy. A fingertip stroked against my panties, teasing me to the edge faster than I’d ever experienced before, only to ease off when I strained against his hand. He nuzzled my nipple with his nose and beard to calm me when I couldn’t take it anymore, only to make me wild again with his hot, hot mouth.

I shivered as he pressed my breasts together and sucked one and then the other, over and over. Moaned when he ground his pelvis into mine. Begged for more, more, more than just his hands and mouth on me.

“Stop torturing me, Nirvaan,” I gasped without thinking.

Once, I’d read on some Agony Aunt column that accidentally addressing your current lover by your ex’s name was common and natural. It had to do with habit and how
into
you were with the new guy. As in, it was a good thing. I’d slotted the column as a big pot of hocus-pocus—until now.

We both froze when I said Nirvaan’s name. I was extremely conscious of my hand inside Zayaan’s jeans, curved along the shape of his bum. My first instinct was to snatch it back and push him away. Zayaan’s hand trembled with indecision on my breast.

“Don’t, Sims…” He sighed, his breath painting a hot blush across my chest.

I’d kept my husband out of this bed, deliberately out of my mind, once I stripped off my nightgown. I didn’t know why I’d thought it might work when Zayaan had never stayed out of the bed I shared with Nirvaan.

I loved two men. I should be used to mental threesomes by now.

“Don’t, what?” I asked.

If he said,
Don’t say Nirvaan’s name
, I’d ask him to leave. Didn’t he understand Nirvaan was a part of us?

“Don’t hide from me…not your thoughts, your desires, your fears. Don’t hide anything,” he requested in earnest.

Tension drained out of me. I put my face against the curve of his shoulder and began to laugh. After a second or two, Zayaan joined in. When we finally got ourselves under control, he raised himself on an elbow, still grinning. I slapped a hand on his chest when he leaned in for a kiss.

“One more thing,” I said.

He quirked a rakish eyebrow.

“Quit going all Nirvaan on me.”

He raised his other eyebrow as high as its rakish twin. I wanted to laugh again, but what I had to say was too important to be taken in jest.

“He’s the one with the slick bedroom moves. Not you. At least, you never used to have those. What I’m saying is, just be yourself. I…I’ve missed your intensity…I’ve missed you.”

Still, he took his time to jog up the pace. He lit candles about the room and switched off the lights. He revived his striptease and wouldn’t let me do anything but lie back on the bed and enjoy the show.

For months, I’d felt guilty for admiring his body when Nirvaan’s was failing. For taking pleasure in the musky, masculine scent of a healthy man when Nirvaan’s sickly, sweet smell would make me gag. I was not going to feel guilty anymore—not tonight, at least.

Zayaan came to bed, naked, at last. We aligned ourselves on our sides, heads on pillows, staring into each other’s eyes, as our hands roved and touched and mapped our bodies to memory.

The hair on his chest, armpits, and genitals was neatly trimmed, and I wondered briefly if it was hygiene or religion that had made him manscape. Whatever the reason, he looked clean and appetizing. I raked my nails across the ridges of muscle on his chest, making him hiss.

He grabbed my hand, tugging me on top of him. He pushed my hair off my face, not letting me hide anything from him. His hair-rough thigh slid between my smooth legs, and he anchored us together—mouth to mouth, chest to chest, groin to groin.

“Yes,” I hissed as my body hummed with excitement.

There was the passion he had been hell-bent on leashing. I wanted it unleashed. I wanted to be swept away in a tidal wave of pleasure. I wanted to be burned alive and be reborn.

I used my teeth down his chest, sank them into a hip blade. He reared up with a shout and grabbed my shoulders. Shrugging his hands off, I roused him to a fever with lips and teeth and tongue, dipping lower and lower. I was on a mission, and it wasn’t one of mercy. He flopped back with a groan when I took him in my mouth.

Zayaan was cut where Nirvaan wasn’t, long where Nirvaan was thick. They tasted the same—salt and tart and heat—yet I knew their differences. I would always know and revel in their differences, my twin knights. I stroked him, teasingly at first and then with purpose. Zayaan’s hands fisted in my hair a little too tight, and I welcomed the pain.

When you felt pain, it meant you were alive. I was learning the same about joy. I was giving life a chance.

I wasn’t numb tonight. I wasn’t dead or frozen or unfeeling. I was alive. In this bed. With this man. And as long as I was alive, Nirvaan’s baby would thrive inside me.

The tide turned, and Zayaan flipped me onto my back. Not a slick move. He wasn’t thinking now, and it made me smile. He explored every inch of my body, as if I were data to be studied, weighed, and consumed. It was my turn to groan and break into gooseflesh. Every part of me seemed to be connected to every part of him, every fiber, every follicle, every delectable taste bud.

“I want to see you. All of you.” Zayaan manacled my wrists in one hand and stretched them up over my head. His other hand hooked under my knee, and he pushed my leg wide open.

“Zai, please,” I begged. I was half-embarrassed, fully aroused when he stared at that part of me. I wanted him to touch me.

“
Know your voice
,” he said, using the same gruff inflection he reserved for poetry recitation. It took his, “
Recognize you when you first come ’round the corner
,” for me to realize he actually was reciting poetry. Rumi again.

I had no breath left to giggle.

His hand began to read me by braille. He licked between my breasts.

“
Sense your scent when I come into a room you’ve just left
.”

He shifted his body to kneel between my thighs. He picked up one foot and pressed soft kisses on it.

“
Know the lift of your heel, the glide of your foot
.”

I slid my other foot along the back of his thigh, his calf. I married our soles together.

“
Become familiar with the way you purse your lips, then let them part, just the slightest bit, when I lean into your space and kiss you
.”

He kissed me then. Khodai, did he kiss me.

I moaned into his mouth and wished…wished for so much. I arched into his hand, willing him to hurry up and join our bodies, but he tightened his hold on my hands until I lay flat again.