AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Apology accepted,” she said shortly, before she walked past me.
She paused as she stepped over the threshold and turned to look at me.
“Wanna ride along?”
CHAPTER 5
ISHA
Ihad a clean exit. All I had to do was walk out the door and not look back. And I ruined it.
Ranveer Sisodia had no right to ask me anything. After all that we had been to each other and not been at the same time, my private life was none of his fucking business. So why was he so upset about my meeting another man? And why did I care enough to reassure him that I wasn’t?
I should have let him believe that I was meeting someone who valued me for what I was. Someone better than him in every way. Instead, I had rubbed myself against his hardness shamelessly and almost begged him to kiss me. That was how it had always been. No matter how much he hurt me with his words, one touch and I was ready to melt into his arms. But that was all in the past. We had kept each other at arms’ length for far too many years now for me to slide back into my old bad habits.
So why did I invite him for a ride?
After all, I wasn’t planning to wander aimlessly through the desert. I was going to Gulab Mahal, and if I took him there when I felt so vulnerable, I’d end up telling him way more than he had a right to know. I’d be giving him a peek into a part of me that was so private that even Diya didn’t know much about it.
I held my breath and hoped Veer would refuse to go with me. But a slow smile broke over his face and he looked so pleased, as if I’d offered him a rocket ride to the moon. It was only a rough ride through the dunes, for fuck’s sake, I thought crossly.
He shut the front door softly and followed me to the massive garage at the back of the palace which housed all of Bhai Sa’s vintage cars, but when I made for the purple and pink ATV, he shook his head in dismay.
“No way,” he declared with a scowl.
“Stop being such a chicken,” I said, rolling my eyes. “It was just a small bump.”
“You drove into a fucking boulder. I almost got crushed like the coyote from the Road Runner cartoon.”
“That was your fault! If you hadn’t distracted me with the constant annoying commentary, I would have kept my eyes on the road,” I countered, referring to our disastrous drive through the desert during Bhai Sa’s anniversary celebrations.
“That wasn’t a commentary. That was me begging you to slow down because you were driving like a demented daayan,” he argued.
“Like I said… chicken,” I teased as I hopped onto the vehicle and backed it up to where he stood looking like a furious fallen angel, with his tall, lean body, his smouldering dark eyes and that annoying cleft in the middle of his chin which softened the unforgiving, harsh lines of his granite jaw. I had often wanted to trace the little hollow with my tongue. I pulled my eyes away from it and forced myself to glare at him.
“Hop on, Laajwanti! Or I’m leaving,” I said, strapping myself into my seat and winding a scarf tightly around my face to keep out the sand.
“You told me we were going for a drive,” he argued. “In a car.”
“Nuh-uh. I never mentioned a car. It’s not my fault you jumped to the wrong conclusion,” I pointed out.
Veer grabbed the spare helmet with a little snarl.
“Fine! But I’m driving.”
“Over my dead body,” I retorted. “You don’t have to come with me if you’re going to be a chauvinistic pig about it.”
“This isn’t chauvinism. I’m just trying to survive. I don’t want to be decapitated when you decide to ram the ATV into another boulder, thank you very much.”
“Fine! Then go back to bed,” I snapped, revving the vehicle.
Veer hopped on before I could ride off and the ATV swerved dangerously for a minute. I cursed under my breath and struggled to get it under control because crashing into the wall of the garage would only prove his point.
We drove past the sleepy security guards and Veer clutched the bars above him as I picked up speed.
“We’re not flying to the moon. Slow down,” he muttered.
I accelerated defiantly and we sped through the desert in silence.
