Page 94 of The Encore’s Crown

“Too late.”

I kissed her again. She tried to hold herself stiff, but my arms wrapped around her and her body gave up the lie almost instantly. Her hands slid from my forearms to my shoulders. Her mouth softened beneath mine. When I pulled her closer, a small sound caught in her throat and disappeared against my lips. I walked her backward until her shoulders touched the door.

“Kiri,” she whispered.

I kissed beneath her jaw. She tilted her head before she could stop herself.

“You can’t act shy now,” I murmured against her skin. “These walls will only be innocent for so long.”

Her fingers tightened in my shirt.

“We can’t.” I kissed the place below her ear that always made her breathing change. “We can’t do anything,” she insisted.

Her body pressed closer. Her hips found mine. The contradiction nearly made me laugh. I lifted my head and looked at her. Her cheeks were flushed. Her lips were parted. Every careful, elegant part of Radhika Malhotra had abandoned her except the voice still trying to defend the honor of her family home.

“We can’t,” she repeated, quieter this time. I brushed my thumb across her mouth.

“Miss Malhotra your body doesn't agree with this defiant mouth of yours.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You don’t believe me.”

“I think you, believe you.”

I leaned in until my mouth hovered over hers.

“But I don't think your body can keep up the act for much longer.”

Her breath trembled between us. Suddenly, beyond the door, footsteps sounded in the corridor. Radhika shoved at my chest. I stepped back just as they passed. She stared at me, horrified and breathless, I smiled back.

“I invited you for Holi, to meet my family. To behave.”

“I said I can behave around parents. The rest? All I heard was ‘spend a week testing the craftmanship of the furniture in the guest wing.’”

She covered my mouth with her hand.

“Stop. Talking.”

Then someone called her name from downstairs. Radhika closed her eyes.

“I have to go.”

I caught her hand before she reached the door and pulled her into one last kiss, slower this time. She melted against me before remembering herself and stepping away. Then she slipped out of the room, leaving me alone in a palace with her taste still on my lips and six hours until midnight.

She said we couldn’t do anything. Her body had already told me that was a lie.

All I had to do was wait for her to prove it.

The first few days at the Malhotra estate taught me two things.

The first was that Radhika had not exaggerated when she said her family had staff. There were people for everything. Drivers, cooks, gardeners, housekeepers, assistants, men who appeared whenever furniture needed moving and women who could produce tea before I knew I wanted any. I never saw Mrs. Malhotra carry anything heavier than a cup without someone materializing to take it from her.

The second was that I had no idea how to let people wait on me.

On my first morning, I found her mother in one of the interior courtyards directing three men as they moved enormous brass planters into place for Holi. One of them bent to lift a crate filled with clay lamps, and I stepped in before he reached it.

“I can take that.”

The man looked at me. Mrs. Malhotra looked at me.