Page 97 of The Encore’s Crown

I kissed her again. She said my name into my mouth and then, I lifted her. She gasped on instinct.

“You can't just drag me into your room and throw me around.”

“Watch me.”

I carried her to the bed and dropped her onto it. She bounced, eyes wide with outrage she didn’t feel.

“We’re already late.”

“Then we should stop talking.”

She caught my wrist and for a moment we stayed like that. Her breathing had already changed.

“Do you really want me to stop?” I asked, sincerity cutting through the hunger long enough to let her say what her body had already told me. Her eyes found mine. Then her grip loosened.

“If you stop now,” she whispered, “I’ll curse you in this life, the next one, and all five after that.”

That was all I needed. I reached for her ankle and pulled her toward the edge. Her sari shifted around her legs. I pushed the fabric upward. I moved between her thighs and pushed the sari higher, baring warm skin inch by inch. She pressed her hand over her mouth before I had even touched her, like she already knew what keeping quiet was going to cost. I kissed the inside of her knee. Then higher. Her muscles trembled beneath my mouth. She whispered my name, and by the time I finally tasted her, the rest of it dissolved into a breathless sound trapped behind her palm.

Four days of pretending she didn’t want this, and she was already heated and waiting for me. I held her thighs apart and took my time. That was her punishment. Every time her body tried to chase my mouth, I slowed. Every time her hips lifted, I pressed them back into the mattress. She kept every sound locked inside, but I felt them in the violent tightening of her legs, in the way her fingers buried themselves in my hair and pulled me closer.

When I looked up, she was gone. Eyes squeezed shut. Head tipped back. Hand still trying to keep her quiet. Every elegant, disciplined part of her had abandoned the fight. I stopped. Her eyes opened instantly. She looked down at me, frustrated and desperate.

“So,” I said, mouth still against her, “you were saying?”

“Kiri.”

“We can’t? Isn't that what you said? Changed your mind?”

She pushed herself onto her elbows. Her hair had come loose around her face. Her cheeks were flushed. The careful white sari was gathered around her waist, and the sight of her like that nearly destroyed whatever control I had left.

“You're the worst man alive.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

She stared at me. I kept my eyes on hers as I teased her with my tongue, gentle enough to make her furious, precise enough to make her body tell the truth for her. A taste was all it took. Within seconds, she was opening herself without hesitation, pulling me back where she wanted me.

“Happy?” she whispered.

“Getting there.”

I put my mouth on her again. She bit down on her knuckles. This time, I didn’t slow. Her whole body tightened beneath me, every muscle drawn toward one point. Her fingers closed around my head, holding me so firmly I could barely move, not that I wanted to be anywhere else.

When she came, she did it almost silently. A broken sound escaped before she swallowed it. Her body jolted hard enough that I had to hold her thighs down against the bed. She shook beneath my hands, fighting not to cry out, hips lifting against my grip as I kept her there and took everything she gave me. When she finally went still, my fingers had left red marks against her skin. I kissed one of them.

“That might bruise.”

Radhika looked down, still breathing too hard to pretend she regretted anything. Her mouth curved.

“I think…” She swallowed, then looked back at me. “I'd like that.”

I lifted an eyebrow.

“Maybe I shouldn’t,” she whispered. “But I do. Knowing I’ll walk back downstairs with your fingerprints on me and no one will know but us. That under all of this, under the good daughter and the perfect smile, I’m yours.”

Fuck.

Four days of chastity, and she said something like that while I was already hard enough to break stone. The next thought was simple. I rose over her, as her hands reached for my waistband. Then voices carried from somewhere outside. Radhika froze and her eyes went to the clock.