The Bollywood Bride by Sonali Dev Read Free Book Online

through her hair and tugged her lips to his, she had melted in his arms, crumbled into infinite pieces, and allowed every single one of them to merge into him.
    Her gaze rested on the door across the room and her heart gave a painful squeeze. She pressed the platter she was carrying to her chest. It was the door to the basement, where they had snuck away so many times. She walked toward it. The leaded glass gleamed. She reached out and touched the doorknob. The slightest twist and the door swung open.
    There’s no lock, Viky. What if someone finds us?
    No one ever comes down here, Ria. It’s just us. . . .
    Just us.
    Her feet sank into the thickly carpeted steps. Her childhood artwork hung on both sides of the stairway. She couldn’t believe her aunt had saved her pictures. The puppy with huge eyes. A family of five in front of a big red house. Vibrant splashes of color that had given her so much solace. Her fingers trailed the textured wallpaper as she went from picture to picture, memories piercing through her at every step.
    The sounds of her childhood rang in her ears. Shrieks as she was thrown into the air, her stomach catapulting into her throat. Laughter. The silly tickling games they had played. Her little-girl giggles, and then the not-so-little-girl ones. Laughter he had liked to steal from her lips with his own.
    Her hand tightened on the platter as she stepped onto the hardwood floor and turned the corner into the room. More laughter. Not in her head anymore, but a chilling blast slamming into her. Sharp. Real. Erupting from the two intertwined bodies pressed against the back of the sofa in front of her.
    “Holy, crap! Vic. Shit!” A yelp from the girl, more laughter.
    Vikram’s hands froze on the girl’s bare bottom, taut flesh squeezed and spilled from between his fingers. The platter slipped from Ria’s hand and hit the wood floor. It shattered. Of course it shattered.
    The girl’s legs unwrapped from around his hips. The bunched-up red ghaghra freed itself from around her waist and slid down her legs, the heavy weight of sequins pulling it down. She climbed off him as if in slow motion, but her hands stayed locked around his neck. His hands stayed on her bottom, clutching, even as the ghaghra fell like a curtain over long fingers pressed into supple, intimate skin.
    Ria looked up bewildered by the pain that tore through her, and her gaze met his.
    His eyes were glazed over, unfocused. The crystal of his irises smoldering, aroused. Not broken. No, certainly not broken.
    “Shit. We are so sorry,” the girl said. She couldn’t stop giggling. Or was that Ria’s ears ringing? Ria wanted to look away from him. She should’ve looked away, but she couldn’t.
    Their gazes melded into each other, locked in place, stripping bare everything she had struggled ten years to forget. And then his eyes hardened. Remembrance slid like molten lava over the naked vulnerability she recognized like her own breath and turned it into such unadulterated hatred that Ria gasped and took a step back.
    Hot angry color flooded his face. He pulled the girl closer, one hand still molded around the globe of her butt under her ghaghra. His other hand trailed up her spine and caressed the back of her neck, his thumb making deliberate strokes against her skin. He watched Ria follow the movement of his hand, savored it, then turned away and looked into the girl’s eyes. His expression softened, the harshness turning so tender, so intimate, that parts of Ria’s heart she’d thought were dead twisted to life in her chest.
    “No. I’m sorry.” The relief of finding words made her want to weep, made her voice too thin, too brittle. She forced herself to deepen it. “I had no idea—I didn’t know anyone was here. I’m sorry. I—” She squatted and started to pick up the pieces of broken glass.
    Locks of hair freed themselves from her bun and spilled around her face as she leaned over. Her scarf slid off her shoulders. Her legs