Incense and Sensibility (The Rajes #3) - Sonali Dev Page 0,79

by the door, then a familiar voice filtered in. Trisha’s distinct voice speaking to someone.

Yash pushed India behind a curtain, hiding them from view just as Trisha hurried into the room.

“Hello, there, Mr. Khan. How are you this fine evening?” Trisha said, her voice so deliberately light it only made the emotion it was laced with starker.

A shudder went through Yash’s body. India’s own body traced it because he was pressed flush against her, sandwiching her between the cold wall and lean muscle that emitted heat like a furnace. Her face was a whisper away from his neck, just where his shirt was buttoned all the way up. One breath and her lips would kiss his exposed throat.

His smell, like his aura, was bright and warm, a perfume commercial given human form, powerful, luxuriant, more vibrant than any human had the right to be. If her knees gave way beneath her she would never forgive herself. If he felt her trembling she would never forgive herself.

“Did I say thank you?” Trisha said on the other side of the curtain, and Yash’s hands tightened on India’s arms. All of him tightened, sadness radiating from his body like a tangible thing.

Before she could stop herself, India’s hands went around him and stroked his back, unable to keep from soothing him. He sagged into her, the weight of the world too heavy on his shoulders. Warm breath blew at her hair sending tingles skittering down her spine. If she sagged into him the way he was sagging into her, she would never forgive herself.

Her body soaked him up, shameless about how starved it was for him, aware that this was all it could get. Ever. This accidental reminder of what it had once wanted with blinding desire.

Sounds of Trisha moving got closer, the sliding of a stool, the clicking of a keyboard. A sigh. “You have to hurry up and wake up. We’re running out of time,” she said. “Please.”

In the silence that followed, Yash’s body trembled in India’s arms. She held him there. Nothing else mattered but the fact that he was where she could touch him. Her hands flattened into his back, absorbing the tremors, letting all her energy flow into his pain, directing it at unraveling the knots where he’d gathered his guilt and helplessness.

Time melted around them, swelled, and stood still. A lifetime. A blink. His body melted into hers. Arousal swelled and raged through her blood, every inch where they touched throbbed. Then a stool scraped the floor again, and footsteps hurried away. There was silence again, broken only by the staccato hissing of the ventilator and monitors.

Yash didn’t move, not until India dropped her arms and sagged into the wall behind her, because her legs had ignored her and forgotten how to stand. Her hands felt empty, her palms cold.

His pulling away was an abomination of the way he had held her. One had sewn her together, the other ripped apart. She was not strong enough for this. She really wasn’t. What was she even doing?

Nothing.

They’d been hiding. That’s all.

The moment he gave her space she slipped past him, and with one last look at Abdul and one last prayer she hurried out the door. Her hands pressed into her chest, as much a ritual as a pathetic attempt to hold something inside.

By the time Yash caught up with her she had taken the elevator down and was out of the building and hurrying down the palm-tree-lined road, half hoping he wouldn’t follow her.

He fell in step next to her, only slightly out of breath. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t.”

If she cried now, with him watching, she’d never forgive herself.

She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t give him what he needed. She was wrong about her own strength.

“You were right,” she said, forcing herself to keep her voice calm. “You weren’t the one who pulled the trigger. But you are the one who can do something to change a world where that happens.” She didn’t look at him, she couldn’t, she just kept walking.

“I no longer know how to do that.”

When they were in preschool, China regularly pushed anyone who pissed her off to the ground. It was a terrible thing to do and she always got in trouble. Sometimes, when India was angry, she wished she was more like her sister. She wished she could shove Yash to the ground now.

“When did you start believing that you could control everything?”

He didn’t answer. He just kept pace with her step for