Page 8 of Claiming His Bollywood Cinderella

Dreams and desires that had to be impossible, didn’t they? She wasn’t actually thinking of kissing Vikram Raawal, was she? She couldn’t.

“You’ve got that feverish glint in your eyes again. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“That this day couldn’t get any more bizarre. That I had no idea what I’d signed up for. That wanting to kiss you has to be the most impossible thought to ever cross my mind.”

He didn’t flinch at her statement. He didn’t even blink. He just sat there and stared at her with those eyes that seemed to devour her.

Naina could feel her cheeks burning. Mortification, she’d tell Maya, had a special kind of sting. If only the earth could burst open like it did so often in his blockbusters and swallow her whole. Closing her eyes didn’t change reality. He was still there, solid as ever, watching her.

It caused fast words to spill out of her without her permission. “I don’t know what just got into me. I’m thoroughly ashamed of myself and not that this makes it any better, but believe me, my desire to kiss you doesn’t arise from the fact that you’retheVikram Raawal,Bollywood superstar, eligible bachelor and one of the wealthiest men in the country.”

“No?” he said.

He didn’t sound accusatory. It encouraged her to carry on.

“No. I mean, I know I can’t just isolate the movie star part of you, but that’s not the draw for me,” Naina clarified breathlessly. She didn’t know why it mattered so much that he believed her. That she wasn’t some mindless groupie that wanted to live out a kind of warped fantasy here.

“Tell me what it is then?”

His question had a curious thirst to it. As if he desperately wanted to know why she wanted him. As if hearing a woman’s admiration for him wasn’t a regular thing in his world, only she knew that it was.

“I want to kiss the man that saw me across the room this evening. The man that can laugh at himself, who is maybe just as lonely as I’ve been, for all that he has the world at his feet. The complicated stranger with whom I’ve found a connection in a quiet, darkened room made for secret trysts,” she finished with a smile, loving this fearless version of herself.

Their gazes held, a live wire of electricity sparking into life between them.

For a long time, he didn’t say anything. And Naina was okay with that too. He had given her something tonight, something precious. Self-confidence. And she wanted to give something back to him, this man who had everything in the world.

“Then come kiss me. I’m all yours.”

Her heart went thud against her rib cage. “What?”

“Kiss me,” he repeated and as if to underscore his invitation, he spread his legs apart, making room for her. “Have your way with me. Do with me whatever you will.”

Naina had never felt more terrified and more thrilled in her entire life. Not even when Papa had taken her and Mama to see snow for the first time when she’d been six and they’d stood at the top of a snow-covered mountain, both majestic and terrifying in its presence.

“Why?” she managed to ask, trying to cling to the last remnants of any sanity that might be left.

“Shall I speak my mind? I’ll probably be blunt.”

“You’re a gentleman to ask permission. I believe I crossed that line long ago.”

“I want to see if that lovely mouth of yours tastes as good as it looks. I want to tear that mask and that dress off and touch every inch of you. I want to cover those gorgeous breasts with my hands and mouth until you’re begging me for more. I want to be inside you while you laugh with your beautiful eyes and strip another layer of clothing off me.”

“Oh.” Her clutch slipped from Naina’s hands, falling onto the floor in a sinuous whisper. “Why?”

He sighed. “Because when a man thinks a woman is incredibly sexy, he wants to do things to her. With her. Wild, wicked things. He wants to—”

“I said I don’t have much experience, not that I’m lacking basic common sense,” Naina interrupted, feeling a tingle of excitement all over her skin. The chiffon suddenly felt like a tight cage against it.

He smiled and shrugged. “I warned you I’d be blunt.”

It was the kind of smile that made girls like her put posters of him up on their walls after his debut movie. There was charm and mischief in that smile. She hadn’t seen it that day at his grandmother’s house. A little glow erupted in her chest that she’d made him smile like that again. As if it were a prize to be won.

“Honesty seems to be the best policy when you want to do all those things with someone,” she agreed and again, he laughed.

Naina felt as if she was the richest person in the world. She wanted to spend entire eons making him laugh like this. While he whispered filthy things in her ear and made her damp between her legs.

“Says the woman who won’t reveal who she is.”

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